Article discussing empirical questions about near-death experiences (NDEs) that can be explored by the scientific method. Scientific study poses risks both to NDErs and to our understanding of the NDE itself. However, because the NDE allows unique access to information about consciousness and death, those risks are outweighed by the benefits to NDErs and to humanity derived from a scientific...
Within anthropology, investigations of shamans and their altered states of consciousness have followed some of the prescriptive problems inherited from the discipline of psychology, coloring the assumptions and perspectives of students of shamanism. These inherited problems include the following: conscious/volitional versus unconscious/involuntary mentalisms; contentual objectivism versus...
Can direct change in state of consciousness through specific mental techniques extend human life and reverse age-related declines? To address this question, 73 residents of 8 homes for the elderly (mean age = 81 years) were randomly assigned among no treatment and 3 treatments highly similar in external structure and expectations: the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program, mindfulness training...
This prospective social experiment tests a new theory and technology for alleviating violent conflict through reducing societal stress in an underlying field of “collective consciousness.” It was predicted that group practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field (the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program) during August and September, 1983, in Jerusalem, would reduce stress...
Reviewed by: Henry James and the Evolution of Consciousness: A Study of "The Ambassadors", and: Searching for the Figure in the Carpet in the Tales of Henry James: Reflections of an Ordinary Reader, and: Henry James: Selected Letters Rosalie Hewitt Courtney Johnson, Jr. Henry James and the Evolution of Consciousness: A Study of "The Ambassadors." East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1987. 187 pp....
Although the considerable majority of reported near-death experiences (NDEs) are associated with positive affect, there are occasional cases of so-called negative NDEs that are dominated by fear and anguish. The phenomenological status of the negative experiences and their relationship to the more typical positive NDEs have been the subject of increasing speculation. In that light, the NDE...
At the end of this volume, it is time to assess the cumulative implications of the assembled evidence. What has been learned about flow in the 10 or so years since the model was first presented? The main conclusions, derived from a variety of different studies, seem rather robust. In the first place, it is clear that the flow experience is recognized as a phenomenological reality by people of...
This paper examines the phenomenological and sociocultural character of Sicilian Pentecostal conversion and compares this transformational experience to that offered by traditional Sicilian shamanic practice. The approach to religious conversion advocated here is critical of the family of approaches called “deprivation‐ideology” approach and features a view of conversion that relies on the...
AnesthesiologyAugust 1988D W Davis, A M Mans, J F Biebuyck et al.
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of different doses of ketamine on cerebral function at the level of individual brain structures as reflected by glucose use. Rats received either 5 or 30 mg/kg ketamine intravenously as a loading dose, followed by an infusion to maintain a steady-state level of the drug. An additional group received 30 mg/kg as a single injection only, and...
Cognitive psychology is considered by some theorists to have subsumed "third force" views of consciousness. The purpose of the present article is to show that the cybernetic conceptions of cognitive psychology do not explain the qualities of consciousness considered fundamental to existentialists. It is our contention that feedback principles are inadequate to explain self-awareness, volition,...