Reducing and deducing the structures of consciousness through meditation.
Frontiers in Psychology 2022 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.884512 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Ananda marga Tantra yoga Non-dual States of consciousness Transcendent |
| Citations | 16 |
| Key points | Proposes that Tantric Yoga meditation, based on Sarkar's 'cognitivization' of Samkhya philosophy, provides a systematic method for first-person investigation of consciousness by reducing its subject-object structures through stepwise meditative procedures. |
Abstract
According to many first-person accounts, consciousness comprises a subject-object structure involving a mental action or attitude starting from the "subjective pole" upon an object of experience. In recent years, many paradigms have been developed to manipulate and empirically investigate the object of consciousness. However, well-controlled investigation of subjective aspects of consciousness has been more challenging. One way, subjective aspects of consciousness are proposed to be studied is using meditation states that alter its subject-object structure. Most work to study consciousness in this way has been done using Buddhist meditation traditions and techniques. There is another meditation tradition that has been around for at least as long as early Buddhist traditions (if not longer) with the central goal of developing a fine-grained first-person understanding of consciousness and its constituents by its manipulation through meditation, namely the Tantric tradition of Yoga. However, due to the heavy reliance of Yogic traditions on the ancient Indian Samkhya philosophical system, their insights about consciousness have been more challenging to translate into contemporary research. Where such translation has been attempted, they have lacked accompanying phenomenological description of the procedures undertaken for making the precise subject-object manipulations as postulated. In this paper, I address these issues by first detailing how Tantric Yoga philosophy can be effectively translated as a systematic phenomenological account of consciousness spanning the entirety of the subject-object space divided into four "structures of consciousness" from subject to object. This follows from the work of the 20th century polymath and founder of the Tantric Yoga school of Ananda Marga, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, who expounded on the "cognitivization" of Samkhya philosophy. I then detail stepwise meditation procedures that make theoretical knowledge of these structures of consciousness a practical reality to a Tantric Yoga meditator in the first-person. This is achieved by entering meditative states through stepwise experiential reduction of the structures of consciousness from object to subject, as part of their meditative goal of "self-realization." I end by briefly discussing the overlap of these putative meditation states with proposed states from other meditation traditions, and how these states could help advance an empirical study of consciousness.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 13
- Intrinsic neural timescales exhibit different lengths in distinct meditation techniques. Neuroimage August 15, 2024
- An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory. Frontiers in Psychology 2023
- Reduced processing of afforded actions while observing mental content as ongoing mental phenomena Scientific Reports May 2, 2024
- ‘’The Science Behind Raj Yoga Meditation-A Narrative Review’’ Advancement in Yoga and Physical Therapy October 31, 2023
- A commentary to comparative analysis of meditation techniques on well-being and consciousness states: A cross-sectional study Journal of Neurosciences in Rural Practice August 6, 2026
and 8 more in the library
Cites 31
- Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self Trends in Cognitive Sciences October 12, 2013
- The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition Oxford University Press eBooks September 13, 2018
- An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence Frontiers in Psychology 2012
- From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind. Synthese 2018
- Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 2014
and 26 more in the library