ABSTRACT
Meditation is considered by some to lead the persistent seeker to an altered state of consciousness, characterized by a sense of expansiveness, unity, joy, of contact with the infinite. A Negative Experience factor also appeared in their final experiment apparently as a result of the inclusion of items tapping negative experience. This factor was regarded as a probable pseudo-dimension which had little to do with successful meditation, but instead was expressive of disruptive influences. A systematic effort to examine the subjective experience of "ordinary" people meditating in small semi-structured groups was reported by K. Osis and E. Bokert and Osis, Bokert and Carlson who found certain stable patterns emerging from factor analyses of questionnaire data. Consistent with the analysis conducted by Osis and his associates subjected questionnaire data to a principle components analysis followed by orthogonal rotation using the varimax criterion.
