READ Stalking the Wild Pendulum (StWP) pages 61-62
“We have described several instances in which time is
being somehow manipulated. I’m not saying that we have actually slowed down the
movement of the clock. It is still keeping good old objective time. But we did
stretch our subjective time so that we are facing a subjective situation that
in turn provides an analogy to a well-known objective situation. This was first
made clear in the theory of relativity, in which it was shown that two
observers moving relative to each other do not agree on the rates at which
their respective clocks are running. Let us try to analyze what is common to
all the cases. We find that the connecting link is an altered state of
consciousness. Some may claim that the last experiment has nothing to do with
altered states of consciousness; in fact, some will altogether deny the
existence of such a thing as consciousness.”
What is consciousness?
How can consciousness be altered?
READ StWP page 72
“As our ability to hold an expanded state of
consciousness increases...this increases our subjective time, so that we can
start remembering some information we have received while out of the body. From
all the above it follows that we may describe a person’s level of consciousness
by the ratio of his subjective time to his objective time. The range of these
ratios is very broad. It starts with small differences, which normally would be
taken for just a ‘wandering of attention’, to hypnotic time dilation, to
dreaming, which is clearly an altered state of consciousness. And, finally, to
a deep meditative state, in which time is ‘stopped’ or almost ‘stopped.’”
What does it mean that one’s level of consciousness is
measured by the ratio of their subjective time to their objective time?
Why is this a good or bad definition for level of
consciousness?
Why is level of consciousness, as defined here, not the
same as “level of light”?
