Psi Functioning and Altered States of Consciousness: A Perspective
Charles T. Tart
University of California, Davis, California
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Notations: *= underline*
Published in Psi functioning and altered states of consciousness:
A perspective. In B. Shapin & L. Coly (Eds.), Psi and States of
Awareness. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1978, pp. 180-210.
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Psi Functioning and Altered States of Consciousness: A Perspective
Charles T. Tart
University of California, Davis, California
A major problem hindering research into the nature of psi is
its typically low level of manifestation (poor signal to noise ratio)
and unreliability of operation. Psi has usually been studied with
either the percipient, the agent, or both in their ordinary state of
consciousness. Because of both anecdotal evidence and a little
experimental evidence suggesting that some altered states of
consciousness, such as hypnosis or dreaming, might be more favorable
to the operation of psi than our ordinary states, considerable
interest has recently become focused on the possibilities of using
altered states for enhancing psi functioning.
Honorton (in press) has recently reviewed 87 experimental
studies, most of them fairly recent, and has shown that experimental
*procedures* which are often associated with the induction of altered
states of consciousness are generally conducive to stronger psi
manifestation. The procedures investigated have included meditation
practices, hypnotic induction procedures, relaxation techniques, and
ganzfeld stimulation.
I stress that Honorton's conclusions are about experimental
*procedures*, procedures which have frequently been associated with
the induction of altered states. As I have frequently pointed out
(Tart, 1971; 1972a; 1972b; 1973; 1974; 1975a; in press (a); in press
(b)). there are enormous individual differences in how people respond
to various induction procedures, including the fact that often no
altered state results. Thus the fact that an experimenter administers
a traditional or special induction procedure to a participant in a psi
(or any) experiment is not equivalent to saying that the experimental
participant is*in* some particular altered state. Although it was
probably the case that many of the participants in the studies
reviewed by Honorton were in an altered state, this is an important
methodological distinction: if we do not make it, we add an enormous
amount of error variance to our data.
Using altered states to facilitate psi functioning is not a
straight-forward or easy task. Our scientific knowledge of altered
states is in its infancy, as is our knowledge of psi, so in many ways
we are using one unknown to potentiate another unknown, and much of
our effort is based on hope, rather than knowledge.
I have spent two decades investigating the nature of both our
ordinary state and various altered states of consciousness. One
result has been the evolution of a *systems approach*, which attempts
to provide an overall conceptual and methodological framework for
working with the scattered scientific data about altered states. More
precisely, it is about the nature of *discrete altered states of
consciousness* (d-ASCs), a more precise term than altered states,
which has often come to be used for almost any and every variation in
consciousness possible, no matter how small. In this paper I shall
present a brief overview of this systems approach to d-ASCs and
speculate about some specific ways this approach suggests fruitful use
of d-ASCs to facilitate psi functioning. The interested reader should
see my recent *States of Consciousness* book (Tart, 1975a) and other
writings (Lee et al., 1976; Tart, 1972a; 1972b; 1972c; 1972d; 1974;
1975b; 1976a; in press (a); in press(b); in press(c)) for a full
exposition of this approach. This paper is a more technical
discussion of the consideration of altered states and psi appearing in
my Psi: Scientific Studies of the *Psychic Realm* book (Tart, 1977a).
In terms of the distinction made above between the *existence*
of a d-ASC and the *procedures* which might or might not produce it,
this paper is about the experientially developed d-ASC and its
possibilities, not about induction procedures. The actual existence
of a d-ASC must be assessed by experiential and/or behavioral and/or
physiological mapping for an individual experimental participant at a
given time, a methodological point discussed fully elsewhere (Tart,
1974; 1975a).*Components of Consciousness*
Although consciousness is usually experienced by us as a
complex but unitary system, as a whole, it is useful for analytic
purposes to break it down into major subsystems. As long as we keep
in mind that such subsystems actually work together to form an
integrated *system*, with emergent properties arising by virtue of its
being a system which are not clearly predictive from knowledge of the
parts only, this will not lead us astray.
In looking at how people in various d-ASCs behave and what
they report about their experiences, I have broken consciousness down
into ten major processes or subsystems, functioning in ordinary
consciousness and often showing radical changes in d-ASCs. The ten
subsystems are sketched in Figure 1. The connections, the arrows,
represent major routes of information flow. Note that there is
nothing ultimate about these subsystems, as sketched in Figure 1:
they are simply convenient classifications or groupings of mental
processes based on current knowledge.
Figure 1:
___________ _________ __________
EXTERNAL | | | Sense | | Latent |
WORLD | Memory | | of | |Functions |
|| | | |Identity | | |
__\||/___ |___________| |_________| |__________|
| Extero- | | /|\ |______ | |_______
| ceptors | | | | | |
|_________| _\|/___| __ \|/__\|/_ _\|/______ ______
| | | | | |Evaluation| | | EXTERNAL
`------>| Input |-->|Awareness|-->|& Decision|-->| Motor|--\ WORLD
------>| Processing| | |<--| Making | |Output|--/
____|____ |___________| |_________| |__________| |______|
| Intero- | | /|\ | /|\ /|\ /|\ /|\
| ceptors | | | | |_______ | |_____ |
|_________| | | |_______ | | | |
/||\ \|/__|____ \|/_|_|__ _|___|____
|| | | | | | |
|| | Sub- |<--|Emotions | |Space/Time|
BODY | conscious|-->| | | Sense |
SENSATIONS |__________| |_________| |__________|
*Apologies for the crudeness of a diagram that uses only ASCII
characters*
Basic *awareness*, that undefinable but immediately observable
quality that lies behind the particular, more articulated contents of
consciousness is also shown in Figure 1. However, it is not a
subsystem but rather a "quality" behind subsystems, a basic
"something" which interests with various subsystems. The resultant of
basic awareness interacting with various subsystems is what I call
*consciousness*. Also shown are latent functions, usually unconnected
to the structure of ordinary consciousness, but which may be activated
in a particular d-ASC. For most of us, most of the time, psi
functioning is such a latent function.
The system of ordinary consciousness, which we shall now
consider generally, does not exist in isolation. A person interacts
with a world around him. Thus in the systems diagram of Figure 1, I
have shown major inputs from the external world, as well as major
sensations from the person's own body, as well as motor output
affecting the external world. I shall briefly describe the main
characteristics of the various subsystems by looking at how we deal
with information input from the external world.
Information about the external world is taken in through the
classical sensory receptors (eye, ear, touch, taste, smell): for
convenience I have grouped these together as our *Exteroceptor*
subsystem in Figure 1. The network of specialized receptors and nerve
endings throughout our body that tells us whether we are comfortable
or uncomfortable, what position we are in, what kind of movements we
are making with what intensity, etc., I have classified together as
our *Interoceptor* subsystem.
