Altered States
What is consciousness? About Psychology defines it as "your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment" (Cherry). So, if consciousness is what you are aware of, then what makes being in an altered state of consciousness any different since you are aware of the things you experience while there? An altered state of consciousness is "a temporary change in one's normal mental state without being considered unconscious" (Lavoie). This being said, even if there is a change in the normal mental state, you are still aware of it. So who is to say that the altered state is not a true one? The film Altered States is set in the 1960's and tells the story of Eddie Jessup. Jessup is a physiology graduate student who is a psychonaut pioneer, he…show more content… Since schizophrenics often hallucinate or have delusions of things that do not exist, then perhaps they are just able to see more because their mind does not know they aren't able to see these things. This is along the same lines as to why children will see ghost more often than adults; they haven't been conditioned to not see ghosts. Why would it be so unbelievable to think that schizophrenics have different neural pathways that allow them to use the brain in a way that we cannot? " The exact cause of hallucinations in the brains of schizophrenics is not yet fully understood. Studies which involve brain imaging have shown that activity occurring in the temporal lobe is involved in hallucinations" (Lane, 2014). The temporal lobe holds the limbic system and is responsible for organizing sensory input, visual perception, and auditory perception (Bailey). So, if the frontal lobe is being over worked then it stands to believe that the schizophrenic is actually seeing these images and is therefore experiencing them.
Religion is "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power; especially