ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Visuddhimagga account of Gotama Buddha's teachings on meditation and higher states of consciousness—perhaps the most detailed and extensive report extant of one being's explorations within the mind. It is concerned with a subcategory of altered state of consciousness (ASC): meditation-specific states of consciousness (MSG). Meditation states are distinct from ASC in that they include only those states attained through meditation that transcend normal conditions of sensory awareness and cognition. The Buddha's system begins with sila—virtue or moral purity —the systematic cultivation of thought, word, and deed, converting energies spent unprofitably into profitable or wholesome directions. Since most of the teachings about Meditation-specific states of consciousness and higher states of consciousness (HSC) are within a religious framework, the particular belief system in terms of which the experiences of an HSC are interpreted also must be seen as accounting for some of the variance.
