Self-Boundary Dissolution in Meditation: A Phenomenological Investigation

From Confound to Clinical Tool: Mindfulness and the Observer Effect in Research and Therapy

The observer effect (OE), the idea that observing a phenomenon changes it, has important implications across scientific disciplines involving measurement and observation. While often viewed as a confounding variable to control for, this paper argues that the OE should be seriously accounted for, explored and systematically leveraged in research and clinical settings. Specifically, mindfulness practices that cultivate present-moment, non-judgmental awareness are proposed as a platform to account for, explore and intentionally harness the OE. In research contexts, mindfulness training may allow participants to provide more precise self-reports by minimizing reactive biases that perturb the observed phenomena. Empirical evidence suggests mindfulness enhances interoceptive awareness and reduces automatic judgment, potentially increasing measurement sensitivity, specificity and validity. Clinically, psychotherapies often aim to make unconscious patterns explicitly observable to the client, capitalizing on the transformative potential of observation. Mindfulness directly cultivates this capacity for meta-awareness, allowing individuals to "de-center" from rigid cognitive-emotional patterns fueling psychopathology. Rather than avoiding unpleasant experiences like cravings or anxiety, mindfulness guides individuals to simply observe these phenomena, reducing identification and reactivity. Mindfulness practices may leverage components of the OE, facilitating lasting psychological change. To further study the OE, developing an "Observer Effect Index" to code observer influence is proposed. Overall, this paper highlights the ubiquity of the OE and advocates developing methods to intentionally account for and apply observer influences across research and therapeutic contexts.

Meditation-Induced Self-Boundary Flexibility and Prosociality: A MEG and Behavioral Measures Study

BACKGROUND

In the last decade, empirical studies on the beneficial effects of meditation on prosocial capacities have accumulated, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Buddhist sources state that liberating oneself from a fixed view of the self by gaining access to its transitory and malleable nature leads to increased compassion and other prosocial traits. These, however, have not yet been empirically tested.

METHODS

The current study aims at filling this gap by first examining whether 44 long term meditators differ from 53 controls in prosocial capacities on different levels of the socio-cognitive hierarchy, and second by examining whether these are associated with meditation-induced 'selfless' states, operationalized here as the sense of boundary (SB) flexibility. We capitalize on our previous work on the neurophenomenology of mindfulness-induced SB dissolution, which yielded a neural index of SB-flexibility, solely for the meditators, and examine its correlations with a battery of validated behavioral prosociality tasks.

RESULTS

Our findings reveal enhanced low-level prosocial processes in meditators, including enhanced emotion recognition and reduced outgroup bias. We show the stability of SB flexibility over a year, demonstrating consistent high beta deactivation. The neural index of SB flexibility negatively correlates with recognizing negative emotions, suggesting a link to reduced social threat perception.

CONCLUSIONS

These results connect the neural correlates of SB flexibility to prosociality, supported by stable high beta deactivations. We expect the results to raise awareness regarding the prosocial potential of flexing one's self-boundaries through meditation.

An Overview of Neurophenomenological Approaches to Meditation and Their Relevance to Clinical Research

There is a renewed interest in taking phenomenology seriously in consciousness research, contemporary psychiatry, and neurocomputation. The neurophenomenology research program, pioneered by Varela, rigorously examines subjective experience using first-person methodologies, inspired by phenomenology and contemplative practices. This review explores recent advancements in neurophenomenological approaches, particularly their application to meditation practices and potential clinical research translations. First, we examine innovative multidimensional phenomenological assessment tools designed to capture subtle, dynamic shifts in experiential content and structures of consciousness during meditation. These experience sampling approaches enable shedding new light on the mechanisms and dynamic trajectories of meditation practice and retreat. Second, we highlight how empirical studies in neurophenomenology leverage the expertise of experienced meditators to deconstruct aversive and self-related processes, providing detailed first-person reports that guide researchers in identifying novel behavioral and neurodynamic markers associated with pain regulation, self-dissolution, and acceptance of mortality. Finally, we discuss a recent framework, deep computational neurophenomenology, that updates the theoretical ambitions of neurophenomenology to naturalize phenomenology. This framework uses the formalism of deep parametric active inference, where parametric depth refers to a property of generative models that can form beliefs about the parameters of their own modeling process. Collectively, these methodological innovations, centered around rigorous first-person investigation, highlight the potential of epistemologically beneficial mutual constraints among phenomenological, computational, and neurophysiological domains. This could contribute to an integrated understanding of the biological basis of mental illness, its treatment, and its tight connections to the lived experience of the patient.

