CHAPTER VI1
Altered States of Consciousness: A Taxonomy
One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impressions of its truth has ever remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the finest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness quite different... No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded...
-William James
An altered state of consciousness is any state where the left hemisphere is in abeyance. Contrary to popular supposition, the ordinary state of consciousness is an unusual state, impossible to maintain for long, and secured only by a modicum of perceptual intake, and continual interior discourse. In most altered states the right hemisphere is active and produces exterior hallucinations or interior imagery. This right hemisphere function of altered states of consciousness can be placed in a taxonomy; if the right hemisphere function is then mediated by the left hemisphere, it gives rise to syntaxic (creative) products and to higher jhanas. If it is expressed directly by the right hemisphere it gives rise to parataxic non-verbal
(i.e., artistic), creativity. If it is unable to be expressed by either it is outletted in prototaxic (somatic) fashion on the body, often in a trance state, the extreme form of which is schizophrenia.
Altered States of Consciousness and the Right Hemisphere
Let us start by boldly defining an altered state of consciousness as any state where left hemisphere function is in abeyance. This definition requires that we look first at the normal state of consciousness and the left hemisphere function which supports it. In the first place, this normal state represents both a high and recent level of awareness which cannot be sustained as long as a day, and requires rest, involving both sleep and dreams to restore the organism [1, p. 256]. It is also a state which is fuzzy both at or near birth and death, and is lost in any severe mental or physical ill health. Finally, even in good health and in the prime of life, it is apparently precariously secured by only two tethers: continual internal discourse and a modicum of sensory perceptual intake. If either of these are radically disturbed - by the reduction of meditation or the
(page 320)
augmentation of dissociation in the former, or by sensory deprivation or sensory overload in the latter - then the normal state of consciousness is obscured. Apparently the normal state of consciousness is indeed a very special state.
One is tempted to digress long enough to note two corollaries with fascinating
implications:
1. since the normal state is such a special state, it must have evolved for a special purpose; and2. since sensory percepts are dependent upon the normal state, and the physical world is the physics of the normal state, it follows that this physics must be a very special state also.
What is so special about the normal state? Deep thinkers from James
[2] to Bearden [3] have hypothesized that the function of the normal state
is to excise some aspect of reality (as a Nicoll prism polarizes light)
so that some other aspect can be paid attention to. The author has elsewhere
suggested that consciousness is located in time, space, and personality
so it may focus on developmental process [4, p. 10].
The fish does not realize that water is rare in the universe, that what he considers his natural environment is an anomaly in many ways and that he himself is an early evolutionary form. In the same way we do not realize that our normal state of consciousness with its three apparent (but illusionary) properties of location in the space of the physical world, location in time, and location in personality is also an anomaly, and that we are likewise an early evolutionary form. As the function of water is to provide an environment in which the fish may find himself and develop, so the function of the normal state of consciousness is to allow the developing ego-consciousness to be oriented in space, time, and personality, as a kind of matrix in which there can be escalation of consciousness from the prototaxic mode through the parataxic mode to the syntaxic mode. The differentiation and focusing of this consciousness from a dim generalized consciousness of flora, and the more particularized but still undifferentiated consciousness of fauna, is one of the chief tasks of human development and evolution. But this should not blind us to the fact that the normal state of consciousness is a kind of prison (perhaps better would be a confining matrix like a seed bed for sprouts) and that ultimate reality is completely outside it.Einstein understood this well, when he said (N. Y. Times, March 29, 1972):
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "Universe." A part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this(page 321)
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.
In our efforts to show the near equivalence between the physiology
of right hemisphere function and the psychology of altered states of consciousness,
we cite some earlier researchers who have provided such evidence, though
they did not grasp the overriding connection. The split-brain research
of Sperry, Gazzinga, and Bogen [5-7], has received
extensive coverage, and we shall assume readers are familiar with it. What
continually appears from this pioneer research is the visual and spatial
nature of the right hemisphere function. We call attention to the visual
image aspect because it keeps occurring in altered states of consciousness
as the herald of the numinous, being found in archetypes, dreams, creativity,
orthocognition, healing, telepathy and other psychic manifestations.
