内容简介：
"Altered States" is an attempt to meet the two greatest challenges of human consciousness: What happens when you die? What is holy? These are the questions which reflect the deepest concerns of humanity, and the forces that evoke these questions are the forces that shape human experience. This is true throughout history, in all cultures, and in all personal experience. Is there any world consensus on the subjects? Is there any conclusion to be discovered? "Altered States" offers concrete and surprising answers to these questions, if not consensus of thought. "Altered States" comprises two major essays: "The State of the Dead," and "The State of the Holy." Each essay is replete with historical research and references. Dr. Yeagley has incorporated years of research into each of these essays. There are elements of philosophy, anthropology, archeology, sociology, psychology, literature, and of course, religion. Both subjects, the Dead, and the Holy, pertain to the invisible. The invisible of course leads immediately to the abstract, the conceptual, or, the intellectual, and thus evokes artistic expression-the sensual, as a natural and necessary balance to all things mysterious. The pictorial illustrations in "Altered States" may place the text in an amalgamated academic status, and compromise a superficial scholar's confidence. However, it is a real question: can Death and the Holy be experienced apart from the creative, or the artistic? This is a philosophical question in itself. Dr. Yeagley had chosen to include the artistic element, at least by way of illustration. If religion is grief management, as identified by the late psychiatrist Dr. Kathy Thomsen-Hall, then sadness, sorrow, and even depression, all demand the elevating, healing power of art. Beauty is restorative. The soul demands it, always.