What kind of instrument do we use when we examine ourselves—and how much of what we see is shaped by that instrument rather than by what we actually are? I propose here that self-reflective cognition operates through a system subject to two separable classes of aberration. Directional calibration bias (Axis I) describes a stable functional tendency to systematically inflate (positive bias) or...
This paper reconstructs, from Sanskrit sources, a philosophical account of how purposive consciousness persists in the forms it produces. The concept of saṅkalpa, read across Chāndogya Upaniṣad 7.4, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.5 and the ritual practice of declared intention, supplies the ground for what I call the investment hypothesis: humanly organised forms carry forward, as a structured...
The Ardhanārīśvara form has been read theologically as a statement about divine completeness, philosophically as a non-dual metaphysics of Prakāśa and Vimarśa, and ideologically as a symbol of gender complementarity. This paper proposes an additional interpretive register: reading the form as a practitioner-centred diagram of liberation, in which the relation between bounded identity and the...
ProblemA persistent observation troubles both positive psychology and contemplative science: people suffer in the midst of success. The wealthy report emptiness; the deeply loved report captivity; the lucid report paralysis; the renunciate remains seized by the identity of renouncing. Existing wellbeing frameworks—utility theory, composite indices, PERMA—explain this poorly because they share a...
This article introduces the Somatic Codification Hypothesis (SCH), a theoretical framework that models the karaṇa system of the Nāṭyaśāstra —the foundational Sanskrit treatise on performance—as a systematic codification of pre-reflective, stimulus-driven bodily responses, alongside, rather than in place of, its established expressive, devotional, and aesthetic readings. The claim advanced here...
Comparative philosophy of religion routinely confronts a methodological dilemma that is rarely named openly: most of its practitioners write about traditions to which they do not belong. The two dominant responses - comparative theology's insistence on confessional location (Clooney, Cornille) and constructivism's refusal of cross-traditional comparison altogether (Katz, Proudfoot) - each...
Between roughly 500 BCE and the thirteenth century CE, the Indian philosophical traditions — Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Buddhist Abhidharma, and the various schools of Vedānta — developed a precise, multi-term vocabulary for what we should now call the empirical psychology of habit. Four terms carry the conceptual weight: saṃskāra, the discrete imprint left in the mind by each act; vāsanā, the accumulated...
Dharma has been extensively defined by source (Jaimini), effect (Kaṇāda), etymology (Mahābhārata), and normative function (Dharmaśāstra), but has rarely been formalised as a mechanism of real-time consciousness-to-action generation. This paper proposes an operational framework at three distinct levels. At the philosophical level, Dharma is identified as the context-sensitive action trajectory...
This essay assembles a comparative lexicon of five virtues — self-discipline, humility, generosity, mindfulness, and perseverance — across five formative traditions: the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Confucian, the Islamic, and the Christian. Twenty-five technical terms are gathered (tapas, sīla, kè jǐ, taqwā, temperantia; vinaya, anattā, qiān, tawāḍuʿ, humilitas; dāna in two senses, shù, zakāh,...
The purpose of the present paper is not to validate the metaphysical claims of yogic traditions, but to examine whether their phenomenological descriptions correspond to measurable physiological processes. The proposal advanced here is explicitly theoretical: a hypothesis-generating model informed by preliminary retrospective clinical observations, not a claim of established proof. All...
Traditional definitions of liberation (such as moksha, nirvana, and kaivalya) across Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical traditions have remained empirically underspecified and conceptually divergent for over 2,500 years. This study proposes an operational definition of liberation asperpetual self-transcendence through infinite domain expansion, characterized by the inability to fix one's...
Background: Current developmental theories inadequately address the integration between analytical and holistic cognitive processing in consciousness evolution. Drawing from 30 years of clinical observation and comparative religious studies, we propose a theoretical framework wherein consciousness development depends on balanced cultivation of left-hemispheric (analytical) and right-hemispheric...
For over 2,500 years, liberation (moksha, nirvana, kaivalya) has remained the declared goal of multiple contemplative traditions, yet no operationally defined, cross-culturally applicable, empirically testable framework has existed for determining whether a given historical figure or living person has achieved it. This article presents a structural analysis of Krishna’s documented...
This article demonstrates that diverse soteriological traditions across six civilisational contexts (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian mystical, Islamic Sufi, Kabbalistic Jewish, and Graeco-Roman philosophical) instantiate a shared structural grammar of liberation despite having developed their models within substantially different philosophical, linguistic, and institutional contexts. A five-element...