wallowinmaya comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! - Less Wrong

48 Post author: MBlume 16 April 2009 09:06AM

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Comment author: wallowinmaya 21 April 2011 03:54:38PM 2 points [-]

I can trigger ecstatic, mystical "religious experiences" fairly easy in other ways; even just singing in a group setting will do it.

Wow, impressing that nevertheless you've managed to become a rationalist! Now I would like to hear how you achieved this feat :-)

I would rather read about the neurological underpinnings of my experience, especially since grokking science's answers can sometimes trigger a near-mystical experience!

I totally agree. Therefore neuroscience of "altered states of consiousness" is one of my pet subjects...

Comment author: Swimmer963 21 April 2011 04:41:45PM 3 points [-]

Wow, impressing that nevertheless you've managed to become a rationalist! Now I would like to hear how you achieved this feat :-)

Mainly by having read so much pop science and sci-fi as a kid that by the time the mystical-experience things happened in a religious context (at around 14, when I started singing in the choir and actually being exposed to religious memes) I was already a fairly firm atheist in a family of atheists. Before that, although I remember having vaguely spiritual experiences as a younger kid, they were mostly associated with stuff like looking at beautiful sunsets or swimming. And there's the fact that I'm genuinely interesting in topics like physics, so I wasn't going to restrict my reading list to New Age/religious books.