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...
Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of mindfulness on early maladaptive schemas, satisfaction and marital trust in young couples. Method: The present study was quasi-experimental with experimental and control groups and pre-test and post-test design. The statistical population of this study was 100 young couples who referred to counseling centers in Arak. (2001), 32...
Abstract In my paper, I show that there are two truths in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy that do not require the divine guarantee, despite Descartes’ claim in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph in the third meditation that he cannot be certain of anything unless he knows that God exists as Descartes’ creator and that God is not a deceiver.
Here we report meditative techniques, which modulate attentional control by arousal-driven influences and not by monitoring continuous thought processes as during mindfulness-related practices. We focus on Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhism) practices, during which a sequence of generation (self-visualization as a deity - Yidam) or completion with sign (inner heat -Tummo) stages necessarily precedes...
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...
Mindfulness-based interventions are associated with improved health and wellbeing. Online mindfulness interventions offer potential scalability and cost advantages over face-to-face interventions. However, little is known about the experiences of learners, what they identify as being helpful to developing a practice of mindfulness and what outcomes they experience from undertaking an online...
Meta-analyses of meditation studies have revealed mixed modest evidence of benefits across a range of outcomes. However, because this evidence-base is predominantly from brief interventions, it is unclear whether it accurately reflects how contemporary meditators practice or the dose-response relationship between amount of practice and outcome. This study sought to characterize how contemporary...
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...
A symptom cluster is very common among oncological patients: cancer-related fatigue (CRF), emotional distress, sleep difficulties, pain, and cognitive difficulties. Clinical applications of interventions based on non-ordinary states of consciousness, mostly hypnosis and meditation, are starting to be investigated in oncology settings. They revealed encouraging results in terms of improvements...
Finding a scientific, third-person explanation of subjective experience or phenomenal content is commonly called the "hard problem" of consciousness. There has recently been a surge in neuropsychological research on meditation in general and long-term meditators in particular. These experimental subjects are allegedly capable of generating a stable state of consciousness over a prolonged period...
Abstract Meditation can exert a profound impact on our mental life, with proficient practitioners often reporting an experience free of boundaries between a separate self and the environment, suggesting an explicit experience of “nondual awareness.” What are the neural correlates of such experiences and how do they relate to the idea of nondual awareness itself? In order to unravel the effects...
Introduction: Personal development workshops are increasingly popular. This study evaluated the relationships between the measures of well-being, interconnectedness, and extended perception in various workshops and explored which kinds of workshops and individual characteristics predicted changes in these outcomes. Materials and Methods: In a prospective, uncontrolled, within-participant design...
The aim of this study was to compare meditators and non-meditators in terms of their tendency to have peak experiences and their dream lucidity, while examining the associations between these outcomes and some related variables such as non-dual awareness, mindfulness facets and absorption. In this cross-sectional study, 237 participants from general Spanish population completed an online survey...
Meditation practices positively influence the neural, hormonal and autonomic systems. We have demonstrated that long-term practice of mindfulness meditation increases N3 and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stages and bring efficient autonomic modulation during sleep. In the present study, the probable humoral correlation that could bring about these changes is evaluated. Long-term Vipassana...
This research explores the intervention effect of the mindfulness acceptance insight commitment (MAIC) training program on the mindfulness level, flow state, and mental health of college swimmers. A sample of 47 college swimmers from a regular university was recruited and randomly divided into two groups before the intervention. Independent variables between groups are psychological training...
Individuals with mind-wandering experience their attention decoupling from their main task at hand while others with flow experience fully engage in their task with the optimum experience. There seems to be a negative relationship between mind-wandering and flow. However, it remains unclear to what extent mind-wandering exerts an impact on flow. And it is also elusive whether physical activity...
Psychedelic ingestion and meditative practice are both ancient methods for altering consciousness that became widely known in Western society in the second half of the 20th century. Do the similarities begin and end there, or do these methods – as many have claimed over the years – share some deeper common elements? In this chapter I take a neurophilosophical approach to this question and argue...