Quite a read. I enjoyed it. He describes the point of view you get in certain altered states very well, poetically and with subtly that matches my experiences.

Quite a read. I enjoyed it. He describes the point of view you get in certain altered states very well, poetically and with subtly that matches my experiences. I’m sure strict materialists will find his characterization of them unsatisfying, and maybe he should have railed against the other extreme (psychedelic woo woo mystics) a bit more to balance it out — he has one quick comment at the end warning against that side — but he ends in a non-committal, I dare say humble spot. It really is remarkable how little — or at all — we allow ourselves to feel the cosmic dread at our unexplained and unexplainable existence. It is the central mystery and (possibly?) horror of our lives, and yet we barely wrestle with it. Or worse we dismiss it out of hand, because we think science has answered enough to make us feel we know reality. But Roger Penrose has a great quote in a interview I saw - he says something like “It’s all well and good to call yourself a materialist, like I do, but honesty then compels you to admit that you’re saying far less than you wish… because we understand almost nothing about what matter is, or what we are, or what ‘knowing’ means…” So what are you left with? Maybe the plants know something we don’t… :)