Changes

The implications for the neurosciences seem clear. Scientists have always presumed in biochemistry that there cannot be a thought without some chemical reaction somewhere. This example offers similar confirmation that thoughts not only are driven by body chemistry, but that they can alter it as well, in ways not normally deemed possible by normative science. The monks obviously did not enter into a lifetime of training just to be able to dry wet sheets on their backs. Their goal was the teachings and their effects on transforming consciousness. One's epistemology therefore, the core of one's belief system, must be tied into the outcome where the problem of consciousness is concerned, a thought altogether new for the way science is normally conducted.

The implications for the neurosciences seem clear. Scientists have always presumed in biochemistry that there cannot be a thought without some chemical reaction somewhere. This example offers similar confirmation that thoughts not only are driven by body chemistry, but that they can alter it as well, in ways not normally deemed possible by normative science. The monks obviously did not enter into a lifetime of training just to be able to dry wet sheets on their backs. Their goal was the teachings and their effects on transforming consciousness. One's epistemology therefore, the core of one's belief system, must be tied into the outcome where the problem of consciousness is concerned, a thought altogether new for the way science is normally conducted.

==CONCLUSION==

==Conclusion==

Virtually unheard of in the middle of the twentieth century, the expression "states of consciousness" has entered the common vocabulary. How this idea will present itself in the years to come, how a subject so intimately wedded to metaphysical and religious concerns will fare in modern culture, and how religion, philosophy, and psychology may meet in their concern over this subject may prove decisively important to all who seek answers to the larger questions of human life, who one is and why one is here. At the least the struggle to understand what happens to consciousness when it becomes more conscious of itself will contribute to the ongoing dialogue between science and religion.

Virtually unheard of in the middle of the twentieth century, the expression "states of consciousness" has entered the common vocabulary. How this idea will present itself in the years to come, how a subject so intimately wedded to metaphysical and religious concerns will fare in modern culture, and how religion, philosophy, and psychology may meet in their concern over this subject may prove decisively important to all who seek answers to the larger questions of human life, who one is and why one is here. At the least the struggle to understand what happens to consciousness when it becomes more conscious of itself will contribute to the ongoing dialogue between science and religion.

==BIBLIOGRAPHY==

==BIBLIOGRAPHY==

#Aranya, Hariharananda. Yoga Philosophy of Patañjali. Albany, N.Y., 1983.

#Aranya, Hariharananda. Yoga Philosophy of Patañjali. Albany, N.Y., 1983.