Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience

Suspending the Embodied Self in Meditation Attenuates Beta Oscillations in the Posterior Medial Cortex

Human experience is imbued by the sense of being an embodied agent. The investigation of such basic self-consciousness has been hampered by the difficulty of comprehensively modulating it in the laboratory while reliably capturing ensuing subjective changes. The present preregistered study fills this gap by combining advanced meditative states with principled phenomenological interviews: 46 long-term meditators (19 female, 27 male) were instructed to modulate and attenuate their embodied self-experience during magnetoencephalographic monitoring. Results showed frequency-specific (high-beta band) activity reductions in frontoparietal and posterior medial cortices (PMC). Importantly, PMC reductions were driven by a subgroup describing radical embodied self-disruptions, including suspension of agency and dissolution of a localized first-person perspective. Neural changes were correlated with lifetime meditation and interview-derived experiential changes, but not with classical self-reports. The results demonstrate the potential of integrating in-depth first-person methods into neuroscientific experiments. Furthermore, they highlight neural oscillations in the PMC as a central process supporting the embodied sense of self.

An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a 'loss-of-function lesion premise,' according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon.

An updated classification of meditation methods using principles of taxonomy and systematics

This paper revisits the proposal for the classification of meditation methods which we introduced in our initial 2013 publication, "Toward a Universal Taxonomy and Definition of Meditation". At that time, we advanced the thesis that meditation methods could be effectively segregated into three orthogonal categories by integrating the taxonomic principle of functional essentialism and the paradigm of Affect and Cognition; and we presented relevant research findings which supported that assertion. This iteration expands upon those theoretical and methodological elements by articulating a more comprehensive Three Tier Classification System which accounts for the full range of meditation methods; and demonstrates how recent neuroscience research continues to validate and support our thesis. This paper also introduces a novel criterion-based protocol for formulating classification systems of meditation methods, and demonstrates how this model can be used to compare and evaluate various other taxonomy proposals that have been published over the past 15 years.

Conscious entry into sleep: Yoga Nidra and accessing subtler states of consciousness

Human sleep is a dynamic and complex process comprising sleep stages with REM and NREM sleep characteristics that come in cycles. During sleep, there is a loss of responsiveness or a perceptual loss of conscious awareness with increasing thresholds for wakefulness as sleep progresses. There are brief bursts of wakefulness or Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO) throughout a nocturnal sleep. Conscious experience during nocturnal sleep is known to occur during lucid dreaming when one is aware during dreams when the dream is occurring. Most cultures have known lucid dreaming since antiquity. However, conscious experience during dreamless sleep is relatively lesser known. Nevertheless, selected Indo-Tibetan meditation literature has documented it since antiquity. Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE) research describes lucid dreamless sleep as its target phenomenology. "Conscious entry into sleep" posits tonic alertness is maintained post sleep onset through the sleep stages for sustained durations of time until an eventual loss of conscious awareness. Entering sleep consciously and being aware during dreamless sleep, including Slow Wave Activity, is plausibly to be in the state of "Yoga Nidra" or Yogic sleep. An attentive sleepful state provides access to subtler states of consciousness and significantly deepens the levels of silence. It is phenomenologically distinct from hypnagogic hallucinations and lucid dreaming. Unfortunately, sleep studies validating this phenomenology are yet to be done. Therefore, an experimental methodology akin to those used in lucid dreaming experiments is described.

The why of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness: Its main functions and the mechanisms underpinning it

What distinguishes conscious information processing from other kinds of information processing is its phenomenal aspect (PAC), the-what-it-is-like for an agent to experience something. The PAC supplies the agent with a sense of self, and informs the agent on how its self is affected by the agent’s own operations. The PAC originates from the activity that attention performs to detect the state of what I define “the self” (S). S is centered and develops on a hierarchy of innate and acquired values, and is primarily expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems; it maps the agent’s body and cognitive capacities, and its interactions with the environment. The detection of the state of S by attention modulates the energy level of the organ of attention (OA), i.e., the neural substrate that underpins attention. This modulation generates the PAC. The PAC can be qualified according to five dimensions: qualitative, quantitative, hedonic, temporal and spatial. Each dimension can be traced back to a specific feature of the modulation of the energy level of the OA.

