Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'State' operates across at least four distinct registers, each illuminating a different dimension of psychic and somatic life. In the psychiatric tradition represented by Janet, 'state' designates discrete alternating conditions of consciousness — numbered, compared, and clinically evaluated — whose succession defines the phenomenology of hysteria and double personality. Siegel and Schore, writing from developmental neuroscience, treat state as a dynamic neurobiological configuration: a plateau of activation that filters perception, memory, emotion, and behavior, and whose transitions constitute the very texture of self-continuity. In the polyvagal framework of Dana, state becomes an autonomic signature — ventral vagal, sympathetic, or dorsal vagal — legible through breath, muscle tone, and posture, and amenable to somatic tracking. The Shaivite contemplative literature rendered by Singh presents the term in its most ambitious register: a graduated ontological series culminating in the state of Śiva, in which observer and observed become identical, collapsing the subject-object structure that subtends all lesser states. Simondon contributes a further dimension, treating state as a phase-condition of a physical or psychic system — metastable, stable, or amorphous — whose transitions constitute individuation itself. The tension between state as subjective phenomenological given and state as objectifiable systemic configuration runs throughout the corpus, making this term a crucial nexus for questions of identity, continuity, and transformation.
In the library
17 passages
The next state is the state of sadāśiva. The observer of this state is called mantra maheśvara. In this state, the observer finds himself to be absolutely one with the universal transcendental Being.
Singh presents a hierarchical ontology of states in Kashmir Śaivism in which each state is defined by a progressively more intimate identity between individual observer and universal consciousness, culminating in the state of Śiva where state and observer are indistinguishable.
Singh, Jaideva, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979thesis
That is the state of jagadānanda. Abhinavagupta concludes by saying, 'this state of jagadānanda was explained to me by my great master Śambhunātha.'
The passage maps the highest states of ānanda onto the five activities of Śiva, demonstrating that 'state' in the Trika system is not merely experiential but cosmologically structured and transmitted through lineage.
Singh, Jaideva, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979thesis
A plateau is our way of visualizing how a state of mind can be quickly activated and shape the totality of the sense of reality, the sense of self, in that moment. A plateau filters which types of peaks can arise.
Siegel conceptualizes state of mind as a constraining neural configuration — a 'plateau' — that determines which emotions, memories, and perceptual biases are accessible, thereby constituting momentary selfhood.
Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis
It is absurd to call state No. 1, — a state of mental depression incompatible with life, — a natural state; it is unlikely that this young woman has always been, from the first, in such a state.
Janet challenges the convention of numbering alternating states in hysteria, arguing that clinical labeling distorts the developmental and normative baseline against which pathological states should be measured.
Janet, Pierre, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907thesis
the adaptive preservation of a cluster of states that comprise self-identity and self-continuity in the face of continuously changing external environmental conditions.
Schore identifies state not as a singular condition but as a cluster of psychobiological configurations whose adaptive regulation across transitions constitutes the neurological substrate of self-identity and continuity.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis
Connect to your ventral vagal state of safety and connection. Tune in to how this is expressed in your body. Identify the qualities of your breath, muscle tone, and posture.
Dana operationalizes polyvagal 'state' as a somatically legible condition — each of the three autonomic states has a distinct bodily signature that can be tracked, named, and therapeutically cultivated.
Deb A Dana, Deb Dana, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection A Guide for, 2018thesis
Autonomic shifts are interconnected experiences that lead your clients deeper into or out of a state. By adding the dimension of time to track autonomic change, your clients can begin to notice the flow of their experience.
Dana frames autonomic state transitions as temporally structured flows rather than discrete moments, emphasizing the processual and interconnected character of state change in clinical polyvagal practice.
Deb A Dana, Deb Dana, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection A Guide for, 2018supporting
the amorphous state cannot be treated as individual and that the absolute genesis of the individuated state is more difficult to define than its relative genesis through the passage from a metastable
Simondon argues that physical 'state' — amorphous versus crystalline — maps onto degrees of individuation, with the passage between states constituting the fundamental event of individuation rather than a mere change of property.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
depending on temperature and pressure conditions, sometimes the crystalline state is stable while the amorphous state is metastable, and sometimes vice versa. The passage from the metastable state to the stable state gives rise to a determinate thermal effect.
Simondon demonstrates that stability and instability of physical states are relational rather than intrinsic, a principle he extends to psychic individuation where the metastable condition is generative of transformation.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Individuation as an operation is not linked to the identity of a matter but to a state modification. A substance conserves its individuality when it is in the most stable state proportionate to its own energetic conditions.
Simondon redefines individuation as a transformation of state rather than a property of substance, grounding psychological and physical identity alike in energetic equilibrium.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
This state, which is the sixth state of turya, is called cidānanda, which means, 'the bliss of consciousness.' This force then presses the passage of the skull (brahmarandhra), piercing the skull to move from the body out into the universe.
Singh describes the sixth turya state as a somatic-cosmic event in which kundalinī energy transforms the practitioner's state of consciousness into a universal bliss that transcends bodily containment.
Singh, Jaideva, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979supporting
This state of Bhairava is beyond the limitation of space, time, and formation. It has no space, It has no time, It has no form—It is beyond that, beyond these three.
The ultimate state of Bhairava is defined apophatically — it exceeds the categorical constraints of space, time, and form that structure all lower states, marking it as the limit-concept of the entire state hierarchy.
Singh, Jaideva, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979supporting
as soon as he enters in that dreaming state, he knows that he has entered in the dreaming state, he is not unconscious of that. And when he enters in the dreaming state, it is for him to decide what dream he will see.
Singh presents mastery of the dreaming state as an advanced yogic attainment in which reflexive awareness is maintained across state transitions, enabling conscious determination of dream content.
Singh, Jaideva, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979supporting
little by little, this state developed singularly; it lasted for hours and days, and as the subject was now much more active, it was filled with all kinds of serious incidents.
Janet documents the progressive expansion of a secondary hysterical state over time, showing that alternating states are not fixed but dynamically evolving configurations with real biographical consequences.
Janet, Pierre, The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907supporting
one consciousness is acutely aware of the image environment, while another knows she is imagining. In the common dream state we are in a single consciousness, which is exclusively experiencing the reality of the environment.
Bosnak distinguishes the hypnagogic state from the dream state by the presence of dual consciousness in the former, theorizing state as defined by the unity or multiplicity of awareness attending an experiential field.
Bosnak, Robert, Embodiment: Creative Imagination in Medicine, Art and Travel, 2007supporting
Plato is interested chiefly in action, Heraclitus in the soul which is neither active nor in a state of physical motion but alive and 'changing' by virtue of the opposites.
Snell contrasts Platonic action-orientation with Heraclitean process-ontology, noting that the soul for Heraclitus exists in a state irreducible to either rest or motion — a dynamic tension of opposites.
Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside
I call such a state of consciousness 'unproblematical' because it has obviously never become a problem to itself. It becomes a problem only when a doubt arises as to whether affects offer a satisfactory basis for psychological judgments.
Jung characterizes affect-dominated consciousness as an 'unproblematical state' that remains unconscious of its own partiality, arguing that self-reflection on state is the precondition of genuine psychological judgment.