Meditation and interoception: a conceptual framework for the narrative and experiential self

The concept of the self is complex and there is no consensus on what the self is. However, there are emerging patterns in the literature that point to two different selves, the narrative and experiential self. The narrative self refers to a conceptual or representational knowledge of the self that extends across time and manifests in self-reflection and personality assessments. The experiential self refers to first-person perception, moment-to-moment awareness, embodiment, and a sense of agency. These two selves are reliably linked to two distinct neural circuits, the default mode network (DMN) and the insula and salience network (SN). One of the consistent themes in the meditative and mindfulness literature is a change in the perspective of the self. In this paper, I will review how meditation alters those neural circuits providing a plausible mechanism that can explain the changes in the self. I also propose a rudimentary conceptual framework to account for some of the mixed results found throughout meditation literature.

The Psychedelic Renaissance: A Catholic Perspective

After being outlawed in 1970, psychedelics have reemerged in the consciousness of Western society in the form of the so-called psychedelic renaissance. This has led to widespread interest in psychedelic compounds being used for recreation, treatment of mental illness and addiction, and even the so-called "enhancement" of individuals and society. This renewed interest in psychedelics has resulted in seemingly endless publications in both the popular and the academic press, including authors from fields as diverse as philosophy, theology, pharmacology, neuroscience, and clinical medicine. A common thread in this developing literature is the claim that psychedelic compounds mediate their reported benefits by inducing the so-called psychedelic mystical experience (PME). The nature of PME is hotly debated, with some claiming that it is entirely psychological and others proposing that it involves contact with extramental reality. This raises a number of important questions for Catholics, especially whether PME should be considered properly "mystical," how PME compares with traditionally understood Catholic mysticism, and whether, and if so under what conditions, psychedelics could be licitly used by the Catholic faithful. This paper is an attempt to begin the process of reconciling empiric scientific data regarding psychedelics generally, and PME specifically, with Catholic philosophical and theological considerations, with the goal of both providing recommendations regarding the licitness of the use of psychedelic compounds and inviting conversation about this important and challenging topic.

Summary

Over the past 20 years, there has been a renewed interest in of psychedelics. Many articles have been published extoling the benefits of psychedelics, including for the treatment of mental illness and addiction, recreation, and "enhancement" of individuals and society. A common claim is that the benefits of psychedelics are a result of the psychedelic mystical experience (PME). This paper considers both the use of psychedelics and PME from the perspective of Catholic theology, provides recommendations about their use for the Catholic faithful, and invites further conversation about this important and challenging topic.

Short Summary

This paper considers challenges posed by psychedelics, considers licitness of use, and calls for further discussion.

Intrinsic neural timescales exhibit different lengths in distinct meditation techniques

Meditation encompasses a range of practices employing diverse induction techniques, each characterized by a distinct attentional focus. In Mantra meditation, for instance, practitioners direct their attention narrowly to a given sentence that is recursively repeated, while other forms of meditation such as Shoonya meditation are induced by a wider attentional focus. Here we aimed to identify the neural underpinnings and correlates associated with this spectrum of distinct attentional foci. To accomplish this, we used EEG data to estimate the brain's intrinsic neural timescales (INTs), that is, its temporal windows of activity, by calculating the Autocorrelation Window (ACW) of the EEG signal. The autocorrelation function measures the similarity of a timeseries with a time-lagged version of itself by correlating the signal with itself on different time lags, consequently providing an estimation of INTs length. Therefore, through using the ACW metric, our objective was to explore whether there is a correspondence between the length of the brain's temporal windows of activity and the width of the attentional scope during various meditation techniques. This was performed on three groups of highly proficient practitioners belonging to different meditation traditions, as well as a meditation-naïve control group. Our results indicated that practices with a wider attentional focus, like Shoonya meditation, exhibit longer ACW durations compared to practices requiring a narrower attentional focus, such as Mantra meditation or body-scanning Vipassana meditation. Together, we demonstrated that distinct meditation techniques with varying widths of attentional foci exhibit unique durations in their brain's INTs. This may suggest that the width of the attentional scope during meditation relates and corresponds to the width of the brain's temporal windows in its neural activity. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Our research uncovered the neural mechanisms that underpin the attentional foci in various meditation techniques. We revealed that distinct meditation induction techniques, featured by their range of attentional widths, are characterized by varying lengths of intrinsic neural timescales (INTs) within the brain, as measured by the Autocorrelation Window function. This finding may bridge the gap between the width of attentional windows (subjective) and the width of the temporal windows in the brain's neural activity (objective) during different meditation techniques, offering a new understanding of how cognitive and neural processes are related to each other. This work holds significant implications, especially in the context of the increasing use of meditation in mental health and well-being interventions. By elucidating the distinct neural foundations of different meditation techniques, our research aims to pave the way for developing more tailored and effective meditation-based treatments.

