Creativity Studies
February 23, 2022
Danah Henriksen, William Heywood, Natalie Gruber
Given the applied nature of creativity in the arts and design, it is important to understand the conditions and practices that support it. Most research suggests that ideal conditions for creativity are often mental and emotional – involving relaxed, yet alert and focused, states of mind. This article explores the connection between mindfulness and creativity in the experiences of students in a...
BMC Health Services Research
February 19, 2022
T. Bentley, D. Castillo, N. Sadeghi et al.
Background Among the over 5 million informal caregivers for patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the United States (US), over 60% experience insomnia. Research on insomnia treatment efficacy in AD caregivers is limited. An ongoing randomized non-inferiority clinical trial, the Caregiver Sleep Research study, is evaluating whether mindfulness meditation is non-inferior to cognitive...
Psychopharmacology
February 18, 2022
Dimitri Daldegan-Bueno, Lucas Oliveira Maia, Carolina Marcolino Massarentti et al.
RationaleSmoking-related disease is a major problem globally. Effective smoking cessation treatments are however limited. Increasing evidence suggests that psychedelics have potential as treatments for substance use disorders and may therefore prove an option in aiding smoking cessation.ObjectivesTo establish which factors predict smoking cessation in people who reported quitting or reducing...
The Subtle Body
February 17, 2022
Simon Cox
Abstract This chapter traces the subtle body concept through the writings of Blavatsky’s heirs, the major figures in the second generation of theosophy, zeroing in specifically on their reformulations of a mystical form of Christianity informed by the yoga of the subtle body. First, it examines the life and works of Annie Besant and her mythological subtle body interpretations of the Bible....
Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism
February 17, 2022
S. Medhananda
Chapter 9 concerns what contemporary philosopher David Chalmers has called the “hard problem of consciousness”—the problem of explaining how conscious experience arises. The chapter provides an in-depth reconstruction of Vivekananda’s Sāṃkhya-Vedāntic solution to the hard problem of consciousness and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The chapter first outlines...
Behavioural Brain Research
February 15, 2022
Vassiliy Tsytsarev
There are at least two approaches to the definition of consciousness. In the first case, certain aspects of consciousness, called qualia, are considered inaccessible for research from a third person and can only be described through subjective experience. This approach is inextricably linked with the so-called "hard problem of consciousness", that is, the question of why consciousness has...
Journal of Neurochemistry
February 12, 2022
Johannes T. Reckweg, Malin V. Uthaug, Attila Szabo et al.
108 citations
Abstract 5‐methoxy‐N,N‐dimethyltryptamine (5‐MeO‐DMT) is a naturally occurring tryptamine that primarily acts as an agonist at the 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A receptors, whereby affinity for the 5‐HT1A subtype is highest. Subjective effects following 5‐MeO‐DMT administration include distortions in auditory and time perception, amplification of emotional states, and feelings of ego dissolution that...
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
February 11, 2022
Karen S. Kingsbury
Through an autoethnographic account that interweaves academic observations, my story of how I came to study Santa Muerte in Mexico and the entangled, emotive tale of Abby, a Santa Muerte devotee whom I grew very close to, I discuss the topic of belief in the ethnography of the occult and the “politics of integration”, derisively referred to “as going native”. I reveal how being an ethnographer...
Zen Pathways
February 10, 2022
Bret W. Davis
Abstract This chapter explains why Zen cannot be sufficiently understood in terms of “mysticism,” if one means by mystical experience a transcendent or otherworldly experience that transports one beyond the mundane world. The path of Zen leads, rather, to a wholehearted and fully mindful engagement in the ordinary activities of everyday life. Zen master Zhaozhou says that “Everyday Even Mind is...
Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience
February 9, 2022
Yehuda Bitty
Abstract This article seeks to direct attention to one unusual figure who provided his own interpretation of the renewal of prophecy during the generation of redemption (i.e., the success of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel). Rabbi David Kohen (1887–1972), known as Ha-Nazir, the Nazirite, was the author of a book entitled Kol ha-Nevu’ah [The Voice of Prophecy]. His original...