As I understand it, we very seldom or perhaps never have any
"direct" contact with sensations from either our exteroceptors or our
interoceptors, the external world, or our bodies. Rather, these
sensations pass through a very important set of processes that I have
classified as *Input Processing*. This subsystem represents a set of
usually completely automatic and largely non-conscious, implicit
learned processes which, in terms of human time, well-nigh instantly
scan the pattern of incoming sensations, separate out those aspects of
the sensation pattern that we have been taught to believe are
"important" aspects, discard the vast majority of incoming sensations
as unimportant, and pass on to awareness a *construction* that
represents what is important to perceive. That is, what we experience
as our "direct" perception of the external world or our body is
usually a high-order abstraction, with a good deal of arbitrariness
going into the abstraction process. It is analogous to the
hierarchical management network in a large corporation. While untold
thousands of processes go on in the operation of this company every
day which generate data, these are combined and abstracted so the
operating officer of the company is liable to see a one-page report on
his desk in the morning which summarizes all that is "important" about
the previous day's operations.
The non-conscious construction and abstraction rules of the
Input Processing subsystem obviously depend on stored criteria,
memory. In order to abstract out what is important, there must be
stored criteria of what is important. I have shown a major two-way
information flow with those groups of data storage processes here
classified together as the Memory subsystem. Most of this interaction
is non-conscious: our experience is that we recognize things around
us immediately in almost all cases, and only rarely have to
deliberately try to consciously figure out what something is.
This abstraction of what is going on in the external and
bodily worlds passes on from the Input Processing subsystem to
*awareness*. Awareness can be aptly described as "the ghost in the
machine," the part of our mind that is not an obvious persistent
structure like the other subsystems, but is much harder to define and
pinpoint. Awareness cannot be given any verbal definition, for a
verbal definition involves the use of learned language structures,
subsystems, but awareness is more basic than any learned language
structure. If you rub your cheek, the experience that *something* is
going on is basic awareness, but as soon as this is further
articulated (either as percept or cognition) into "I am rubbing my
cheek," we are dealing with *consciousness*, the interaction of basic
awareness with various subsystems and structures.
This distinction between basic awareness and consciousness is
an important one. Ordinarily we seldom experience simple or basic
awareness, although it can happen as a result of meditative practices
or in some d-ASCs. What we ordinarily call our consciousness is a
sort of marriage, an emergent gestalt of awareness and activated
structures, activated subsystems. In Figure 1 I have put a less
substantial border around awareness to represent this difficulty of
localizing it, and the difference in its nature from subsystems.
Awareness, in a sense, moves into subsystems to various degrees to
produce our consciousness of their operation. Whether awareness is
ultimately a neurological process of the same nature as other
subsystems, what I have called the orthodox scientific view of
consciousness, or whether it may be something of a quite different
basic nature than neurological functioning, a view implied by much
parapsychological data, which I have called the radical view of
consciousness, is discussed at length elsewhere (Tart, 1974; 1975a;
1975b).
Much of our consciousness is occupied by these abstract
representations of external events and bodily sensations, the output
of the Input Processing subsystem. Ordinarily we then go on to
evaluate a situation. We may deliberately call up information from
the Memory subsystem in a conscious fashion to try to expand our
understanding of our perceptions, and we may deliberately evaluate the
nature of the situation and make some kind of decision about it. The
*Evaluation and Decision Making* subsystem is a classification for
those relatively conscious reasoning and decision making processes
that we experience ourselves going through. When we decide on what to
do, we use our *Motor Output* subsystem, the classification of our
various effector mechanisms, to actually do something with our muscles
or vocal chords which affects the external world or our own bodies.
We may have various emotions activated by the representations
of stimulus patterns we receive through the Input Processing subsystem
or by internal processes, and these various emotions are classified
together as the *Emotion* subsystem. These emotions may have direct
bodily effects on us, and may affect our Evaluation and Decision
Making subsystem. When emotions are operating much of our reasoning
too frequently becomes rationalization.
There are several other subsystems that are not quite so
obvious in a common sense analysis of mental functionings as the ones
discussed above, but which have important effects on our experiencing
and action. One of these is what I have called the *Sense of
Identity* subsystem, which represents the values we have as to what
kind of person we are, how we like to present ourselves to other
people, what we stand for, what we are opposed to, etc. In many
situations, then, we evaluate and act not simply in terms of how to
attain obvious ends, given the situation, but how *I* can not only
attain some particular end (because *I* value it), but also present
the proper image of *my*self to others, etc. This is the quality
popularly called "ego" in experience, the quality that gives certain
kinds of data within the overall system a very special relevance and
power, often conjuring up strong emotions, because this is *me*,
rather than just neutral information.
The *Space/Time Sense* subsystem is quite implicit in most of
our psychological functioning, but very important. It is a kind of
constant mental map organizing our experience which says I am located
in such and such a location at such and such a time. It *constructs*
an explicit or implicit spatial and temporal background to our
experience, and generates expectations about how things are liable to
change from this spatial and temporal reference point. We ordinarily
do not recognize the constructed nature of these kinds of mental
processes because we implicitly believe that we are simply responding
to *real* time and *real* space. In various d-ASCs, however, time and
space can be constructed quite differently as the subsystem changes
its operations, an important property that we shall consider later
when we talk about using d-ASCs to facilitate psi processes.
Another very important subsystem is the one labeled
*Subconscious*, a collection of those various processes that we infer
from observations of another's behavior and reports of his mental
processes but which, ordinarily, the person himself is not directly
aware of. In some ways it is the catch-all category in the systems
approach, as it covers such a wide range of phenomena. Some of these
phenomena, such as those studied in psychoanalysis, are fairly well
understood, while we have very little information about some others,
such as creative processes.
The Subconscious subsystem may get information directly from
the Input Processing subsystem even if that information does not enter
awareness, the phenomenon of subception. The Subconscious subsystem
may in turn affect Input Processing to control what is passed on to
awareness, resulting in such processes as perceptual defense as an
extreme, but, in a more general sense, resulting in the process of
selectivity of perception. The Subconscious subsystem may trigger off
particular emotions, and particular emotions may themselves activate
various parts of the Subconscious. Emotions *per se*, of course, can
affect Input Processing: if you are feeling angry when you are
walking down the street, you can much more readily see instances of
social injustice than if you are feeling elated. Indeed, Subconscious
effects can be seen on every other subsystem, although I have not
drawn in every possible information flow route in Figure 1.
The subsystem labeled *Latent Functions*, shown in the upper
right-hand corner of Figure 1, is a classification for all human
potentials which are potentially available in some d-ASC, but are not
ordinarily available in our ordinary state of consciousness.*** This
subsystem (mere precisely, these many potential subsystems) represents
many psychological potentials which we did not develop in the course
of growing up in our particular culture, even though we had them by
virtue of being born human beings. Indeed, some of these may have
been strongly inhibited by our culture, but at least some of them are
still potentially available. For at least some of us, this includes
the potential to use psi.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnote 1: *It is conceivable that some of these potentials might
become available in the ordinary state of consciousness through long
training that, in various ways, changes the nature of the state to
allow these latent potentials to fit in, but I shall not explore that
question in this paper.
