Religious Studies
September 28, 2026
Sebastian Hüsch, Klaus Viertbauer
Abstract This paper argues that the contemporary shift from the meaning of life to meaning in life reflects not a rejection of transcendence but a transformation in its structure. It distinguishes between absolute transcendence, which locates meaning within a comprehensive horizon beyond the situated subject, and immanent transcendence, which understands transcendence as the inexhaustibility of...
Research Square
September 24, 2026
Ravindra Kumar Sharma
preprint
Abstract Psychology has sophisticated accounts of emotional contagion, interpersonal synchrony, therapeutic alliance, and affective communication — yet it has never named the single foundational medium all of them only partly approximate. This article names it, and builds a first-order framework upon it. It proposes that psychology acknowledge, as a foundational matter, four claims: that vibe —...
Mindfulness
September 24, 2026
Oleg N. Medvedev, Christian U. Krägeloh
Abstract Many qualitative methods textbooks instruct researchers to begin by declaring their paradigm position from a standard typology, such as positivist, postpositivist, constructivist, critical, and poststructural paradigms, and to ensure methodological coherence with that position. This typology is often perceived to be a comprehensive framework for locating research positions. We argue...
September 23, 2026
Jessica Annette Albrecht
This chapter examines the relationship between Buddhist meditation, psychology, and disability through a Global Religious History perspective. It argues that the modern understanding of Buddhist meditation as an emancipatory and universally accessible practice emerged within the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century intersections of Orientalist scholarship, psychological science, and...
Frontiers in Psychology
September 22, 2026
Samhitha Tirumalasetti
Inconclusive evidence for leading third-person theories of consciousness has renewed scientific interest in its first-person nature. Self-inquiry, a first-person method from Advaita Vedanta, can be operationalized to meet this need, though it has not received prior empirical study, likely owing to Advaita’s idealism. By bracketing Advaita’s metaphysical commitments and mapping its...
Dia-noesis.
September 18, 2026
Yiwen Zhang
Large language models produce first-person expressions, simulate hesitation, and generate apparently self-referential judgments. These behaviors have reopened philosophical debates about machine selfhood, yet existing positions share an unexamined assumption: that genuine selfhood requires a persistent, unified substantial subject. This paper names that assumption substantial-self priority and...
September 17, 2026
Cristina Albu
Ellen Pearlman is a visionary polymath, putting her knowledge of art, Buddhism, computer technology, science, Southeast Asian Vipassana meditation, and Tibetan tantric dance in the service of inquiries into the individual and collective human psyche. In the art world, she may be better known as an arts writer than as an artist since she has been a regular contributor to art publications such as...
September 17, 2026
Aleksandar Uskokov
Abstract This chapter examines pre-Śaṅkara deliberations on liberation (mokṣa) and its status as the highest good (niḥśreyasa) in Vedic theology, tracing its conceptual evolution from early Mīmāṁsā to the Brahma-sūtra. It begins by situating niḥśreyasa within dharma literature, where it initially denoted general human goods before being redefined as liberation from rebirth through knowledge and...
September 17, 2026
Casey Rae
Abstract Chapter Four follows the “turning wheel” of psychedelic awakening as it moved from private epiphany to collective ritual, tracing the converging paths of Ken Kesey’s Pranksters, Timothy Leary’s Millbrook circle, and the embryonic Grateful Dead. It begins with Furthur, the Day-Glo-painted Prankster bus that carried a crew of LSD-fueled experimenters across America in 1964—part road...
International Journal for the Study of New Religions
September 16, 2026
WooHyun Jung
Jeffrey J. Kripal’s ten monographs—from Kālī’s Child (1995) to How to Think Impossibly (2024)—have done as much as the work of any single American scholar to put mystical, paranormal, and altered-state experiences back at the center of religious-studies inquiry. Wouter J. Hanegraaff (2008), in the most theoretically substantive review article devoted to that work, has charged that Kripal’s...