I've been reflecting on my philosophical views as of late, and I find an essenti al dichotomy that I cannot get rid of no matter

how hard I try. On the one hand, I find myself a die-hard materialist. The universe is nothing more than the interaction of minute physical elements--free will is but an illus ion, as evidenced by the findings of neuroscience, consciousness is an amusing b y-product of DNA-driven machines built to survive just long enough to create mor e DNA-driven machines, and there is no reason why we're here--it's only because millions of years ago, molecules happened to bump into each other and form a sel f-replicating molecule that our existence today occurs. There is no grand purpo se towards life; no morality beyond what's genetically hard-wired into us and wh at society and cultural expectations program us to believe; no God beyond what r eligious institutions tell us there is; and I am going to grow old, get diseases , become imperfectly blemished, and finally die whether I want to or not. Cance r and other horrible diseases are a fact of life, and even my own consciousness is not as perfect and indivisible as Descartes once thought; just lesion selecti ve portions of your brain and your consciousness will get altered accordingly. My self-awareness, created indirectly by the copulation of my parents, will even tually go out just like every impermanent thing, and I have nothing more to look forward to in life but aimlessly wanking around until my time comes up. Life i s suffering, as Buddha once said, and the only compelling incentive I find mysel f taking when examining the source of my motivations is the pursuit of material pleasure. Nihilistic hedonism at its finest. On the other hand, I find myself a raging idealist. There is no proof that matt er exists, as all we can ever know of it are our sensations of it: a table in fr ont of me could really exist, or it could all be an illusion. Dreams seem just as real as reality does today, and yet I wake up out of my dream every morning. Could the same analogy be extended towards life, and waking up after death? I find myself strangely drawn towards altering my own synchronicities through chao s magick and other belief paradigms, and it seems there is much truth behind the simple maxim that magic is only real if you believe in it. Folie a deux, mass delusions, and examples of shared telepathy as induced by psychedelics and delir iants provide tangible, if not utterly compelling evidence of something beyond t he sheer materialistic side that science aims to show. If we're not conscious d uring deep sleep, then where did this consciousness go? And how does it return? Auditory hallucinations, such as those experienced by schizophrenics, are just as real as another person talking to me, and in fact all the people that I beli eve to be real in dreams are merely just figments of my imagination. I have no proof that I will die--only examples of other fleshy humanoids no longer ceasing to behave in a manner consistent with life; and the mere fact that I cannot con ceptualize my own existence ceasing to be seems proof enough that it cannot happ en. The One-ness as experienced via ego death; the dissolution into shape-shift ing realities as experienced through Datura; the becoming of objects as experien ced through Salvia; the sheer happiness, blissful peace, and assurety that my de ath will only dissolve me back into the serene Cosmos all seem ample proof that there is something more beyond materialism. The testament of mystics; the testa ment of Yogis; and the testament of a substantial proportion of psychedelic user s all just as firm in their belief of the denial of death as skeptics are firm i n their belief its reality point towards an inherent incoherence between the two . In a lucid dream, anything is possible. Who's to say that Life isn't but a d ream, after all? And then there's the example of Jesus, Mohammed, and any other pivotal character who was so successful in irrevocably changing the world that people still believe in them two thousand years later. Was it pure charisma tha t pulled this off? A devoted conspiracy started by twelve individuals? Or was this the one, true example of someone who was able to cheat death, and all the e vidence that skeptics use now to mock is based on a biased sample two thousand y ears later? What if all we need to do to obtain eternal life is believe in the words of these prophets?

I find my personal philosophy a strange admixture of Chuck Palahniuk's delightfu lly cynical nihilism, the Marquis de Sade's willful, amoral hedonism, the magica l idealism of Robert Anton Wilson, and the compelling blend of science and poetr y pointing towards reality being more than materialism of McKenna and Leary. What's a conflicted philosophical person to do?