States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
7. Induction of Altered States: Going to Sleep, Hypnosis, Meditation
We have now seen that a d-SoC is a system that is stabilized in
multiple ways, so as to maintain its integrity in the face of
changing environmental input and changing actions taken in response
to the environment. Suppose that the coping function of the particular
d-SoC is not appropriate for the existing environmental situation,
or that the environment is safe and stable and no particular d-SoC
is needed to cope with it, and you want to transit to a d-ASC:
what do you do?
This chapter examines that process of inducing a d-ASC in general
from the systems approach, and then considers its application
to three transitions from ordinary consciousness: to sleep, to
hypnosis, and to meditative states.
Inducing a d-ASC: General Principles
The staring point is the baseline state of consciousness(b-SoC),
usually the ordinary d-SoC. The b-SoC is an active, stable, overall
patterning of psychological functions which, via multiple stabilization
relationships (loading, positive and negative feedback, and limiting)
among its constituent parts, maintains it identity in spite of
environmental changes. I emphasize multiple stabilization,
for as in any well-engineered complex system, there are many processes
maintaining a state of consciousness: it would be too vulnerable
to unadaptive disruption if there were only a few.
Inducing the transition to a d-ASC is a three-step process, based
on two psychological (and/or physiological) operations. The process
is what happens internally; the operations are the particular
things you do to yourself, or someone does to you, to make the
induction process happen. In the following pages the steps of
the process are described sequentially and the operations are
described sequentially, but note that the same action may function
as both kinds of induction operation simultaneously.
Induction Operations: Disruption and Patterning
The first induction operation is to disrupt the stabilization
of your b-SoC, to interfere with the loading, positive and negative
feedback, and limiting processes/structures that keep your psychological
structures operating within their ordinary range. Several stabilization
processes must be disrupted. If, for example, someone were to
clap his hands loudly right now, while you are reading, you would
be somewhat startled. Your level of activation would be increased;
you might even jump. I doubt, however, that you would enter a
d-ASC. Throwing a totally unexpected and intense stimulus into
your own mind could cause a momentary shift within the
pattern of your ordinary d-SoC but not a transition to a d-ASC.
If you were drowsy it might totally disrupt one or two stabilization
processes for a moment, but since multiple stabilization
processes are ongoing on, this would not be sufficient to alter
your state of consciousness.[1]
So the first operation in inducing a d-ASC is to disrupt enough
stabilization process to a great enough extent that the baseline
pattern of consciousness cannot maintain its integrity. If only
some of the stabilization processes are disrupted, the remaining
undisrupted ones may be sufficient to hold the system together;
thus, an induction procedure can be carried out without actually
inducing a d-ASC. Unfortunately, some investigators have equated
the procedure of induction with the presence of a d-ASC, a methodological
fallacy discusses in Chapter 13.
Stabilization processes can be disrupted directly when they can
be identified, or indirectly by pushing some psychological functions
to and beyond their limits of functioning. Particular subsystems,
for example, can be disrupted by overloading them with stimuli,
depriving them of stimuli, or giving them anomalous stimuli that
cannot processed in habitual ways. The functioning of a subsystem
can be disrupted by withdrawing attention/awareness energy or
other psychological energy from it, a gentle kind of disruption.
If the operation of one subsystem is disrupted, it may alter the
operation of a second subsystem via feedback paths, etc.
Drugs can disrupt the functioning of the b-SoC, as can any intense
physiological procedure, such as exhaustion or exercise.
The second induction operation is to apply patterning forces,
stimuli that then push disrupted psychological functioning
toward the new pattern of the desired d-ASC. These patterning
stimuli may also serve to disrupt the ordinary functioning of
the b-SoC insofar as they are incongruent with the functioning
of the b-SoC. Thus the same stimuli may serve as both disruptive
and patterning forces. For example, viewing a diagram that makes
little sense in the baseline state can be a mild disrupting force.
But the same diagram, viewed in the altered state, may make sense
or be esthetically pleasing and thus may become a mandala for
meditation, a patterning force.
