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Four pairs of adult siblings served once as either the stimulus or the response person in two sessions separated by one week. While the brain of the stimulus person, who was seated in a closed chamber, was exposed successively to six different complex magnetic fields for 5 min. each quantitative monopolar electroencephalographic measurements over the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes were collected by computer for the response person who was seated in another room. The six configurations of fields served as different stimulus patterns and had been designed to affect consciousness. As predicted theoretically, a significant increase in electroencephalographic power within the 5.0-Hz to 6.0-Hz band over the frontal and occipital lobes was noted for the response persons when the stimulus persons received one of the six specific patterns of weak (1 microTesla range) magnetic fields. This magnetic stimulus was presented for 100 msec. with changes in rate of 20 msec. to each of the eight solenoids that were equally spaced in the horizontal plane around the head of the stimulus person. Derivatives within this narrow frequency band had been hypothesized to be a source of the “binding factor” for the cohesive cerebrogenic electromagnetic fields producing consciousness. The results suggest that an appropriate altered state of one brain can effect specific predictable frequencies of the electroencephalographic activity of another distant brain which is genetically related.

In a sample of 71 medical students, dream recall frequency was positively correlated with proneness to altered states of consciousness ( r = .26) measured by the State of Mind and Consciousness Questionnaire and dissociation ( r = .29) measured by the Dissociative Experiences Scale II. A regression analysis, however, yielded neither altered states of consciousness nor dissociation, sex, or age to be significant predictors of dream recall frequency. Among women dream recall frequency was associated with proneness to dissociation; among men it was correlated with proneness to altered states of consciousness.

This note relates recent research on dream content to other findings on imaginal experiences which suggest that state or situational factors frequently define the content of experiences related to altered states of consciousness. As with hallucinatory, dissociative, and autohypnotic phenomena, dream content reflects a continuity between waking and imaginai experience.

Cognitive, perceptual, and motor deficits are part of the constellation of symptoms found in various hypoglycemic conditions. Since neurogenic symptoms and altered states of consciousness affect driving skills, hypoglycemia should be considered a mitigating factor in vehicular accidents.

Various apparent drawbacks and extensions are considered of a previously developed cognitive approach to mystical and altered-state experience as directly exteriorizing the normally masked processes of semantics or “felt meaning.” The humanly criterial “turning around on the schemata” as the basis for recombinatory symbolic operations would be based on the cross-modal or synaesthetic embodiment of the geometric and luminosity patterns “afforded” by the imaginal disassembling and reuse of visual-spatial perceptual microgenesis. Accordingly the more orthodox accounts of synaesthesias and geometric imagery as “primitive” or “nonsymbolic” are addressed and rejected. The cognitive-introspectionist reinterpretation of the phenomena of altered states in turn leads to a new understanding of ordinary insight, body-percept transformations in schizophrenia and yoga chakra experience, and the ‘void’ experience of classical mysticism. It appears that the juxtaposition of the psychology of thought and of altered states of consciousness is mutually and uniquely illuminating to both concerns.

Four Ss with histories of reported spontaneous ESP occurrence participated in 8 sessions per S. Each session consisted of 3 trials in which the contents (art prints) of sealed envelopes were assessed by clairvoyant means. One trial took place while S was in his ordinary waking state, one while S was in a self-induced altered conscious state, and one while S was in an altered state induced by sensory-bombardment techniques. Written transcripts of each S‘s statements were given to 3 outside evaluators who ranked each transcript against the 4 possible art prints in the target pool randomly selected for that session. Using median ranks of 1 and 2 as “hits” and ranks of 3 and 4 as “misses,” the 4 Ss were awarded a total of 58 “hits” and 38 “misses” ( CR = 2.04, p = .041, two-tailed). S-judgings produced a total of 61 “hits” and 35 “misses” ( CR = 2.65, p = .008, two-tailed).

Significant correlations (0.50) were observed again between scores for the Wilson-Barber Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings and the numbers of experiences that are indicative of temporal lobe lability. In addition, positive correlations (0.42) occurred between temporal lobe EEG measures (scalp electrodes) and numbers of temporal lobe signs. The numbers of alpha seconds per minute from the occipital lobes were correlated (0.57) with the Wilson-Barber cluster that indicated interests in “altered states”. Scores on the childhood imaginings section of the Wilson-Barber Inventory were correlated (0.44) with the numbers of spikes per minute over the temporal lobes when the eyes were closed.

For 19 Ss a condition of sensory overload induced several kinds of altered states of consciousness. RFT scores correlated .39 with degrees of altered consciousness, indicating that field dependency is associated with the experience of radically altered consciousness.

The techniques of steady visual fixation and repetitious auditory input are used in the laboratory for investigating perceptual phenomena and in yoga and meditation for facilitating altered states of awareness. Phenomena related to mild sensory deprivation are reported in both circumstances.