This article examines one of the least studied representatives of Russian pre-revolutionary philosophy, P.D. Ouspensky. To this day, the legacy of this unusual, original thinker remains little explored in Russian thought, whose interests included the ideas of “superman”, “eternal return”, “fourth dimension”, “third organon”, as well as the study of consciousness taken in unusual, religious...
Abstract Objectives As contemplative science continues to evolve, research has shifted from studying the mental health outcomes of brief meditation programs for novice practitioners to investigating traditional meditative paradigms and their associated advanced soteriological aims. However, empirical studies on meditative development remain limited. Methods The present study examined the...
CancersNovember 18, 2025Alicja Heyda, Agnieszka Gdowicz-Kłosok, Magdalena Bugowska et al.
Introduction/Goal: Stress and negative emotions have been shown to exert a substantial impact on cancer patients, affecting their ability to adapt to therapy and the overall effectiveness. Elevated cortisol levels, a stress-induced hormone, have been shown to suppress immune system function, potentially reducing the body's capacity to combat cancer cells. On the contrary, prolactin, a hormone...
Spirituality is an essential dimension of human life, encompassing self-awareness, relationships with God, others, and nature, as well as the search for meaning in life. This study examines spirituality through the perspective of Transpersonal Psychology, a modern branch of psychology that emphasizes transcendental experiences, heightened consciousness, and the integration of psychological,...
bioRxivNovember 17, 2025Lena Hehemann, Lisa Stetza, Christoph Kayser
preprint
Respiration is a unique physiological process that can operate automatically but can also be deliberately used to modulate the bodily state. Importantly, respiration is deeply intertwined with neural processes, influencing processes from arousal and attention to executive control. Although structured respiration (breathing practice) has been exploited for centuries, the immediate consequences...
Lucid dreaming (LD) – in which dreamers become aware that they are currently dreaming – has gained increasing attention in consciousness studies, yet its fine-grained experiential dynamics remain undercharacterized. We conducted in-depth micro-phenomenological interviews on 22 signal-verified lucid dreams experienced in a controlled sleep-laboratory setting, mapping within-episode dynamics from...
The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to examine whether relational structures of qualia...
The article presents an interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of meta-consciousness at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and mystical tradition. The aim is to integrate analytical, phenomenological, and spiritual-hermeneutical approaches to construct a unified model of meta-consciousness as a recursive process of self-observation. The object of the research is...
When composing with musical borrowings within repetitive structures, a dual perception often occurs, in which listening shifts its focus from the inherent representation of the borrowings to their immediate sonic presence. This shift in attention is frequently characterized as a form of aesthetic contemplation.This paper demonstrates an artistic exploration of how the concept of aesthetic...
Abstract First-hand experience with psychedelics may help clinicians develop skills and knowledge needed to work with the profound changes to conscious awareness occasioned by psychedelics. However, the topic remains contentious and underexplored. In this world-first study, we investigated the utility of psilocybin experiential therapist training in a sample of 14 mental healthcare...