Aberrant brain states as recorded by various kinds of experts can account for a vast range of different kinds of experience, and of experience modified in ways that are quite unpredictable from the perspective of the internal models we form of its essential apparatus. Further, despite the fact that so-called consensus reality, after factoring out the effects of cultural setting, is shared by a vast number of humans, it would seem that within-group variation in brain structure ought to be large enough to account for many different kinds of basic patterns or notions of reality. Perhaps we do see these variants in our social landscape, but don't fully recognise them, since the shared beliefs and meta-beliefs, even among persons who violently disagree seem greater than they actually are. This variability in brain states, brought about by natural and by artificial factors, operates not only between brains but within the history of each brain as well. Given this, it would seem that if a metanoia such as is imputed to spiritual awakening were merely the result of a brain state, such as an inhibition of the temporal lobe, then something much like it ought to be encountered more commonly than it apparently is, and to arise and fade in an episodic manner. On the other hand if it were real, real say in its claim to be a direct expression of a higher form of truth than our consensus metaphysics allows to be possible, then it ought to be able to supply more interesting solutions to philosophical puzzles than it seems to do. If it is an opening to ultimate beauty, why does it not generally give rise to recognisable aesthetic revelations? If it is equated to a brain state this only affects the conditions which arouse and extinguish such experience, but does not necessarily invalidate the state's internal account of itself, except where these accounts overlap. However, one would expect an interesting and coherent description of the unawakened state as seen from the awakened state, which again seems conspicuously absent. All of these are natural questions and doubts, but merely expose the persistence of dualistic thinking; the error they embody is significant, but only for the thinker.