States of Mind

If the Dynamics of Mind are the "flitting" movements of your attention, the States of Mind are the actual landscapes in which that movement occurs. A state is not what you are doing; it is where you are.

In the same way that water can exist as ice, liquid, or steam, your consciousness inhabits different "phases" of density and clarity. These states are the "stations" of experience, ranging from the heavy, localized awareness of the material world to the expansive, non-dual clarity of the Absolute.

Drawing from both Western psychology and Eastern traditions traditions like the Mandukya Upanishad, and adding recent research, we map 7 primary states of consciousness, like the colors of the rainbow, ROYGBIV, all present in white light:

We experience different at least the top three mental states on a daily basis. 

After Dynamics of Mind, States of Mind are the next most temporally extended experience that we experience. Altered states before or beyond dreaming (such as the hypnagogic liminal state, lucid dreaming, Holotropic Breathwork, hallucinatory psychoactive experiences, near-death experiences, mediumship, and even telepathic communication) can be arrived at, at least by some individuals, in varying ways. Each of these states relaxes some aspect of the filtering mechanism of the mind, and the phenomenology can be quite different than the trio of states we are habitually used to (waking, dreaming, deep sleep). Some state experiences are private but others can be vastly transpersonal (hallucinations), or even interpersonal in the case of NDEs and telepathy, proving that not all altered states are trivial hallucinations within someone's head.

Extending the light metaphor is helpful: Depending on the refractive index of a prism, the single beam of consciousness can be "separated" into different states—the waking world, the dream world, the stillness of deep sleep, or even into otherworldly transpersonal realms beyond. 

Understanding Nested Phenomenological Realities
To navigate the layers of the onion within universal mind, it can be helpful to become oriented where your "Individual Soul" is currently anchored. Our experience of minds is bounded by a series of recursively nested dissociations within universal mind. You can think of them as a set of circles or Russian dolls, or turtles all the way down. But it's not quite that simple. There are two primary sets of nested circles which interact.

The Waking State: Through your individual soul, awareness experiences the physics of World Mind. Key Realization: When awake and going about your daily life, the solidity of matter is you experiencing the exterior of "World Mind." World mind is very mathematical and rigid in everything it thinks. So much so that we anthropomorphize these mental patterns and call them "laws," as if they were the fiat decree of a monarch, or maybe a tyrant because the laws don't seem to be breakable by any means. It may sound strange, but your body is in world mind. It is highly structured biology that in turn obeys the laws of chemistry, which must obey the laws of physics, but ultimately the buck stops at mathematics. That must be why Carl Friedrich Gauss claimed, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences." 

Usually in STEM this pyramid is shown inverted with math at the top and biology at the bottom, and you conveniently omitted. That may be a bit of mathematical elitism, or just straight materialism because the way I see it, consciousness is meant to be the pyramidion, the all seeing golden eye at the top, not ignored as an epi-phenomenon or deferred as "the hard problem" at the bottom of the stack. Anything that obeys this pyramid's structure belongs to the world. However, you are not your body, biology, chemistry, physics, nor math. You are not your mind. Yet you are aware of all that. See the neti neti path in Ontology. 

You are experiencing the world in the waking state. How do you do that if your body and brain is part of the world? Where is your individual mind, your interior? That is part of your individual soul. Your soul body (nested within Soul Mind) interacts with your individual body (nested within World Mind). Your body (with its brain) and soul (with its mind) are a team, making you an individual human. Without a soul you would just be dead meat. (NDE's shed light on this). Without a body your soul would be a ghost (mediums and people studying paranormal activity shed light on this). When your body and soul come together you can lead a human life. There is much more to this, but this is an overview of my map.

The Dream State: Here your awareness "refracts" from the World Mind and interacts within your individual Soul Mind. This is a transition from looking outward to looking inward. During vivid dreams, where symbols are encountered, you may experience the species supermind, a larger circle labeled 'Collective Human Soul' in the diagram below. Jung called this the 'collective unconscious,' (some call it the Akashic) but there is nothing unconscious about your experiences there. In such an experience, you no longer have a physical body but you have a dream body, which you can see in the 'lucid dream' state. Here, you encounter archetypes and fluid landscapes that do not obey the rigid laws of physics (which is how World Mind behaves), but do follow the fluid laws of Soul Mind. You might be able to grow wings and fly, and strange things are bound to happen which would defy Physics, but obey the fact that what you focus on becomes your reality. This is wishful thinking in the waking state but literally true in the dream state. Maybe that's why people are always trying to make their dreams a reality. If you focus on something with enough persistence and energy you can move the world, but it takes time and effort. World Mind is slow and rigid and Soul Mind is quick and fluid. 
Key Realization: In the dream state you are inhabiting the "Soul Mind," where geometry and symbols are imbued with emotional and archetypal meaning. Interpreting these symbols is helpful as spirit guides (superminds, perhaps your 'higher self') may use them to communicate with your 'lower self' in the waking state from larger layers of the soul onion.

The Deep Sleep & Altered States: Here you pass beyond the human collective into additional layers of superminds, not shown in the diagram. These can be vast, transpersonal, timeless experiences that few recall, yet they inform our deepest sense of well-being. They restore our minds and bodies in mere moments measured by others in the waking state. Only after experiencing deep sleep you may "reflect back" into the waking state feeling refreshed. 
Key Realization: In deep sleep you are returning to the absolute, where geometry dissolves back into pure potential, and where the drop briefly rejoins the ocean.

Why do people see geometric patterns in altered states?
When the standard filtering mechanism of the brain is interrupted—whether through meditation, Holotropic Breathwork, NDE's, telepathy, or other transpersonal modalities, or through ingesting entheogens—the "curtain" of the physical world can be pulled back.

What one sees is often experienced as Sacred Geometry.

Explorers frequently report encountering moving, higher-dimensional, and strange non-Euclidean geometries. This is not a hallucination; it is a direct encounter with the Universal Language. It is the intelligible domain of the Universal Mind becoming visible to the individual experiencer.

The modern "Standard Worldview" is a denial of meaning that often leads to nihilism—a state deeply damaging to the human soul where nothing matters. This perspective reduces the majesty of existence to a series of random, accidental collisions of matter.

Altered states of mind provide a "shifted vantage point." By revealing that reality is structured, harmonious, and interconnected, these experiences reveal a truth that the "Standard Worldview" cannot admit as anything other than a hallucination. Seeing through false narratives of separation via altered state mentation—such as lucid dreaming—is not just "interesting"; it is a profound act of psychological and spiritual restoration. When you realize the "world" you are inhabiting is a geometric construct of the world mind, the fear of a meaningless, dead universe begins to dissolve. The universe is minded. We are not alone.

Lucid dreaming is perhaps the most accessible "shifted vantage point." It is the moment the individual soul wakes up within the Soul Mind. In this state, you can observe your dream body and dream world firsthand. You are no longer a passive observer of a random story; you are the conscious inhabitant of a structured, fluid reality that clearly operates under different rules than the physics of World Mind. This is the first step in realizing that you are not a victim or passenger in the dream world, but a participant in its creation. When you wake, consider applying the same realization to the waking state.