This revulsion only makes sense if you firmly believe that rationalism is the highest good, and that the only right way to engage with the world is through rationality, ie, dividing the world into "false" and "true" ideas.

There are good reasons that so many people realize for themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value than dualistic ones.

The older I get, the more some paradoxes really tickle my brain in a way they never did when I was younger. It’s like they express some reality that transcends our understanding while still reaching out and grabbing us by our mind grapes to show us that something deeper is at hand.

It’s nearly impossible to describe this in English well.

Sometimes it makes more sense for me to think that I'm not a rational being, I'm an animal with a rational brain glued on top.

If you do a "5 Whys" type thing, there isn't really a reason to live. It's just an instinct. So I can say, I'm a hedonist, I live because life pays off eventually. No big deal.

I don't think rationality is opposed to anything like love or sentiment. I just like feeling good. Rationality is a tool I can use to feel more good, if I want.

My point about awe and wonder is that I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God. I should mention that it was a similar experience that he says convinced him of the existence of a god to begin with.

Do you have some specific examples of irrationality? I’m curious to know what you’re encountering, and I haven’t yet found this among the non-religious meditators that I know.

> I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God

I do avoid them (figuratively, not literally) because I value my critical thinking.

What I observe in meditators is a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things and have insight beyond even experts.

If they produced some new knowledge through that, I would be all for it. But no, it just is a collapse of common sense.

> a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things

This is again all very vague, so it’s difficult to understand your perspective. Silly quackeries like what?

It also doesn’t align with what I’ve experienced, or have observed in others: I’m still a staunch believer in logic, reason and science. Have never felt the need to take on psychic beliefs, etc.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about the people you’re referring to, I just don’t have a similar frame of reference.

Quite possible. We might also be talking about different kinds of meditation. Mindfulness meditators seem to have a healthy attitude. TM meditators start talking psychic things pretty quickly. The people around me are all TM types.

Yeah, TM is quite a different thing.

The scientific interest in meditation is primarily focused on the mindfulness variety, which is more about observing your state of mind without judgement, and learning to stop getting lost in discursive thought, vs. TM's focus on mantras.

While the mindfulness family of practices has been fairly well secularized, it does seem that TM brings a lot more baggage along with it.

I think this still boils down to the person practicing. While researching/evaluating meditation practices, TM was something that I decided to steer clear of, for many of the reasons you describe.