Icelander said:

captures that importance.

Maybe because in reality it ain't all that important. Outside your mind I mean.

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I don't mean important like it's a governing force we should be aware of, or important like it's some kind of safehouse idea for our apparently neurotic death-anxious 'reality'. It's important like love is important, like feeling good is important.

There's nothing outside the mind. But you knew that. A "reality" beyond the mind would be too absurd, only suicide would be the real philosophical question, as one of the existentialists said. It would be like the whole universe incarnating as a walnut and just sitting there for eternity. It's nice to think we're being realists when we say the universe is a dog-eat-dog place and 'that's the way it is' or 'don't ask', but in my long searches for anything real the only thing that comes close to reality or finality is the "God" experience I speak of. I think any conclusion that is negative or anti-life must be inherently wrong, because this whole thing is not serious enough for such things.

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Yet somehow, with no external input to speak of, I managed to convince myself that I was at the center of a massive cosmic conspiracy involving Christ, aliens, the secret government, etc.

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Synesthetic said:

If that were so, then there must be a neurotransmitter or a combination of neurotransmitters that trigger this feeling, and our brain has to be programmed by evolution to interpret that input as being connected to everything.

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Lakefingers said:

So how did this happen? How did the delusional trap suck them in?

...

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The human entorhinal cortex is located in the ventromedial portion of the temporal lobe and consists of eight subfields. It has reciprocal connections with the hippocampus and various other cortical and subcortical structures, and thus forms an integral component of the medial temporal lobe memory system.

The number of neurons of the entorhinal cortex is diminished in temporal lobe epilepsy (Du et al. 1993) and in Alzheimer's disease (Gomez Isla et al. 1996).

Epileptic seizures... of the temporal lobe, [produce] psychosensory events including taste, smell, fear, sexual pleasure sensations, and memory disturbances (Engel 1996).

In addition to the hippocampus proper, other medial temporal lobe structures are involved in TLE, such as the amygdala (Kälviäinen et al. 1997, Pitkänen et al. 1998) and the entorhinal cortex (Du et al. 1993). Cell loss is the most profound in layer III of the rostral entorhinal cortex (Du et al. 1993). In experimental studies of status epilepticus of rats, layer III of the medial portion of the entorhinal cortex is suggested to be the most vulnerable (Du et al. 1995a). Evidence is also beginning to point to the entorhinal cortex as one of the primary sites in which temporal lobe seizures propagate and reverberate (Spencer and Spencer 1994). Furthermore, the structural changes in the entorhinal cortex might propagate changes in the hippocampus.

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This is a foolish way to look at it, though, because there's no evolutionary advantage to feel connected to everything, especially since we have to kill things to survive. It's one thing to feel connected to things you are symbiotic with (like family members), but another to feel somehow connected to a rock.

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Synesthetic said:

You know the one, the moment when you feel connected to everything around you, or in the universe, etc.

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Lakefingers said:

One of the major negative side effect of psychedelic experimentation is delusional ideation, and one of the most common pathologies associated with frequent high-dose psychedelic experimentation is persistent recurring delusions of grandeur.

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