Definition of altered states:
“An altered state of consciousness (ASC), also called altered state of mind or mind alteration, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart. It describes induced changes in one’s mental state, almost always temporary. A synonymous phrase is “altered state of awareness”.”
-Wikipedia
Yoga and Meditation as practices historically employed to induce altered states:
“In addition to the use of mind-altering plants in ancient cultures, the development of yoga and meditative practices within Hinduism and early Buddhism dates back to at least 400 BCE (Shear, 2011). These disciplines were employed primarily as a means of purifying practitioners and aiding in their union with higher spiritual states (Feuerstein, 1998). Jonathan Shear (2011) stated that these Eastern traditions, “can enable the activity of the mind to settle down and disappear entirely so that its fundamental inner nature, independent of all the contents of ordinary awareness, can be experienced with clarity” (p. 140). Hence, meditation and yogic practices appear in the historical record as yet another ancient technology purposefully designed to induce altered consciousness.”
-Albert P. Garcia-Romeu and Charles T. Tart
Breathwork techniques to induce altered states:
There are many kinds of breath practices designed to achieve altered states of consciousness; these include Stanislav Grof’s “Holotropic Breathing:”
Spontaneous Experiences of Transpersonal Identity: Vaclav Havel
“There are some things that I have felt since childhood: that there is a great mystery above me which is the focus of all meaning and the highest moral authority; that the event called the ‘world’ has a deeper order and meaning and therefore is more than just a cluster of improbable accidents; that in my own life I am reaching for something that goes far beyond me and the horizon of the world I know; that in everything I do I touch eternity in a strange way.”
P. 55 Havel, Quoted in Vadislav, J., editor. Vaclav Havel, or Living in Truth, p. 189
“We carry within ourselves, he is sure, an “inner experience of the total integrity of Being.” This intuition links conscience both to God and to integrity. Being is the only reality with integrity; obeying one’s conscience brings one into communion with this “integrity with Being.”
P. 58 Havel, Letters to Olga, p. 232
“…because [the human being] is rooted in Being by virtue of its origins, it carries that loss within it as part of its own essence” and consequently experiences a “homesickness for the integrity of Being.”
P. 61 Havel, Letters to Olga, p. 329
Spontaneous Experiences of Transpersonal Identity: Black Elk
“Then a Voice said: “Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you.”
I was still on my bay horse, and once more I felt the riders of the west, the north, the east, the south, behind me in formation, as before, and we were going east. I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.”
Spontaneous Experiences of Transpersonal Identity: Richard Maurice Bucke
“It was in the early spring at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom (it was in an English city). His mind deeply under the influences of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city, the next he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study, and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught . . . The illumination itself continued not more than a few moments, but its effects proved ineffaceable; it was impossible for him ever to forget what he at that time saw and knew, neither did he, or could he, ever doubt the truth of what was then presented to his mind.”