Advanced meditation includes meditative endpoints that are outcomes of meditation practice and occur with time and mastery of meditation. The “cessation” event (c.f. nirodha in Theravada Buddhism) is a meditative endpoint characterized by a loss of consciousness followed by a sense of mental reset and deep clarity. In general, organization of brain activity exists along a “criticality”...
That meditation is similar to mental training is a widely used analogy that seeks to capture thegrowth-oriented processes that unfold through the intentional performance of mental activities.However, despite its intuitive appeal, this notion remains conceptually underdeveloped. To ourknowledge, no interdisciplinary dialogue has been established with training science—a fielddedicated to the...
Emergent phenomena (EP)—sudden unusual mental or somatic experiences—are surprisingly widespread. Although EP often lead to positive impacts on well-being, they are sometimes followed by intense suffering. We examine potential risk factors and protective factors for EP and related suffering using logistic regression on general-population survey data (n = 3,133). The four strongest risk factors...
Mindfulness meditation is a contemplative practice that is informed by Buddhism. It has been proven effective for improving mental and physical health in clinical and non-clinical contexts. To date, mainstream dialogue and scientific research on mindfulness has focused primarily on short-term mindfulness training and applications of mindfulness for reducing stress. Understanding advanced...
Meditation, psychedelics, and other similar practices or induction methods that can modulate conscious experience, are becoming increasingly popular in clinical and non-clinical settings. The phenomenology associated with such practices or modalities is vast. Many similar effects and experiences are also reported to occur spontaneously. We argue that this experiential range is still not fully...
Adoption of potentially consciousness-altering practices may be leading to a rise in emergent phenomena (EP): sudden unusual mental or somatic experiences often interpreted as spiritual, mystical, energetic, or magical in nature. It is unclear how frequently these altered states of consciousness occur and what the clinical implications may be. Anecdotal accounts and prior literature suggest...
Psychedelic-assisted therapy studies suggest that the induction of "mystical experiences" combined with psycho-therapy is a possible intervention for psychiatric illness. Advanced meditation may induce powerful experiences comparable to psychedelics. We investigated effects of an intensive meditation practice called Fire Kasina. Six individuals completed a retreat, and participated in an...
Mindfulness meditation is a contemplative practice informed by Buddhism that targets the development of present-focused awareness and non-judgment of experience. Interest in mindfulness is burgeoning, and it has been shown to be effective in improving mental and physical health in clinical and non-clinical contexts. In this report, for the first time, we used electroencephalography (EEG)...
Abstract Millions of people globally have learned mindfulness meditation with the goal of improving health and well-being outcomes in both clinical and non-clinical contexts. An estimated half of these practitioners follow mindfulness teachers’ recommendations to continue regular meditation after completion of initial instruction, but it is unclear whether benefits are strengthened by regular...