Steps in the Induction Process
Figure 7-1 sketches the steps of the induction process. The b-SoC
is represented as blocks of various shapes and sizes (representing
particular psychological structures) forming a system/construction
(the state of consciousness) in a gravitational field (the environment).
At the extreme left, a number of psychological structures are
assembled into a stable construction, the b-SoC. The detached
figures below the base of the construction represent psychological
potentials not available in the b-SoC.
Disrupting (and patterning) forces, represented by the arrows,
are applied to begin induction. The second figure from the left
depicts this beginning and represents change within the
b-SoC. The disruptive (and patterning) forces are being applied,
and while the overall construction remains the same, some the
relationships within it have changed. System change has about
reached its limit: at the right and left ends of the construction,
for example, things are close to falling apart. Particular psychological
structures/subsystems have varied as far as they can while still
maintaining the overall pattern of the system.[2]
Also shown is the changing relationship of some of the latent
potentials outside consciousness, changes we must postulate from
this systems approach and our knowledge of the dynamic unconscious,
but about which we have little empirical data[3]
at present.
If the disrupting forces are successful in finally breaking down
the organization of the b-SoC, the second step of the induction
process occurs, the construction/state of consciousness comes
apart, and a transitional period occurs. In Figure 7-1 this is
depicted as the scattering of parts of the construction, without
clear-cut relationships to one another or perhaps with momentary
dissociated relationships as with the small square, the circle,
and the hexagon on the left side of the transition diagram. The
disrupting forces are now represented by the light arrow, as they
are not as important now that the disruption has actually occurred;
the now more important patterning forces are represented by the
heavy arrows. The patterning stimuli/forces must now push the
isolated psychological structures into a new construction, the
third and final step of the processes in which a new, self-stabilized
structure, the d-ASC, forms. Some of the psychological structures/functions
present in the b-SoC, such as those represented by the squares,
trapezoids, circles, and small hexagon, may not be available in
this new state of consciousness; other psychological functions
not available in the b-SoC have now become available. Some functions
available in the b-SoC may be available at the same or at an altered
level of functioning in the d-ASC. There is a change in both the
selection of human potentials used and the manner in which they
are constructed into a working system.
Figure 7-1 also indicates that the patterning and disrupting forces
may have to continue to be present, perhaps in attenuated form,
in order for this new state to be stable. The d-ASC may not have
enough internal stabilization at first to hold up against internal
or environmental change, and artificial props may be needed. For
example, a person may at first have to be hypnotized in a very
quiet, supportive environment in order to make the transition
into hypnosis, but after he has been hypnotized a few times, the
d-ASC is stable enough so that he can remain hypnotized under
noisy, chaotic conditions.
In following this example you probably thought of going from your
ordinary state to some more exotic d-ASC, but this theoretical
sequence applies for transition from any d-SoC to any other d-SoC.
Indeed, this is also the deinduction process, the process
of going from a d-ASC back to the b-SoC. Disrupting forces are
applied to destabilize the altered state, and patterning forces
to reinstate the baseline state; a transitional period ensues,
and the baseline state re-forms. Since it is generally much easier
to get back into our ordinary state, we usually pay little attention
to the deinduction process, although it is just as complex in
principle as the induction process.[4]
It may be that some d-SoCs cannot be reached directly from another
particular d-SoC; some intermediary d-SoC has to be traversed.
The process is like crossing a stream that is too wide to leap
over directly: you have to leap onto one or more stepping stones
in sequence to get to the other side. Each stepping stone is a
stable place in itself, but they are transitional with respect
to the beginning and end points of the process. Some of the jhana
states of Buddhist meditation may be of this nature (see Goleman's
chapter in Transpersonal Psychologies {128}). This kind
of stable transitional state should not be confused with the inherently
unstable transitional periods discussed above, and we should be
careful in our use of the words state and period.
