Exploring human consciousness is a fascinating adventure that takes us beyond the boundaries of current materialistic scientific paradigms. Into areas where old mechanistic views are no longer sufficient. It is therefore not surprising that different people have very different views on these issues, and that an incredible spectrum of hypotheses can be found here. From an absolute insistence on matter and the denial of the very existence of consciousness, to the belief that everything is pure consciousness and that no solid matter actually exists.
Sometimes debates about these issues are very stimulating. But other times, unfortunately, owners of the “one true truth” argue with each other. And then the debate is no longer about questions of consciousness, but rather about self-confidence and egoism. However, the ego is only a very small part of the complex system of our consciousness. In our modern times, we still do not understand the true dimensions of human consciousness. And so we still attach overly great importance to our personal ego. Our entire modern civilization is based on this attitude. We devote a great deal of time and effort to satisfying our various egoistic desires, which we consider to be the most important in the universe.
But I do not want to „cheaply“ argue against egoism here. I do not feel like on owner of any „true truth“. However, my experiences from psychedelic trips and holotropic breathing have taught me that the personal egoistic experience in normal daily consciousness is very limited. And it would not be wise to consider it as the “only truly objective and correct knowledge”. The short-sightedness of this approach is now literally striking. If we want to see it, of course. Unfortunately, because of our own “infinitely important” ego and fear of other states of consciousness, we often really don’t want to see these problems.
That is why I consider it important to remind us that there are many ways of experiencing consciousness. Our modern Western civilization has become fixated on a very limited, predominantly masculine, and analytically focused consciousness as the only “correct” one. We try to solve everything purely with our minds and strive to have our minds under control. However, this way of experiencing consciousness suffers from tunnel vision and is unable to encompass broader contexts. Unfortunately, we refuse to understand this and reject or ignore all other ways of experiencing consciousness.
That is precisely why my wife and I tried to show in our first book that there are multiple ways of experiencing consciousness and also differences in the types of consciousness men and women have. For example, women generally experience a much more expanded form of consciousness than men and are able to grasp much broader contexts. Thus, their everyday consciousness is closer to what psychonauts usually call “expanded consciousness.” That is why the “feminine way of thinking” is often so incomprehensible to men with their usually more “tunnel-visioned thinking”…
We all know our everyday consciousness well. However, most likely, each of us has at least once experienced a dip into “expanded consciousness,” whether spontaneously, such as in nature, or deliberately induced through holotropic breathing or psychedelic substances. This book is devoted to these experiences in expanded consciousness…