Defining Transformative Experiences: A Conceptual Analysis

The concept of transformative experience (TE) has been widely explored by several disciplines from philosophy to neurobiology, and in different domains, from the spiritual to the educational one. This attitude has engendered heterogeneous models to explain this phenomenon. However, a consistent and clear understanding of this construct remains elusive. The aim of this work is to provide an initial comprehensive interdisciplinary, cross-domain, up-to-date, and integrated overview on the concept of TEs. Firstly, all the models and theories on TEs were reviewed to extract and analyze TEs’ main components emerging from different disciplines. Then, this preliminary analysis was integrated with an in-depth examination of redundancies and particularities across domains and disciplines, to provide an integrated theoretical framework of TEs and a preliminary interdisciplinary operational definition of TEs. This examination, in turn, can help organize current research and theories, thus providing suggestions for operationalizing TEs as well as encouraging new interdisciplinary research endeavors.

Knowing the Knowing. Non-dual Meditative Practice From an Enactive Perspective

Within a variety of contemplative traditions, non-dual-oriented practices were developed to evoke an experiential shift into a mode of experiencing in which the cognitive structures of self-other and subject-object subside. These practices serve to de-reify the enactment of an observing witness which is usually experienced as separate from the objects of awareness. While several contemplative traditions, such as Zen, Mahāmudrā, Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta emphasize the importance of such a non-dual insight for the cultivation of genuine wellbeing, only very few attempts in contemplative science have turned toward the study of non-dual-oriented practices. This article starts from a recently developed theoretical cognitive science framework that models the requirements of a temporary experiential shift into a mode of experiencing free from cognitive subject-object structure. This model inspired by the enactive approach contributes theoretically grounded hypotheses for the much-needed rigorous study of non-dual practices and non-dual experiences. To do so, three steps are taken: first, common elements of non-dual-oriented practices are outlined. Second, the main ideas of enactive cognitive science are presented including a principled theoretical model of what is required for a shift to a pure non-dual experience, that is, an experiential mode that is unbound by subject-object duality. Third, this synthesized theoretical model of the requirements for the recognition of the non-dual is then compared with a specific non-dual style of meditation practice, namely, Mahāmudrā practice from Tibetan Buddhism. This third step represents a heuristic for evaluating the external coherence of the presented model. With this, the aim is to point toward a principled enactive view of non-dual meditative practice. In drawing the implications of the presented model, this article ends with an outlook toward next steps for further developing a research agenda that may fully address the concrete elements of non-dual practices.

Advaita: Oneness as a Lived Reality—Examining Aspects of Profound and a Radical Psychology

It is all good to say, that the world is one! Are these idealistic/poetic ideas or could there be psychological pathways to experience oneness as a continuous realisation? This is not a question of philosophy or intellectual argumentation, but a question of living and being. There has been now interest in non-dual awareness in research as well ( Josipovic, 2014 ). The objective of this article is to introduce a radical worldview—advaita vedānta that leads to profound cognitive, affective and behavioural implications of well-being beyond the surface level ideas of happiness. Advaita—which means ‘not-two’ is the most profound and radical of psychological theories Indic civilization has experienced and accepted as the epitome—the crown jewel. The Vedāntic worldview and practice with the background throb of all Indic values—of inclusion, love and truth vests in Advaita—oneness. In popular imagination, it has been both esoteric-cised and yet has remained un-commodified. Contrary to popular ideas that look at advaita as a speculative philosophy, advaita is understood as a rich psychological theory with a basis in cognition, knowing, as well as a living in oneness. The students of modern psychology, especially, in India are left poorer, if they are unable to review advaita and yet study consciousness, which is a booming area of research in modern psychology. Advaita is a continuous living realisation—termed as Jīvanmukti, the Vedāntic ideal of being free, while living. Examining the primary Saṃskrit text—Jīvanmukti-viveka, I describe Jīvanmukti—of living in continuous realisation of oneness, till the body drops down, as stated by the great muni, whose above-mentioned abhyāsa grantha—the application manual, is used across Hindu spiritual frameworks and monastic orders, till today.

Implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness or consciousness as such

Consciousness is multi-dimensional but is most often portrayed with a two-dimensional (2D) map that has global levels or states on one axis and phenomenal contents on the other. On this map, awareness is conflated either with general alertness or with phenomenal content. This contributes to ongoing difficulties in the scientific understanding of consciousness. Previously, I have proposed that consciousness as such or nondual awareness-a basic non-conceptual, non-propositional awareness in itself free of subject-object fragmentation-is a unique kind that cannot be adequately specified by this 2D map of states and contents. Here, I propose an implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness to be added as the z-axis to the existing 2D map of consciousness. This gradient informs about the degree to which nondual awareness is manifest in any experience, independent of the specifics of global state or local content. Alternatively, within the multi-dimensional state space model of consciousness, nondual awareness can be specified by several vectors, each representing one of its properties. In the first part, I outline nondual awareness or consciousness as such in terms of its phenomenal description, its function and its neural correlates. In the second part, I explore the implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness and how including it as an additional axis clarifies certain features of everyday dualistic experiences and is especially relevant for understanding the unitary and nondual experiences accessed via different contemplative methods, mind-altering substances or spontaneously.

Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation

A fundamental aspect of the sense of self is its pre-reflective dimension specifying the self as a bounded and embodied knower and agent. Being a constant and tacit feature structuring consciousness, it eludes robust empirical exploration. Recently, deep meditative states involving global dissolution of the sense of self have been suggested as a promising path for advancing such an investigation. To that end, we conducted a comprehensive phenomenological inquiry into meditative self-boundary alteration. The induced states were systematically characterized by changes in six experiential features including the sense of location, agency, first-person perspective, attention, body sensations, and affective valence, as well as their interaction with meditative technique and overall degree of dissolution. Quantitative analyses of the relationships between these phenomenological categories highlighted a unitary dimension of boundary dissolution. Notably, passive meditative gestures of "letting go", which reduce attentional engagement and sense of agency, emerged as driving the depth of dissolution. These findings are aligned with an enactive approach to the pre-reflective sense of self, linking its generation to sensorimotor activity and attention-demanding processes. Moreover, they set the stage for future phenomenologically informed analyses of neurophysiological data and highlight the utility of combining phenomenology and intense contemplative training for a scientific characterization of processes giving rise to the basic sense of being a bounded self.

The Phenomenology of “Pure” Consciousness as Reported by an Experienced Meditator of the Tibetan Buddhist Karma Kagyu Tradition. Analysis of Interview Content Concerning Different Meditative States

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness.

The Technology of Awakening: Experiments in Zen Phenomenology

In this paper, I investigate the phenomenology of awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism. In this tradition, to awaken is to ‘see your true nature’. In particular, the two aspects of awakening are: (1) seeing that the nature of one’s self or mind is empty or void and (2) an erasing of the usual (though merely apparent) boundary between subject and object. In the early Zen tradition, there are many references to awakening as chopping off your head, not having eyes, nose and tongue, and seeing your ‘Original Face’. These references bear a remarkable resemblance to an approach to awakening developed by Douglas Harding. I will guide the reader through a series of Harding’s first-person experiments which investigate the gap where you cannot see your own head. I will endeavour to show that these methods, although radically different from traditional meditation techniques, result in an experience with striking similarities to Zen accounts of awakening, in particular, as experiencing oneself as empty or void and yet totally united with the given world. The repeatability and apparent reliability of these first-person methods opens up a class of awakening experience to empirical investigation and has the potential to provide new insights into nondual traditions.