Emerging paradigms in XR, AI, and BCI contexts necessitate novel theoretical frameworks for understanding human autonomy and agency in HCI. Drawing from enactivist theories of cognition, we conceptualize human agents as self-organizing, operationally closed systems that actively enact their cognitive domains through dynamic interaction with their environments. To develop measurable variables...
This paper re-evaluates the pedagogical urgency of integrating the educational philosophy of Sri Aurobindo into contemporary academic systems across disciplines. In an era characterized by disciplinary fragmentation, utilitarian curricula, and an instrumental conception of knowledge, Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Education offers a philosophically coherent and ethically grounded alternative. Rooted...
This study aims to examine the traces of Advaita Vedānta teachings in Hindu theo-philosophy in Bali through a hermeneutic approach. The non-dualistic doctrine rooted in Śaṅkara’s thought has undergone transformation and adaptation within the Balinese local discourse, both textually and in religious practice. Tattwa manuscripts such as Tattwa Jñāna, Bhuwana Kosa, and Tuturan Bhatāra Rsi Agastya...
Mindfulness-based interventions are gaining recognition as effective therapeutic tools for psychological distress in oncology. However, the widespread adoption of mindfulness in Western clinical contexts has raised ethical and philosophical concerns, particularly regarding the Westernisation and cultural appropriation of Buddhist wisdom. This paper examines the ethical implications of employing...
Mysticism is often understood as an altered state of consciousness associated primarily with religious traditions. In spite of characterizing their experiences as ineffable, mystics across traditions have persistently attempted to articulate such experiences, producing diverse textual and pedagogical forms. This paper examines two distinct modes of articulating mystical experience—spiritual and...
Data from previous psychedelic trials suggests that the intensity of mystical experiences positively impacts treatment outcomes. However, not many conceptual frameworks are available to measure how this seems to be the case. According to Yogic and Buddhist philosophies, Kleshas are considered obstacles to self-realization, inner peace, and liberation. Using validated questionnaires, we accessed...
A previous study argued that the spiritual trajectory of the Twelve Steps, read alongside the Hasidic recovery of relational address, resolves the ancient quarrel between a personal God who is addressed as Thou and an impersonal Infinite into which the self is absorbed; it proposed that Hasidism reorients mystical depth toward relational responsibility rather than dissolution.¹ The present...
There is a growing use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in psychosis research and intervention. Validated VR simulations of psychotic-like experience have the potential to allow controlled manipulation of stimuli, reproducibility, and to isolate mechanisms of change in an ethical research framework. Although initial developments appear to be safe, qualitative reporting of participants'...
This chapter is devoted to the analysis of the mental preconditions for the formation of objective mental reality. It critiques the approach of cognitive psychology, which tends to treat mental representations primarily as functional or computational structures that lack definition in terms of phenomenology. As an alternative, the author proposes a phenomenological model that describes the...
Pain Within Altered States of Consciousness challenges conventional assumptions about pain. Rather than treating pain as a simple product of tissue damage, this book presents it as a dynamic construction of conscious experience—shaped by brain networks, attention, emotion, expectation, and the organization of the self. Bringing together anesthesiology, neuroscience, pain medicine, contemplative...