Reality is what smacks people hard in the face when they are utterly convinced that it's something other than what it is.

I was thinking about this a while back, and it's amazing how much of human culture seems to be dedicated to the belief that reality can be manipulated by wishes, whims, secret powers, or anything other than slogging hard work.

Magic, superstition, "new age" thinking, and all the rest all seem to involve being able to change external reality by doing something simple, often just inside your head.

Have you ever noticed that every god in human history has one thing in common? They can all be somehow appealed to, manipulated, sacrificed to, or otherwise made to affect reality in your favor.
If there were real gods, you would think most of them couldn't care less what humans thought about anything, any more than we worry about what the local squirrels think or do.

So far, the only god I've ever heard of that actually had this "what the hell are you praying to ME for?" view was the Cimmerian god Crom in the Conan novels.

As far as chemical-induced enlightment throughout the ages, I think there's a reason that the greatest testimonials for this sort of thing come from sages and others who went out into the wilderness all alone to enlarge their minds. A third party observing what is actually happening tends to throw cold water on the experience by pointing out what the tripper was really doing and saying. (There's that "reality" thing again.) Anybody who has attended a party where such things are going on has seen this phenomenon for themselves. It's why the word "buzzkill" was invented.

Sometimes there's objective evidence even if there's no observers. An artist a friend knew in college seemed to be continually disappointed that the amazing work he did "under the influence" was somehow altered by dark and unknown forces to random crap when he came back down. Maybe the key is to serve special refreshments at gallery openings...