Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness

The Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness (CSNSC) is an independent  academic research center dedicated to the study of Ongoing or Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience (ONE or PNSE). You can view the research in this area by visiting the publications page on the Center’s website.

These types of experiences have been co-opted and integrated into religious and spiritual contexts for millennium, and are often referred to as: enlightenment, persistent mystical states, nonduality, oneness, transcendental consciousness, and so forth.

The CSNSC’s research determined that religious and spiritual traditions mixed varying amounts of unnecessary belief, dogma, and expectations in with their understanding of non-symbolic experience. The current research results suggest that they are simply specific changes that take place within the brain, involving alterations in key nodes and how these nodes communicate with each other. Recent research has been able to tease out what is most core to ongoing forms of non-symbolic experience, and what isn’t – demystifying it, literally, for perhaps the first time in human history.

This led to a reliable classification system that allows people to clearly see where they are at, and provides invaluable context for the way they experience the world. For the first time people who experience ongoing forms of non-symbolic experience are able to determine how they can reliably alter the experience to better suit their lives, as well as what might not be as desirable.

It also led to a protocol that induces it far more reliably than anything else CSNSC is familiar with. In recent experiments, approximately 73% of participants reported shifting to an ongoing form of non-symbolic experience in less than 4 months. A further 26% of participants reported temporary forms of ongoing non-symbolic experience.

In addition to conducting it’s own research, the CSNSC serves as a center-point in the global community of academic scholars who research this area. It provides access to a large pool of potential research participants, assistance with locating funding for research, peer review, education about protocols that have been used, and much more. The center’s overall mission is to help to facilitate and spread research in this area to the greatest extent possible worldwide.