---------------------------------------------------end footnote
*The Busyness and Compellingness of Our Ordinary State of
Consciousness*
The various subsystems discussed above are analytical
divisions of a complex, interacting *system*. The subsystems
stabilize each other's functioning, for instance, and so lead to the
stability of a particular discrete state of consciousness (d-ASC).
For our ordinary state, there is an incredible busyness to our
experience. Our minds are not quiet until we receive some external
stimulus, but rather we are constantly generating internal thoughts,
fantasies, plans, and emotions, as well as putting ourselves in
stimulus situations which usually result in a steady flow of complex
input.
Further, our ordinary state, rather than being called "normal"
consciousness, might be more appropriately called consciousness, for
its very busy pattern of activity is focused around the consensus
reality we have been taught by virtue of becoming fully functioning
members of our particular culture; it is focused on those select
aspects of perception/experience that have been defined as important
by our culture. Because of the force of the conditioning that went
into the enculturation process, much of this busyness of our ordinary
state of consciousness is also beyond conscious control, i.e., our
ability to deliberately direct our attention, deliberately use our
awareness to activate various types of experiences, is limited. The
feeling that some people report in various d-ASCs of having more
control over their attention is one theoretical reason for thinking
that it might be easier to activate latent psi functions in them. Be
that as it may, when we ask a percipient or agent who is in this
ordinary d-SoC to try to use psi, we are asking him to try to do a
very poorly understood and difficult task against an incredibly high
noise level of compelling consensus consciousness, the constant
ongoing activity of their ordinary state. In addition to any
*specific* resistances our percipient or agent may have against using
psi, this noise level is a real problem.
As an analogy, when we ask a percipient or agent to use psi,
it's as if we want someone who is in the middle of a lively party in a
popular tavern to try to hear a whispered conversation that is going
on outside in the street. The stereo is playing loudly, dozens of
people are dancing and shouting, others are conversing loudly on all
sorts of topics that seem important or fashionable, others are telling
interesting stories and jokes. Everyone, including our would-be
percipient (and probably our experimenter) is drunk: drunk not only
with the freely available liquor, but with the
social/emotional/intellectual stimulation provided by the party.
Further, this condition is not something that just happened to our
percipient: he chose (or was conditioned to choose by virtue of his
upbringing) to come to the party, he is enjoying it (or has been
conditioned to believe he is enjoying it), and doesn't want to leave.
We make our way through the crowd, finally get alongside our
percipient, and try to persuade him that it really is important for
him to try to hear this whispered conversation that is going on
outside in the street. If we are lucky, we can get him to stagger
over toward the door, closer to where the outside conversation is
taking place. We will probably be continually stopped by his friends
who come up and engage him in conversation, offer him more drinks, or
want to whisk him away to dance. The task of actually getting him to
leave this warm, friendly, intoxicating party in the tavern to (what
seems) the cold, dark street outside, and then pay prolonged attention
to this hard to hear conversation is a prodigious one indeed.
This analogy may seem extreme, but my studies of the
psychology of consciousness have convinced me that this is a quite
useful analogy for our ordinary state of consciousness and what we are
asking someone to do when we try to get him to listen to the "still
small voice" of psi. Indeed, the analogy should be extended to
include various (culturally shared) insanities and specific
resistances to psi. Our percipient has probably heard a lot of awful
stories about the things that can happen to people who go out into
dark streets and get involved with people they don't know. His
friends in the tavern (who represent both other people, who constantly
reinforce our consensus consciousness, and the internal structures of
our minds that embody consensus reality)have similarly been warned
about such encounters, and would want to try to keep our percipient in
the tavern where they believe they are all safe. Or our percipient
may have fantastic ideas about wise men from the East waiting in the
street, who are going to shower him with fantastic psychic gifts, so
he wants to run out into the street shouting "Here I am, you found me,
I'm wonderful, give it all to me, *now*!", but this is not very
adaptive behavior for actually hearing a whispered conversation
either.
This three-ring circus of ordinary consensus consciousness is
the background we must keep in mind when we consider the possibilities
of using d-ASCs to facilitate psi.
*Routes of Psi Information Flow*
We shall now consider four theoretical routes of psi
information flow. Each of these routes may sometimes operate within
our ordinary state, as well as within d-ASCs. Later we shall consider
how d-ASCs may specifically facilitate psi information flow along the
various routes.
Figure 2 is a modification of the systems diagram of Figure 1
to show these four possible routes of psi information flow. I have
drawn the input arrow from the external world to the Exteroceptor
subsystem in a blocked-out form to remind us that in a
parapsychological experiment we deliberately eliminate any information
flow relevant to the target that might come over known sensory
receptors. Except in the case of the percipient being in a sensory
isolation situation, he is still getting some sensory information from
his immediate environment but, since this is irrelevant to the target,
this constitutes either random or systematic noise. Insofar as he
pays attention to this sensory input, he is distracting himself from
possible internal experiences that might carry the psi message.
Research on ganzfeld techniques, for example, has shown some success
in facilitating psi by reducing this noise input (Terry and Honorton,
1970).
Figure 2: scrolls off right side of screen, limitations of ASCII
________
Psi-3 | |
...................................................... | Target |
: : |________|
: ........................... : :
: : Psi-2 : : :Psi
: _____v_____ _________ _:____:___ _________ :
: external | | | Sense | | Psi | | | :
: world | Memory | | of | | Receptor <---------| Channel |<--/
: || | | |Identity | | | Psi |_________|
: __\||/___ |___________| |_________| /|Psi-1_____|
: | Extero- | | /|\ :....... | |__/____ \...........................
: | ceptors | | | Psi-2 : | / | Psi-4 :
: |_________| _\|/___| __ \:/__\|/_/ _\|/______ ______ :
: | | | | | |Evaluation| | | EXTERNAL :
: `------>| Input |-->|Awareness|-->|& Decision|-->| Motor|--\ WORLD :
: ------>| Processing| | |<--| Making | |Output|--/ :
: ____|____ |___________| |_________| |__________| |______| :
: | Intero- | | /|\ | /|\ /|\ /|\ /|\ :
---> ceptors | | | | |_______ | |_____ | :
|_________| | | |_______ | | | | :
/||\ \|/__|4___ \|/_|_|__ _|___|____ :
|| | | | | | | :
|| | Sub- |<--|Emotions | |Space/Time| :
BODY | conscious|-->| | | Sense | :
SENSATIONS |__________| |_________| |__________| :
^ :
:.............................................................:
Psi-4
*Apologies for the crudeness of a diagram that uses only ASCII
characters*
I have added the psi target and the psi channel in the upper
right-hand corner of Figure 2, showing them feeding into a largely
latent function or subsystem called the *Psi Receptor*, whatever
process or processes transforms the psi information (arriving over
some channel connecting the distant target to the percipient) into a
form useful for processing in the mind or brain. Once this latent Psi
Receptor is activated, four routes of information flow are possible.
*Direct Psi*
The first possible psi information flow route, marked as ,
is represented by an arrow directly from the Psi Receptor to awareness
in Figure 2. This route corresponds to the occasional type of psi
experience where a percipient finds himself getting extremely good
representation of the target. There seems to be little or no
distortion, and the information has a quality of intruding and
temporarily displacing whatever prior mental processes were going on.
