Before I talked about Descartes' (and my) assumption that the rational mind is the center and everything else, including our bodies, revolves around it. I now believe just the opposite - it is our bodies that are the center and everything else, including our rational minds, revolves around the body. The proof for this statement is not in thinking about it rationally, but to instead introspect and remember the states that you have been to, and to at least be open to the possibility of finding other states. But what are these other states that I keep on talking about? Ultimately this is something that you will have to discover in yourself. Here are some of the states that I have directly experienced:
Runner's High
I love to run. Our bodies love and need to work. When I run, I quickly slip into a semi-trance and my body just takes over. I typically have wonderful conversations with myself as I run - it is when I'm at my strongest. I make my most courageous decisions while I'm running - I feel powerful and capable. When I need to make a big decision, I like to go running on it. People who don't believe that this state exists, or doubt that they can achieve it themselves are, by their very disbelief, keeping themselves from achieving this state. Isn't that strange?.
Berserker rage
I discovered this state in high school football. I found that if I prepared myself mentally all of the day before a game I could go into a very, very powerful rage/trance during the game. This crazy rage made me a kind of star during my sophomore season. It turns out that we have a war-like, berserker state where we can do incredibly physical feats. The Vikings knew about these states - it is where we get the word "berserk". The rage/trance let me perform way beyond my normal athletic limits. On the down side I also smashed through people without being conscious of what harm I was doing to them. From a rational point of view I can't say much to defend this other than it is a lot more fun than you might think. To fully embrace being human we must accept that, on a very deep level, humans are unusually war-like animals.
Personal growth
As I mentioned before, the more I worked towards healing my psychological wounds in my thirties, the more I discovered that just about all of this work revolves around spirituality. Another word for it, perhaps, is love, but it is a very powerful form of it. I know this is a difficult word for many, but it is the best that I can come up with for now. After taking a particularly powerful set of courses I remember just sitting in the Microsoft cafeteria and feeling unconditional love for everyone around me - regardless of how they might feel about me. Some of our best spiritual leaders talk about this state of consciousness; whatever word you choose our world could use more of this.
Communion with Nature
The reason I love hiking and backpacking is that it puts me in closer connection with nature. Given a chance, I think all of us can feel this deep connection with the natural world. Environmentalist oppose the destruction of wilderness not just because of rational reasons, but because the land is sacred to them. Walk through a strand of old growth trees with a quiet mind, and I strongly suspect you might discover what I mean. There is a value to a tree far beyond its narrow economic value. There is a reason why even in the densest cities we find it imperative to mix in greenery and trees. There are many paths to spirituality, taking a long walk in wilderness is one of my personal favorites.
Energy and multiple orgasms
This one surprised me. It turns out that men can have multiple orgasms. It involves some of the same breathing and mind discipline I learned in Zen. It also involves consciously channeling sexual energy through the body to redirect it from going to orgasm. The Tantrics in China did a lot of exploration into this. To a strict rationalist this sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but it is a demonstrably concrete physical phenomenon.
This one is worth pursuing for two reasons - it is a very pleasurable discipline, and it also demonstrates the amazing connections between mind, body, and our energy. Once I personally experienced changing my energy flows to do something that I thought impossible, I became a lot more curious and open to some of the New Age woo-woo talk about energy. I don't claim to completely understand it, and I don't want to make exaggerated claims, but our control of our own energy levels is much more complex and powerful than a typical, limited rationalist view of the world would want to admit.
Sex and spirituality
The more I pay attention during sex, the more powerful and profound it becomes. As I mentioned before, I discovered that sex for me has three levels - the body, the emotions, and the spirit. Quite often I approached (and sometimes still approach) sex as if I were happily munching through a bag of potato chips. That's sex on the body level. Sex is such a powerful, body based experience that many of us get stuck here. Then I learned to open my heart to my partner. That's sex on the emotional level. Finally, I started to pay close attention to the energy exchange between my partner and myself. That is sex on the spiritual level. I found that this feeling of spirituality (or energy level if you prefer), showed up nowhere more strongly than in sex.
Self-Healing
A constant "problem" with drug tests is that annoying placebo effect. It turns out that people can consciously will themselves to get better simply by believing they are taking a powerful drug when in fact they are just taking an inert placebo pill. This is truly amazing.
In my mid thirties, I developed a very dangerous and painful tumor in my spinal column. Despite the fact that it was life threatening, it was one of the times I was most powerful. I interviewed for and got a very demanding position at work. A dear friend came to visit me after the surgery, and we laughed when we realized that I was giving comfort and strength to him instead of the other way around.
One big problem, though, was that in removing the tumor, the surgeon had to remove a large chunk of the nerve connections to my left arm. One of my doctors looked at the body as a machine and was quite firm in telling me that there was no way I was going to regain the lost functionality. How could I? -- The nerves controlling it were completely removed. The actual surgeon, though, told me that we don't fully understand the body mind connection, and it is hard to predict exactly what could be re-established.
So there I sat in my hospital bed, feeling very powerful and determined to do whatever I could to help my mind fully reconnect to my arm. I consciously poured as much love as I could into my poor damaged arm. Later that night I felt a tremendous wave of energy that flowed starting from my left side, then throughout my body and then seemed to fill the entire room with energy. It was incredible. It felt like being kissed by an angel. Now I hasten to add that despite this experience I didn't have a religious conversion. I still don't believe in some patriarchal (or matriarchal ) God sitting in heaven with their white robed angels. But now from direct personal experience I do know that there are states of consciousness that I never even dreamed possible while I was living firmly in my rational world. And as for my arm, I made a complete recovery - I regained complete control. The second doctor was right. I can't say for sure that my mental efforts added to this, but I also can't say for sure that they didn't. And I sure know that I experienced something extraordinary.
Emotions
What about emotions? Where do they fit in? The traditional view on emotions is that they are separate from rational thought. You can either think emotionally or you can think rationally, but not both at the same time. Star Trek's Spock, my former idol, was a great proponent of this. I no longer believe it. I think that everything we do is accompanied by emotion including rational thought. When I am working through a computer problem I tend to feel calm and serene - these are emotions that I treasure and are a huge part of the reason I am such a rationalist. I make a point of returning to this serene space as much as possible. There has been recent psychological research to show that emotions and rational thought are much more intertwined than we previously believed. So, for me, emotions are an intrinsic part of all our experience, sometimes they are very intense and sometimes they are almost unnoticeable, but they are always with us. And yes, they are a source of knowledge in the same way that any of my body's senses are a source of knowledge. But I'm not convinced that they are independent of all my other mental states, I think they are just an important part of being self-aware.