Frontiers in Psychology
2022
Vincent Ringgaard Christoffersen, Borut Škodlar, Mads Gram Henriksen
Although tranquility is a fundamental aspect of human life, the experiential nature of tranquility remains elusive. Traditionally, many philosophical, religious, spiritual, or mystical traditions in East and West have strived to reach tranquil experiences and produced texts serving as manuals to reach them. Yet, no attempt has been made to compare experiences of tranquility and explore what...
Frontiers in Psychology
2022
Daniel Meling
17 citations
Within a variety of contemplative traditions, non-dual-oriented practices were developed to evoke an experiential shift into a mode of experiencing in which the cognitive structures of self-other and subject-object subside. These practices serve to de-reify the enactment of an observing witness which is usually experienced as separate from the objects of awareness. While several contemplative...
Explore
June 23, 2021
Lars‐gunnar Lundh
The present paper argues that if the so-called mindfulness movement is to reach its full potential it needs to emancipate from its religious context and ally itself fully with psychological science. The argument that mindfulness meditation needs a religious context for ethical reasons is untenable. Although mindfulness skills may well be used for un-ethical purposes, this applies equally to...
Explore
May 26, 2021
Elena Salmoirago-Blotcher
'Mindfulness' has become a mainstream component of American culture and a successful business worth more than 1 billion dollars. Born out of Buddhist contemplative traditions that reached the West in the mid-1960s, secular mindfulness programs have spread both geographically (to the US and Europe) and socially (to healthcare, academia, politics, the military, and finance). The diffusion of...
arXiv Preprint Archive
January 29, 2021
Daniela Calvetti, B. Johnson, Annalisa Pascarella et al.
preprint
Meditation practices have been claimed to have a positive effect on the regulation of mood and emotion for quite some time by practitioners, and in recent times there has been a sustained effort to provide a more precise description of the changes induced by meditation on human brain. Longitudinal studies have reported morphological changes in cortical thickness and volume in selected brain...
Being and becoming
2021
Jose Luis Perez Velazquez, Vera Nenadovic
In this chapter, we will see how it is possible to diminish our selves. Phenomenal self-consciousness involves a relation between the self and objects; the more and stronger the connections between the individual and objects or other people, the greater nourishment for the sense of self. In our world with so many opportunities to possess things, robust attachments arise. Reducing the...
Being and becoming
2021
Jose Luis Perez Velazquez, Vera Nenadovic
This chapter reviews very briefly some concepts of the self and consciousness throughout history. Hellenistic, Roman and mediaeval neuroscience concepts are described. Parallels with the scientific perspectives explained in the previous chapters are explained.
Religions
November 5, 2020
June Mcdaniel
3 citations
On the island of Bali in Indonesia, the traditional Hindu religious leaders are the pedandas, or brahmin high priests. Their religious status is largely based on their mystical states, during which they create the highest and most valuable form of holy water, which is needed for all religious rituals on the island. It is one of the rare examples in world religions where mysticism is not only...
EPH - International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
April 10, 2020
Sung Jang Chung
The fundamental structure of the spiritual world and consciousness of the humanity are unknown to human beings. Except for teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Kim Hang and other saints of the major world religions, to my knowledge, no accepted theory is yet established. There have been countless conflicts, arguments and even prosecutions and wars in the history of mankind due to discrepancies in...
World Art
January 2, 2020
D. S. Farrer
1 citation
Dreamwork recorded in the Malay art world questions the occult power of artistic agency. As I did participant observation in Malaysia and Singapore, the artist Mohammad Din Mohammad divulged knowledge of Sufi lore, shamanic healing, and Malay martial arts (silat). On a quest to comprehend, discover, create and articulate esoteric skills, secret knowledge and mysterious artifacts, the artist...