Let us know look at examples of three inductions of d-ASCs, all
starting from a b-SoC of the ordinary waking state—the process
of falling asleep, the induction of hypnosis, and the practice
of two kinds of meditation toward the goal of reaching a meditative
state. These examples are intended not as final analyses from
the systems approach, but simply as illustrations of how the systems
approach to states of consciousness deals with the induction of
d-ASCs.
Going to Sleep
You begin by lying down in a quiet, dimly lit or dark room. the
physical act of lying down, closing the eyes, being in a quiet
place, immediately eliminates much of the loading stabilization
that helps to maintain your ordinary d-SoC. Since there are far
fewer sensory stimuli coming in from the quiet environment, energy
is not required for dealing with these stimuli, and some this
psychological energy is freed. Some of it may, for example, go
to enhancing imagery. Further, incoming stimuli tend to pattern
the kind of psychological energies that maintain your active,
waking state; they activate you. Without this stimulation,
then, certain kinds of psychological energies are no longer generated.
When these activation energies are generated, they ordinarily
circulate through and further stabilize the waking state by loading
it.
Lying down and relaxing eliminate another major source of loading
stabilization, the familiar, expected pattern of input from your
body. Almost all your kinesthetic receptors for telling you what
your body is doing respond primarily to change, and when
you are relaxed and still for long periods, these receptors stop
sending messages into the central nervous system. Your body, in
a neural impulse sense, disappears; it is no longer there to pattern
consciousness.
You adopt an attitude that there is noting to accomplish, no goals
to be attained, no problems to solve, nothing important to deal
with. Your attitude is that there is no normative pattern to hold
your consciousness.
It is usually futile to try to go to sleep. The active
attitude that works so well in doing things within your
ordinary waking d-SoC does not help here. Taking this passive
attitude further withdraws attention/awareness energy from many
of your feedback stabilization processes. If there is no norm
to hold to, there is no need to monitor for and correct deviation
from the norm. This is important for allowing thought processes
and other psychological processes to drift into the hypnagogic
mode.
So far these attitudes (nothing is important) and physical actions
(inactions really, lying still and relaxing) are similar to the
start of many other procedures for inducing various d-ASCs. What
tips the balance toward inducing the particular d-SoC of sleep
are the physiological factors (not well understood, in spite of
two decades of intense research on sleep) we call tiredness,
or need to sleep. These tiredness factors constitute both a further
disrupting forces for the waking state and a patterning force
or forces for shaping the transitional period into the sleep state.
Their intensity is important in determining whether the induction
is successful: if you are not at all tired, sleep will probably
not occur. If you are very tired, sleep may occur even if the
other disrupting operations (lying down, reducing sensory input,
taking a "nothing is important" attitude) have not been
carried out.
The study by Vogel and his colleagues of ego states during the
transition to sleep, described in Chapter 5, showed how the experiential
mapping of consciousness fell into two (or perhaps three) distinct
clusters, two (or perhaps three) d-SoCs. For a time after lying
down, the subjects retained a feeling of contact with the environment
and their thoughts remains plausible by consensus reality standards.
This was the intact ego state. The subjects then moved into the
destructuralized ego "state," losing contact with the
external environment and with their thoughts deviating greatly
from consensus reality standards of normality. They regained plausibility
of thought in the restructuralized ego state. The destructuralized
ego "state" is transitional between the intact ego state
and the restructuralized ego state. Whether it constitutes a d-SoC
by our definition is not clear from Vogel's data: we do not know
whether there was a coherent pattern or just constant change.
Inducing Hypnosis
The procedures for inducing hypnosis are many and varied but certain
steps are common to most of these procedures. The first such step
usually involves having you sit or lie comfortably, so you do
not have to exert any effort to maintain your bodily position,
and telling you not to move and to relax your body as much as
possible. This step has a variety of effects. For one thing, if
you are somewhat anxious about what is going to happen, your anxiety
which intimately related to bodily tension, is at least partially
relieved if you relax. You limit your ability to feel anxiety.
This makes it easier for you to alter your state of consciousness.
Also, when your body is in a relaxed position and lying still,
many of the kinesthetic receptors adapt out, as in going to sleep.