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.

Silence between words: Is solitude important for relatedness?

Chronic loneliness is a risk factor for physical and health problems, in part due to dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system. In contrast, temporary moments of positive solitude (passing good times alone and not feeling lonely) appear to have positive effects on mental health, social life, and creativity, and seems to be a buffer against loneliness. Herein, three ways of how solitude may have positive effects on health and relatedness are discussed, namely effects on enhancement of mind-wandering, interoceptive awareness, and spirituality. Solitude may facilitate (1) activation of the default mode network (DMN) underlying mind-wandering including daydreaming about other people; (2) activation of brain areas supporting interoceptive awareness; (3) deactivation of prefrontal cortex, or deactivation and decreased connectivity of the DMN, giving raise to susceptibility to spiritual experiences. The capacity to handle and enjoy solitude is a developmental process that may be difficult for many persons. Craving for social connections and external stimulation with digital technologies (e.g., internet, smartphones, social media) might be interfering with the development of the capacity for solitude and thereby increasing loneliness; this might be partly due to impaired interoceptive awareness and impaired functional mind-wandering (common in solitude). Congruently, overuse of digital technologies was associated with reduced activity, and reduced gray matter volume and density, in brain areas supporting interoceptive awareness, as well as with decreased connectivity of the DMN supporting creative insights. Solitude has been a relatively dismissed topic in neuroscience and health sciences, but a growing number of studies is highlighting its importance for well-being.

Clarifying and measuring the characteristics of experiences that involve a loss of self or a dissolution of its boundaries

Mystical experience, non-dual awareness, selflessness, self-transcendent experience, and ego-dissolution have become increasingly prominent constructs in meditation and psychedelic research. However, these constructs and their measures tend to be highly overlapping, imprecise, and poorly integrated with similar pathological experiences. The present study seeks to clarify the common factors involved in the characteristics of these experiences using precise distinctions across an array of experience contexts (including meditation, psychedelics, and psychopathology). Participants (N = 386) completed an online survey about an experience that involved either a dissolution of self-boundaries or a loss of selfhood. Confirmatory factor analyses resulted in 16 experience characteristics, including multiple types of changes in sense of self, co-occurring phenomenology, and cognitive and affective responses. Qualitative thematic analysis provided rich descriptions of experience characteristics. Taken together, results lead to a more specific measurement model and descriptive account of experiences involving a loss of self or self-boundary.

Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems

The ideas of self-observation and self-representation, and the concomitant idea of self-control, pervade both the cognitive and life sciences, arising in domains as diverse as immunology and robotics. Here, we ask in a very general way whether, and to what extent, these ideas make sense. Using a generic model of physical interactions, we prove a theorem and several corollaries that severely restrict applicable notions of self-observation, self-representation, and self-control. We show, in particular, that adding observational, representational, or control capabilities to a meta-level component of a system cannot, even in principle, lead to a complete meta-level representation of the system as a whole. We conclude that self-representation can at best be heuristic, and that self models cannot, in general, be empirically tested by the systems that implement them.

