What does it mean to be out of your skull? Is it a detrimental term or may it have hidden meanings and use?
I have been thinking recently about collective delusion. Where society or a segment of society comes to believe something to be true which is in fact false.
There are many examples. I have “faith” that religion is a collective delusion. It is a series of stories we tell to explain our own origins, to find our place in a fearful world. It has no basis in fact but whereas we collectively agree that Father Christmas is a fiction, woe betide those who dare to say the same about [insert your favorite deity/prophet].
Getting out of your skull is not about mindless drug or alcohol abuse. Or at least not the way I mean it. It is about distancing yourself from your own ego. It is about questioning every thought you have ever had about god, the universe and everything.
It is about deciding whether the answer really is “42” or something else entirely.
It is about questioning every aspect of yourself, your thoughts your behaviour and the reality you believe you see around you.
To some extent this can only be the realm of science. Maths and the microscope, maths and the Large Hadron collider, maths and the cosmic background radiation.
And yet science can be aided surely by getting “out of your skull”. By abandoning dull convention, by thinking new thoughts, by daring to challenge the many collective delusions we have invented for ourselves.
It may be that the Doors of Perception can only truly be opened by mystic experience. Or by dreams or the mind travels of the shaman. Or the deep meditation of the experienced monk.
Those of us less brave or determined might achieve a shift in perception by letting go. By renouncing old ways, thinking new thoughts, daring to do new things. By shaking ourselves up, by refusing to bow to convention and collective delusion.
Few would wish to experience the Dark Night of the Soul and yet we must achieve at least some view through the doors of perception if we are to grow. To escape the wheel of existence, we must seek to free ourselves from dull mundanity.
Weltanschauung 