Ego dissolution—the experience of losing one’s sense of self—is reported across a range of altered states, including psychedelic intoxication, meditative absorption, traumatic dissociation, and psychotic episodes. This paper proposes a unifying framework for these phenomena by introducing the concept of unlooping: the breakdown of recursive structures that construct and maintain identity....
A hallmark of Christian mysticism is negative theology, which refers to the school of thought that gives prominence to negation in reference to God. By denying the possibility to name God, negative theology cuts at the very root of our cognitive makeup—the human impulse to name and put things into categories—and thereby situates us “halfway between a ‘no longer’ and a ‘not yet’” (Iser, 1978, p....