Direct psi thus seems to be relatively independent of the structure of
the percipient's state of consciousness at the time, whether it is his
ordinary state or a d-ASC.
Such experiences seem relatively rare compared with the more
indirect psi information flow routes, described below, but when they
happen they are often quite striking. To illustrate, when I was
working as a laboratory assistant at the Round Table Foundation in the
summer of 1957, the well-known Dutch psychic, Peter Hurkos, was in
residence, and we were trying to find a person with whom he would be a
good telepathic team. I had tried several informal runs with Hurkos
as both agent and percipient without making any really significant
scores. The test, called the Matching Abacus Test (Puharich, 1962),
consisted of arranging two rows of transparent boxes. Ten different
target pictures can be seen through the boxes in one row, with a
matching set of pictures in the boxes of the other adjacent row. The
boxes were in random order within each row, and a shield covered the
whole apparatus so the percipient could not see the boxes, although
the sender could. As percipient, I would pick up a box from the row
near me, hold it so that Hurkos, as agent, could see it, and then move
it along my row, helpful of getting a telepathic impression which
would tell me where to put it down so it would be directly across from
his matching box.
During one of the later tests, when I was acting as
percipient, I was immersed in my own familiar mental processes,
guessing, when suddenly a quite vivid and fully colored image of one
of the target pictures, a sailboat, sprang full-blown into my mind and
stayed there for a couple of seconds before fading, clearly displacing
my own mental processes. The sudden, vivid intrusion was obviously
alien, it did not seem to be a production of my own mind. I
immediately asked Hurkos if the box I had in my hand at that moment
was the one containing the sailboat, and it was. The information flow
route seems to have been from the Psi Receptor directly into awareness
for a couple of seconds.***
______________________________________
Footnote 2 *This informal testing situation was not, of course,
adequately controlled for possible sensory cues from the agent to the
percipient. Positive results in it would have been used only as an
indication to go on to more rigorous testing conditions with a
particular agent-percipient team. It is conceivable that Hurkos
knowingly or unknowingly whispered the name of the target and so cued
me in this particular instance, although I personally doubt it. The
sensory leakage possibility is not what is important here, however:
the incident is presented to illustrate the sudden and alien quality
of mental content that can occur in the direct psi route.
-----------------------------------------------end of footnote
*Memory-Mediated Psi*
A second psi information flow route is shown by the arrow
labeled in Figure 2. Here the information goes from the Psi
Receptor to the Memory subsystem, where it activates a memory image or
images (in any sensory modality or combination of modalities) which
correspond, to various degrees, to the target. This memory image,
rather than the actual psi information, flows on into awareness. It
is rather similar to what happens in ordinary Input Processing
subsystem construction of sensory information, where frequently a
memory image that has some reasonable degree of match to the actual
presenting stimulus is what gets passed on to awareness, rather than
the actual stimulus itself. "Reasonable degree of match," of course,
means an incomplete transmission of information and, in some cases,
fairly high distortion.
Roll (1966) proposed this as an information flow route for psi
some years ago, and this theory has the virtue of being able to
account for some of the distortions and transformations frequently
seen in the psi reception process. It would seem to have some
experimentally testable consequences also. For example, if the psi
target is something we have never experienced in our past, we might
not be able to receive it, or at best, we might only get a composite
image built up of already existing memory images. Characteristics of
the composition process might be able to identify when this route is
operating.
This route of memory-mediated psi also illustrates the
difficulty, given the present state of our knowledge, of drawing an
exact dividing line between the Input Processing subsystem and the
Memory subsystem, since the former draws so heavily on the latter.
*Somatic Psi*
A third possible route of psi information flow, shown by the
arrow in Figure 2, is from the Psi Receptor to various parts of the
body, and thence to our interoceptors, through the Input Processing
subsystem, and finally to awareness. The psi information is thus
expressed as one or another kind of sensation in the percipient's
body, hence the name somatic psi. Since body sensations ordinarily go
through various degrees (sometimes extreme) of processing (abstraction
and construction) in the Input Processing subsystem, the resultant
percepts must be recognized as relevant before they can be used as
indicators of psi. Such bodily sensation patterns may or may not have
emotional feelings associated with them.
Carlos Castaneda has told me (personal communication, 1975)
that this kind of possible information flow route is very important in
the techniques of sorcery he learned from his teacher, don Juan. A
sorcerer believes that he gets a great many cues as to things
happening in his *environment* by noticing sensations in his own body.
Similarly, I and other experimenters who have worked with me on my
studies of feedback training of GESP ability on the Ten-Choice Trainer
(Tart, 1975c; 1976b), where the experimenter/agent can see the
percipient's hand movements over the circular arrangement of targets,
have been quite convinced, on many trials, that the percipient's
"body," some non-conscious aspect of his mind, as evidenced by hand
motions, obviously knows what the correct target is on a particular
trial. It is very frustrating for the experimenter/agent when the
percipient then goes on to make the wrong response! I hope to
objectively validate this observation in future research. We know
very little about this somatic psi information flow route, but I think
it can be quite important.
Methodologically it will be difficult to study the operation
of this route, or even to make it operate, because of strong biases in
our culture that devalue the body and either incline us not to pay
much attention to our bodies, or to have highly distorted,
hypochondriacal kinds of concerns with them. I notice many of my
academic colleagues, particularly, tend to implicitly regard their
bodies as machines designed to transport their marvelous intellects
from one location to the other, or as a source of pleasure or pain,
but not as a source of useful information. Workers in humanistic and
transpersonal psychology are just beginning to discover that the body
has a wisdom of its own, a "brain" of its own, as it were, that can
provide us with and process information about both our own state and
the state of the external reality around us.
I shall describe a recurring personal experience to illustrate
how this information flow route might work. Through much of my adult
life I have occasionally found that during social gatherings I will
become anxious and upset, being, to put it in rather literal body
language, "uptight." Because of my preoccupation with psychological
matters, and my Western conditioning that my emotional and bodily
state were (or should be) subordinate to my mind, my typical reaction
was to try to figure out what was wrong with *me*, what psychological
processes of *mine* were making me upset. Sometimes I could find an
answer, but often I could not come up with any plausible psychological
reason for my feelings.
A few years ago I began to try to practice simply paying
attention to things as they were, rather than as I thought they ought
to be, and to accept feelings without getting caught up in my
reactions to them, to adopt a less attached attitude to my own
feelings and ideas. As part of this I began to pay closer attention
to these uptight feelings at social gatherings, and also more direct
attention to the other people in the room, sometimes asking them how
they felt. To my surprise, I often found that the uptight feelings in
*my* body, that made no sense to me, were reflecting the fact that
someone else in the room was feeling anxious or nervous. Thus some of
my body feelings became a source of information about my *environment*
when I learned to regard them more clearly and actively check them
against others' states.