Thus the body as a whole begins to fade out as a conscious experience;
this known, patterned stimulation fades and no longer serves as
a load and patterning force to help stabilize your b-SoC.
Second, the hypnotist commonly tells you to listen only to his
voice and ignore other thoughts or sensations that come into your
mind. Ordinarily you constantly scan the environment to see if
important stimuli are present. This constant scanning keeps up
a continuous, varied pattern of information and energy exchanges
among subsystems, which tends to keep subsystems active in the
waking state pattern: as varied perceptions come in, you must
decide whether they are important, you must draw on memories from
the past in making these decisions, etc. By withdrawing attention/awareness
energy from this scanning of the environment, you withdraw a good
deal of psychological energy and activity from a number of subsystems:
a major loading and patterning process is attenuated.
A third common instruction is that you should not think about
what the hypnotist is saying, but just listen to it passively.
If the hypnotist says your arm is feeling heavy, you are not to
think, "He says it's feeling heavy, I wonder if it really
will get heavy, I remember it got heavy a long time ago but that's
because there was a weight on it; well, I guess I shouldn't be
doubting..." In the ordinary d-SoC you constantly think about
what is being said to you and what is happening to you, and his
maintains a great deal of evaluative and decision-making activity
and again activates other subsystems. Thus, this step also slows
down the constant thinking that helps to maintain your ordinary
d-SoC through loading stabilization.
Fourth, you are frequently told to focus your attention on some
particular thing in addition to the hypnotist's voice. Let us
take the example of your being asked to look fixedly at some simple
object like a candle flame or a bright, shiny disk. This fixation
serves to reduce further your scanning of the environment, with
the same effects mentioned above, but it has an additional effect.
It is unusual for you in your ordinary d-SoC to stare fixedly
at one thing. If you do, all sorts of unexpected (to most people)
visual effects occur because the retina becomes fatigued. Colored
halos start to appear around the object being stared at, shadows
appear and disappear, apparent movements occur, parts of the object
fade. To the extent that these are not part of your usual experience,
they constitute a kind of input that the Input-Processing subsystem
(discussed later) is not used to handling, and so they tend to
disrupt the normal functioning of this subsystem.
Further, because the hypnotist earlier stated that he has the
power to make you have unusual experiences, the fact that you
are now having unusual experiences enhances the prestige of the
hypnotist and gives you more trust in him. This is a kind of trick:
by using physiological effects that you do not realize are the
expected result of staring at anything, the hypnotist manages
to take credit and so enhances his psychological effectiveness.
The importance of this will become even clearer later when we
discuss the Sense of Identity subsystem.
Fifth, the hypnotist commonly suggests to you that you are feeling
sleepy or drowsy. This elicits a variety of memory associations
that help the induction process. Since going to sleep means that
your b-SoC breaks down, this suggestion acts as a disruptive force.
And since going to sleep is associated with a fading out of your
body image, this suggestion enhances the fading of the body image
that is already occurring because of the adaptation of kinesthetic
receptors to your relaxed, still posture. Further, since going
to sleep is a passive activity, the suggestion encourages a sense
of passivity on your part and so reinforces the earlier instructions
not to think about what the hypnotist is saying but simply
to accept it. the references to sleep also draw up memories and
expectations of your identity fading, so energy is not required
to keep evaluating the situation in terms of your personal values.
Sixth, as well as suggesting sleep, the hypnotist often further
indicates that this sleep is not quite the same as real sleep
because you will still hear him. The hypnotist may not need to
suggest this overtly: everyone in our culture knows enough about
hypnosis to realize that the subject can still hear the hypnotist.
This is a specific patterning force. The suggestions telling you
that what is happening is like sleep primarily serve to disrupt
your d-SoC, but since the hypnotist does not want you actually
to go to sleep, he adds a patterning force to produce a passive
sleeplike state in which communication with the hypnotist is still
effective.
