Back to: Consciousness Cartography: Mapping Non-Local States of Awareness
Ancient Cartographies: The World’s First Maps of Consciousness
What follows is not a comprehensive survey of world mysticism. It is a focused examination of the cartographic features of each tradition: what they were mapping, how they divided the territory, and what their maps reveal about the nature of consciousness. Read each section as a navigator studying a map, not as a tourist browsing a museum.
The Buddhist Cartography
The Jhāna System: A Traveler’s Detailed Guide
Of all the ancient consciousness maps, the Buddhist jhāna system is arguably the most detailed, the most practically specific, and the most extensively verified through centuries of practice. The word jhāna (Sanskrit: dhyāna, Chinese: chán, Japanese: zen) is often translated as ‘meditative absorption,’ though this translation loses the active, precise quality of the original. A better translation might be ‘a specific, reproducible, depth of meditative attention characterized by particular experiential qualities.’
The classical Theravāda system describes four rūpa jhānas (form-absorptions) and four arūpa jhānas (formless absorptions), for a total of eight progressively deeper states. To these, the Theravāda tradition adds a ninth state: nirodha-samāpatti, the cessation of perception and feeling, which occupies a unique position in the system as the state in which consciousness temporarily ceases its ordinary activity.
The Four Form Jhānas
The First Jhāna arises when the meditator’s mind, through sustained application of attention to a meditation object, achieves what is called ‘access concentration’: a state of mental unification stable enough to temporarily suppress the five hindrances (sensual desire, ill will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness, and doubt). The hallmarks of the first jhāna are five factors: applied thought (vitakka), sustained thought (vicāra), rapture (pīti), pleasure (sukha), and one-pointedness (ekaggatā). The experience is characterized by a strong sense of mental unification, often accompanied by physical sensations of lightness, warmth, or energy.
In the Second Jhāna, applied and sustained thought are abandoned as the mind settles into a state of inner confidence and unification. What remains is rapture, pleasure, and one-pointedness. The quality of the state shifts from effortful concentration to a more effortless, luminous stillness.
The Third Jhāna involves the fading of rapture (which the texts describe as too coarse for this level of refinement) and what remains is equanimity, pleasure, one-pointedness, and a quality the texts describe as mindful clarity. Meditators at this level often describe a state of serene, stable awareness that is neither ecstatic nor flat, but profoundly peaceful.
The Fourth Jhāna is characterized by the abandonment of all previous factors including pleasure and is defined by pure equanimity and one-pointedness. The breath is described in some texts as ceasing at this depth. The awareness is extraordinarily still, clear, and spacious. This state is considered the foundation for the development of higher cognitive abilities (abhiññā), including the non-local perceptions that are so central to this course.
The Four Formless Jhānas
The four arūpa jhānas take the four form jhānas as their foundation and progressively dissolve the remaining structure of meditative experience. In the Base of Infinite Space, the meditator releases attachment to the perception of material form and expands awareness to a sense of unbounded, directionless space. In the Base of Infinite Consciousness, the sense of space itself is released and what remains is the awareness of awareness, consciousness recognizing itself as boundless. In the Base of Nothingness, even the sense of infinite consciousness is released, leaving only the bare recognition of absence. In the Base of Neither Perception Nor Non-Perception, the system reaches its limit: consciousness is so refined that it can barely be said to perceive at all, yet it has not ceased.
The 31 Planes and the 89 Consciousness States
Beyond the jhāna system, the Buddhist cosmological map describes 31 planes of existence, organized into three realms: the sensual realm (kāma-loka, 11 planes including the human), the form realm (rūpa-loka, 16 planes corresponding to the form jhānas), and the formless realm (arūpa-loka, 4 planes corresponding to the formless jhānas). This cosmological map is not merely metaphorical. It describes, from within the Buddhist framework, the actual territories that advanced meditators can access and navigate.
