Frontiers in Psychology
August 31, 2026
Swapan Samanta
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...
Frontiers in Psychology
August 5, 2026
Swapan Samanta
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...
International Journal of Sanskrit Research
July 1, 2026
Swapan Samanta
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...
International Journal of Sanskrit Research
July 1, 2026
Swapan Samanta
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...
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
June 10, 2026
Swapan Samanta, Nirmal Sultania, Mukul Roychoudhury et al.
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...
Front Psychol
May 4, 2026
Swapan Samanta
1 citation
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...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
March 12, 2026
Swapan Samanta
ABSTRACT Background and Aim: Contemporary definitions of meditation bifurcate into method-based accounts (attention regulation, present-moment awareness) and outcome-based accounts (stress reduction, neural coherence). Neither family defines meditation by its structural function within a liberation economy. The present article introduces a Three-Register Framework that provides, for the first...