Seventh, once you appear passive and relaxed, most hypnotic procedures
go on to simple motor suggestions, such as having you hold an
arm horizontally out in front of you and telling you it is getting
heavy. Motor suggestions like this are relatively easy most people
to experience, and as you begin to respond to these suggestions,
the hypnotist's prestige is further enhanced.
This automatic response to suggestion affects your Sense of Identity
subsystem. Ordinarily it is your own "voice" inside
you that tells you to do a thing that you then do. Now the hypnotist's
voice takes over this role, and your sense of self begins to include
the hypnotist. The special modulation from this subsystem that
constitutes the ego sense (discussed later) is added to the stimuli
that would ordinarily be perceived as the voice of an outsider.
Psychoanalysts call this the transference element of hypnosis,
especially when some of the transference involves parental
transferences onto the hypnotist. The deliberate or implicit encouragement
of identification with the hypnotist's voice is an application
of patterning forces.
Success with simple motor suggestions also produces a novel kind
of body stimulation: you feel your body moving, but with different
qualities than ordinarily. Your arm, for stance, feels exceptionally
heavy and seems to move by itself. This kind of datum again does
not fit the habitual input-processing patterns, and so tends both
to disrupt the stabilization of your d-SoC and to help pattern
the hypnotic state.
As you respond well to simple motor suggestions, the hypnotist
usually goes on to harder and more impressive motor suggestions
and various kinds of cognitive suggestions, and continued success
leads to increasing inclusion of the hypnotist within your ego
sense.
Finally, we should note that an important factor in understanding
the hypnotic induction technique is the subject's implicit expectations
of what it is like to be hypnotized and how a hypnotized subject
behaves. Shor {59} did a survey showing that among college students
there is a fairly good general knowledge of what hypnosis is like,
in spite of some misconceptions. So if a subject agrees to be
hypnotized and believes that the hypnotist can do it, he has implicit
expectations that affect his reactions t o the particular thing
the hypnotist does.
The Hypnotic State
If the induction is successful and the neutral hypnotic state
is developed, the result is a d-ASC characterized by a quiet mind
{78}; most of the structures are inactive, many of the psychological
subsystems discussed in Chapter 8 are not actively functioning.
Typically, if a deeply hypnotized subject is asked what he is
thinking about or experiencing, the answer is "Nothing."
However, this state is also characterized by greatly enhanced
suggestibility, a greater mobility of attention/awareness energy,
so when a particular experience is suggested to the subject he
usually experiences it far more vividly than he could in his ordinary
d-SoC, often to the point of total experiential reality. Thus
the hypnotic state shows a high flexibility of functioning, even
though it is relatively quiet between particular functionings.
The state is also characterized by a quality called rapport,
a functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem to include the
hypnotist as part of the subject's own ego.
It is easy to see how the various techniques mentioned above destabilize
the ordinary pattern and operate on various psychological subsystems
to push them toward extreme values of functioning. But where is
the actual transition? We do not know. Studies of hypnosis have
generally paid little attention to the transition between hypnosis
and waking. Some psychoanalytically oriented case studies {19}
have reported marked transitional effects, but no study has tried
to map the exact nature and extent of the quantum jump.
Much modern research that has tried to determine whether hypnotic
suggestibility is indeed greater than waking suggestibility has
committed an important methodological error (discussed in Chapter
9): using group data without examining individual data. Thus,
unless every individual makes the transition at exactly the same
point on the appropriate measure of psychological subsystem functioning,
no transition point would appear in the group data. Put another
way, if there were some one variable on which the jump was made
from the normal state into hypnosis, and one subject jumped from
a value of two to six to make his transition, and a second subject
jumped from three to seven, and a third from four to eight, etc.,
the group data would show absolute continuity and no evidence
for a transitional phase. Superimposing many maps destroys the
patterns. The systems approach stresses the importance of examining
the transitional period of hypnotic phenomena.
One further idea should be mentioned. Because most or all subsystems in the unprogrammed deep hypnotic state, so-called neutral hypnosis, are idling or relatively inactive, the hypnotic state may be better than the ordinary waking state as a b-SoC with which to compare other states. The ordinary waking state seems an incredibly complex, active, and specialized construction compared with the hypnotic state.
