Although Sperry's empirical science reinforced a materialist view of the relation between mind and brain, his concept of an emergent consciousness that could causally influence neural function is reminiscent of Cartesian dualism, purportedly allowing for free will, individual responsibility for action and a synthesis of science with moral and religious values. Yet Sperry insisted that his view...
The primate visual brain is characterized by a set of parallel, multistage systems that are specialized to process different attributes of the visual scene. They occupy spatially distinct positions in the visual brain and do not project to a unique common area. These processing systems are also perceptual systems, because the result of activity in each leads to the perception of the relevant...
FEATURES Julia Ching. Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart ofChinese Wisdom . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xxi, 302 pp. Hardcover $64.95, ISBN 0-521-46293-2. Paperback $22.95, 1SBN 0-521-46828-0. Mysticism and Kingship in China approaches Chinese intellectual history from the central thesis that mysticism—the ecstatic communion between man and the cosmos —lies at the center...
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES BRUCE GREYSON* Near-death experiences (NDEs) are profound psychological events with transcendental or mystical elements typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger. Such experiences, once regarded as meaningless hallucinations, have become the subject of serious study by medical and other...
There have been numerous reports in the literature on the descriptive similarities between a severe nightmare and an acute psychotic episode. Nightmares may be a prelude to psychotic decompensation, and it has been suggested that frequent lifelong nightmares may even be diagnostic of an underlying vulnerability to psychosis. In this report, we present a case study of a 40-year old female...
Meditation includes a variety of techniques that share a common conscious effort to focus attention in a non-analytic way. In terms of its goals, meditation is a state of completely focused attention devoid of external thoughts--a state of heightened choice-less awareness. This study was designed to: (1) Identify and critically review professional literature on the effectiveness of meditation;...
The behavioral syndrome produced by phencyclidine (PCP) and its analog ketamine represents a pharmacological model for some aspects of schizophrenia. Despite the multifaceted properties of these drugs, the main mechanism for their psychotomimetic and cognitive-impairing effects has been thought heretofore to involve the corticolimbic dopamine system. The present study examined the temporal...
Voegelin was deeply concerned about a spiritual crisis of consciousness in the Western world as well as the threat of totalitarianism growing in Europe. The realisation led him to the question of ideologies which he considered as attempts to form a closed society. He argued that philosophy should be as Plato and Aristotle envisaged a science of human nature. The discovery by Plato and Aristotle...
The mind-body problem, which Schopenhauer called the 'world-knot', has been a central problem for philosophy since the time of Descartes. Among realists - those who accept the reality of the physical world - the two dominant approaches have been dualism and materialism, but there is a growing consensus that, if we are ever to understand how mind and body are related, a radically new approach is...
The APZ questionnaire was developed in order to explore hypotheses on ASCs. First -- in a series of 11 experiments using different induction methods on N = 393 healthy subjects -- the hypothesis was tested that ASCs have major dimensions in common irrespective of the mode of their induction. In the International Study on Altered States of Consciousness (ISASC) the external validity of the...