The Abhidhamma’s analysis of 89 types of consciousness (or 121 in the more elaborate count) represents perhaps the most ambitious attempt at a complete taxonomy of experience in world literature. Each consciousness type is characterized by a specific combination of mental factors (cetasika) that can arise with it, and each has specific conditions for its arising and specific results. Contemporary scholars like Bhikkhu Bodhi and Analayo have done important work making this system accessible to modern readers, and its potential as a resource for consciousness science has only begun to be explored.
The Vedantic and Yogic Cartography
The Five Koshas: Layers of Being
The Taittirīya Upanishad (c. 600 BCE) describes human existence in terms of five sheaths or coverings (kosha) that envelop the innermost reality of pure awareness. These are not merely metaphorical layers but are understood as distinct functional levels of the self, each with its own energy, its own mode of knowing, and its own relationship to the others.
- Annamaya kosha (food body): The gross physical body, sustained by food, subject to birth and death. This is the level of consciousness identified with ordinary waking experience embedded in the physical world.
- Prāṇamaya kosha (energy body): The vital energy sheath, sometimes called the etheric body, comprising the prāṇa (life force) and the five vital airs (vāyus). This sheath is the interface between the physical and the mental, and its condition is reflected in the quality of breath, vitality, and somatic awareness.
- Manomaya kosha (mental body): The sheath of mind and emotion, comprising the ordinary thinking mind and the emotional-instinctual processes. This is the level at which most human psychology operates.
- Vijñānamaya kosha (wisdom body): The sheath of discriminating wisdom and deeper intelligence. This is the faculty that can distinguish between the real and the unreal, between consciousness and its contents. Its development is central to the Vedantic path.
- Ānandamaya kosha (bliss body): The causal sheath, associated with deep dreamless sleep and with the state of samādhi. It is characterized by a pervasive sense of uncaused wellbeing and is the most subtle of the five sheaths, closest to pure awareness itself.
Beyond the five sheaths, the Upanishads describe pure awareness itself, Ātman or Brahman, which is not a kosha but the undivided reality that the koshas appear within. The cartographic insight here is that what we ordinarily call ‘I’ is a nested stack of levels, each containing the others, all of them appearances within a consciousness that is fundamentally undivided.
Patañjali’s Eight Limbs and the Varieties of Samādhi
Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras (c. 400 BCE to 400 CE) describe the yogic path as eight progressively deepened stages of practice: ethical restraints (yama), personal observances (niyama), posture (āsana), breath regulation (prāṇāyāma), withdrawal of the senses (pratyāhāra), concentration (dhāraṇā), meditation (dhyāna), and samādhi. The final three, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi, form a unified progressive depth of absorption called samyama, which Patañjali describes as producing direct knowledge of the object of concentration and, ultimately, knowledge of the nature of consciousness itself.
Patañjali distinguishes between samprajñāta samādhi (samādhi with object, which has four varieties depending on the subtlety of the object of focus) and asamprajñāta samādhi (samādhi without object, in which all seeds of mental activity are transcended). The final state, nirbīja samādhi (samādhi without seed), corresponds remarkably closely to the Buddhist nirodha-samāpatti in its description of consciousness transcending its own ordinary activity.
The Chakra System as a Consciousness Map
The chakra system, which appears in various forms across Tantric Hindu, Tantric Buddhist, and Tibetan traditions, maps consciousness not as a progression through temporal stages but as a distribution across spatial locations in the subtle body. The seven-chakra system familiar from modern yoga culture is a relatively late synthesis (it appears in this specific form in the Sat Cakra Nirūpaṇa, composed around 1526 CE by Pūrṇānanda), but the underlying principles are much older.
Each chakra is associated with a specific range of consciousness: the root chakra (mūlādhāra) with survival awareness, grounding, and the most instinctual layers of experience; the sacral chakra (svādhiṣṭhāna) with creative and relational consciousness; the solar plexus chakra (maṇipūra) with will, identity, and personal power; the heart chakra (anāhata) with love, compassion, and the transition from ego-centered to other-centered awareness; the throat chakra (viśuddha) with authentic expression and subtle sound; the third eye chakra (ājñā) with intuitive perception and non-local knowing; and the crown chakra (sahasrāra) with pure awareness and its union with universal consciousness.
