IONS: EXPLORING STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS...

Cross-culturally and throughout history people have known and used some means of accessing non-ordinary states of consciousness, whether through ritual, psychoactive herbs and drugs, spiritual practices, or physical discipline. The universality of the phenomenon of non-ordinary states suggests that it has deep relevance to the human condition. Exploring the intrapsychic dimensions of consciousness and reports of transpersonal experiences point toward an extended range of possible states which hold the potential for illuminating an expanded scientific paradigm. The approach known as "state-specific sciences" fully acknowledges that the state or organization of the researcher's consciousness will determine which facts, phenomena, and relationships come into awareness, with far-reaching implications for current scientific methodology. Our ongoing study of meditation as a tool for accessing and mapping non-ordinary states is an important part of our work in this area; in addition, other projects include studies of a wide variety of exceptional states of awareness ranging from shamanic experience, to psychological dissociation, to lucid dreaming. All of these provide a rich ground for mapping various levels of consciousness and spiritual experiences-including their epistemological, psychological, psychophysiological, and cultural dimensions.

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QUESTION: Have you ever had an unusual consciousness experience? Please describe.

(Or do come up with additional questions, research links, thoughts, ideas, observations... will add my own over this next week).

Diane

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

Answers

See also thread...

Some discussion generators, from the Institute of Noetic Sciences...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 00320L

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000