666

My meditation practice has changed all that. I have had first-person experiences of consciousness as eternal, boundless, and fundamental. These experiences are so forceful and compelling that I am now agnostic on the nature of consciousness. I still suspect that a materialist explanation for consciousness is the correct one, but I am now more willing to entertain theories like panpsychism. I now take the “hard problem of consciousness” very seriously, and I have no answer for it.

It would be hypocritical of me to talk about the limits of inner revelation without acknowledging the ways in which first-person contemplative experience have shaped my life. Despite all that, though, I still strive for restrained agnosticism when it comes to truth claims about the material world. If I did not have this restraint, I have no doubt that I would be led down the garden path of wild claims. Mystical practice is necessary but dangerous. Necessary, because it cultivates meaning, compassion, and self-knowledge. Dangerous, because without proper grounding in reason, it can lead us to dangerous absurdities.