Contemporary researcher Hiroshi Motoyama spent decades attempting to measure subtle energy activity at chakra locations using sensitive instrumentation, producing findings that remain contested but scientifically interesting. The chakra system serves, in this course, as a map not only of consciousness levels but of the relationship between consciousness, body, and subtle energy, which becomes particularly relevant in Module 3.
The Kabbalistic Cartography
The Tree of Life: A Structural Map of All Reality
The Kabbalistic Tree of Life (Etz Chayyim) is one of the most visually striking and conceptually ambitious consciousness maps ever created. It is not, at its core, a map of meditation states. It is a map of the entire structure of consciousness and reality, from the undifferentiated ground of being (Ain Soph, the limitless) through the progressive emergence of form and individuality down to the most concrete material existence.
The ten sephirot (singular: sephirah, meaning ’emanation’ or ‘sphere’) are best understood as modes or qualities of consciousness and reality, arranged in a specific geometric pattern of three columns (pillars) and connected by twenty-two paths. Each sephirah has a complex symbolic resonance encompassing a divine quality, a psychological function, a cosmological level, a body region, a color, a sound, and much more.
Reading the Tree from bottom to top as a consciousness map: Malkuth (Kingdom) represents embodied consciousness in the material world, the full incarnation of awareness in matter. Moving up the Middle Pillar: Yesod (Foundation) represents the astral or dream-level, the psychic substratum of material reality and the level associated with the personal unconscious. Tiphareth (Beauty) represents the self at its most radiant, the level of the Higher Self or individuated soul, corresponding to what many traditions call the heart center of genuine spiritual light. Kether (Crown) represents the most subtle level of individual consciousness before its dissolution into the undifferentiated ground, corresponding to Buddhist nibbāna or Vedantic turīya.
Beyond and above Kether sit the three Veils of negative existence: Ain (Nothing), Ain Soph (Limitless), and Ain Soph Aur (Limitless Light). These are not sephirot but descriptions of what lies beyond any possible structure, the infinite ground from which the Tree itself emerges. The Kabbalistic insight here is that the highest consciousness is not a positive state but an apophatic reality that transcends all description.
Da’ath: The Hidden Sephirah
The Tree contains a peculiarity that most introductory accounts omit: Da’ath (Knowledge), the ‘hidden sephirah’ that appears on the Tree as a dotted circle or is sometimes described as occupying the space between Kether and Tiphareth. Da’ath represents the possibility of direct union between the individual consciousness and the divine, a state that is not part of the ordinary progression of the Tree but that can arise when the Abyss (the great gap between the upper and lower portions of the Tree) is successfully crossed. In the Kabbalistic system, this crossing represents the most critical and most dangerous transition on the mystical path.
For this course, Da’ath is particularly interesting because it maps remarkably well onto several traditions’ descriptions of the transition to non-dual awareness: the moment in Buddhist practice when subject-object division ceases, the Sufi concept of fanā (annihilation), and what Monroe described as the transition through the ‘void’ in his deepest explorations.
The Sufi Cartography
Stations and States: A Map of the Spiritual Path
Sufi consciousness cartography is distinctive for its emphasis on the experiential phenomenology of the spiritual path and for its rigorous distinction between what is permanent and what is transient. The maqāmāt (stations) are qualities of consciousness that have been integrated so thoroughly they become the practitioner’s stable baseline. The ahwāl (states) are transient experiences of grace, gifts from the divine that cannot be cultivated or sustained by the practitioner’s effort alone.
Different Sufi masters enumerated different numbers and sequences of stations. Al-Sarraj (d. 988 CE) described seven: repentance (tawba), vigilance (wara’), renunciation (zuhd), poverty (faqr), patience (sabr), reliance on God (tawakkul), and satisfaction (ridā’). Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (d. 1088 CE) described a hundred stations in his Manāzil al-Sā’irīn (Stations of the Travelers). Al-Ghazali in his Ihyā’ Ulūm al-Dīn described the stations in terms of their psychological prerequisites and their fruits in lived experience.
