The conventional dichotomy between human health and disease has historically been approached through reductionist models that emphasize the exclusive causal relevance of physiological and pathological processes. Consequently, self-awareness and affective dimensions, integral to a phenomenological perspective, are often relegated to secondary traits, affording little consideration for the causal...
Good bodily and mental health is a condition of well-being. We may keep our bodies in good health by embarking on a quest to explore the deepest corners of our minds. The practical and scientific approaches for comprehending the relationship between the mind and body are the main emphasis of the study. Through their writings, Deepak Chopra and Swami Vivekananda emphasize the vitality of the...
Recent findings have shown that psychedelics reliably enhance brain entropy (understood as neural signal diversity), and this effect has been associated with both acute and long-term psychological outcomes, such as personality changes. These findings are particularly intriguing, given that a decrease of brain entropy is a robust indicator of loss of consciousness (e.g., from wakefulness to...
A well looks at a donkey, not vice versa [#33] Self-image and infinity somehow fell into one.[#3024] One of the many things that make a more genuinely philosophical meditation practice so in ter est ing is that some of its aspects can be taught, while others can't.Some things you simply have to find out for yourself.Before we start, let us do a little demo.Be assured that you do not have to be...
There is no waking, there is no sleeping, there is only being.[#1784] Contemplative practice is related to sleep in a number of in ter est ing ways.First, many dozens of our experiential reports emphasize how deeply relaxing, restful, and refreshing it is to spend a while abiding in the wakeful presence of bare awareness.What is more, the relationship between our subjectively experienced target...
The world reflecting in a mirror without a perceiving observer.[#1735] An impression of " there are impersonal eyes in the room."[#3451] "Witness consciousness" is a global phenomenology.This is to say that the totality of all experiential contents appears as if being observed by something that isn't really an "observer" at all-by a timeless, impersonal, knowing presence.Witness consciousness...
Our reports show that the phenomenology of "pure being" can either be the sole defining characteristic of a full-absorption episode or coexist with other forms of experiential content.Next, you will find nine examples of the phenomenal quality that I am trying to isolate here.Note that some of the descriptors explored in earlier chapters-like "body dissolution," "peace," "silence,"...
When openness touches openness.[#1444] For many centuries, meditators have been describing states of direct perception, the experience of seeing what is.Meditation involves a distinct phenomenology of perceiving, timelessly, without any conceptual overlay or any form of judgment, interpretation, or choice.Seeing what is out of a state of pure awareness often reveals another par tic u lar and...
It was as if my body / my being was pixelated and dissolved into the rest of the pixels that make up the entirety of every thing else.[#3086] There are countless ways in which the experience of pure awareness can shift from background to foreground.The phenomenology of translucency is one way: "It's like real ity shining through when all ideas, concepts . . .step aside for a moment" (#2528; see...
A bodilessness in the consciousness of a body [#302] My body dissolves into a micro-foam of impermanence, zooming into the fractal edge of pre sent which endlessly unfurls fern-fronds of scintillating *now*-fuzz.[#1832]The experience seems to be similar to a thread which forms a seam and holds on one side the body and on the other side infinity together, so both are there and yet they are not...