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Is consciousness individual or cosmic? What means are there to extend human consciousness? These questions have not yet had a full treatment within academic science, having been ruled out of inquiry by the dominant paradigm for the past 60 years.
Yet there is a cultural and scientific evolution, if not revolution, in process. Academic people, being members of their culture, reflect the general interest in “Altered States” of consciousness, meditation, drug states, and new and old religions . . . . There is, therefore, a continuing need to re-establish the basis of psychology and to link current research with that of other students of consciousness such as William James and Carl Jung, and with the “esoteric” psychologies of other cultures such as Sufism, Yoga and Buddhism.5
Soon after I got home I threw a party. I wanted to tell everyone about my amazing adventure in India—and that was my undoing. Three hundred and fifty friends and colleagues were invited. There were impressive speakers, including doctors, lawyers, an internationally known yoga teacher, down-to-earth business people. An extraordinarily moving film was shown. The party was well- organized, the food was good—but something fell flat. I lost my credibility and most of my friends. Psychiatric residents I taught in medical school were contacted to see if I had gone crazy. It was then that I began to realize how hot this issue was. I would have recognized it earlier had I remembered my own ups and downs—my own soul searchings and resistances in India.
Actually, looking at the situation from another point of view, I could see the humor in it. I left for India as a modern, successful psychiatrist going on an adventure—and returned almost as if in rags and covered with ash. I had served on the abortion boards of two large respected hospitals, and upon my return resigned on the grounds of the incompatibility of abortion with my new spiritual beliefs. I was aware of being in a very awkward and humorous position. Here I was, trying to maintain my professional posture while suspecting that I would eventually end up in front of colleagues, stating something like, “Yesterday God sent a message between the leaves of a cabbage, saying that He exists, wants us all to know that He loves us and that we should appreciate His creation.”
Even so, I tried as hard as possible to open up communication