A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States

Abstract

In this age so concerned with travel in outer as well as inner-space, it is strange that, while we have detailed charts of the moon, we have no cartography of the varieties of human experience.In order to draft a map of inner space, I am ready to be your travel guide and take you on two voyages: one along the perceptionhallucination continuum of increasing ergotropic (1) arousal, which includes creative, psychotic, and ecstatic experiences; and another along the perceptionmeditation continuum of increasing trophotropic (1) arousal, which encompasses the hypoaroused states of Zazen and Yoga samadhi.Along the perception-hallucination continuum of increasing arousal of the sympathetic nervous system (ergotropic arousal), man--the self-referential system--perceptually-behaviorally (cortically) interprets the change (drug-induced or "natural") in his subcortical activity as creative, psychotic, and ecstatic experiences (2).These states are marked by a gradual turning inward toward a mental dimension at the expense of the physical.The normal state of daily routine, our point of departure, is followed by an aroused, creative state, which can be characterized by an increase in both data content (a description of space) and rate of data processing ["flood of inner sensation' (3), or most intense time (4)].However, in the next aroused state on the continuum, acute schizophrenic [or rather "hyperphrenic" (5)] state, further increase in data content may not be matched by a corresponding increase in the rate of data processing.While the creative state is conducive to the evolution of novel relations and new meaning, the psychotic "jammed computer" state interferes with the individual's creative interpretation of the activity of his central nervous system (CNS).At the peak of ecstatic rapture, the outside (physical) world "retreats to the fringe of