Consciousness, Altered States of
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology September 5, 2018 Ruth Finnegan
Altered states of consciousness, apart from dreaming, are common in human life but rarely studied in depth by anthropologists. The main areas where such states have been found and partially studied include dreaming (including prophetic and creative dreams), sensations of contact with the dead, experiences of music, poetry, and trance, and psychic communication described as telepathy, extrasensory perception, or nonlocal awareness.