They have taken out my spinal cord: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of self-boundary in psychotic experience within a sociocentric culture

INTRODUCTION

In the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry, schizophrenia is described as a disturbance of the minimal self, i.e. the most basic form of self-awareness. This disturbance of the minimal self at the individual level is assumed to precede the intersubjective disturbances such as boundary weakening. However, the role of intersubjective disturbances in the emergence and recovery of schizophrenic experience still remains an open question. This phenomenological study focuses on how encounters with others shape self-experience during from psychosis by analyzing this process from the perspective of cultural differences, which in current research is especially under-researched. While most phenomenological accounts are based on first person-accounts from Western, individualist cultures where the self is conceived and experienced as separate to others, the present study qualitatively investigates psychotic experiences of patients from Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

METHOD

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or first episode psychosis. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Eight group experiential themes were identified across interviews.

RESULTS

The data suggest that intersubjective processes of boundary weakening such as invasiveness and hyperattunement may shape minimal self-experience and more specifically contribute to a mistrust of the own senses and to hyper-reflexivity. Interestingly, boundary weakening yields pervasive emotions and can be experienced as a threat to the whole social unit. On the one hand, the strengthening of self-other-boundary was achieved through opposition, closedness and withdrawal from others. On the other hand, this study suggests that the re-opening of self-other-boundaries in response to the crisis may help establish connectedness and may lead to recovery.

Moving beyond the lab: investigating empathy through the Empirical 5E approach

Empathy is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that plays a crucial role in human social interactions. Recent developments in social neuroscience have provided valuable insights into the neural underpinnings and bodily mechanisms underlying empathy. This methodology often prioritizes precision, replicability, internal validity, and confound control. However, fully understanding the complexity of empathy seems unattainable by solely relying on artificial and controlled laboratory settings, while overlooking a comprehensive view of empathy through an ecological experimental approach. In this article, we propose articulating an integrative theoretical and methodological framework based on the 5E approach (the "E"s stand for embodied, embedded, enacted, emotional, and extended perspectives of empathy), highlighting the relevance of studying empathy as an active interaction between embodied agents, embedded in a shared real-world environment. In addition, we illustrate how a novel multimodal approach including mobile brain and body imaging (MoBi) combined with phenomenological methods, and the implementation of interactive paradigms in a natural context, are adequate procedures to study empathy from the 5E approach. In doing so, we present the Empirical 5E approach (E5E) as an integrative scientific framework to bridge brain/body and phenomenological attributes in an interbody interactive setting. Progressing toward an E5E approach can be crucial to understanding empathy in accordance with the complexity of how it is experienced in the real world.

Change in Time Perception Following the Place of Pre-Existence Technique

Time perception is closely related to spatial and bodily perception, yet little is known about how this interrelationship is impacted by meditation and biological sex. To examine this, we studied the effects of a stepwise application of three meditation techniques, from focused attention, to open monitoring to non-dual meditation, encompassed in the Place of Pre-Existence technique (PPEt) on the subjective perception of time, space and body using a pre-post research design. A total of 280 participants (mean age = 47.09 years; SD = 10.13; 127:153 males to females) completed the Subjective Time, Self, Space inventory before and after PPEt. Following PPEt, participants perceived time passing as slowing down, while time intensity, relaxation, 'awareness of space' and 'awareness of body' increased, suggesting heightened mindfulness to these constructs following the training. Awareness of space revealed to be modulated by biological sex and meditation expertise, with males showing a decrease of spatial awareness as a function of meditation expertise while females showed an opposite pattern. The speed and intensity of the experience of time both correlated with body and space awareness. In line with previous studies demonstrating a connection between relaxation and perception of time, a significant correlation was found between relaxation and the subjective experience of the intensity of time. The current results are discussed in the context of the embodied experience of time, and the Sphere Model of Consciousness.

"I am feeling tension in my whole body": An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain

Introduction

Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on the enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others' emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation.

Objective

This study aims to enrich the knowledge of the empathic experience of pain using an experimental phenomenological method.

Materials and methods

Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories.

Results

Experiential access to the other person's painful experience involves four main themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations in coordination with the sportsperson's bodily actions. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. The temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant's own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them.

Discussion

We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of an embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory of non-interactive social experience.