Meditation and Meditative States
Meditation refers to variety of techniques that may or
may not induce a d-ASC at a given time.
Meditation techniques are varied, but Naranjo and Ornstein {39}
have classified them into three basic types: (1) concentrative
meditation, (2) opening-up meditation, and (3) expressive meditation.
Here we consider the first two and begin by analyzing a technique
common to both before further distinguishing between them.
Most meditation techniques involve, as the initial step, sitting
absolutely still in a posture that is not only comfortable, but
that involves keeping the head, neck, and spine in a straight
vertical line. A small but significant amount of muscular effort
is needed to maintain this posture. Like the comfortable position
assumed for inducing sleep or hypnosis, the comfortable posture
in meditation allows various kinesthetic receptors to adapt out,
so the body image generally fades. In contrast with going to sleep,
the fact that a slight amount of muscular effort is needed to
hold the body in this upright position prevents sleep from occurring
for most people. Hypnotic induction procedures can allow the subject
to slip in and out of actual sleep, but this is usually quite
disruptive in meditative procedures, as the person begins to fall
over.
Since much of a person's sense of identity comes from his body
image, the fading of the body in a comfortable, steady posture
also tends to reduce his sense of identity, thus helping to destabilize
his b-SoC and to free energy.
Sitting absolutely still, not acting, also frees energy that would
otherwise be automatically absorbed in acting: meditation is a
technically simplified situation in this way.
The vertical posture for head, neck, and spine is also of theoretical
importance in meditation systems that believe that a latent human
potentiality, the Kundalini force, is stored at the base of the
spine and may flow upward, activating various other postulated
latent potentials, the psychic energy centers or chakras,
as it rises {128, ch. 6}.
Since the meditator is sitting absolutely still, his muscular subsystem similarly has little to do beyond postural maintenance. This further reduces loading stabilization. Thus many sources of activity that maintain ordinary d-SoC fade out when the meditative posture is assumed.
Concentrative Meditation
Concentrative meditation techniques basically instruct you to
put all of your attention on some particular thing. This can be
an external object that is looked at fixedly or some internal
sensation such as the rise and fall of the belly in breathing.
As in hypnotic induction, the meditater is told that if his mind
wanders away from this focus he is to bring it back gently[5]
to this focus, and not allow it to distracted.
This greatly restricts the variety of input to the system, inhibits
thinking about various stimuli that come from scanning the environment,
and in general takes attention/awareness energy away from and
reduces the activity of the various subsystems of ordinary consciousness.
The meditater fixes his attention on one thing, usually
an external or internal sensation. This can produce unusually
phenomena due to various kinds of receptor fatigue, as in the
induction of hypnosis, but most meditation systems stress that
these anomalous perceptual phenomena should not be taken as signs
of success or be paid any special attention. In Zen Buddhism,
for example, there is a teaching story of a student excitedly
rushing to his roshi (master) to describe a vision of gods bowing
down to him and feelings of ecstasy that occurred during his meditation.
The roshi asks him if he remembered to keep his attention fixed
on the rise and fall of his belly in breathing during the vision,
as per the meditation instructions, and when the student says
no (who would care about the rise and fall of your belly during
such a vision?), the roshi reprimands the student for allowing
himself to become distracted! Thus while anomalous perceptual
phenomena may act as a disruptive forces for our ordinary state,
they do not attract the same amount of attention in meditation
as they do in hypnosis and so may have different effects.[6]
As in any induction technique, the person preparing to meditate
has explicit and implicit expectations of what will come about.
His explicit expectations stem from his immediately conscious
memories of what he knows about meditation and his goal in doing
it. His implicit expectations range from the implicit but potentially
conscious ones that come from other knowledge about meditation
he could recall but is not recalling at the moment, to
more implicit ones that he has absorbed over a longer time and
of which he may not be consciously aware. The more implicit expectations
may or may not accord with the teachings of the particular meditative
system, for they may have come through personality-induced distortions
of teaching situations in the past. The discussion(in Chapter
4) of the construction of ordinary consciousness and how it affects
our perception of the world is relevant here.
