New Insights into ESP, Hallucinations and ASC
Abstract: From a unique perspective, this paper attempts to make a new interpretation of Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) induced by meditation, mind-altering drugs, hypnosis, or physiological lesion. On the basis of empirical materials, we summarizes four essential phenomena (hallucinations, paranormal phenomena, the more sensitive awareness and mystical experiences) in ASC after an initial clarification. However, the existence of paranormal phenomena, especially extrasensory perception (ESP), has been disputed for more than one century. Therefore, taking ESP as a breakthrough, we firstly propose a novel hypothesis that ESP happens because there are two pathways to affect perception and the essence of ESP is that internal false stimulations are mistaken as external objective stimulations which enter through various senses and external objective stimulations as perceptions which do not result from various senses when one is in deep hallucinations. To support this hypothesis, whi