Selfless Minds, Unlimited Bodies? Homeostatic Bodily Self-Regulation in Meditative Experiences

Deep meditative states often involve reports of 'selfless' experiences, but the body's homeostatic self-regulation continues to operate, maintaining essential self-related information processing for survival. The term 'losing the self' is misleading; what is lost is a particular ordinary mental model of the self in relation to the body and world, not the embodied experience itself. The body remains a living self-organizing system, becoming sensorily attenuated and 'transparent' yet central. Enhanced connectedness with this transparent body may produce feelings of 'oceanic boundlessness' or an 'unlimited body.' The explicit feeling of a selfless mind is tacitly accompanied by an implicit feeling of an unlimited body. True self-loss only occurs with death.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Deep contemplative states such as meditative states alter the subjective experience of being a self distinct from the world and others to a point that the individual may report ‘selfless’ states. In this paper, we propose a shift in focus on homeostatic bodily self-regulation underlying selfless experiences. We suggest that during reported phenomena of ‘self-loss’ or ‘pure consciousness’, the ‘impure’ body continues to perform the humble yet essential, basic task of keeping track of self-related information processing to secure the survival of the human organism as a whole. Hence the term ‘losing’ the self or ‘selfless’ states may be misleading in describing these peculiar types of experiences reported during deep meditative states. What is ‘lost’, we claim, is a particular, ordinary way to mentally model the self in relation to the body and the world. We suggest that the experience of having a body – a living self-organizing biological system – is never ‘lost’ in this process. Rather it gets sensorily attenuated and stays transparently at its very centre, very much present and hence alive. Enhanced connectedness with one’s ‘transparent’ body may lead to feelings of widening, ‘oceanic boundlessness’, a feeling that we propose to call here ‘unlimited body’. The proposal is that the explicit feeling of selfless minds may be tacitly accompanied by the implicit feeling of unlimited body, as two sides of the same coin. Even if one experiences, during deep meditative states, a complete ‘shut down’ of one’s perceptual awareness, the biophysiological mechanisms supporting self-organisation and homeostatic self-regulation of one’s body must remain in place. To put it provocatively: the only and unique occasion when one truly loses one’s self is when one’s body becomes a corpse (i.e. death).