Fischer reports [8]:
It has been known for some time that the left hemisphere - the "dominant" in most right-handed and in two-thirds of the left-handed people - functions as a digital, analytical, sequence perceiving and field articulating brain hemisphere concerned with speech, language, writing, and arithmetic; while the "minor" or right hemisphere is in charge of analogical, synthesis-oriented, non-verbal information processing visuospatial gestalts and fields, metaphoric signification through intuition, imagery and music.(page 322)During most ordinary activities of our daily routine (i.e., when neither hyper- nor hypo-aroused) we may "feel free" to shift from the cognitive mode of the "major" or Aristotelian (an Apollonian) hemisphere to that of the "minor" or Platonic (a Dionysian) hemisphere and vice versa. While a hemisphere-specific task is solved by the appropriate hemisphere, the activity of the other is repressed or inhibited. Moreover, Aristotelian logic and language may be interhemispherically integrated with Platonic imagery. But when levels of subcortical arousal are raised (as during creative, hyperphrenic, catatonic, and ecstatic states) or become lowered (as in the hypo-aroused meditative states), there is a gradual shift of information processing from the Aristotelian to the Platonic (cortical) hemisphere. I posit that such loss of Aristotelian freedom to make rational decisions is implicit in the findings of Goldstein and Stolzfus who claim that states of stimulation, excitation, anxiety, and hallucination correspond to a progressive narrowing of interhemispheric EEG amplitude differences with eventually complete reversal of their relationships.
These findings are in agreement with and account for the non-verbal, visuo-spatial and audio-spatial symbolic nature of dreams and hallucinations and we may now describe dreams and hallucinatory trips as truly exciting voyages from the rational, Aristotelian cognitive mode into the intuitive, metaphorical and timeless spaces of the Platonic hemisphere.
Hence the source of imagination may be found in those hallucinatory and meditative states of self-awareness during which visuo-spatial symbols and meaning become the ordering structure and function of in-sight. During these states the Aristotelian laws of "symmetry," "identity," and "tertium non datur" lose their validity: time may be reversible, things and signs may become symbols for other meanings; in short, the prevailing "laws" strangely resemble those which govern the realm of subatomic particle physics.Even the turning left or right of eye or head movements during thinking and problem-solving may indicate which side of the brain is operating. Bakan related such movements to right or left hemisphere dependency [9]. He noted that left movers have higher hypnotic susceptibility scores, emit more alpha waves under controlled conditions, all of which would tend to be compatible with right hemisphere dominance. It also appears that the right hemisphere may function better at low levels of stimulus arousal, such as an altered state of consciousness.
When right hemisphere function is active, it may produce what has
been known throughout history as auditory or visual hallucinations [1].
The very word testifies to the assumption that since the physical world
is ultimately real, any construct of consciousness for which there is not
a physical referent is pathological. But this simplistic view conveniently
forgets the fact that sensory phenomena are junior to the state of consciousness,
and are after all artifacts of the normal state. As the title of one of
Castaneda's books implies, the person with the active right hemisphere
may indeed "see" a "separate reality." [10] Don Juan is not the only one
advising a new order of "seeing"; A Course in Miracles suggests
the same thing from a Christian point of view [11] .
We are accustomed to think of imagery as something on the order of hallucination because of our implicit assumption that physical reality is "real" and "tangible." But this may be naive. As Samples has indicated in The Metaphoric Mind, thoughts are essentially metaphors of reality [ 12]. Ferguson declares that Professors Pribram of Stanford and Bohm of the University of London have proposed theories which in a nutshell state that, "Our brains mathematically construct concrete reality by interpreting frequencies from another dimension, a realm of meaningful patterned primary reality that transcends time and space [13]. The brain is a hologram interpreting a holographic universe." Indeed the Pribram-Bohm hologram model of things suggests that what we think is sensuous reality is merely a virtual image" projected by a holographic pattern imprinted in the brain. All this makes George Kelly's wise words true with a vengeance: "We are constrained to experience events in the manner in which we anticipate them." The left brain may have evolved to deal with this reality, while the right brain deals with another.
If the physical universe has no more reality than the holographic (virtual) image we see in exhibitions, then the subordinate position of imaginative imagery to percepts of "reality" would be removed, and creative imagination
(page 323)
would emerge as one of the central building blocks of consciousness. Hence its development, stimulation, control and perfection would become both the aim of education and that of the life development of the individual. Such a view, which would elevate the controlled creative imagination to that of co-creator and would raise man from a reactive being to one with control over his future and destiny, would revolutionize both culture and education, and enormously actualize the latent potential of mankind.
