Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
July 12, 2026
Gerd Leidig
Meditation should be understood not as changing internal mental models but as transforming how a person participates in the world through embodied, affective, social, and existential engagement. The Neuro-Existential Architecture System (NEAS) proposes three modes of predictive engagement: prereflective transparency, where experience feels like self and affect; the Witnessing-Space, where mental events become observable phenomena; and the Logos-Vektor/Logos-Prior, which reshapes deeper existential orientations. Shamatha cultivates the Witnessing-Space, while Vipassana activates insight into impermanence, suffering, and non-self. The three marks of existence are contemplatively cultivated Logos-Priors, not metaphysical claims. Awakening is a fragile, recurrent recalibration of engagement, not a final attainment.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 29, 2026
Gerd Leidig
Active Inference is often interpreted as a theory where the brain builds internal models of an external world, but this article argues it is better understood as enactive inference: a theory of embodied, affectively regulated coupling between organism and environment. Free-energy minimization cannot be reduced to passive sensory-surprise reduction, as shown by the dark-room problem, but must relate to expected free energy, exploration, viability, and biological normativity. Introducing processual perspectivism as an ontology of perspective-bearing life, the article posits that mind is not an inner representational object but the perspectival form of embodied self-organization, and consciousness is the intrinsic, affectively structured perspective of a living system regulating its openness to the world.
Preprints.org
March 16, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Arthur Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will, when stripped of its ontological commitments, offers rich descriptions of embodied agency and selfhood that align with contemporary cognitive science. This paper reconstructs Schopenhauer's ideas in four stages: interpreting his unity of body and will through the Free Energy Principle; situating his fragmented self within Gallagher's Pattern Theory of Self; framing his ethics of compassion as a precursor to a Pattern Theory of Compassion; and explaining his pessimism as predictive dysregulation. The approach uses cognitive models as a functional grammar for phenomenal experience without reducing its metaphysical depth.
Preprints.org
March 4, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Consciousness and optimal brain-world alignment emerge when the neural system maintains a precise balance between excitatory and inhibitory signaling. The affective qualities of elation and anxiety are not mere accompaniments but active control parameters: elation enhances confidence in prior beliefs (excitatory precision), while anxiety heightens sensory vigilance (inhibitory precision). This balance is homeostatically regulated through sleep-wake cycles, with NREM and REM sleep serving as subcritical and supercritical excursions, respectively. The framework integrates the Temporo-Spatial Theory of Consciousness with the Affective Criticality Hypothesis, offering a neurobiologically grounded mechanism for brain-world alignment that transforms the hard problem of consciousness into a problem of precision-regulated inference.
Preprints.org
February 26, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Awakening is redefined not as a final, irreversible state described in Asian traditions but as an ongoing recognition of reality's structure—a moment when consciousness becomes aware of itself, entering meta-awareness. Within a framework called processual perspectivism, a 'Witnessing-Space' is the central, metastable configuration of an enactive inference system. Awakening involves a radical reorganization of this space: moving from fragmented, emotionally dysregulated patterns to an integrated perspective where the system sees its own generative architecture. This Witnessing-Space connects process-ontological philosophy, brain dynamics, and existential spiritual self-realization. The study of awakening may offer a key to resolving the mind-body problem by revealing how phenomenal appearance is generated.
Preprints.org
January 13, 2026
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Spirituality can be understood as the brain's highest-order regulatory pattern, operating on the slowest intrinsic neural timescales to integrate sensory and emotional information over long periods. This 'spiritual self-pattern' functions as a long-term prior that modulates the balance between predictive confidence and corrective sensitivity, maintaining mental health. Meaning arises from successfully integrating sensory chaos into these temporal models, preserving consciousness against existential entropy. Spiritual resonance involves metastable synchronization, while spiritual dissonance results from pathological precision leading to fanaticism or despair. The model provides a mechanism for spiritually integrated psychotherapy, where the therapist manages criticality to restore self-organization.
Preprints.org
November 28, 2025
Gerd Leidig
preprint
Consciousness is not a mysterious extra property to be explained but the inherent control structure of living, self-organizing systems. The 'Hard Problem' arises from outdated assumptions about substance and binary logic, not from an actual gap in understanding. By integrating enactive inference, neurobiological criticality, and the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium steady states, consciousness is revealed as the affectively regulated process that enables life to maintain itself. It is not the puzzle to solve but the solution to how living systems persist.
Preprints.org
October 22, 2025
Gerd Leidig
preprint
The brain's spatiotemporal dynamics act as a common currency linking neuronal and mental processes. A multi-layered synthesis of theories from Northoff, Buonomano, Friston, and Carhart-Harris, extended by affective and homeostatic regulation of predictive processing, shows that the dynamic balance of two limbic memory systems (E/I balance) realizes precision weighting as lived affect—confidence versus anxiety. The sleep cycle recalibrates the brain's spatiotemporal architecture daily through oscillation between sub- and super-critical states. This neurodynamic architecture exemplifies multi-perspectival monism: a single psycho-physical process accessible from both third-person (E/I balance, criticality) and first-person (affect, consciousness) perspectives, forming a naturalistic, non-reductive, processual ontology of mind.
Preprints.org
September 1, 2025
Gerd Leidig
preprint
True awakening is not a permanent, static state but an ongoing, dynamic process of impermanence. Drawing on Heraclitus's Aletheia and Buddhist teachings on attachment, the essay argues that the human desire for a fixed nirvana is a form of compensation for perceived incompleteness. Using Karl Friston's predictive coding and Georg Northoff's spatiotemporal theory of consciousness as metaphors, the brain is described as a master of compensation that temporarily deconstructs its rigid narrative self to experience a timeless present. Liberation lies in embracing the continuous zigzag path of reason, not in achieving a final state. This perpetual negotiation between finitude and hope constitutes the essence of human existence.