I am not presenting these kinds of experiences as
unquestionable examples of somatic psi, for they took place in
situations where many other types of sensory information were
available that I might have been unknowingly reacting to. The point
they illustrate is that by prematurely conceptualizing my own bodily
feelings as unimportant, or as only reflecting my own psychological
processes, I was discarding a valuable source of information that
could carry psi messages.
*Subconscious Psi*
This fourth possible psi information route, shown by the
arrows in Figure 2, shows psi going from the Psi Receptor to the
Subconscious subsystem, from whence it may have a variety of indirect
effects on us. The initial reaction at a subconscious level to the
particular content of the psi information could result in selective
psi perception or some distortion of the information then and there.
There would be enormous individual variation here, depending on both
general enculturation processes and the particular personal
developmental history that affected what we would ordinarily refer to
as unconscious personality dynamics. Once this had occurred, there
are a variety of possible ways the output of the Subconscious
subsystem could be expressed.
As a first possibility, the subconsciously transformed psi
information might manifest by affecting the processing of ordinary
sensory information passing through the Input Processing subsystem,
modulating it so as to express parts of the psi information. This is
one thing that can happen when psi information is obtained in the
course of using external props, such as Tarot cards or a person's
palms in a psychic reading. A large quantity of sensory information
of little or only very general relevance is passing through Input
Processing, and the Subconscious subsystem could subtly modify Input
Processing so that certain aspects of this sensory information, such
as a particular detail of a Tarot card, would stand out more.
As a second possibility, the Subconscious subsystem might send
some kind of image or experience directly into awareness. An
excellent example of this would be a dream that conveys psi
information. Many psychic dreams contain *symbolic* expressions of
the target material. Since we normally think of the dream production
process as located in the Subconscious subsystem, the psi message
obviously modifies whatever normal mechanisms affect dream production.
Eisenbud's (1970) and Ehrenwald's (1968; 1971) work is very relevant
here, as is the Maimonides work (Ullman, Krippner, and Vaughan, 1973).
A possible exception should be noted here: there are
occasional psychic dreams where an ordinary dream process seems to be
suddenly pushed aside and the psi target dominates dream imagery for a
short period, an apparent manifestation of the direct psi route ( )
discussed earlier. I have discussed this further in two case studies
(Tart, 1963; Tart and Fadiman, 1974).
A third possible way the Subconscious subsystem might affect
other subsystems so as to indirectly transmit a psi message would be
to affect the Evaluation and Decision Making subsystem processes, to
subtly alter them to lead to a decision that might not normally be
reached, but which is relevant. Dean's work (Dean and Mihalasky,
1974), showing that more successful executives do better on
precognition tests could be interpreted in this fashion. Assume this
psi ability generalizes to their ordinary work. These executives, in
their ordinary line of business, believing they are making only
"rational" decisions based on known facts, could have their evaluation
processes subtly altered to emphasize aspects of the situation
relevant to information they picked up by psi, and so arrive at better
decisions. This route also models Stanford's (1974a; 1974b) psi-
mediated instrumental response (PMIR) theory, an adaptive effect on
thinking or behavior caused by unknown psi operation, even though the
person does not know he is using psi. Subconscious effects on the
Input Processing subsystem also model the PMIR theory.
The Subconscious subsystem could also, of course, activate
particular emotions because of its intimate connections with the
Emotion subsystem, and these emotions could serve to modify Input
Processing, the Sense of Identity subsystem, or the Evaluation and
Decision Making subsystem in ways that would express psi. Similarly,
the Subconscious subsystem might create bodily feelings that were like
the somatic psi route.
*Ordinary Consciousness is not very Conducive to Psi*
Given the above discussion of possible routes to psi
information flow, it becomes clearer why psi seldom functions very
well in our ordinary state, in consensus consciousness. In consensus
consciousness our orientation is usually to deal with things of the
*external* world, particularly the things we have been conditioned or
persuaded to believe are important. This means that the limited
quantity of awareness (which also acts as an activating energy) we
have available is concentrated on information coming in through the
exteroceptors, and to a small extent, from the interoceptors. Insofar
as total awareness is ordinarily limited (an assumption of the systems
approach), this means the ability to be aware of other subsystem
activity which might convey psi information, or to activate other
subsystems by putting awareness into them, is limited or impossible.
Further, this usual orientation heavily loads and patterns our
consciousness with information dealing with the external world, so
that even if psi information came in by one of the four routes
described above, it would be unlikely to be noticed among the
preponderant experiences/plans connected with dealing with the
external world. In engineering terms, the signal to noise ratio would
be very poor, so the signal would generally be undetectable.
More specifically, in our ordinary state, the Memory subsystem
is largely at the disposal of the Input Processing and the Evaluation
and Decision Making subsystems in order to deal with the external
world and make appropriate decisions, thus little attention is left
there for the memory-mediated ( ) route to be activated. Similarly,
the route, directly to awareness, is quite inhibited because
awareness is almost totally wrapped up in the ongoing process of
dealing with and reacting to the external world. It's hard to push
aside all that activity. The somatic psi route, , is also generally
blocked because we are either ignoring our bodily sensations or, if we
are actively involved in dealing with the external world, we are
creating large amplitude bodily sensations by virtue of that
interaction, and these sensations are likely to mask any more subtle
feelings that come from psi being expressed as bodily sensations.
This preoccupation with the external world will also strongly inhibit
the subconscious psi route, ( ), in that the subtle distortions of
conscious processes caused by the Subconscious subsystem expressing
psi are likely to be of low intensity compared to the intense
sensory/evaluative/emotional experiences resulting from dealing with
the external world and our emotional reactions to these external world
situations. Indeed, if your thinking goes in a "funny" direction that
doesn't feel logical, or if you feel odd, chances are you will
deliberately force yourself to return to "normal" immediately so you
can continue dealing effectively with the external world.
Another hindrance to psi functioning in consensus
consciousness is that the Space/Time subsystem is active as an
implicit background to all our perceptions, thought, and actions,
telling us that we are here, in *this* particular place at *this*
particular time. This automatically implies that what is not in
*this* particular place at *this* particular time cannot be affecting
us and has no relevance. Thus the high degree of structuring of
consensus consciousness in terms of our ordinary space and time
framework, which implicitly (and explicitly) excludes psi, acts to
indeed exclude psi.
The Sense of Identity subsystem, insofar as it is likely to
make you emotionally identified with being an active, practical,
capable person, further discourages you from attending to "weird" or
illogical feelings and ideas. This ego identification uses up a great
deal of awareness and energy that could otherwise potentially activate
psi processes, and it gives special energy to ego-relevant processes
that are usually involved in dealing with the ordinary external world.
*Nature of Altered States of Consciousness*
The flow of awareness and energy through the ten subsystems
described above work together in our ordinary (or in any altered
state) to form a *system*, so there is not only a specific range of
functioning within each subsystem (analyzed in isolation) but an
overall interactive, discrete pattern of functioning of the integrated
system, a discrete state of consciousness (d-SoC). It is the quality
or "feel" of this system pattern, as well as the specific functioning
of the subsystems, that identifies and characterizes a *state* of
consciousness.