Transforming adversity into an ally: A qualitative study of “feeding your demons” meditation

Contemplative science has made great strides in the empirical investigation of meditation practices, such as how mindfulness, compassion, and mantra practices impact health and well-being. However, meditation practices from the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition that use mental imagery to transform distressing beliefs and emotions have been little explored. We examined the “Feeding Your Demons” meditation, a secular adaptation of the traditional Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist meditation practice of Chöd (“Severance”) in a pilot, randomized controlled trial in which 61 community adults from the U.S. with prior meditation experience and moderate levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms (70% female)were randomly assigned to one month (15 meditation sessions) of “Feeding Your Demons” practice or a waitlist control group. Written diary entries were collected immediately after each meditation session. We used an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis approach to examine qualitative responses to two questions which probed (1) how participants made meaning of each meditation session and (2) how they thought it may impact their future thoughts and intentions for action. Five major themes were identified based on 20 codes developed through an inductive review of written responses across all participants. The themes included an enhanced sense of self-worth and confidence, empathy for the “demon” or rejected parts of oneself, increased self-awareness, an active-oriented “fierce” self-compassion, and an acceptance form of self-compassion. Overall, participants expressed an ability to reframe, or transform, their relationship to distressing thoughts, emotions, and experiences as they gained personal insights, self-compassion, and acceptance through the meditation process which in turn shaped their future intentions for action in the world. This research suggests that a secular form of a Vajrayana Buddhist practice may be beneficial for Western meditation practitioners with no prior training in Vajrayana Buddhism. Future research is warranted to understand its longer-term impacts on health and well-being.

Changes in Subjective Time and Self during Meditation

Simple Summary

Meditation induces an altered state of consciousness, which is often described by meditators as being in the present moment and losing one’s sense of time and self. Few studies have assessed these experiences. We invited 22 experienced meditators to participate in two experimental sessions lasting 20 min each (1) to meditate and (2) to read a story as a control condition. We measured their heart and breathing rates during these two sessions and conducted a metronome task before and after each session. In this task, participants had to group metronome beats into perceptual units, a measure of the duration of the present moment. In comparison to the reading condition, the heart and breathing rates showed a mix of increased as well as decreased bodily activity in the meditation condition. In the meditation condition, participants subjectively perceived their body boundaries less strongly, paid less attention to time, and felt time pass more quickly compared to the control condition. No differences between conditions were apparent for the metronome task. This study is the first to show how the sense of self and time are relatively diminished during meditation.

Abstract

This study examined the effects of meditative states in experienced meditators on present-moment awareness, subjective time, and self-awareness while assessing meditation-induced changes in heart-rate variability and breathing rate. A sample of 22 experienced meditators who practiced meditation techniques stressing awareness of the present moment (average 20 years of practice) filled out subjective scales pertaining to sense of time and the bodily self and accomplished a metronome task as an operationalization of present-moment awareness before and after a 20 min meditation session (experimental condition) and a 20 min reading session (control condition) according to a within-subject design. A mixed pattern of increased sympathetic and parasympathetic activity was found during meditation regarding heart-rate measures. Breathing intervals were prolonged during meditation. Participants perceived their body boundaries as less salient during meditation than while reading the story; they also felt time passed more quickly and they paid less attention to time during meditation. No significant differences between conditions became apparent for the metronome task. This is probably the first quantitative study to show how the experience of time during a meditation session is altered together with the sense of the bodily self.

Characteristics of Kundalini-Related Sensory, Motor, and Affective Experiences During Tantric Yoga Meditation

Traditional spiritual literature contains rich anecdotal reports of spontaneously arising experiences occurring during meditation practice, but formal investigation of such experiences is limited. Previous work has sometimes related spontaneous experiences to the Indian traditional contemplative concept of kundalini. Historically, descriptions of kundalini come out of Tantric schools of Yoga, where it has been described as a “rising energy” moving within the spinal column up to the brain. Spontaneous meditation experiences have previously been studied within Buddhist and Christian practices and within eclectic groups of contemplative practitioners. Prior explorations of kundalini have emphasized extreme experiences, sometimes having clinical consequences. We conducted a first such investigation of kundalini-related experiences within a sample of meditators from a single Tantric Yoga tradition (known as Ananda Marga) that emphasizes the role of kundalini. We developed a semi-structured questionnaire to conduct an exploratory pilot investigation of spontaneous sensory, motor and affective experiences during meditation practice. In addition to identifying the characteristics of subjective experiences, we measured quantity of meditation, supplemental practices, trait affect and trait mindfulness. We administered it to 80 volunteers at two Ananda Marga retreats. Among reported experiences, we found the highest prevalence for positive mood shifts, followed by motor and then sensory experiences. The frequency of spontaneous experiences was not related to the quantity of practiced meditation or trait measures of mindfulness and affect. Self-reports included multiple descriptions of rising sensations, sometimes being directly called kundalini. Experiences with rising sensations were complex and many included references to positive affect, including ecstatic qualities. There were also reports of spontaneous anomalous experiences. These experiences of rising sensations resemble prior clinical descriptions that were considered kundalini-related. The individuals who reported rising sensations could not be distinguished from other participants based on the incidence of experiences, quantity of meditation practice, or trait measures of mindfulness and affect. In contrast, greater amount of Tantric Yoga meditation practice was associated with greater positive affect, less negative affect and greater mindfulness. Further study of these exploratory findings and how they may be related to spiritual and well-being goals of meditation is warranted along with scientific investigation of purported kundalini phenomena.

