First off, I invite you to read with me a recent article in Newsweek about the emerging field of "neurotheology."
It echoes some of the research done a generation back with yogis and Zen monks when folks such as Charles Tart (my first reviewer for "The Return of Magic") were interesting the world with their studies of ASC's (alternate states of consciousness).  The question that remains, of course, is whether our brains simply developed this way in an essentially random manner because it paid off in the evolutionary sequence or whether, as the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin hypothesized, there is some ultimate goal that is already there.

The point is that we do have experiences that by their nature demand attention (like the conversion experiences described by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience), and I do think that these experiences involve something that transcends our individual awareness.

Magic, I insist, invites us into a shared world.  I use the term "transubjective" to indicate this world, and in the theologies I have learned of the one that most nearly seems to capture this is the Tibetan view that I discuss in the book.

But what are your reactions to this--and how does any of this seem to explain your own experiences?  Please join in the discussion.