For example, if you had to decide right this moment whether
you were drunk or in your ordinary state of consciousness, you could
do it in either of two ways. In one way you could recall that if you
were drunk, you would be experiencing certain particular experiences,
such as instability in walking, a Motor Output subsystem effect. If
you are not experiencing instability, you are probably not drunk.
That is, you could look for specific *criterion experiences* which we
can take as information about the functioning of particular
subsystems. Alternatively, you could simply judge the overall pattern
of your consciousness. I'm sure most readers did not really have to
look for specific symptoms, but knew immediately from an introspective
glance at the overall pattern of their consciousness that they were
not drunk. The differences between the overall patterns of our
ordinary state and being thoroughly drunk, or of our ordinary state
versus dreaming, or of our ordinary state versus some meditative
states are *discretely* different. It is not just a matter of more or
less of particular psychological components, the arrangement, the
emergent system is different. This is the importance of the adjective
*discrete* as part of the definition of a d-ASC, it emphasizes these
qualitative, pattern difference.
The various subsystems that comprise our ordinary state
interact with each other, even though we isolate them for analysis
purposes, and this interaction, plus our interaction with consensus
reality, stabilizes our overall pattern of functioning, so the d-SoC
is stable. We usually do not suddenly have a mystical experience if
we see a bright light flash, or fall into some kind of "trance state"
at a sudden, loud noise. Various induction techniques, considered at
length elsewhere (Tart, 1975a), can sometimes break down the stability
of our ordinary state and, following a transitional period which may
be long or so short to be almost unnoticeable, lead us into various d-
ASCs. In various d-ASCs there may be changes in the style and level
of functioning of particular subsystems and/or in the overall
patterning of functioning, changes which usually seem quite radical to
the experiencer. These changes offer interesting possibilities for
effecting the manifestation of psi, and the remainder of this paper
will be devoted to considering them.
*Potential Effects of d-ASCs on Psi Functioning*
In looking at the range of phenomena associated with d-ASCs,
there are several classes of possibilities which have the potential of
changing subsystem functioning or overall system (state of
consciousness) functioning that might favor the manifestation of psi.
First, latent psi functions could become (more) activated, through
being able to be brought closer to or into conscious awareness, or
otherwise gaining more energy, and/or through giving a more coherent,
stronger output signal about the content of the psi target. Second,
some subsystems whose normal operation would ordinarily inhibit psi
might be themselves inhibited, and so, by contrast, allow psi
information more ready access to consciousness. Third, the overall
change in the *pattern* of subsystem functioning that constitutes
various d-ASCs might also allow for a more ready expression of psi, in
addition to specific subsystem changes. I shall not deal with
specific d-ASCs in this paper except for illustrative purposes, but
consider general patterns of subsystem and system change over the
currently known range of d-ASCs that might be favorable to psi.
*Direct Psi*: Consider the route, where psi information
seems to temporarily directly intrude into awareness, displacing other
contents. An important aspect of our ordinary d-SoC is that we have
very limited voluntary control over our attention/awareness. Yet many
people, in various d-ASCs, report feelings that their awareness is
somehow freer, either by virtue of not seeming so compulsively
attracted by particular contents or subsystems that ordinarily capture
awareness, or by virtue of experiencing a marked increase in ability
to focus and hold awareness at will. Thus there is more opportunity
to welcome psi impressions deliberately, or at least less resistance
to their moving into awareness
This *experience* of freeing up of awareness can be
interpreted in two ways. In the orthodox view of consciousness, the
psychoneural identity hypothesis, where awareness is considered
nothing more than a byproduct of brain functioning, for psi to
manifest by the route means that brain functioning is somehow
"loosened up," possibly by the imposition of random noise, by chemical
facilitation of synaptic processes, by the inhibition of ordinary
patterning forces, etc., so that neural circuits that were ordinarily
not functional or were unable to interact with the bulk of the
functioning system can somehow connect. This constitutes the
activation and operation of whatever part of the brain the Psi
Receptor is. For the orthodox view, distinguishing basic awareness
from various subsystems is only an analytical convenience, nothing
more. In the radical view of consciousness, which sees basic
awareness as being of a *qualitatively* different nature from brain
and nervous system functioning, the direct psi route could be
interpreted as meaning that basic awareness is literally less involved
in interacting with the structure of the brain, and manifesting more
in its own right. Insofar as basic awareness is, in its own nature
"non-physical" (in terms of currently understood physics), and insofar
as psi might be an aspect of the nature of basic awareness, then any
feelings of awareness being less controlled by ordinary consciousness
(brain) processes might be strongly correlated with enhanced psi
functioning. Awareness could literally be less controlled by or
imprisoned with the brain.
Regardless of how we *interpret* such d-ASC experiences of
increased ability to direct awareness, the experience of such
increased freedom*** seems to give the percipient the ability to focus
on unusual aspects of consciousness, which could very well increase
attentiveness to the psi message, regardless of which information flow
route, of the four discussed above, it comes in.
___________________________________
Footnote 3 *There are probably cases where the feeling of increased
freedom is illusory, however.
----------------------------------end of footnote
*Memory-Mediated Psi*: Variations in the experienced
functioning of various aspects of the Memory subsystem are quite
prominent over the range of known d-ASCs. Thus insofar as the memory-
mediated route of information flow is operative, many possibilities
of psi facilitation are offered. One of the most interesting memory
effects is the phenomenon of *state-specific memory*, where something
experienced or learned in a particular d-ASC can be well recalled
again in a subsequent episode of that same d-ASC, but the information
does not transfer very well to our ordinary state, or to other d-ASCs.
State-specific memory is illustrated in the old folk advice that if
you lose something while you're very drunk and can't find it the next
day, one way to increase your chances of finding it is to get very
drunk again. Recent laboratory research is now confirming the
existence of such state-specific memory for alcohol intoxication
(Godwin and Powell, 1969), and experiential reports suggest it exists
for many other d-ASCs.
If the information flow route involves a specific,
discriminable quality to memory, and such a quality is more readily
discriminable or accessible in some particular d-ASC, then psi
functioning should be more readily enhanced in that d-ASC. Vivid
visual imagery, as both a read-out and control strategy, might be such
a quality. This may be the reason for some psychics' need to enter a
d-ASC to make their psi abilities function effectively. Also, if psi
information is conveyed by memory images, and memory images are
usually not very vivid compared to the ongoing pattern of sensory
stimulation (via the Input processing subsystem) and the operation of
the Evaluation and Decision Making subsystem for dealing with the
external world in our ordinary state, then switching to a d-ASC where
memory images became more vivid and dominant might automatically
result in increased detectability of psi signals that are memory-
mediated.
*Somatic Psi*: The route, psi information expressed as body
sensations or patterns of sensations, is particularly intriguing, as
people often report greatly enhanced and/or altered experiences of
their bodies in various d-ASCs. Ordinary sensations may be
experienced much more vividly at times, and often people report
experiencing entirely new qualities of sensations that are totally
unknown in their ordinary state. Enhanced contact *per se* with
bodily sensations might enhance psi functioning, particularly if
percipients were then trained by feedback training as to what
particular qualities of these enhanced body sensations actually
express psi, and which are irrelevant. As mentioned earlier, this is
probably not an easy line of research, given our frequently
contradictory and often neurotic Western attitudes toward our bodies,
but the possibilities here are exciting.
