of all things, as well as the restrictions of the ego-centred mode of
cognitive processing.
In the late 1970s, Maxwell Cade, a
prominent psychophysiologist, proposed that there were five different levels of consciousness (dreaming sleep; hypnogogic/hypnopompic
[i.e. between waking and dreaming]; everyday waking; meditative; and lucid awareness), and
that these different levels of consciousness correlate with specific
patterns of electrical brain activity.
During meditation – considered by
Cade to elicit a higher level of consciousness than the normal, waking consciousness (equated to the
aforementioned ‘mystical’ or ‘meditative’ state of awareness) there is
a prominence of alpha brain waves,
associated with relaxed wakefulness, and theta brain waves, associated with the creative subconscious
mind.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, there is
also a decrease in the beta brain
waves that are associated with
active thought. The highest level of
consciousness – referred to as lucid
12
awareness or the “awakened mind”
state – involves comparable levels
of alpha and theta brain waves to
the meditative level of consciousness, but also includes beta brain
waves, indicating a return of higher
cognitive functions. Unlike the beta
brain waves seen during the everyday waking level of consciousness,
which occur predominantly in the
left hemisphere, the beta brain
waves seen in the “awakened mind”
level of consciousness are balanced
across the two hemisphere. Optimal
brain functioning, and indeed higher
states of consciousness, are thus
seen to stem from balanced left and
right-hemisphere cognitive functioning [5].