State Resulting From Concentrative Meditation
Naranjo and Ornstein {39} describe the meditative state[7]
of consciousness that can result from concentrative
meditation as a discrete state characterized as "voidness,"
"blankness," or "no-thingness." There seems
to be a temporary nonfunctioning of all psychological functions.
In some sense, difficult to deal with verbally, awareness seems
to be maintained, but there is not object of awareness. The appearance
of this meditative state seems to be sudden and to clearly represent
a quantum leap. The practice of meditation quiets down the various
subsystems, but there is a sudden transition to this pattern of
voidness.
The meditative state may or may not be valued in and of itself,
depending on the particular spiritual discipline and its philosophy.
What does generally seem to be valued is its aftereffect, generally
described as a great "freshening" of perception or increase
in feelings of aliveness. In terms of the systems approach, a
major aftereffect of the concentration-produced meditation state
is a decrease in processing and abstracting of sensory input from
what occurs in the ordinary d-SoC. Much more raw sensory data
are passed to awareness, instead of the highly selected abstractions
usually seen, and this produces a great intensification of sensory
perception of both the external world and one's own body. this
is usually felt as quite joyful. As Wordsworth put it in Ode
on Intimations of Immortality {147}:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
Going on to contrast this with perception in his ordinary d-SoC,
he said:
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn whereso'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
I suspect that if Wordsworth were alive today he would be quite
interested in altered states of consciousness.
This is a good place to remind ourselves that a state of consciousness
generally has many processes stabilizing it. Many of you
have had the experience of sitting down and trying to meditate
according to some prescription and finding that rather than reaching
some desirable d-ASC you only obtained a sore back! Sitting still
in the correct position and trying to do the technique may indeed
disrupt some of the customary feedback processes that stabilize
your b-SoC, but if others are still active, such as continual
thinking, no actual shift in state of consciousness will result.
Confusion results when the word meditation is used to describe
many different things. It is probably too late to prevent sloppy
usage, but ideally, the phrase tried to meditate means
that the meditater attempted to carry out the instructions but
was not successful at concentrating or holding the posture. The
phrase did meditate means the meditater felt he was relatively
successful in following the instructions, event though no meditative
state developed. The phrase reached a meditative state means
that the meditater actually did so.
Opening-Up Meditation
Opening-up meditation refers to a variety of techniques whose
aim is to help you achieve full sensitivity to and awareness of
whatever happens to you, to be a conscious observer
observing what is happening to you without being caught up in
your reactions to it. It is a matter of being aware of what is
happening without thinking about what is happening
to the exclusion of perceiving what is happening, or becoming
identified with reactions to what is happening. Vipassana is
a Buddhist meditation of this sort. The word means something like
bare attention—bare attention to sensations, feelings, thoughts,
and reactions to these things as they occur. The "simple"
rule[8] is to notice
anything and everything that happens, to neither reject anything
as unworthy of attention, nor welcome anything as worthy of more
attention than anything else. This includes being aware of "failures,"
such as thoughts, rather than fighting them.
Opening meditation is usually practiced in the same sort of posture
as concentrative meditation, so all the effects of posture on
disrupting the b-SoC are similar.
This non-identification with stimuli prevents attention/awareness
energy from being caught up in the automatic, habitual processes
involved in maintaining the ordinary d-SoC. Thus while awareness
remains active, various psychological subsystems tend to drift
to lower and lower levels of activity. Traditional accounts indicate
that after a high level of success is achieved, there is a sudden
shift into a meditative state of consciousness characterized by
a great freshening of perception and deautomatization of the subsystem
of Input-Processing. This is the meditative state itself, rather
than an aftereffect of it, as in concentrative meditation.
Almost all psychological energy is present in the awareness function,
and there seems to be far less input-processing, so things are
perceived more directly.[9] The
meditater experiences things as much more intense and clear; whether
this means that he perceives the external more accurately has
not, to my knowledge, been tested.
