because we believed our thoughts were broadcast and received, but b ecause God was showing us the same things at the same time. This prompted an ever increasing array of delusional states. Everything that was even slightly out of the ordinary became laden with meaning and intent. I was on constant lookout for gui dance, and, following my intuitions and "God's will", I was lead to heartache after heartache. Before all this, I had never been religious. In fact, I was at best an agnostic atheist. But I realized that, if it were true, I would have to commit to the belief. So I d id. And I was disappointed. I focused on the mechanisms. How was God communicating with me? It was always

private

, meaning that God's thoughts were always presented to my own mind. As a consequence, I could not r emove my own brain from the explanation. It kept coming back to that. I did n't understand my brain, so how could I be certain that God was, or was not, communicating with me? I couldn't. And truthfully, the mystery of how my brain could do these things

without

God was an equally driving mystery. So I worked, and struggled until I was stable enough to attend university, where I began to study cognitive science. And so that's where I started: was it my brain, or was it something else? O ver the years, I discovered that I could access the religious state without

fully

accessing the perceptual state. I could access the full perceptual state without needing to experience the religious one. I was left with a real puzzle. I had a real discovery - a perceptual state - and a history of delusion br ought on by the belief that the universe was conscious, and had high expectations for me. I have a wide range of th eories to try explain everything, because I've needed explanations to stay grounded. The basic premise about the delusional component, and I think psychedelic "woooo" phenomenon in general is that we have

absolute

faith in our cognitive faculties. Example: what is your name? Are you sure? Evidence aside, your certainty is a

feeling

, a swarm of electrical and chemical activity. It just so happens that every time you , or anyone else checks, this feeling of certainty is acc urate. Your name is recorded externally to you - so every time you look, you di scover it unchanged. But I want you to focus on that

feeling

of certainty. Now, let's focus on something a little more tenuous - the feeling of the familiar. What's the name of the girl you used to sit next to in grade 11 english class? Tip of the tongue, maybe? For some reason, we're more comfortable with perceptual errors than errors in these "deep" cognitive processes. Alien abductees? They're

certain

they're right. Who are we to question that

certainty

? I have firsthand experience that shows me that even this feeling of certainty - that my thoughts and interpretation of reality are veridical - can be dramatically incorrect. This forces upon me a constant evaluation of my beliefs, my thoughts, and my interpretation of the r eality around me. However, most people have neither the experience or the mental tools required to sort out such questions. When faced with malfunctioning cognitive faculties that tell them their vision

is

an angel, or "Mescalito" (a la Castaneda), then for them it really

is