Nothingness Is All There Is: An Exploration of Objectless Awareness During Sleep

Recent years have seen a heightened focus on the study of minimal forms of awareness during sleep to advance the study of consciousness and understand what makes a state conscious. This focus draws on an increased interest in anecdotical descriptions made by classic Indian philosophical traditions about unusual forms of awareness during sleep. For instance, in the so-called state of witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, one is said to reach a state that goes beyond ordinary dreaming and abide in a state of just awareness, a state in which one is not aware of anything else other than one’s own awareness. Moreover, for these traditions, this state is taken to be the essence or background of consciousness. Reports on such a state opens the door to exciting new lines of research in the study of consciousness, such as inquiry into the so-called objectless awareness during sleep—states of awareness that lack an ordinary object of awareness. In this two-staged research project, we attempted to find the phenomenological blueprints of such forms of awareness during sleep in 18 participants by conducting phenomenological interviews, informed by a novel tool in qualitative research, the micro-phenomenological interview (MPI) method. Following a phenomenological analysis, we isolated a similar phase across 12 reported experiences labeled as “nothingness phase” since it described what participants took to be an experience of “nothingness.” This common phase was characterized by minimal sense of self—a bodiless self, yet experienced as being “somewhere”—, the presence of non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, an absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and an awareness of the state as it unfolded.

Determining states of consciousness in the electroencephalogram based on spectral, complexity, and criticality features

This study was based on the contemporary proposal that distinct states of consciousness are quantifiable by neural complexity and critical dynamics. To test this hypothesis, it was aimed at comparing the electrophysiological correlates of three meditation conditions using nonlinear techniques from the complexity and criticality framework as well as power spectral density. Thirty participants highly proficient in meditation were measured with 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG) during one session consisting of a task-free baseline resting (eyes closed and eyes open), a reading condition, and three meditation conditions (thoughtless emptiness, presence monitoring, and focused attention). The data were analyzed applying analytical tools from criticality theory (detrended fluctuation analysis, neuronal avalanche analysis), complexity measures (multiscale entropy, Higuchi's fractal dimension), and power spectral density. Task conditions were contrasted, and effect sizes were compared. Partial least square regression and receiver operating characteristics analysis were applied to determine the discrimination accuracy of each measure. Compared to resting with eyes closed, the meditation categories emptiness and focused attention showed higher values of entropy and fractal dimension. Long-range temporal correlations were declined in all meditation conditions. The critical exponent yielded the lowest values for focused attention and reading. The highest discrimination accuracy was found for the gamma band (0.83-0.98), the global power spectral density (0.78-0.96), and the sample entropy (0.86-0.90). Electrophysiological correlates of distinct meditation states were identified and the relationship between nonlinear complexity, critical brain dynamics, and spectral features was determined. The meditation states could be discriminated with nonlinear measures and quantified by the degree of neuronal complexity, long-range temporal correlations, and power law distributions in neuronal avalanches.