Although meditation has been a neglected topic of scientific research,
this is changing rapidly: the interested reader should see the
bibliography on research in this area put out by Timmons and Kamiya
{141}, as well as the recent updating of that bibliography by
Timmons and Kanellakos {142}.
This concludes our brief survey of the process of inducing a d-ASC.
In some ways it is too simplified: the actual situation in which
a person, either by himself or with the help of another, sits
down to induce a d-ASC is influenced by many variables that affect
our lives, especially those implicit factors stemming from our
personal and cultural histories that are so hard for us to see.
One final example to illustrate the importance of these implicit
and expectational factors. When phonograph recordings were still
something of a novelty, George Estabrooks {16}, one of the early
researchers in hypnosis, decided to see if hypnosis could be induced
by simply recording the verbal procedure on a record and playing
it to a group of volunteer subjects. He recorded an induction
procedure and got some volunteers from one of the college classes
he taught. At the time for the experiment, he put the record on
and, to his consternation, found he has brought the wrong record
from his office: he was playing a record of Swiss yodeling! Deciding
to let it entertain his subjects while he got the right one, he
said nothing but left and went to his office.
When he returned, he found one subject was in a deep hypnotic
state! The professor had said this record would hypnotize him,
the student went into hypnosis.
Footnotes
[1] This particular example is true for your ordinary d-SoC. But if you had been asleep, you might have been awakened as a result of the hand clap. It might have been sufficient in a sleep d-SoC to disrupt stabilization enough to allow a transition back to ordinary waking consciousness. Also, if the expectational context were right, it could cause a transition from your ordinary d-SoC to a d-ASC. The Abbe de Faria, in the early days of hypnosis, "hypnotized" ignorant peasants by leading them through dark passages into a dark room, then suddenly setting off a tray of flash powder while striking a huge gong {38}. This must be one of the most authentic ways of "blowing one's mind." (back)
[2] There is a depth or intensity dimension within some b-SoCs (discussed in Chapter 14). So we could speak of the b-SoC having reached its deepest (or shallowest) extreme.
(back)
[3] Psychoanalytical studies {19} of hypnotic induction give us inferential information on such activities: experiential phenomena reported during induction are interpreted as indicators of changes in unconscious forces, drives, and defenses. (back)
[4] We might hypothesize that because the ordinary d-SoC is so tremendously overlearned compared with almost any other d-SoC, whenever there is a transitional period the dominant tendency is to repattern the ordinary d-SoC mode. Sleep would also be likely. Only the presence of special patterning forces allows some d-ASCs to be structured from a transitional state. (back)
[5] Gently bringing attention back to the concentration focus is important: if you violently bring it back, fight the distractions, this sends large quantities of attention/awareness to them, and so keeps attention/awareness energy circulating through the system generally. This stabilizes the ordinary d-SoC, which involves many Rows of attention/awareness energy to a variety of things. (back)
[6] Another important difference is that in hypnosis induction the hypnotist takes credit for these anomalous effects, thus helping to incorporate himself into the subject's own psyche We have given little attention to the role of the hypnotist as "outsider," for he only becomes effective as he becomes able to control the subject's own attention/awareness energy. The meditator in the Buddhist tradition is seeking to free himself from control by external events or persons, and so does not value particular phenomena (back)
[7] We speak here of a single state resulting from concentrative meditation because our rudimentary scientific knowledge goes only this far. But we should remember that spiritual disciplines distinguish many states where we see one. In Buddhist terms, for example, eight distinct states of samadhi (concentration) are described, each of which may be a d-SoC (see Chapter 17 and [128]). Whether these are actually useful descriptions of eight d-SoCs or only descriptions of techniques is a question for the developing science of consciousness to research (back)
[8] "Simple" to say, extremely difficult to do! (back)
[9] We do not know enough at present to adequately describe how the d-ASC reached from opening meditation, characterized by freshened perception, differs from the feeling of freshened perception occurring within one's ordinary d-SoC as an aftereffect of concentrative meditation. (back)