A Taste of Rapé

It occurred to me today—after trying rapé for the first time and finding, much like with other substances, that it had little noticeable effect on me—that maybe there isn’t one single baseline of consciousness from which we all depart.

Each of us lives inside a different “ordinary.”

What feels transcendent to one person might feel like Tuesday afternoon to another.

I have a client who has no particular interest in eliciting altered states of consciousness, and doesn’t orient to the world as a spiritual practitioner. Yet when they once tried psilocybin, it had no effect on them whatsoever. They attribute this to being autistic. To me, that’s a perfect illustration of this principle: that what we call altered is always relative, shaped by the particular instrument of perception we inhabit, and by how attuned we are to the wider field of consciousness itself.

The Scientific Lens

From a neurobiological view, “altered states” are shifts in how the brain and body integrate experience—changes in patterns of energy and information flow. Dan Siegel describes this through his Wheel of Awareness: the hub as pure knowing, the rim as the contents of experience, and the spokes as attention moving between them.

When awareness rests in the hub, the system becomes more integrated—stable, flexible, compassionate. The hub itself, he says, is consciousness; it is enlightenment. In this frame, awakening isn’t a mystical exception but the natural coherence of an open, integrated mind–body–relational network.

Physics, meanwhile, leaves the question open but intriguingly parallel. Some researchers describe consciousness as a fundamental field—an intrinsic quality of information itself, woven into the fabric of the cosmos. Others remain cautious, calling it an unsolved mystery. Either way, science and contemplative wisdom seem to circle the same insight: that awareness may not be in the universe, but the universe may be in awareness.

The Animist View

In animist traditions, consciousness is not a human possession but a living field shared by all beings and elements. What Western frameworks call an “altered state” might instead be a change in relationship—a tuning of the inner instrument from the human channel to the greater ecological song. The question isn’t “What did I experience?” but “Whom did I meet?”

From this view, there is no baseline consciousness—only degrees of participation in the life that is everywhere awake.

The Buddhist View

Buddhism turns the idea inside out: it’s ordinary consciousness that is altered—altered by clinging, delusion, and misperception. States of clarity or absorption (samādhi) don’t create enlightenment; they reveal the openness that was never lost once the obscurations fall away. What is discovered is empty, luminous, selfless knowing—awareness without owner.

The Advaita Vedānta View

Advaita, by contrast, speaks in affirmations: awareness itself is the changeless ground. All experiences arise and dissolve within Brahman, the one consciousness. The mind may fluctuate, but awareness remains untouched. The journey is a remembering, a recognition: Tat Tvam Asi—you are That.

Buddhism negates to avoid reification; Advaita affirms to dissolve doubt. Yet in lived realization, both point to the same boundless clarity where self and world are not two.

The Sufi View

Sufism enters through the heart. Consciousness is the light of the Beloved recognizing itself through every form. States of ecstasy (aḥwāl) come and go like gusts of divine wind; what matters is the station (maqām) of remembrance that abides.

Through fanāʾ (annihilation), the lover dissolves into the Beloved; through baqāʾ (abiding), the Beloved lives through the lover. For the Sufi, differing states are simply the pulse of Love unveiling itself—God knowing God through the mirror of the heart.

Integration

For one person, an altered state is a break from numbness into vividness.

For another, it’s a break from vividness into stillness.

For someone, it’s the first time their sense of self dissolves;

for another, that’s familiar territory.

This is why cross-talk about states is so messy.The same words—bliss, unity, emptiness, visionary, grounded—can point to entirely different coordinates of experience.

Perhaps what we call an altered state is simply what it feels like when a worldview shifts.Each tradition sketches its own baseline of reality, and every person’s physiology, culture, training, and relationships tune them to a particular frequency of knowing.

Our “ordinary consciousness” is an ecosystem—shaped by the brain and body, by collective stories and practices, by the physics of the world we move through, and by the relational fields that hold us.

For the scientist, consciousness is the integration of this system into coherence.

For the animist, it is the conversation between all beings.

For the Buddhist, it is emptiness appearing as form.

For the Advaitin, it is the unchanging witness of all appearances.

For the Sufi, it is love’s awareness knowing itself through every form.

Five views, five baselines.And every individual carries a micro-version of this diversity within their own constellation of body, culture, and relationship.

What feels extraordinary for one is ordinary for another,

because the “ordinary” itself is woven from different patterns of embodiment and belonging.

The only way to understand another’s “altered state” is through calibration, not comparison—asking, what was different for you from your usual way of being?

And even then, not everyone can map another’s difference onto their own spectrum—because sometimes that place hasn’t been reached yet,

or it doesn’t exist within the current range of who they know themselves to be,

or who they even need to become.

Maybe the question isn’t what’s altered at all, but for whom?And maybe the question isn’t what alters consciousness, but what consciousness each of us starts from.

Maybe awakening is less about reaching new states,and more about recognizing how many worlds awareness already contains.