Presented herein is the proposition that humans can, under certain conditions, attain a higher awareness, a "cosmic" or "unitive" consciousness in which they have immediate knowledge of a reality underlying the phenomenal world. Resistances to this belief are cited, as are their contemporary counterforces. New models of reality urged by relativity theory, quantum mechanics and Bell's theorem are invoked as parallels, metaphors, and potential sources for empirical validation of this thesis.
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