PLoS One
November 7, 2018
Cassandra Vieten, Helané Wahbeh, B Rael Cahn et al.
124 citations
A survey of 1120 meditators found that most report having had anomalous and extraordinary experiences during meditation, such as mystical, transpersonal, or difficult phenomena. While meditation research has largely focused on clinical effectiveness and neural correlates, these less-studied experiences may be crucial for psychological and spiritual development, act as mediators of meditation's benefits, or be important outcomes themselves. A task force of researchers and teachers developed recommendations to expand research into these areas, which represent largely uncharted scientific terrain suitable for rigorous investigation.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Helané Wahbeh, Dean Radin, Cedric Cannard et al.
37 citations
Consciousness remains a profound mystery. Mainstream neuroscience assumes it arises solely from brain neurons, but the origin of subjective experience (qualia) is unexplained. David Chalmers called this the 'hard problem.' This review argues the hard problem may stem from flawed materialist assumptions. It examines phenomena suggesting consciousness can extend beyond the brain and body in space and time, called non-local properties. These effects vaguely resemble quantum entanglement, but mechanisms are highly speculative. The authors suggest post-materialistic models may be needed to resolve the conceptual impasse.
Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine
January 1, 2022
Helané Wahbeh, Garret Yount, Cassandra Vieten et al.
9 citations
People who feel more interconnected with others and nature tend to report better well-being, including more positive emotions and compassion, and less pain and sleep disturbance. In a study of adults attending personal development workshops, measures of interconnectedness were positively correlated with well-being and positive affect, and negatively correlated with sleep disturbance and pain. Extended perception tasks showed no link to interconnectedness or well-being. After workshops, participants reported improved well-being, interconnectedness, positive emotion, and compassion, and reduced sleep disturbances, negative emotion, and pain. Workshop formats involving lecture, small groups, pairs, and discussion predicted well-being improvements, as did content including meditation and technology tools. Meditation was the most consistent predictor of positive well-being changes. Conscientiousness was the only individual characteristic that predicted changes, but its effects were mixed.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
April 3, 2023
Helané Wahbeh, Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin
A survey of 442 academic professionals found that most believe in some form of afterlife, with confidence in survival and paranormal belief strongly correlated. Women reported higher confidence and belief than men. The most persuasive proposed experiments for testing survival of consciousness were a controlled prospective study of veridical out-of-body perceptions during a near-death experience, a mediumship experiment, and a reincarnation experiment. The least persuasive was survival as computer-based artificial intelligence. The findings suggest that well-designed experiments could influence skeptics' beliefs, though academics hold a wide range of views on the topic.
Bio Systems
January 1, 2023
Stuart Kauffman, Dean Radin
The mind-brain relationship may be partially quantum, not fully explained by classical physics. The authors propose a model with two ontological elements: Possibles (not obeying Aristotle's law of excluded middle) and Actuals (obeying it). Measurement registered by an observer's mind converts Possibles into Actuals, suggesting mind may be quantum and play an active role in the physical world. This aligns with proposals by Heisenberg (1958), von Neumann (1955), and Stapp. Empirical evidence supports these possibilities.
Explore (New York, N.Y.)
January 1, 2013
Yung-Jong Shiah, Dean Radin
Drinking oolong tea that had been intentionally treated by Buddhist monks improved mood more than drinking ordinary tea from the same source. Over seven days, 189 Taiwanese adults in Kaohsiung recorded their mood each evening. On three of those days, participants drank 600 mL of tea twice daily. One group blindly received tea treated with good intentions; the other received untreated tea. Those who drank the treated tea showed a greater mood increase (Cohen's d = 0.65). Believing one was drinking treated tea also produced a large mood improvement, but only when actually drinking the treated tea, suggesting that belief and the intentional treatment interact.