So who's eywa?

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

I think it probably is part the times we live in - or the place you live in, but maybe also willful blindness. Of course it is individual experience, but I am pretty sure that it is a lot harder to experience any feeling of unity, of light or connectedness (you may call it a "spiritual experience")...

First off, I can appreciate the beauty of the wilderness, and I can understand why some people would find it to be a unique and fascinating experience (I certainly do) but I don't believe it's anything "sacred" or "magical" beyond our realm of comprehension, nor should we hold back in trying to find scientific/materialistic explanations for what we don't know.

...if you are in a city or in the middle of corn fields or in a forest that is just a managed tree farm as opposed to a wild forest or wide untouched spaces with at least largely free animals.

Does a 3-day backpacking excursion in the Sierras qualify?

I also imagine that it is a lot harder to experience such a feeling if the thinking mind keeps jumping in with attempts of scientific explanations for everything.

Again, appreciating the unique experience of the wilderness does not preclude simultaneously approaching it with a scientific mindset or with a sense of curiosity about how it all works. I can certainly attest to that.

This is why often people seeking such experiences do meditate or trances to minimize the influence of the thinking and reasoning mind on the experience and be open for other forms of knowledge. That is of course never a state to stay in - it is always a journey but the experiences stay. The explanation that people always just were too damn stupid or lacked science to explain something and thus invented deities and spirituality to explain these things is a very simplistic one.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to experience the wilderness without a scientific mindset. I never suggested that people were stupid and had to invent deities to explain unknown phenomena. People in ancient civilizations didn't have our scientific understanding, and devising anecdotes of supernatural beings was their method of coping and finding reason with the unknown. It's not a knock on them and it's understandable given the circumstances.

It does not explain at all why there is such an emotional response

We may very well be able to explain it as our knowledge in the field of neuroscience expands.

neither does it explain why many scientists in these days still are spiritual or religious

I don't know what your point is with this statement.

- just because we have some knowledge on the physical or chemical processes that are connected to things we see in the natural world does not have to minimize the wonder and awe we can feel

And I never suggested that. I am at awe at some of the natural wonders and what nature can do and shape of the course of billions of years. Yet I am still aware of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that are responsible for the creation of these phenomena.

(in part though only if we temporarily let go of the thinking mind which tries to minimize these experiences as "it is just this and that chemical phenomenon").

Attempting to find a scientific explanation for our experience, or of spectacular natural phenomena, is certainly not minimizing or trivializing them. I don't know where you got that idea from.

I personally feel something special if I am at the top of a mountain, looking over all the other mountains nearby or to sit in the shade of a tree in the African savannah, watching wild animals climbing the rock wall nearby, or even taking a break during driving in a lonely valley near the spring of a river where no one else is near. I am a geologist and know how mountains are formed and rivers flow - but for these moments I do not think about plate tectonics and thrust belts and hydrological cycles, I just see and feel mountains and rivers and savannah and the absence of chatter of people (including my own).

Yes, by all means, appreciate the phenomena of this Earth. Our planet has some true natural wonders to behold. But as I said earlier, they certainly aren't something magical or beyond our realm of understanding, nor should we stop attempting to scientifically understand them.