Abstract

Points out that scientists' discomforts over the beginning of a systematization of knowledge on different states of consciousness and on psychic phenomena result from the challenge that this knowledge poses to basic premises of the scientific paradigm. It is stressed that there can be no resolution between scientific determinism and human free will, but rather a recognition of alternative metaphors for expressing different aspects of transcendental reality. Conflicts between traditional and newer views of humans (based on the duality of experience) are discussed along with characteristics of a possible future society.