A Taxonomy of States of Consciousness
The various states of consciousness can be placed in a taxonomy which exemplifies a paradigm of relationship between the conscious ego in man and what Otto refers to as "the numinous element" [ 14, p. 7], what Jung calls the "collective unconscious" [15], and what Sullivan calls "the not-me." [16, p. 162] In religious terms its nearest cognates would be Emerson's "Oversoul" or the Christian "Holy Ghost." The level of developmental maturity at the time of the juncture determines whether the affect will be dreadful and awful (using such words in their original meanings), as in schizophrenia and possession trance, or benign and transcendental as in samadhi and mystic rapture. [4, p. 2]:
(page 324)
This historical relationship is typified in various styles of the human condition in today's world in an associated paradigm of three modes of cognitive relationship to experience. These modes were discovered independently by Sullivan [ 16, p. xiv] and Van Rhijn [ 17], and may be described using the Sullivan terminology as follows: prototaxic (experience occurring before symbols), parataxic (experience using symbols in a private or autistic way), and syntaxic (experience which can be communicated). Sullivan coined the phrase "consensual validation" to characterize the consequent validation of symbolic representation which he pointed out led to healthy development.Van Rhijn's theory is that the subconscious receives a mixed input of stimulus, memory, and libido loadings which is then fed to the higher areas of the cortex. Using Sullivan's terminology, it may percolate through the symbolic level into conscious thought - the most desirable result. If rejected there, it may still find expression through parataxic representation as a presentational sign which includes gesture, body language, myth, ritual, and art. If rejected there, it may still find a lower outlet through prototaxic representation which includes the symptom formation of psychosomatic illness manifestations. Thus the mental health potentiality of full cognition and the mental illness potential of less than full cognition is reinforced. Less than full symbolic cognition of experience results at best in parataxic and presentational images of art and archetype, which is the organism's way of working off the excess energy unused in full cognition, and at worst in neurosis, and psychosomatic externalization of the misspent energy onto the psyche, body, and immediate environment.
Speaking of the Van Rhijn hypothesis, Caldwell says [ 18, p. 282]:
The levels of symbolic translation are laid out in a hierarchy of sophistication. At the top . . . is direct verbal symbolization. Below it are presentational symbolizations, which include gesture, myth, ritual, and art. Below this are the more primitive "symptom formations," the term psychoanalysis uses for the psychosomatic and physiological manifestations of neurosis such as headaches, eczema, colitis, and the like.We have elsewhere presented in detail our thesis concerning the prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic modes of experience particularly in relation to the developmental characteristics of the numinous element [ 19]. Those readers not familiar with this explication may wish to consult Development of the Psychedelic Individual for clarification. Here we give the bare outlines of the theory without the supporting evidence for our espousal of it and without any of the developmental aspects.It appears in three modes, prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic, whose delineation composes the content of this paper. Each mode has a number of sub-routines to which we give the name of "procedures." These aspects take place in an altered state of consciousness, involving some kind of juncture or union between the individual and the general, and are often accompanied (especially in the prototaxic mode) by some dissociation or hair-raising, uncanny affect involving awe or dread in some instances. In addition, there may be psychic or psychedelic effects or manifestations.
The stereotypic names for the prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic
modes are respectively trance, art, and creativity, which is the title
of the book where these matters are explained in further detail [4]. Each
will now be discussed in summary fashion with a comparison of the procedures
in the mode. As Will be seen from Table 6-1,
the "taxonomy" consists of a gradual stepwise change in the direction of
increase in ego control and creativity as one proceeds to the right. There
is also an increase in positive emotion and in mental health. While a child
might stereotype this hierarchy as from "bad" to "good," it would be more
accurate to say that one ascends a parameter which appears to have the
following characteristics:
(page 325)
LEFT | RIGHT |
weak ego | strong ego |
loss of will | evidence of will |
loss of memorability | memorability |
ego function excursed | ego function preserved |
somatic activity | cognitive activity |
superstition | enlightenment |
non self-actualizations | self-actualization |
motor automatisms | cognitive representations |
possession | illumination |
madness, angst, anxiety | high mental health |
horror, fear, dread | love, compassion, charity |
trance | creativity |
negative affect | positive affect |
crudity of effect | refinement of effect |
dissociation | association |
lack of control of preconscious | control of preconscious |
(page 326)
The various properties of trance states are compared in Table 6-2. As we inspect the table, we should remember that the most important result is the finding that each of the properties undergoes a graduated step-wise change from negative to positive as we proceed across the table from heavy to light trance. We will not stop to detail the particulars found in each table cell, but the overall ordered progression found in the table indicates that scientific investigation has gained a logical purchase on a previously unordered set of phenomena.
