According to certain sects of Hinduism, there are seven states of consciousness...
1. dreamless sleep consciousness
2. dream consciousness
3. ordinary waking consciousness
4. transcendental consciousness (experienced during transcendental meditation)
5. cosmic consciousness (transcendental waking consciousness-- One percieves the unity of all things except does not percieve himself as part of it. The unity seems to have an impersonal nature. The perciever is not aware of the resolution to the paradox that the oneness is also an infinite number of individual things-- the "absolute-relative paradox.")
6. God consciousness (cosmic consciousness plus awareness that the perciever is part of the unity, and the oneness seems to have a personal nature. The absolute-relative paradox is partially resolved.)
7. Unity consciousness (God consciousness plus the simultaneous perception that the unity with personal nature also has impersonal nature. The absolute-relative paradox is resolved.)
I completely turned my back on this philosophy when I was 21 and I became a full blown atheist. However, now I have one foot back in the door. I am not really sure what to think. I am still an atheist, but I think there is something to the idea that everything is one and that existence and nonexistence might be two forms of the same "thing." Theoretical physics has been developing toward some of the major metaphysics theories that Eastern philosophy held thousands of years ago.
The seventh state of consciousness is what I seemed to be in at the Memphis Zoo. It was as though what I was percieving was not unconscious. It seemed to be on a level above consciousness, not below it. The lucid dream I had only involved the aspect of seeing that existence is actually nonexistence, which is a Taoist belief. When I fully believed in the stuff, I knew very little about lucid dreaming, and now I am not sure where it would fit on the list of states of consciousness.
I had my zoo experience two days after I learned transcendental meditation, the meditation taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Donovan, Mia Farrow, and Marianne Faithful went with to India to study transcendental meditation. I ended up writing off Maharishi as a fraud, even though his meditation works. John Lennon and Paul McCartney turned on him with the same attitude. He is a business snake who takes a little bit of truth and stretches it as far as it will go. TM does alter consciousness and provide extreme relaxation, but I am very skeptical about the claim that one can eventually live permanently in unity consciousness. I also don't believe Maharishi's claims that one can learn how to fly and that his catalogues of holy oils, dosha balancing music tapes, and other items of purchase are for real. My experience of seeming enlightenment happened right away, but then I never went back to it until I had a partial experience of it after I did some mushrooms on the beach in 1999, six years after I denounced Maharishi and his gimmicks.
A book that explains this stuff in great detail, and is very pro-Maharishi, is The Seven States of Consciousness by Anthony Campbell. I think you can order it on Amazon.com. Transcendental meditation is just sitting straight up in a chair with your eyes closed and thinking a mantra (nonsense word) in your head over and over for 20 minutes. You should sit quietly for about a minute before you start the mantra. After 20 minutes (Look at your watch or clock some during the meditation.) of repeating the mantra (gently... Don't strain at all to concentrate on it. When your mind wanders, don't fight it too hard. Just go back to the mantra in a relaxed manner. Your mind is supposed to wander.), slowly open your eyes and then just sit there for a few minutes. For me, this works best when I open my eyes and look at the sky over open land or water. Maharishi and his people claim that only they can tell you what "your mantra" is and that only they can observe your meditation to make sure you are doing it correctly. They also say that it is bad for you to use the "wrong mantra," so do this at your own supposed risk. I think Maharishi is a charlatan who knows how to get obscenely rich, which he is, but I thought I should let you know what the claim is. People meditated on the mantra "aum" (the ultimate mantra, according to many Hindus) and other ones for thousands of years before Maharishi came to the United States and used The Beatles' extreme popularity to get himself rich and famous.
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