Counterfactual-Fractal Quadruple Ego-Impossibility Theorem: a Multidisciplinary Mathematical-Neuroscientific Model of Nirvana (Extinction of Suffering) within Original Buddhism

A strictly scientific and multidisciplinary approach to human consciousness is proposed, presenting a hierarchical structure of four levels of causal impossibility of a Self (Illusory-I, Projected Consciousness, and Ego as synonyms)—Laws of Nature, Neuropsychoanalytic, Interpretative, and Counterfactual-Fractal—derived from natural laws to provide a more precise understanding of nirvana (extinction of suffering) and its attainment. This framework unifies anattā (non-self) and anicca (impermanence) under the same structural scientific principle, showing that neuroscience, original Buddhism from the Pāli Canon, mathematics, and neuropsychoanalysis converge on the same conclusion regarding human suffering and its cessation. Nirvana is modeled as a consolidated neural configuration corresponding to the highest attainable mode of conscious experience.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This article proposes a strictly scientific and multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon that enables it: human consciousness. It presents a hierarchical and interdependent structure of four levels of causal impossibility of a Self (Illusory-I, Projected Consciousness and Ego as synonyms) — Laws of Nature, Neuropsychoanalytic, Interpretative, and Counterfactual-Fractal — derived directly from natural laws, aiming to provide a more precise understanding of nirvana (extinction of suffering) and its attainment. It also presents the corresponding four-layer structure for both Attachment and Impermanence, as corollary. The content of this article demonstrates a mathematical formulation for understanding anattā (non-self) and the same formulation applied to anicca (impermanence), which leads to an equivalent understanding of Attachment and its cessation as a corollary.Without this interdisciplinary mathematical model, these foundational doctrines remain only descriptively related; here, they are unified under the same structural scientific principle. Since the central axis of Buddhism is the cessation of suffering through the investigation of reality and the consequential dissolution of the Illusory-I (the Ego, also known as the Self) — not the dissolution of consciousness, but rather the realization of its biological real form and thus its most refined architecture — this understanding reinforces rather than weakens the scientific structure of consciousness. The result is the prevalence of the Real-I (Consciousness) and the cessation of the Illusory-I (Projected Consciousness). Nirvana is the Anglicized form of nibbāna (the standard term in the Theravāda Pāli Canon) and corresponds to the Sanskrit nirvāṇa, modeled here as a consolidated neural configuration corresponding to the highest attainable mode of conscious experience. Within this framework, neuroscience, original Buddhism (as preserved in the empirical, non-mystical, and non-sectarian Pāli Canon), mathematics, and neuropsychoanalysis converge on the same conclusion regarding human suffering and its cessation. This article provides both a cognitive framework for understanding nirvana and a practical methodological approach that may serve as an effective catalyst for clinical patients and, more broadly, for human beings in general in attaining this mental state.Keywords: Counterfactual-Fractal Quadruple Ego- Impossibility Theorem; Counterfactual-Fractal Quadruple Ego-Impossibility Theory; anattā (non-self); neurophenomenology; nirvana; nirvāṇa; nibbāna; Self; Happiness; Suffering; contemplative neuroscience; dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda); mathematics of consciousness; buddhism; neuroscience; neuropsychoanalysis; consciousness.