Hand in hand with this goes an altered consciousness of space and self. In his book Altered States of Consciousness, he explains: “In extraordinary states of consciousness-moments of shock, meditation, sudden mystical experiences, near-death experiences, under the influence of drugs-temporal consciousness is fundamentally altered. Marc Wittmann is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany. There are many forms of non-ordinary mental states, which all seem to distort our sense of space and time. Much later, in 1892, the term “altered states of consciousness” was used for the first time in reference to hypnosis: “The faculties of reason and judgement, the elaborate and regulative faculties, in this altered state of consciousness, are obviously dependent on sense perceptions, and vary accordingly as they do,” writes an anonymous doctor in an article about hypnosis published in the Aberdeen Standard. Terence McKenna, an American ethnobotanist, even thought that the use of psychedelic mushrooms had led to the “evolution of human language and symbol use.” Other researchers suggest that mind-altering substances may have been a core factor in the creation of today’s most common religions. According to the Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, excessive dancing, meditation, and mind-altering plants were used in ancient civilizations to modulate the activity of the mind. Since the origins of humankindĪltered states of consciousness have been used by humans for more than 30,000 years. However transient, altered states of consciousness are key to understanding the human mind. In order to define altered states of consciousness, we need to ask: what is an ordinary state of consciousness? Because scientists can’t agree on an answer to this question, altered states of consciousness don’t have a clear definition. Altered states of consciousness may immediately bring to mind psychedelics or hypnosis, but there are many ways to induce such non-ordinary states.
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