bioRxivJune 14, 2025Michael Gruenwald, Sebastien De Landtsheer, Thomas Huebl et al.
preprint
Psychological trauma is associated with significant alterations of biological functions and is correlated with epigenetic changes specifically of DNA methylation. Trauma therapy is aiming at relieving the impact of trauma and is in initial studies also correlated with changes in DNA methylation. In this study we explored the changes in whole blood DNA methylation of participants of a program...
This paper aims to juxtapose bodhisattvas, awakened beings recognized in various Buddhist traditions and contemporary philosophies, as viewed through different lenses: as personified symbols, idealistic visions, mystical manifestations, naturalized sentient beings, and integral visions. Specific attention is given to the contrasting bodhisattva motivations and ideals articulated in Theravāda...
Summary This case study focuses on the experiences of mystical healing practices exemplified by Butati Dham in Rajasthan, India. Butati Dham, a revered site for mystical healing, offers a compelling case study of how Indigenous wellness tourism transcends modern scientific rationality to meet deep psychological and spiritual needs. The Dham’s rich spiritual heritage, rooted in the legend of...
Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) remains a challenge, with many patients unresponsive to standard antidepressants. NN-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a fast-acting psychedelic, offers potential benefits due to its rapid onset and short duration. This review, registered with the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/6D9WC), summarizes the safety and tolerability of DMT in early-phase...
Introduction Psychedelics, such as psilocybin, are increasingly recognized for their propensity to elicit powerful subjective experiences that carry personal meaning. While research has demonstrated the capacity for these compounds to promote psychological wellbeing, it has yet to be shown to what extent they modulate "meaning in life", a specific contributor to mental and physical health....
This chapter discusses Sylvia Leclercq’s fascination with mysticism in Julia Kristeva’s novel Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila . Sylvia, a psychoanalyst and academic, like Kristeva herself, ponders the question of female mysticism throughout the historical novel. She knows that Freud was dismissive of mysticism, which he called the “oceanic” feeling. Kristeva offers us a...
PsyArXivJune 3, 2025Jan Marius Keppel Hesselink
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The rainbow body (Jalü in Tibetan Buddhism) represents a profound spiritual attainment, and it is said that the physical form dissolves into light at the time of death. This paper proposes a novel hypothesis: the visual component of the rainbow body experience, as vividly perceived in personal meditative encounters, can be understood as a complex, dynamic phosphene-movie, a vivid internal...
The last century has witnessed a remarkable conflation of thought between contemporary physics and the Jewish mystical tradition or Kabbalah. Nowhere does this merger resonate more cogently than with ideas promulgated by the influential and iconoclastic physicist, David Bohm. Notwithstanding the radically different lexicons invoked, there exist striking conceptual parallels between the...
The ancient Greeks gave a special importance to sleep, both because of the interpretation of dreams and because of its healing properties. Therapeutic incubation [enkoimesis] was a ritual practice, resorted at the healing sanctuaries of antiquity in Greece, such as those of Asclepius [Asclepieia] and was the culmination of a process of sleeping in a sacred space in order to receive an...
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are episodes of disconnected consciousness that typically occur in situations that involve an actual or potential physical threat or are perceived as such, and the experiences are characterized by a rich content with prototypical mystical features. Several explanatory theories for NDEs have been proposed, ranging from psychological or neurophysiological to...