Chapter
Thirteen
Altered states of consciousness
Another problem is inherent in the whole idea of subjective definitions: they may
help us to decide for ourselves whether we are in an ASC, but as soon as we try to
tell others, our words become objective behaviour from their point of view. Also,
think of the drunk who staggers about claiming that he feels perfectly normal,
or the first-time marijuana smoker who giggles at her own hand for ten minutes
while insisting that the drug has had no effect. In these cases, we may think that
physiological measures would be more appropriate than words. And even when
the person’s own words seem to be the best measure, there are still problems
because ASCs are notoriously hard to describe, and different people have differ-
ent prior experiences, different expectations, and different ways of describing
things. Training may help, but this raises other problems such as how to compare
the experiences of trained explorers with those of novices.
You may have noticed that lurking among these problems is an old familiar
one. Is there really such a thing as a conscious experience that exists apart from
the things people do and say about it? Or is consciousness itself nothing more
than those behaviours and descriptions, as claimed, for example, by eliminative
state of consciousness’ (Farthing, 1992, p. 205). Similar defini-
tions persist in psychology textbooks. One popular volume says
that ‘an altered state of consciousness exists whenever there is a
change from an ordinary pattern of mental functioning to a state
that seems different to the person experiencing the change’
(Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2014, p. 640).
Such definitions capture the basic idea of ASCs but raise prob-
lems of their own. First, they compare ASCs with a normal SoC,
but what is normal? Normality for one person might range
through bleary-eyed breakfast-eating to concentrated hard
work, and from relaxing alone with music to having coffee with
friends. Arguably the ‘breakfast-eating state of consciousness’
differs as much from ‘having coffee with friends’ as being stoned
differs from being straight, and yet most people would unhesi-
tatingly agree which were ‘normal’. So the subjective definition
of ASCs depends on comparing them with normal states, but
we cannot pin those down either.
PRACTICE 13.1
IS THIS MY NORMAL STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS?As many times as you can, every day, ask yourself ‘Is this my normal
state of consciousness?’ When you have decided, you might like to
ask some other questions. How did you decide? What is normal about it?
Is it always obvious what state you are in, and if so, why? If not, what does
this tell you about ASCs?FIGURE 13.1 • The experience might be
amazing, but the words never
seem to do it justice.