Chapter 13 - The Internet and Higher States of Consciousness—A Transpersonal Perspective

Abstract

Higher states of consciousness (HSC) are long considered to lie outside the discipline of psychology, in part because the experience is rare and subjective and often unreliably intermittent. But in the last 30 years, a growing body of research has documented the existence of and the neurophysiological signatures of these states. The latest phase in the research on HSC has been the establishment of physiological and psychological markers for HSC. While early research largely focused on markers during the practice of meditation, researchers are now studying experienced practitioners who report an ongoing experience of HSC. Initially, this research was done on subjects during sleep, but technological advances have made it possible to study subjects in waking activity. The research has also found that people experiencing Cosmic Consciousness show distinctive EEG patterns during activity that suggest the maintenance of transcendence with waking processes. Moreover, high frontal EEG coherence distinguishes the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique from just sitting resting with one's eyes closed, and high frontal EEG coherence is lowest in the nonmeditating group during tasks and highest in the Cosmic Consciousness group.