![]() The facial expression of the highly excited soldier who was about to kill was almost identical to the trancelike appearance of the hypnotized subjects I saw daily in the laboratory. The camera focused on the face of a single soldier who was in the middle of launching an attack. In the movie, the camera crew filmed an American attack from the Vietnamese trench. Serendipitously, when I watched a documentary on the war in Vietnam, I realized that we can witness altered states of consciousness (ASCs) under natural circumstances, far from the laboratory, when a person’s activity level increases rather than decreases. Some of even those who entered a relaxed, passive state wondered why we had talked about drowsiness, for this state did not even resemble sleep: Although their muscles relaxed, they felt much livelier than during sleep in fact, livelier than in their normal waking state. It was as if they had been released from some kind of pressure, their behavior reflected childlike playfulness. ![]() ![]() ![]() They followed the instructions of the experimenter immediately, while their fast movements, lively facial expressions, loud voices, and their fast speech were in sharp contrast with the passive behavior of the average subject. Four subjects exhibited a different behavior: They were in an even “more active” state than the waking one.
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