In the parataxic mode, the numinous element which inspired such awe and dread in the former mode is veiled in images, images which may be seen through the procedures of the mode: archetype, dreams, ritual, myth, and art. This veiling allows the ego to be present, and gradually through the procedures, the normal state of consciousness emerges.
Table 6-3 illustrates the progression of parataxic procedures across five properties - state of consciousness, direction of action, modality, goodness/ badness, and numinous aspect. The prototaxic mode and the syntaxic mode are shown for comparison anchor points on either side.
1. State of consciousness progresses from trance in the prototaxic through REM states in the early parataxic to the normal state;2. direction of action starts with action being impressed on the individual and ends with action being expressed by the individual;
3. the cognitive modality changes from being excursed in the prototaxic through pictorial, oral, and then expressions in enactive, iconic, and symbolic levels;
4. goodness/badness varies from very bad in the prototaxic to very good in the syntaxic; and
5. finally the numinous aspect loses the dreadful characteristics of the prototaxic and in the parataxic evolves from "worrisome" in archetype, "paranormal" in dreams, "religious" in myth, "magical" in ritual, and finally "creative" in art.
The gradual changes and progressions in all five properties in this
mode clearly demonstrates the taxonomy of increasing ego consciousness
and control.
We now come to the principal item of this discussion, the syntaxic mode, and its components. Let us remember that the syntaxic mode is characterized by full
(page 327)
TABLE 6-2: PROPERTIES OF VARIOUS TRANCE STATES COMPARED (table IV T.A.C.)
(page 328)
TABLE 6-3: PROPERTIES OF PARATAXIC PROCEDURES (table V T.A.C.)
(page 329)
cognitive representation of experience. The mode is divided into three
sections:
1 . creative, embracing the procedures of tantric sex, creativity, biofeedback, orthocognition1 , and meditation. These very diverse functions represent some aspect of mental control over the body and external events;2. psychedelic, embracing the graces of response experience, Adamic ecstasy, knowledge ecstasy, knowledge-contact ecstasy of the first, second, and third degrees; and
3. unitive, embracing four theoretical higher graces of ineffable contact, transcendental contact, ineffable union, and transcendental union.
These fifteen procedures/graces are detailed with their properties
in
Table 6-4.
So much has been written about tantric sex, creativity, biofeedback, orthocognition1, and meditation elsewhere [4, pp. 245-351] and by others, that we shall omit further reference here in the interests of brevity, remembering that these are all functions of the normal state of consciousness, and that this journal is interested in altered states.
Table 6-4, "Properties of Syntaxic Procedures and Graces," represents a further effort to develop a taxonomy of these areas. On the left are the three highest developmental stages, the creative or sixth stage, the psychedelic or seventh stage, and the unitive or eighth stage [19, Chapter 2]. In the next column, the Yogic Stage, the same levels have been described as the third, fourth, and fifth stages of man.
The next column is headed "stability," which is generally permanent in the ordinary state, transient in altered states of psychedelia, and again (believed) permanent in the unitive state. Siddhis is the Hindu term for higher powers, such as levitation, which conventional wisdom calls paranormal. Siddhis appear as epiphenomena in the transition from creative to unitive levels. The next column is headed "Jhanas, " (sometimes spelled Jnanas), which means levels of knowledge. Goleman has described the eight jhanas at the bottom of the table, and we have extended the jhana numbers back to minus signs, so as to have a complete numbering system in the syntaxic mode [20].
Next on the table we come to the procedures/graces. The first five are
those in the Creative stage, the first procedure being tantric sex, which
must be included, because there is too much Eastern evidence considering
this as a possible developmental process, to leave it out [21]. The next
procedure is creativity, also a developmental process, as the writer has
elsewhere indicated [221. The next procedure is biofeedback, another technique
of development [4, p. 314] , then comes orthocognition [4, p. 320], about
which there will be later discussion. The final procedure in this stage
is meditation [4, p. 332], which seems
to prepare consciousness in some way for the spectacular psychedelic levels
to follow. These procedures of the creative stage may not be as ordered
as are here indicated, but may be more like sampling from a buffet.
(page 330)
TABLE VI-4: PROPERTIES OF SYNTAXIC PROCEDURES AND GRACES (table VIII T.A.C.)