Predictors and potentiators of psychedelic-occasioned mystical experiences

Mystical experiences are often described as being among the most profound and meaningful events of a person’s life. Their occurrence, while a normal but uncommon phenomenon, is reliably occasioned by psychedelic substances under the appropriate conditions, although care is needed around the context of usage to help ensure safe and beneficial experiences. The occurrence of mystical experiences in psychedelic sessions is a key mediator of the sustained psychological benefits reported in both healthy and clinical populations. Certain factors including set and setting, drug dosage, trait absorption, drug type, intention and states of surrender and acceptance all predict or influence the occurrence of mystical experiences. Various additional factors may further contribute to the occurrence and intensity of mystical experiences and enhance their long-term benefits, including music, meditation and spiritual practices and nature-based settings. This review examines these factors and considers how they might be optimised to increase the chances of a mystical experience occurring, while also considering factors that are negatively associated with mystical experiences with suggestions on how these might be mitigated where applicable. Finally, potential future research avenues for furthering our knowledge of psychedelic mystical experiences and how their benefits might be enhanced is suggested. Maximising the potential for the occurrence of mystical experiences is an important aspect of the beneficial application of psychedelics.

Self-Regulation of Seat of Attention Into Various Attentional Stances Facilitates Access to Cognitive and Emotional Resources: An EEG Study

This study provides evidence supporting the operation of a novel cognitive process of a somatic seat of attention, or ego-center, whose somatic location is under voluntary control and that provides access to differential emotional resources. Attention has typically been studied in terms of what it is directed toward, but it can also be associated with a localized representation in the body image that is experienced as the source or seat of attention-an aspect that has previously only been studied by subjective techniques. Published studies of this phenomenon under terms such as egocenter or self-location suggest that the seat of attention can be situated in various ways within the experienced body, resulting in what are here referred to as different attentional stances. These studies also provide evidence that changes in attentional stance are associated with differences in cognitive skill, emotional temperament, self-construal, and social and moral attitudes, as well as with access to certain states of consciousness. In the present study, EEG results from multiple trials of each of 11 specific attentional stances confirmed that patterns of neural activity associated with the voluntarily control of attentional stances can be reliably measured, providing evidence for a differential neural substrate underlying the subjective location of the seat of attention. Additionally, brain activation patterns for the attentional stances showed strong correlations with EEG signatures associated with specific positive emotional states and with arousal, confirming that differential locations of the seat of attention can be objectively associated with different emotion states, as implied in previous literature. The ability to directly manage the seat of attention into various attentional stances holds substantial potential for facilitating access to specific cognitive and emotional resources in a new way.

Qualitative analysis of first-person accounts of noetic experiences

The term "noetic" comes from the Greek word noēsis/noētikos that means inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding. Strong cultural taboos exist about sharing these experiences. Thus, many may not feel comfortable transparently discussing or researching these topics, despite growing evidence that these experiences may be real. The study's objective was to qualitatively evaluate first-hand accounts of noetic experiences. 521 English-speaking adults from around the world completed an online survey that collected demographic data and four open-ended questions about noetic experiences. Thematic analysis was used to characterize the data. The ten most used codes were expressing to or sharing with others, impacting decision-making, intuition/"just knowing," meditation/hypnosis, inner visions, setting intentions/getting into the "state," healing others, writing for self, and inner voice. There were five main themes identified: 1. Ways of Engagement; 2. Ways of Knowing; 3. Types of Information; 4. Ways of Affecting; and 5. Ways of Expressing. Subthemes. Future research will include investigating the nuances of these themes and also establishing standardized methods for evaluating them. This would also then inform curricula and therapies to support people in these experiences.

Qualitative analysis of first-person accounts of noetic experiences

The term "noetic" comes from the Greek word noēsis/noētikos that means inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding. Strong cultural taboos exist about sharing these experiences. Thus, many may not feel comfortable transparently discussing or researching these topics, despite growing evidence that these experiences may be real. The study's objective was to qualitatively evaluate first-hand accounts of noetic experiences. 521 English-speaking adults from around the world completed an online survey that collected demographic data and four open-ended questions about noetic experiences. Thematic analysis was used to characterize the data. The ten most used codes were expressing to or sharing with others, impacting decision-making, intuition/"just knowing," meditation/hypnosis, inner visions, setting intentions/getting into the "state," healing others, writing for self, and inner voice. There were five main themes identified: 1. Ways of Engagement; 2. Ways of Knowing; 3. Types of Information; 4. Ways of Affecting; and 5. Ways of Expressing. Subthemes. Future research will include investigating the nuances of these themes and also establishing standardized methods for evaluating them. This would also then inform curricula and therapies to support people in these experiences.