The point being, that possibly accessing a “higher reality” is being able to access ALL of the senses, instead of only five, and this maybe achievable through techniques that you are not familiar with (meditation).
Psychedelic drugs can get some people to states of mind that include synesthesia, heavens and hells and what Freud called the “Oceanic consciousness” (visions of being part of a Whole of everything). Lily claimed to have achieved a “higher” sense of reality by immersion in a sensory deprivation tank.
The senses are curtailed to some extent so that we can walk, eat, sleep, etc. They are limited so that we can tend to practical matters.
Aldous Huxley described these experiences as belonging to the “hinterlands” of the mind.
I’d simply note that these are places a mind can go to. Seeing these places as spiritual is a matter of personal preference. They may or may not be spiritual.
The question that comes to mind is : Is a higher reality or ultimate reality out there? Is it a part of a physical reality that we are ignoring or not seeing?
Or can it be product of the mind? If you alter your brain chemistry with drugs, are the resulting experiences giving you access to a higher reality?
Someone shows you a picture that he has drawn. Is it a representation of objects that he actually saw in the physical world? Or did he draw objects from his own imagination?
If I press my finger against my eye, I get double vision. I know everything I can see with no eye pressure amounts to single objects, that the double vision is not an indication of some higher sense of reality. I’d guess that a similar situation exists for those folks who had NDEs and claimed to have visited heaven or hell. The state of their brains during these experiences produced images which may simply be illusions. It’s the same with mind-altering drugs. They may simply produce illusions.
To be perfectly honest, here, I do believe in the kingdom within, in the spiritual possibilities of mental “trips”; but. being a pragmatist, I must ask what good these trips do for a person or for others. Do they lead to self absorption or to care and concern for self and others?
Not saying that they are, but it is important to recognise that the issue of reality vs. ultimately reality is a non issue and the relevant issue is self absorption and/or its antidote.
If a person is “absolutely” self absorbed then they are not deserving of support from their community and should be kicked out of that community (which is a consequence of their freedoms).
I believe the question of
“Created By a God vs God as reality”
is a human concern driven and created by psychological impulses of the individual who is besieged subliminally by a state of DOOM, i.e. Despairs Over Own Mortality.
There is no such thing as a God or God-as-Reality which can exists as real.
Any one who can manage and modulate that DOOM will not be bothered with the idea of God to give relief to that DOOM.
It’s a theoretical limit that doesn’t exist but that doesn’t matter as it means that as a person approaches this limit they become less deserving of the benefits of a living in a community.
Honestly through faith it’self dating back to Mayan culture which is the assumption we were in fact created in the vision of God, birthed by the stars (i.e. our five senses, and outer-space) yet only do we perceive a more intelligible sense of God. Like it was in the beginning possibly with the big bang we could have spawned as common organisms and cells yet only to evolve into more adaptable and intelligent creatures able to understand ancient cultures and their said religions. Our adaptation in this ever-changing world could eventually ascertain exactly what it is God and nature are stocked with. But to explicitly express this uncertain idea of an (all above our senses) God we could never fully understand such a blunder. Intense but this is true, of course we’re physical form but the dream world they’re talking of is just that which is our consciousness, the actual spirit of life. Just because someone didn’t know something doesn’t mean it never existed, so my rebuttal for this post is this: We’ve all acquired very unique and almost supernatural senses as is with all other creatures on earth, we feel as though they were Gods gifts but truley our senses only take us as far as, as you’ve seen, far as humans can go. So who we spawned from is up to anybody with a brain to figure out.