Interesting, thanks for sharing those articles and thoughts! I got back and forth. I find neuroscience to be fascinating, and believe that much of our experience is chemical and electrical reactions, in some sense. But, I also question it - what does that even mean? I tend to take the stance of Dr. Stanislav Grof - We understand how th TV works and everything within the TV set needs to be there for the signal to come through, but you don't go looking into the TV set to find the picture. It simply does not exist.

Psychedelic research is also really fascinating and helping to shed light on consciousness research. For example, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, seems to decrease blood flow to the default mode network, which is like the "orchestrator of self." With decreased blood flow, this region of the brain simply begins to take in whatever, and has a hard time accurately predicting and making sense of the external world. This region also seems to control perception of self, ego, and etc. More information about this - Dr. Carhart-Harris

I find the science and research to be fascinating. But I always get caught up on -- ok, so we know what's going on in the brain, but what does that actually really mean? Maybe these are mechanism that need to happen to produce an experience?

I found this quote in the Atlantic article to be funny/true:

Many people who’ve had near-death experiences aren’t that interested in the science.

Ah, so many questions and thoughts! Thanks again for sharing!