Abstract
This chapter presents two studies that were carried out in accordance with the phenomenological approach (see Appendix): the first involved interviews with 15 former prisoners of war (POWs) who were imprisoned in Egypt and Syria after the Yom Kippur War (1973), while in the second I interviewed 27 senior meditators with an average of 10,000 hours of accumulated practice each. The aim of both these studies was to expose the pre-reflective experience during altered states of consciousness (ASCs).
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Notes
- 1.
This study concerns only male captives and hence uses the pronoun HE.
- 2.
There is a substantial debate concerning how the sense of time should be defined. For the purposes of this book, it will be defined as a sense of duration , nowness, or succession: a sense that A comes before B and is also the cause of B and, in addition, that there is continuity between A and B. More precisely, at least for the purposes of this book, the sense of time will be defined as encompassing the following four aspects/characteristics: (1) The passage of time; (2) The rate of time’s flow: slower or faster; (3) Order of time: before and after; and (4) The arrow of time: directionality, time moving forward. The sense of time cannot be reduced to (or solely defined as) one of these four but rather results from the combination of these interdependent elements.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria and Horovitz 2021).
- 8.
- 9.
Such conditions are unknown in the professional literature: for example, one who suffers from alien hand syndrome feels that he can control a hand that is not his own (agency without ownership). In contrast, someone who, like the Nazi scientist in the film Dr. Strangelove, suffers from what the professional literature defines as anarchic hand syndrome feels the absence of control over a hand that is completely his (ownership without agency).
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
This is in fact the central characteristic of spaces of extreme trauma, such as concentration camps, in which there is no subject and no gaze; the person is reduced to an object, or, perhaps more accurately, a THING. See: Ataria 2021 Primo Levi and Ka-Tzetnik: The Map and the Territory.
- 13.
For an extensive discussion see: (Ataria 2016a).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
In Heidegger’s case, this enables awakening and transition to authentic existence—but that is not the subject of our discussion here:
The being-at-an-end of Da-sein, however, means existentially being-toward-the-end. Resoluteness becomes authentically what it can be as being-toward-the-end-that-understands, that is, as anticipation of death. Resoluteness does not simply “have” a connection with anticipation as something other than itself. It harbours in itself authentic being-toward-death as the possible existentiell modality of its own authenticity…. Resolutely, Da-sein takes over authentically in its existence the fact that it is the null ground of its nullity. We conceived of death existentially as what we characterized as the possibility of the impossibility of existence, that is, as the absolute nothingness of Da-sein. Death is not pieced on to Da-sein as its “end,” but, as care, Da-sein is the thrown (that is, null) ground of its death. The nothingness primordially dominant in the being of Da-sein is revealed to it in authentic being-toward-death. (Heidegger 1996, pp. 282–283)
- 18.
I believe that the requirement for a cause-and-effect kind of relationship in this case is superfluous. In any case, this is a philosophical question that is outside the boundaries of the present discussion.
- 19.
It is important to emphasize that there are different types of schizophrenia and so any generalization would be incorrect. I refer to some people who develop schizophrenia.
- 20.
For an extensive discussion see: (Ben-David and Ataria 2021).
- 21.
We shall return below to the relationship between I and ME. At this point, I treat these words in a neutral fashion.
- 22.
This section is based on an advanced interview with one of the most experienced meditators who took part in the research and discovered a unique ability to describe his experience in extreme situations.
- 23.
Meditators did not practice the method of naming every experience that arose.
- 24.
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Ataria, Y. (2022). The Subjective Experience During Altered States of Consciousness. In: Consciousness in Flesh. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5_2
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