Absolutely, humanity has been chasing altered states of consciousness for thousands of years. The substances and rituals change, but the search seems to stay the same. Shamanic traditions, meditation, psychedelics, and now more modern things like DMT all circle around the same question: is consciousness something the brain creates, or is the brain more like a receiver tuning into something bigger?
The funny thing is watching the cycles repeat. Shrooms and acid were the counterculture of one generation, then ecstasy became the rave culture of the 90s, and ketamine had its moment. Different tools, same human curiosity. Maybe we are just using different languages to ask the same questions people have asked for thousands of years... or maybe sometimes it was simply an unforgettable night out with friends during our youth.
I was raised Catholic, but I don't really fit neatly into a box. I found my faith at the bottom, when I had nothing left to lean on but something bigger than myself. What has always intrigued me is how someone can acknowledge there is an unexplained and possibly deceptive phenomenon, yet still be completely certain there is nothing beyond the physical world. To me, that sounds closer to agnosticism than atheism.
The human mind is a powerful thing. What we believe shapes how we interpret the world and how we move through it. I once heard it said, "belief lives in the mind, while faith lives in action." That one stuck with me.
Maybe faith isn't about having every answer. Maybe it's about having peace when the answers aren't clear. The idea that this life is temporary, that this body is just a vessel with an expiration date, and that we're passing through this world rather than truly belonging to it... there is something comforting about that.
Maybe the biggest question isn't just "what is out there?" Maybe it's "why were we created with the ability to even ask the question?" Dogs don't have that ability. They don't sit around wondering why they exist, and as far as we know, they don't wrestle with the weight of their own existence. That strange awareness of ourselves—the ability to question, create, love, suffer, and even choose the act of suicide—might be one of the greatest mysteries of all.