The work is devoted to the study of deep - extra-logical - states of consciousness. The author found his own approach to the problem by introducing a dialectical opposition between the discreteness of the language and the continuum of consciousness. One of the author's postulates is as follows: the study of the cultures of the past gives us the opportunity to see those aspects of human consciousness that are closed to direct observation. The main conclusion of the work: altered states of consciousness are by no means some special state of the psyche, but simply an open manifestation of that continual component of it. In the dialectical opposition of the discrete to the continuous, a comparison is made between the religious thinking of the East and the West. The invariants of the spiritual experience of two different cultures are revealed.