The adventure of living in an alien cultural milieu is often the initial attraction that eventually produces an ethnographer. But anthropology seems to be entering its maturity, and is doing so at a time when all of science is in a period of rapid growth. It perhaps helps to remember once again that a mature science is always a structural science. Recognizing that at the level of neurocognitive functioning, all human minds operate on the same fundamental principles, the anthropologist is in search of the general principles underlying the apparent differences in surface symbolism. Transpersonal experimentation in an alien symbolic milieu carries the method of participant observation to its ultimate limits.
Symbolic penetration is carried to the status of a field method.
Taken at its most commonsense meaning, it is the product of rank idealism, and recognizes no structural underpinnings to human experience whatsoever. This is the natural result of having been enculturated in different societies and having undergone different life experiences. There will always be a structural loading on any experience, no matter how pervasive the cultural loading. This fact is fundamental to Husserlian phenomenology, and is what makes awareness of the structures of consciousness by any human being possible, regardless of cultural background. As always, however, one must maintain a clear distinction between direct experience and the interpretation of experience.