Richard Miller's 5 simple questions confirm this (time 2:55):
These 'simple' questions lead me to inquire whether the complex and analytical questions we love to ask are more than an essentially materialistic massaging of our intellectual egos. We seem to ask two kinds of questions - those that seek functional responses upon which we can base actions - and those that seem to have an aesthetic appeal within our intellects.
I have been revisiting the Sirach, supposedly one of the aprocryphal books of the Bible tradition. But that word can be interpreted as non-genuine or hidden. That's the kind of reputation that will kill anybody's credibility. But the Sirach is an evocation of Wisdom, and if it is read as a text intended to shake up the psyche rather than something to be encountered in a dispassionate rational way, it's magic as a functional text may become apparent.
I would contend that 'smuggled materialism' must be applied to any post Enlightenment thinking. That is, any kind of attempt to engage on a purely intellectual level demands that disconnect we have come to dignify as 'objective'. The idea of 'subjective' now denotes unreliable interpretation. But in fact (and this is what I found so compelling about 'Why Liberalism Failed') is is precisely the 'disconnect' that is perilous. The objective is a strange disconnected state that is proposed as a counter to a connected (subjective) state that might be ill-disciplined. Deneen (Why Liberalism Failed) reminded me that liberty once meant freedom from the base passions via the intentional development of virtues - connected and disciplined. Now it means freedom from restraint - disconnected and self-indulgent.
The model of the mystical state is disciplined subjectivity, and the Wisdom tradition is a guide to attainment in various cultural traditions. Typically the intellect is made to sit still and be quiet. It is not in control. There is a distinct relationship between the mystical state of awareness and out of body awareness. It is awareness of being that is not of the material world - in the world at times, but not of the world.
The paradox of Enlightenment thinking is a disconnect from the material world on the one hand, yet asserting that consciousness is entirely dependent on it on the other. If our consciousness is dependent on physical being why not embed us more in the deep matrix of materiality, rather than imagine to upload consciousness into a post-biological state? In an almost ridiculous way deep ecologists are closer to the proper materialistic model of thinking. But, in fact, that way of thinking allows for connected being in the physical world, while allowing an element of being not of it. In essence, if we are to be 'in the world', we must be deeply connected - but still not 'of the world'.
Central to animistic awareness is knowing that the material world is one level of experience - where there is a particular representation of spirit. Knowing that the material level is not all there is requires subjective connection. This, I think, we are born with, and materialistic conditioning numbs and deflects that innate awareness.
I don't think that brain-based rational thought is a bad thing. It is just out of context and out of balance, addictive and dangerous. If it has done us any good at all it is that the restoration of connected and self-disciplined awareness is, now, a uniquely deliberate and conscious act. Dean Radin argued that science gives us the tools to examine psi in a 'superior' way. I think the whole Enlightenment misadventure now obliges us to rethink who and what we are - a reconnecting and re-enchanting mission in which we struggle to divest ourselves of the delusion of separation. The Enlightenment spurred the shift from soul to mind. Reason became mere intellectualising, rather than rendering soul awareness as conscious thought. Now we gotta flip things and head in the other direction.