Practitioners of the mindfulness form of Buddhist meditation were tested for visual sensitivity before and immediately after a 3-mo. retreat during which they practiced mindfulness meditation for 16 hr. each day. A control group composed of the staff at the retreat center was similarly tested. Visual sensitivity was defined in two ways: by a detection threshold based on the duration of simple...
In Reply.— Dr Hoffman's suggestion that one may find many of the visual disturbances that were described in my article1 in non-LSD—using persons is well taken. The diagnosis of the LSD flashback syndrome, like that of epilepsy, is primarily made by carefully obtaining a history. But before drawing such a conclusion, the clinician has the responsibility of excluding the possibility of...
To the Editor.— I read with interest Abraham's article on "Visual Phenomenology of the LSD Flashback."1The description of visual flashbacks and the apparent reduction in symptoms with the administration of a benzodiazepine called to mind the case of a woman I treated whose major difference from the patients in Abraham's group was the absence of a history of LSD ingestion. This patient had...
In a study designed to identify the electrophysiologic characteristics of the Transcendental Meditation Program, 52 periods of spontaneous respiratory suspension (RS) were observed in 18 subjects during the practice of this program. These periods were correlated with some but not all the subjective experiences of pure consciousness. Nineteen RS periods (belonging to 11 subjects) free from any...
Research Article| April 01 1984 Mystical Consciousness in a Process Perspective Ernest L. Simmons, Jr. Ernest L. Simmons, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Process Studies (1984) 14 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.2307/44798176 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ernest L. Simmons; Mystical Consciousness in...
This paper develops particular Strausian -like themes on the formation and structure of the Cartesian problematic. Particularly, my interest is to link the Cartesian 'invention' of consciousness (or 'the mental') in the philosophy of mind with the issues of representation and 'the problem of the external world' in epistemology. The Cartesian novelty becomes clear by comparing Cartesian...
It is frequently argued that the phenomenological or qualitative features of our sensations will never be satisfactorily reduced by a purely materialistic neuroscience. They constitute, it is often said, a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of physlcalism. In what follows I provide a critical examination of several of the most popular of these arguments. I also explore the...
This article was read at an invitational conference convened by the Institute for Noetic Sciences, June, 1982, to discuss ways of introducing into the educational system our new knowledge of the scope of consciousness. I illustrated the difficulties by the way in which the academic world has ignored or suppressed William James' writings on psychical research and the concept of cosmic...
A subject is described who can voluntarily select and hold either of two qualitatively different states of consciousness. Evidence is presented which confirmed differential left or right hemisphere dominance in each state. Asymmetries of EEG alpha and task performance scores indicated a state-dependent shift in functional lateralization. Evoked response studies showed directional changes in...
The phenomenology that typically accompanies the near-death experience (NDE) is also sometimes a by-product of ketamine, an anesthetic used in both medical and recreational settings. Some surveys indicate that NDE-type ketamine hallucinations are quite common. The close parallels between some ketamine experiences and the NDE can be explained by a variety of conceptual models, including these:...