Self Systems in Altered Ego and Consciousness States and Sustainable Leadership Psychology

Abstract

Some argue that the ontology of the mental is a metaphysical and irreducible one, in spite of the emerging physicalism in scientific basis for models of mind and self, based on materialistic reductionism. However a model of a physical mind localized in brain based consciousness can still accommodate the non-local or rather metaphysical and disembodied aspects, as a study of the findings of neural correlates and brain biology related to altered ego and consciousness states would suggest, as argued in this paper. There is a need to synergize the bottom up approaches with top down perspectives on consciousness and mind in a theoretic model of mind encompassing the reductionist and holistic paradigms and scientific and philosophical frameworks. This is possible in the light of the current literature related to altered ego states of pathological conditions and altered consciousness states of meditation and its brain based mechanisms and processes. A perspective on a model of mind is possible by integrating its physicalism with its rather metaphysical nature intrinsic to its being and objective reality in specific altered states of consciousness that implies a disappearance of the subject-object differentiation that is normally associated with self systems.This has possible implications for management of self systems,with its import for sustainable leadership.