Consciousness restructuring

Because we are creatures with a certain kind of body and nervous system, a large number of human potentials are in principle available to use. but each of us is born into a particular culture that selects and develops a small number of these potentials, rejects others, and is ignorant of many. The small number of experiential potentials selected by our culture, plus some random factors, constitute the structural elements from which our ordinary state of consciousness is constructed, we are at once the beneficiaries and the victims of our culture s particular selection. The possibility of tapping and developing latent potentials, which lie outside the cultural norm, by entering an altered state of consciousness, by temporarily restructuring consciousness, is the basis of the great interest in such states. 

A discrete altered state of consciousness (d-ASC) refers to a d-SoC that is different from some baseline state of consciousness (b-SoC). usually the ordinary state is taken as the baseline state. A d-ASC is a new system with unique properties of its own, a restructuring of consciousness. Altered is intended as a purely descriptive term, carrying no values. 

Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 1966, 14, 238-248) shows the frequency of these three ego states or states of consciousness with respect to psychophysiological criteria. The psychophysiological criteria are arranged on the horizontal axis in the order in which transition into sleep ordinarily takes place. You can see that the intact ego state is associated with alpha and REM or alpha and SEM (slow eye movement), the destructuralized ego state mainly with restructuralized ego state mainly with... 

The intact ego state and the restructuralized ego state seem to correspond to bounded regions of experiential space, d-SoCs, but it is not clear whether the destructuralized ego state represents a d-SoC or merely a period of unstable transition between the b-SoC of the intact state (ordinary consciousness) and the d-ASC of the restructuralized state (a sleep state).f51 we need more data about the condition they... 

---