Right that makes sense to me: Stimuli that comes into our brains we interperite into symbols and concepts, and often we thing in terms of these symbols (words) and concepts too.
But i think its jumping to a conclusion to say that the actual phenomena (or stimuli) or the "objective reality" is different from the symbols we percieve. I say that because, no one knows for sure and has seen the objective truth beyond perception (including yourself swimfriend, you are no more qualified to speak of what is true than any of us, since we are all human and imperfect)
Im not saying the symbols we percieve are 100% the truth, but i do think there is truth behind them, and through the depiction of these "visions" this is the only way we can comprehend what is going on because thats how our brains work, we are linguistic creatures and that is a great gift.
I think there is real phenomena behind the visions speaking to us through the visions. In fact with the experiences i have had the one thing that is always extremely clear is that a genuine and real "other" conciousness is being tapped into. I simply cannot accept that there is no contact with autonomous conciousness anywhere along the line. In other words i think it is silly and we are giving ourselves way too much credit for vivid imaginations when we say "the psychedelic experience is all in the head"
I think rather than merely representing these things, the symbols "accurately" represent them, and have truth behind them because of the perhaps real phenomena on the other side of the symbol.
So what i mean is that you can say
"What I mean is that once the content of an experience is turned into CONCEPTS, the CONCEPTS are not the SAME THING as the EXPERIENCE. And so discussing, comparing, sharing, defining, contemplating CONCEPTS is...meaningless--compared to the actual experience."
But you dont know that for sure, because you are a human like the rest of us and theres no way you can confirm this as a absolute truth, because you have an ego too, and you are also limited to these symbols and concepts. and therefore your statemtn has as much truth and meaning as any human statement. and you are no more or less correct than olympus mon, exept that i prefer to subscribe to that particular view because it is much more fulfilling to my spirit.
Which brings me back to my main point. There is no "truth". one "truth" does not negate the other. truth is just another word, we are here merely to experience phenomenon and i figure we might as well enjoy it while were here