*Subconscious Psi*: The route, from the Subconscious
subsystem to indirect effects on the rest of consciousness, may also
be greatly affected by various d-ASCs. One way of understanding some
of the phenomena of d-ASCs is by conceptualizing the boundary between
conscious and subconscious changing, so what was *sub*conscious in an
ordinary state could become conscious in a d-ASC.*** That is, people
may sometimes directly *experience* certain aspects of their minds
which they or outside observers only *infer* exist in their ordinary
state. Thus some psi information that reaches the Subconscious
subsystem might then be directly experienced, and perhaps the
experience would be in a less distorted form: some of the distortion
that takes place in this route may be due to the nature of the
subconscious itself, but some may be due to the further information
flow step of the Subconscious affecting other subsystems. Directly
contacting the Subconscious subsystem eliminates this extra chance for
distortion.
____________________________________
Footnote 4 *This distinction could be further elaborated to show some
boundaries between conscious, pre-conscious, and subconscious, but
this elaboration is unnecessary here.
----------------------------------end of footnote
An important consideration as to how much practical use can be
made of this route is the degree to which an individual percipient is
psychologically mature and tolerant of his personal subconscious
material. If his subconscious processes have a strong component of
repressed and emotionally unacceptable qualities, as in ordinary kinds
of psychopathology, then increased contact with the subconscious
aspects of the mind in d-ASCs may induce anxiety, possibly to the
point of being catastrophic, rather than aiding psi. Thus simply
putting percipients in more direct contact with their subconscious by
inducing (and appropriately focusing ) a d-ASC is not sufficient: we
need to decide who this method is suitable for, and/or what kinds of
individual psychotherapeutic or growth work can be done with a given,
promising percipient to make this d-ASC contact with the Subconscious
subsystem positive, instead of possibly negative.
*Indirect d-ASC Effects on Psi Functioning*
We have been discussing the kinds of changes that can occur in
d-ASCs in terms of changes in particular subsystems, and have
discussed these changes in relative isolation, but recall that in the
systems approach any *state* of consciousness is a system, the parts
interact with each other in a dynamic fashion to form a stable, unique
pattern. Thus changes in subsystems which might not be *directly*
involved in one of the four psi transmission routes may still have
important effects on psi information flow.
Consider the functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem.
We all have a number of identities or roles, which are called forth by
various situations and emotional states. When a particular identity
is functioning, it tends to organize the rest of our mental
functioning into a consistent pattern, and, to various degrees, we
identify with this identity. Our mental processes *constellate*
around an identity (Tart, in press (a)). When I am lecturing in a
class in my identity of "Professor," if my muscles feel cramped, I do
not stop lecturing in order to lie down on the floor and stretch!
That is too inconsistent with the Professor role, even though it might
be perfectly consistent with a role of friend in the company of close
friends socializing in a relaxed atmosphere.
It is often difficult to realize just how strong our
identification with these various roles or identities can be. It is
often practically total. The identification also tends to be
*implicit*, that is, we just tend to assume that the role we're in is
really our true self while that role is active, and not realize at the
time that this is one role out of many potential roles. This can
inhibit psi in the following way. Suppose, in your ordinary state,
your Sense of Identity subsystem functioning constellates your mental
functioning around an identity in which you are a "rational, hard-
headed person who is very practical and accepts no nonsense." If a
psi impression arises via any of the various routes, it is quite at
variance with this identity, and perhaps consciously, but even more
likely, automatically and unconsciously, you're likely to shift your
attention away from that information or actively suppress it, because
it is inconsistent with your identity. Thus psi cannot usefully reach
awareness, except perhaps in an indirect, unconscious fashion, and
even indirect effects may be inhibited for lack of energy because of
the binding up of awareness and energy in functional patterns
consistent with and maintaining the current identification.
Many psychics have a socially acceptable identity (especially
within certain subcultures) of being a "psychic." Regardless of
whether they deliberately enter a recognized d-ASC, in the appropriate
circumstances they slip into this role/identity of psychic, and the
Sense of Identity subsystem now operates in such a way as to
constellate many functions of consciousness about this identity, and
perhaps thus enhance psi functioning. We can, in a sense, be
"possessed" by an identity which can help our psi functioning, or we
can be "possessed" by an identity which can hinder it. The ability to
deliberately alter our identity state might be very valuable here, but
very little research has been done on this kind of functioning to
date. Pearce's (1973; 1974) comments on the suppression of
reversibility thinking in most normal adults are quite relevant here,
and the success of some laboratories in eliciting psi from their
percipients could profitably be analyzed from the view that they take
time to set up and involve their percipients in a temporary subculture
and identity in which psi functioning is appropriate and normal.
The action of going into any d-ASC may make it easier for us
to drop our ordinary identity, which may be inhibitory of psi, and
take on the identity with psi abilities. Since we are obviously not
"ourselves" any longer, much is permitted that might be threatening,
silly, irrelevant, or forbidden to our ordinary self. Thus quite
aside from whatever *specific* changes occur as a result of the
specific qualities of a particular d-ASC, the very act of entering a
d-ASC may facilitate psi because of this symbolic effect of loosening
normal identity. This is an important point to investigate further,
as it implies there will be a general "placebo" effect of almost any
d-ASC induction procedure on psi functioning. While this is useful in
practical terms, it adds a certain amount of confusion when we try to
analyze what specific qualities of particular d-ASCs can enhance psi
functioning.
Consider also the effects of the Emotion subsystem. Many
outstanding spontaneous cases of psi and occasional laboratory
observations suggest that when very strong emotions are aroused, they
may facilitate psi, probably in a motivational sense. In some d-ASCs
it is easy to arouse quite strong emotions and direct them, often
easier than in our ordinary state. Hypnosis is an excellent example.
Such d-ASCs may facilitate psi in an indirect fashion because we can
feel strong emotional motivation to succeed.
Additionally, strong emotions can destabilize whatever ongoing
d-SoC they occur in and induce a new d-ASC constellated around the
emotional state itself. I have discussed this in detail elsewhere for
sexual arousal and marijuana intoxication (Tart, in press (a)). If
the emotion induced is consonant with psi functioning, interesting
possibilities exist here. In many cases of spontaneous psi, then, the
strong emotional need to use psi may have induced a d-ASC, as well as
acting as a motivator.
Finally, consider the operation of the Space/Time subsystem.
