The Various Effects Of Marijuana Upon States Of Consciousness

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the state of pure awareness, different sensations are experienced as sensory qualities. For example, the sensation of a sexual orgasm may be experienced with pure awareness. Natural beauty, such as flowers, is sometimes experienced from a point of awareness without adding conscious thinking (Snyder, 1986). These two processes of awareness have been described as non-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness. The state of awareness, or lack thereof, that a user may experience can be called “choiceless” since choice is a part of actual conscious functions. If a decision is made outside of consciousness, then in fact they are not called “by choice” since the choice implies the actual conscious action.
This may suggest a reason for sensory enhancement under marijuana, which is the movement of attention from consciousness processes to awareness processes. The difference here is that we cannot describe a consciousness without attention. Attention energy is involved within the “sensory processes,” and consciousness has more to do with the different decisions one makes.
Another immediate effect which marijuana has is to change the perception of time, where events take longer to occur. Marijuana affects visual and audible qualities in users, which creates this change in time dimension. Visual scenes often have more depth, sounds are heard with more dimension, and therefore there is an expansion of the fabric of time within the mind, which results in a feeling of depth instead of the usual two dimensional flow (Tart, 1972). The explanation of this phenomena from marijuana users is that more is happening, and therefore they are thinking faster or more thoughts are occurring in the same time period. The possibility here is that a person is aware of more perceptions in a given amount of time as a result of the enhancement of his/her senses. Since marijuana enhances visual details, the movements of self and others are att...