In the Psychedelic stage we refer to "graces" rather than procedures.
Whereas procedures are within the control of the will, graces appear to
come without conscious volition2, and are
characterized by immediacy, transcendence, bliss, mind- expansion, vividness,
loss of sense of time, unity, deliverance, verisimilitude, transiency,
and subsequent change in behavior [4, pp. 354-355]. Curiously, they can
be divided into six levels of ecstasy, each having characteristic
(page 331)
properties, which seem agreed upon by those mystics in both East and West who have experienced them.
Response Experience [23], is the first grace (jhana -1) which is the same as what Maslow called "peak experience," and the "nature/mystic experience" testified to by many artists, composers, poets, and others [24]. Nature, especially water and mountains, acts as the trigger, though giving birth to a child can also serve. We quote a characteristic example from Jones [25, pp. 196-197]:
I was walking all alone in the forest, trying to make out my plan of life .... Suddenly, I felt the walls between the visible and the invisible grow thin, and the Eternal seemed to break through into the world where I was. I saw no flood of light, I heard no voice. But I felt as though I was face to face with a higher order of reality.
The next grace, jhana 0, has been called "the access state," but
we shall call it "the Adamic ecstasy." In Blake's great words: "The doors
of perception are cleansed" and all things are seen in the pristine glory
which Adam found them before he fell. Two curious things happen in this
experience:
The conscious mind "slips a clutch" as Huxley says, and briefly expands into the Eternal Now, so that often memories of the past or future are brought back. Moses' Adamic ecstasies are described in Exodus 3:2-5, and 33:9-23, and St. Paul's in Acts 9:3-6. Here is George Fox's account of his [26, p. 153 ] :
1. a voice, usually identified as God's, is heard, and
2. there is some transcendence of time.
Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new, and all the Creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can describe. I knew nothing but pureness, innocency, and rightousness ... so that I came up into the state of Adam ... before he fell ....
It will help us to understand these difficult matters, if we hypothesize
that time, space, and personality are being "loosened" as constraints on
consciousness in these upward steps. The auditory anomaly and the time
transcendence on the access state are supplanted in jhana 1 with space
transcendence and visual anomalies, and we find reported what has come
to be known as a "knowledge ecstasy." The vision is in line with the sectarian
beliefs of the participant, but is always awe-inspiring. We forego the
many Christian visions which could be detailed here, in favor of the testimony
of Jacob Boehme [24, p. 182] :
The gate opened to me so that in a quarter of an hour, I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at a university ... for I saw and knew the being of all things, the byss and the abyss ....(page 332)
There now occur three levels of knowledge-contact ecstasies, jhana 2, 3, and 4, which are curious in that a) consciousness seems in someway to be transcending personality, and b) language seems to convey less and less of what is going on. To use physical language (admittedly incomplete) at the first knowledge-contact level the person is touched by the numinous element, and at the second level pierced or penetrated, while at the third level they merge. It is amazing that the language of sexual love can so well convey to us what is going on at a much higher level, but this probably says more about our state than about the experiences. It is also amazing that mystics of both East and West can agree so well as to distinguish between the graces, but the evidence is there [4, p. 369]. We have now gone as far as Christian mysticism can carry us.
But the Hindus talk of higher jhanas in the unitive stage, and here we follow Goleman [20], who identifies jhanas 5 through 8 as ineffable contact, transcendental contact, ineffable union, and transcendental union. This involves an expansion of consciousness in which time, space, and personality having been transcended, there is a state of neither perception nor non-perception. Such a paradox indicates that verbal description is now completely inadequate. However, we may perhaps poetically say that if creation is differentiation, then yogic escalation may be compared to mathematical integration, since it returns to an undifferentiated state or function. What we are seeing here is the anomaly of knowledge turning into state, or to put it another way: in the juncture between the individual and the general mind, duality becomes successively abolished through loosening constraints on the consciousness of time, space, and personality, so that ultimately through knowledge more and more complete, the one becomes the other, and union is reached. This is the "Omega Point" of Teilhard de Chardin.
This concludes our analysis of Table 4, which is a very primitive effort at understanding some of the properties of the syntaxic procedures and graces, since it is an initial effort at putting these matters into some kind of taxonomic order. There are probably many gaps and errors in it, but we are seeing through a glass darkly a first attempt of humanistic psychology to look at transcendental functions.
