A balanced mind, or equanimity, cultivated through meditation and other spiritual practices, is considered one of the highest mental states. Its core features include deidentification and non-duality. Despite its significance, its neural correlates remain unknown. To address this, we acquired 128-channel EEG data (n = 103) from advanced and novice meditators (from the Isha Yoga tradition) and...
Especially in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James developed the polar categories of healthy-minded individuals content with their once-born religion versus sick souls who need to become twice-born in order to find religious peace. Biographers of James have concluded that he does not fit well under either of his polar categories. Drawing on both data about James’ life and on his...
This chapter describes the mindsets of external listening from a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspective. Freud&s;s concept of evenly suspended or free-floating attention is matched with a particular breath meditation. Brief psychotherapy and unfocussed listening offer perspectives on either end of the concentration spectrum (focussed and open, respectively), with alterations that can be...
This chapter introduces the practical aspects of breath meditation and breathwork in the context of the framework bringing in physiological, neuroscientific and phenomenological explanations. This is extended to show how manipulation of the breath can cause changes in these factors to help engender different states of mind and bodily experiences. It is shown how a range of common factors for...
Introduction Philosophy of mind grapples with fundamental questions concerning the Consciousness, the Mind-body problem, the Identity, and Free will (as opposed to Determinism). In the context of psychiatry, this philosophical groundwork provides a conceptual framework for comprehending the intricate workings of the human psyche. Objectives We aim to discuss how the philosophical investigation...
The intuitive experience of dreaming is that we “see” something with our mind’s eye and react to it. Indeed, dream formation conceptualizations have often focused on the visual image-to-verbal thought direction of causality, inspired by bottom-up models of perception. However, despite being experienced as external to us, the dream environment is internally generated, meaning that dreams are...
This paper explores the concept of consciousness from a mathematical perspective by using set theory. The individual minds of people can be represented as elements in a set, and the interaction between these sets of minds can be modeled using set operations. Although this mathematical model is an oversimplification of the complexity of human consciousness, it provides a theoretical framework...
A growing body of literature in the field of embodied situated cognition is drawing attention to the hostile ways in which our environments can be constructed, with detrimental effects on people's ability to flourish as environmentally situated beings. This paper contributes to this body of research, focusing on a specific area of concern. Specifically, I argue that a very particular...
Cancer pain is a prevalent and challenging symptom affecting a significant number of patients globally, with inadequate control remaining a substantial challenge despite advancements in pain management. Non-pharmacological interventions, including mindfulness-based approaches, have shown promise in alleviating cancer-related pain. This study aimed to explore the efficacy of a single session of...
With its catchy title, historian Benjamin Breen's Tripping on Utopia brings together controversial findings about the human mind, social engineering, and professional responsibility.He delineates the time frame and focus of an inquiry into psychoactive drug research by stating that "Timothy Leary and the Baby Boomers did not usher in the first psychedelic era.They ended it" (3).The Controlled...