A few items of note pursuant to what you just wrote:

First, in your last paragraph you suggested that only I have been in the state of clarity, which isn't so. I'm not the first and will not be the last. It's not that extraordinary. What is different is a shift from perceiving oneself as the self and body versus identifying as the void itself.

Second, as usual, I do not disagree with most of what you have written, including that interpreting or explaining the void, or nothingness, is a different matter than knowing it. And there is no end to the mental effort used to understand something that, for lack of a better term, is experiential.

Third, I no longer find it necessary to provide an explanation for existence, consciousness, or the stateless state to assure myself that I am not deluded. It's just not important to do so except as a matter of discussion when someone else wants me to clarify what I mean, and even then, quite obviously, the actuality does not come across.

Fourth, you wrote: "I'm just maintaining that there's a difference between the state and the explanation of it. Does the state explain itself? I doubt it." Perhaps here I disagree, because the state does explain itself, but not with words or concepts. It is self-evident as much as it is self-evident that you are a male, a scholar, a philosopher, and a human being. You do not need to explain this or remind yourself of this for you to know it. You may engage in a discussion about this, but it is not for your own edification.

Lastly, in your description of your cannabis experience you note that it was similar to talking to god or a deeper part of yourself. This is not the stateless state, the nothingness, of which I speak. When the egoic self is not in play, so to speak, then there is no one to talk to anyone/anything else, because there is no point of view or doer or thinker. To talk to oneself, god, or anyone else requires a fragmentation of the mind into me and the other.

Most notable in what I have tried to convey is the discovery that I was never the person I thought I was, but rather an artifact of consciousness, which is a totality that forms, or gives rise to, the sense of self and all else. I was bound by thought, belief, preconceptions, and so on. This created suffering for me, as it does for everyone else, because the sense of self creates suffering out of ignorance and selfishness.

So this has to do with a personal realization of what I am as well as what I am not. In the clarity it becomes obvious. To guess what the clarity is is another issue. I can only say that it is an absence of all that has obscured it. When we try to figure it out or define it we are merely adding more thought to what is already bound by thought.

All the perceptions, insights, ideas, thoughts, descriptions, comparisons, and information are only attempts to measure or mentally grasp the implications and substance of this essence that underlies the self, all forms and expressions, and all else. To complicate matters we tend to introduce more and more descriptors and concepts to what is quite simple, which is to find that which is irreducible. When the thoughts come to a complete end then it is obvious what I essentially am, and because I am not unique it may also be what everyone else is.