A Holographic Model of Transpersonal Consciousness

There are, at least, two kinds of consciousness-personal or individual consciousness, and transpersonal or unitive consciousness. Personal consciousness is the human experience of multiplicity, of things being discrete and separate, For example, we experience ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, from objects and other organisms. Personal consciousness filters data relevant to our personal survival from the immense amount of information that is available, It scans the environment and our internal states in a sequential manner, focusing first on one item, then shifting to another in a manner similar to the way in which our eyes saccade from one object to another (Ornstein, 1972). Some instances of personal consciousness are, for example, the pattern of light (phosphenes) seen when the closed eyes are pressed, the experience I have while gazing upon the players arrayed over the field at a cricket match or baseball game, and the prickles of pain I feel in my foot when it falls asleep. Western psychology with its cognitive models of thought processes, theories of motivation and personality, etc" has provided us with many characterizations of personal and individual consciousness.