We think that we experience reality, and on occasion, some have the impression that through special circumstances they are able to catch sight of a deeper insight, they feel they have got a sense of the ultimate nature of the world. In the past, this was most apparent in religious experiences. But, in contemporary times, it is most commonly found in psychedelic experiences. James Cooke here argues that these mystical experiences can reveal how consciousness itself is a window onto reality and that consciousness and reality exist in one and the same world. In contemporary neuroscience, it is common to envision the brain as being fundamentally isolated from the outside world. Your brain sits in the darkness of the skull like a prisoner, one who only receives clues as to what is occurring in the wider world, clues provided by the senses. It is the job of the brain to conjure a vision of what could be occurring in the world beyond the bony confines of the cranium….
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