In some traditions it's not a hallucination taking place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
Whether or not someone believes this to be real or a hallucination, it is still a human experience, and should at least be treated with respect. I think it's perfectly fine to not believe that it is something higher than brain function, but in Buddhism there is the concept of non-duality.
But in reality, it is always a hallucination taking place, because the supernatural isn't real.
This is about as banal and useless a claim as one can imagine. The model of science is an interpretation of data based on observation and experimentation, with objectively verifiable results. The model of religion is literally just vibes. The rain happens because the man in the sky is angry.
If you want to regress further into the solipsist trap and retort that no one can prove objective reality even exists then fine. At some point, to have a conversation, conversants must accept even simply for the sake of argument some minimal set of common axioms. Reality exists. Objective reality exists. Objective reality operates according to understandable rules. Science creates models which more correctly describe the nature of reality than religion.
If you can't even get that far then I don't know what to tell you. Go talk to the machine elves living in your walls or something.
> Reality exists. Objective reality exists.
Remember, the only information about that reality is supplied via/by our mind. Our mind also suggests choices about what to measure, what experiments to hold, and more generally what sort of maps to create. It is all subjective from the ground up.
> Science creates models which more correctly describe the nature of reality than religion.
Science makes testable predictions and creates models which help make further testable predictions. Those models do not “describe the nature of reality”. If you think natural sciences make statements of absolute truth, you are mistaking science for religion.
Dogmatically defining metaphysical claims as "not real" because they are unfalsifiable is no more rational than dogmatically accepting them—the only purely rational approach is to say "we don't know and cannot know" and then move on.
But being Catholic I was also going to a big fancy theater once a week where there was cosplay and fairy tales and lots of singing and a snack. All your friends hung out for coffee and donuts. And really that was my surface-level experience of the Christian faith, because Star Wars was more real to kids like us, than the Old Testament (at least most of the NT folks had been photographed and copied...)
But upon returning I considered how this is a way of life for millions-billions, great intellects, vast civilizations, isn't there more than fairy tales? And it really took dedication and concentrated effort and perseverance just to open up to those possibilities of a spiritual realm. But once you grasp that there's something to it all, and a breadth and depth that's unfathomable, and things might get rocky or difficult, decision point time: follow him to the Cross, or turn away and you'll never know?
Moreover, it became apparent but surprising to me that my reality was unlike others' reality, and I simply have no way of being inside the other's experience of their reality. There's no film or video game or book that can convey to you how people really live, love, and die. We just set out on life's journey and hack through the jungle, making friends along the way.
So ... only what is physical is real? Like only matter and energy? Then there's no such thing as significance or value, only different combinations of matter and energy. Any opinion or argument, held however strongly, is only a set of chemical reactions, nothing more?
If you're on a hike and you see blueprints for a working automobile, you don't assume it assembled itself by mere chance. There's a language of a working design and you assume some minds created it.
But at the same time you interact with humans who have a working blueprint expressed in a 4-letter language and suddenly deny there is any mind behind any design?
I have spent many years pondering it myself, as I'm sure most of us have. I've even spent some time pondering it while not under the influence of mind altering substances (again, not unique, just wanted to throw that out there).
"The question" is, by design or by accident, unanswerable. At least not with any technology that we have yet contemplated.
Honestly, I could probably write for hours about the many possibilities I have pondered, and some of them are quite interesting (and some are just stupid), but I don't want to ramble and HN is not the place for it.
However, there is a good one that gives me some comfort from time to time. So I will at least share that particular thought:
Assume there was an entity with the characteristics one would normally ascribe to a god: the power of creation, omnipotence, all-knowing intelligence, and being eternal yet simultaneously timeless.
At the moment such a being were to come into existence, certainly in an instant, it would experience the "ultimate realization": it would be forever alone.
In my feeble human mind, that is indeed a twisted fate for such a powerful being. Something straight out of the Twilight Zone.
So then I pondered what I would do in that scenario. And the answer seemed fairly obvious: Everything, with a capital "E".
If it could be done, created, built, lived, experienced, dreamed, loved, hated, you name it.
Where would I do it? Everywhere.
For how long? As long as it took. Even if it required doing it all just a bit different 1000^1000^1000^10000000000 times over.
Why? Because then I would have memories. I would have friends.
Having no limitation of knowledge or thought, he could think about himself. His thoughts would not be deficient in any detail, and thus would be an exact representation of himself. [1]
He could delight in that representation with his whole being, and that would be yet another full representation of himself. And thus he would not be alone or sad.
And he could have the propensity of emanating his delightfulness, expressing it outwards like light out of a star. And that emanation could be expressed as the creation of everything else. [2]
[1] https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/trinity/trinity.i.html?queryID...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_scien...
As a child it was understood to me that certain drugs (only the illegal ones) precipitated hallucinations and this was quite undesirable.
After a lifetime of listening to disembodied music on radio, shows on TV, and sailing through Cyberspace, how can we not question reality as moderated through pixels or remote broadcasts... even just your printed paperbacks?
Religions speak of voices/visions all the time and perhaps it's perceived as bunk when an oracle, a psychic, a shaman or a seer receives messages. But generally Western Medicine is concerned with dull-witted people hallucinating detrimental and dangerous things for them. Not people who are guided by encouraging voices or just hearing music in their head at a snap of fingers. One time after college, my mom just goes "don't you think listening to all that awful music is hurting you?" and I was like "welp, vicious cycle."
For myself, I don't remember/experience dreaming and my visual "powers" are limited to watching the world go by, but my inner voices are myriad and a rich tapestry. Unfortunately they're overwhelmingly bad and evil and pessimistic, [they had eventually come to parity with the way people treated me in meatspace,]
so I went through a series of physicians and medications as they attempted to exorcise those daemons by means of human chemistry experiment. Strangely I rarely had the experience as auditory or any sort of "sound in my head" so it's difficult to explain how they're there, and it was harder for me to accept that they were, and my intellect questioned the proposition that a pill could be a voice-killer like heroin is a pain-killer?
And just like antimicrobials or pesticides, it's not easy to find drugs that quell only the bad voices, lol.
Really cannot recommend watching it enough, and narrated by Leonard Cohen, for a treat (...maybe).