The Maya Gaia website was begun in Geocities in 1997. The experience happened in 1970 and at the time, I was almost completely naive regarding philosophy or epistemology of religion or metaphysics or mystical, spiritual, or paranormal phenomena of any kind but the experience started my search for explanation that is still ongoing.
My transcendent journey contained many perennial and synchronistic 'features' unfolding as my consciousness transformed from numinous duality to nonduality and back. It is only after subsequent research that I learned it followed a neo-Tantric scenario wherein my ecstatic orgasm triggered a Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
Starting my journey as an agnostic, I easily ignored the dogmas of the prophetic religions and drew primarily on historical Vedantic, Buddhist and Tao sources but discovered my major challenge was in applying a holistic approach to the reductionist, materialist, scientific viewpoint and that of open-ended, new-age spiritualism. I use my direct insight as a lens to pass thru all the speculation regarding the nondual experience I find on the Internet and play at autophenomenological hypothesizing about the reality it suggests - ever mindful that imagination is what Spinoza described as the power on which all the errors, superstitions, and prejudices of revealed religion rests.
In surveying the internet resources about "Science of Consciousness" it is apparent that there is vastly more disagreement than concurrence in virtually every aspect of the subject in all the scientific disciplines including psychiatry, neurobiology, biochemistry, biophysics, cosmology and both classical and quantum physics.
The epistemology supporting the notion that there is a state of nondual consciousness variously called Nirvikalpa Samadhi, Bodhi, Satori, etc. is based exclusively on subjective accounts of such episodes. Despite the claim of ineffability in the literature of the nondual traditions, a perennial profile has emerged over the millennia, by which we can somewhat judge the authenticity of the nondual experience both by attributions and apophatically as well as by synchronistic aspects of before and after states of numinous duality that may attend it.
It is clear that understanding is in its infancy with the most fundamental issues yet unresolved- how does consciousness arise from the brain/mind; are there proto conscious quanta in the reality landscape; is human consciousness necessary to complete a quantum event; are the anthropic principle or any version of panpsychism conceivably scientific? Even in the emergent 'science' of integral/transpersonal psychology, confusions between the nature of dual and nondual 'mystical' states arise- Steven Katz's failure to make a clear distinction in his Constructivism, a case in point. The debates expose even deeper levels of uncertainty as to what constitutes "real" science with doubts extending to questioning whether anyone understands quantum mechanics. Must a theory be "testable" or falsifiable or would this dispose many theoretical concepts like quantum gravity, string theory, and the anthropic principle to be lumped together in metaphysics. Are scientists' strong world views- whether atheistic or theistic, legitimate factors in apprising the credibility of their theoretical arguments about Consciousness- with its potential for spanning the spectrum of reality from Alpha to Omega?
Due to the closing of Geocities scheduled for July 12 all my other Maya-Gaia pages are being relocated to Maya-Gaia