The higher stations in most accounts include fanā (annihilation of the ego-self in God), baqā (subsistence in the divine reality after annihilation), and mahw (obliteration of consciousness of consciousness itself). These map with considerable precision onto the upper reaches of the Buddhist jhāna system, the Vedantic state of nirvikalpa samādhi, the Kabbalistic crossing of the Abyss, and Monroe’s descriptions of Focus 27 and beyond.
The Sufi tradition also developed a rich vocabulary for the intermediate states of the path, particularly the states of qabḍ (contraction) and basṭ (expansion), which describe the oscillating movements of consciousness between states of withdrawal and opening. This vocabulary is remarkably useful for understanding the phenomenology of meditation retreats and of the non-ordinary states this course cultivates.
The Daoist Cartography
Neidan: Inner Alchemy as Consciousness Map
The Daoist tradition produced one of the most distinctive and least-understood consciousness maps in world history: the system of neidan (inner alchemy), which describes the spiritual path as a process of transforming and refining the three fundamental energies of human existence.
Jing (essence) is the most dense and physical of the three: the vital essence associated with sexual energy, physical vitality, and the most material level of human existence. Qi (breath, energy) is the vital force that animates the body and mediates between the physical and the mental. Shen (spirit) is the mental and spiritual principle, the luminous awareness that is consciousness at its most refined. The Daoist contemplative process is described as the transformation of jing into qi, then qi into shen, and finally the return of shen to xu (emptiness, the undifferentiated ground of all being), a process called lian jing hua qi, lian qi hua shen, lian shen huan xu.
This four-stage process maps with striking precision onto the Vedantic kosha system (gross body to energy body to mind to bliss body to pure awareness), onto the Buddhist progression through the jhānas, and onto Monroe’s progression from C-1 through Focus 27. The specific Daoist innovation is the emphasis on the body as the primary laboratory for this transformation and on the refinement of physical energy as the starting point for spiritual development.
The neidan texts, particularly the Cantong Qi (c. 142 CE) and the Wuzhen Pian (c. 1075 CE), are notoriously difficult to read because they deliberately encode their content in alchemical metaphors that were intended to be opaque to the uninitiated. Contemporary scholars like Fabrizio Pregadio have done important work in making these texts accessible, and their comparison with Tantric approaches to the body as a site of spiritual transformation opens rich territory for this course.
The Shamanic Cartography
Three Worlds and the Axis Mundi
Shamanic cosmologies, found across Siberia, the Americas, Australia, Africa, and many other parts of the world in forms that share striking structural similarities, describe consciousness in terms of a three-world cosmological map. The Upper World is the realm of higher beings, teachers, and spiritual powers. The Middle World is the ordinary consensus reality of human existence, but also the realm of spirits associated with specific places, plants, animals, and natural features. The Lower World is not a hell but a realm of ancestral wisdom, primal powers, and foundational knowledge.
The axis mundi, the world axis or cosmic pillar, connects all three worlds and serves as the shaman’s pathway between them. It may be visualized as a great tree (the World Tree, found in Norse, Siberian, and many other traditions), a mountain, a ladder, or a spiraling vine. The shamanic journey involves an altered state of consciousness typically induced by rhythmic drumming (at approximately 4 to 7 Hz, which corresponds to the theta brainwave range associated with hypnagogic states and deep meditation), in which the practitioner’s awareness travels along the axis mundi to retrieve information, healing power, or guidance from the non-ordinary realms.
For this course, the shamanic cosmology is particularly valuable as a map of non-local consciousness territories that preceded all literate traditions. The correspondence between the shamanic Upper World and Monroe’s upper Focus levels, between the Lower World and the deep unconscious territories Grof describes as perinatal and transpersonal, and between the Middle World and what Tart calls the ‘consensus reality level’ of discrete consciousness, is striking enough to warrant careful attention. Contemporary researchers like Roger Walsh and Stanley Krippner have done important comparative work in this area.