Before concluding, a word about "orthocognition" is in order. An orthocognitive concept is one which orients us to a larger view of reality, as the Copernician view did over the Ptolemaic, and as the Mendeleev periodic table of the elements did over the classical "four elements" - earth, air, fire, and water. Orthocognition involves the use of the right cerebral hemisphere to see or make imagery. This "seeing" or imaging may be creative, it may be for healing - to " see" a desired state of affairs - which is exactly the use of the word by both Don Juan [10] and A Course in Miracles [11]. The Pribram-Bohm model states that sensory reality is a virtual image caused by holographic imprinting in the brain [13] . If such a hypothesis is considered orthocognitive, then these various graces may be merely graduated levels of increasingly coherent and synchronous
(page 333)
cerebral functioning when the right hemisphere is active and dominant, and the left hemisphere is in resonance. Such a view is consistent with the concepts of Jaynes about the origins of consciousness [1].
In conclusion, we are looking at altered states of consciousness with a new scientific rigor. It now looks as if most of the altered states along with the normal state of consciousness can be ordered into a taxonomy which goes in its principal dimension from the experiencing of events in a prototaxic and somatic manner to an experiencing of events in a syntaxic and cognitive manner, along with which there are increases in control, memorability, and positive affect. Once these altered states were the provinces of mystics, schizophrenics, and other psychological deviates. It now begins to look as though theories about right hemisphere functions and holographic processes in the brain may allow scientific inquiry a far larger share in these unusual experiences. Such development allows for their more general acceptance by many intellectuals who previously were put off by the sectarian and occult explanations which were the only ones available. But this knowledge, though yet incomplete, does even more: events that can be reported similarly by independent observers, and then ordered into a taxonomy, acquire face validity; and having found that El Dorado actually exists, and in possession of a rudimentary map of how to get there, it is logical to expect that more average persons may try the journey. This makes life a great adventure.
Artists, mystics and poets have all seen this coming. Thoreau said in
1848 in Walden: "That day is yet to dawn, for the sun is only a morning
star." That dawn is now occurring, and we are privileged to witness the
breaking of a glorious new day.
1 . J. Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1976.
2. W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Longmans
Green, New
York, 1902.
T. E. Bearden, Photon Quenching and the Paranormal, Unpublished report,
Systems Development Corp., Huntsville, Alabama, April 20, 1977.
4. J. C. Gowan, Trance Art and Creativity, The Creative Education
Foundation,
Buffalo, 1975.
5. M. S. Gazzaniga, One Brain, Two Minds, American Scientist,
60, pp.
311-317, 1972.
6. R. W. Sperry, Hemisphere Deconnection and Unity in Conscious Experience, American Psychologist, 23, pp. 723-733, 1968.
7. R. E. Ornstein, Right and Left-Handed Thinking, Psychology Today, pp. 87-90, May 1973.
8. R. Fischer, Hallucinations Can Reveal Creative Imagination, Fields Within Fields, 11, pp. 29-33, 1974.
(page 334)
9. P. Bakan, The Eyes Have It, Psychology Today, pp. 64-70, April 197 1.
10. C. Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan, Simon and Schuster, New York, 19 7 1.
11. Anonymous, A Course in Miracles, Foundation for Inner Peace, New York, 1976.
12. R. Samples, The Metaphoric Mind, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1976.
13. M. Ferguson, Editorial, The Brain/Mind Bulletin, Interface Press, July 4, 1977.
14. R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford University Press, London, 1928.
15. C. G. Jung, Collected Works: II, Psychology and Religion, Pantheon, New York, 1958.
16. H. S. Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, Norton, New York, 1953.
17. C. H. Van Rhijn, Symbolists: Psychotherapy by Symbolic Representation, The Uses of LSD in Psychotherapy, H. Abramson (ed.), Josiah Macy Foundation, New York, 1960.
18. W. V. Caldwell, LSD Psychotherapy, Grove Press, New York, 1968.
19. J. C. Gowan, The Development of the Psychedelic Individual, The Creative Education Foundation, Buffalo, 1974.
20. D. Goleman, The Buddha on Meditation and States of Consciousness, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 4: 1, pp. 1-44, 1972.
21. P. Rawson, Tantra, Thames and Hudson, London, 1973.
22. J. C. Gowan, The Development of the Creative Individual, R. Knapp, San Diego, 1972.
23. M. Laski, Ecstasy, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1962.
24. C. M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1901.
25. R. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, Macmillan, London, 1932.
26. R. Knox, Enthusiasm, Oxford University Press, London, 1950.
(page 335)