In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of hu… - Sam Harris

Not even in the right ballpark”? His experience sounds so much like a DMT trip that we are not only in the right ballpark, we are talking about the stitching on the same ball.

Forces of digestion and metabolism are at work within me that are utterly beyond my perception or control. Most of my internal organs may as well not exist for all I know of them directly, and yet I can be reasonably certain that I have them, arranged much as any medical textbook would suggest. The taste of the coffee, my satisfaction at its flavor, the feeling of the warm cup in my hand — while these are immediate facts with which I am acquainted, they reach back into a dark wilderness of facts that I will never come to know... Where am I, that I have such a poor view of things? And what sort of thing am I that both my outside and my inside are so obscure?

Fundamentalist Christians support Israel because they believe that the final consolidation of Jewish power in the Holy Land — specifically, the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple — will usher in both the Second Coming of Christ and the final destruction of the Jews.