This subsystem is usually quite implicit in its operation in our
ordinary state: even though our perception of space and time is
really a built-up construct, we believe we simply perceive "real"
space and "real" time. Given this construction of a physical world
model, operating implicitly, and *defining* psi targets as somewhere
else and thus difficult or impossible to contact, the ordinary
operation of the Space/Time subsystem inhibits psi functioning. In
many d-ASCs, the experience of space and/or time drastically changes
as this subsystem alters its functioning. For example, space and time
can sometimes be experienced as unreal, or ordinary space and time are
seen as relatively arbitrary constructions, but nothing final. With
such a change, the implicit inhibitions against using psi may
disappear. To us psi in your ordinary state, you are essentially
being asked to do something which is extremely difficult or
miraculous, to somehow violate the "barriers" of "real" space and
"real" time. If space and time are not real, if the target is not
separated from you in any real way, then it is neither difficult,
impossible, or unlawful to pick up information about it. LeShan's
(1974) ideas are relevant here.
*Using Hypnosis to Facilitate Psi*
Because of space limitations I have been very general and
abstract in discussing an overview of the way d-ASCs may affect psi
functioning, so let me end this paper by giving a more specific
example. Remember, though, that most of the research to date on the
effects of d-ASCs on psi functioning is methodologically
unsophisticated. The implicit paradigm of many studies seems to have
been that psi was very strange and wonderful, some particular d-ASC
was very strange and wonderful, so putting them together ought to
produce great psi results! While the *procedures* used for producing
d-ASCs have often been quite helpful in facilitating psi (Honorton, in
press), we are far from sophisticated investigation.
One of the best examples of a relatively sophisticated use of
a d-ASC to enhance psi is Ryzl's (1962) description of training the
psi function in an hypnotic state. My understanding of the procedure
is as follows. Rather than simply assuming that psi functioning would
be automatically available in hypnosis, Ryzl seemed to realize that
the hypnotic state might be favorable to psi manifestations, but you
still had to develop the specific psi potential within the hypnotic
state. He effectively used three specific properties of the hypnotic
state and also applied basic learning theory in a way I have described
elsewhere (Tart, 1975c; 1976b), and achieved very significant results.
First, Ryzl used the observation that hypnosis generally
produces a very quiet state of mind in the hypnotized person. It is
typical that if a deeply hypnotized person, who has not been given
some specific suggestion, is asked what he is thinking about, he
answers "Nothing" (Tart, 1966). This quiet state is in marked
contrast to our ordinary state of consensus consciousness. A further
aspect of the quietness of the hypnotic state is that the hypnotized
person can readily ignore distractions from the environment, his
thoughts are not automatically activated by incoming stimuli. In any
well-conducted psi experiment these distractions are irrelevant, they
are noise, and ignoring them is adaptive. Second, Ryzl utilized the
fact that it is easy to suggest high degrees of motivation in the
hypnotic state, so he would readily make his percipients want to
develop psi and keep this motivation high. Third, he utilized the
fact that deeply hypnotized persons can usually visualize quite
intensely with their eyes closed. Ryzl trained his percipients by
placing a tray in front of them with their eyes closed, with target
objects present on the tray. He asked them to try to visualize what
objects were on the tray, and to report when a visual image was
present. Once a percipient achieved and described a visual image of
what he thought was on the tray, he could then open his eyes and
compare his image with the target.***
_________________________________________
Footnote 5 *This procedure is, of course, not acceptable for
demonstrating psi, but is perfectly fine for training psi.
-----------------------------------end of footnote
Although Ryzl emphasized the importance of the hypnotic state
as responsible for his success in eliciting psi, I believe this
immediate feedback training was also very important for training psi.
Further, I suspect that immediate feedback training would be more
successful in an hypnotic state than in an ordinary state because of
the inhibition of distractions and lowering of the internal mental
noise level. An expanded theoretical description of how immediate
feedback training should work, which will be published soon (Tart,
1977b), is very relevant here. Ryzl's percipients could learn to
discriminate what qualities of imagery actually conveyed psi
information and which did not.
Ryzl claims to have developed strong psi abilities in a number
of people using this kind of training as well as teaching them to
transfer the ability to their ordinary state. One of his percipients,
Pavel Stepanek, has demonstrated significant psi abilities to other
investigators for a number of years. I find this demonstration
particularly impressive, because guessing whether the green or white
side of a card was up for many thousands of trials is undoubtedly one
of the world's most boring ESP tests! Unfortunately, there has never
been any adequate attempt at replication of Ryzl's results. The few
published attempts (Beloff and Mandleberg, 1966; Haddox, 1966;
Stephenson, 1965) did not adequately duplicate Ryzl's main conditions.
*Future Directions for Research*
From the point of view of the systems approach to states of
consciousness, d-ASCs clearly offer many theoretical possibilities for
enhancing psi functioning. Another possibility, for example, which
space has precluded discussing in this paper, but which may be as or
more important in the long run, is the possibilities of state-specific
understandings of psi that may be possible through the development of
*state-specific sciences* (Tart, 1972c).
There is an important gap, of course, between theoretical
possibilities and real, practically useful, accomplishments. We have
excellent preliminary laboratory evidence (Honorton, in press) that
*procedures* associated with the induction of various d-ASCs have
frequently enhanced psi functioning. Since such procedures
undoubtedly led to the actual development of various d-ASCs at times,
this evidence strongly supports the proposition that at least some d-
ASCs can be used to enhance psi.
I shall suggest two main lines of research for the immediate
future to capitalize on the potential of d-ASCs for enhancing psi
functioning. Both lines will become more fruitful as our general
scientific knowledge of d-ASCs advances, but we have enough knowledge
now to profitably continue research.
The first research line will consist of replicating some of
the existent, successful research on using various d-ASCs to enhance
psi, but adding the kinds of experiential mapping operations,
discussed elsewhere (Tart, 1975a; in press (b)), that indicate which
percipients actually transit into a particular d-ASC and which are not
affected in that way by the induction procedure. The use of self-
report depth scales will be particularly useful here (Honorton,
Drucker, and Hermon, 1973; Tart, 1972b; 1975a). In the systems
approach, the presence or absence of a given d-ASC must be ascertained
by mapping a person's experience, not by simply assuming it because an
induction procedure has been gone through. This will clarify what
kinds of changes in psi functioning are attributable to more general
psychological effects (such as role loosening) of the induction
*procedure*. This clarification will have many useful consequences.
If, as I suspect, we find that there is for, say, hypnosis, a small or
no increase in psi functioning for percipients who do not actually
become hypnotized to any significant degree, but a large increase for
those who actually transit into the hypnotic state, then future
research can save much time by preselection procedures that eliminate
those who are not susceptible to hypnosis.
The second line of research, which will be contemporaneous
with the first in some ways, is to get beyond the naive assumptions
that psi will somehow automatically manifest more favorably in any d-
ASC, or will do so if we simply tell the percipient in the d-ASC to
use psi, and start investigating which specific attributes of
particular d-ASCs can be used to *train* a percipient to use psi more
effectively. We should not assume that psi is a gift that
automatically comes with a d-ASC: it is an *opportunity* which we
must learn to make use of. The example of Ryzl's approach with
hypnosis, given above, illustrates the direction of this second line
of research.
There are many other methodological considerations and special
problems to be solved, of course, some of which I have discussed
elsewhere (Tart, 1974; 1975a), but I believe we can make important
advances in facilitating psi functioning in the next decade by the
systematic and sophisticated use of d-ASCs.
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