This study attempts to critically explore Transpersonal Psychology views on the nature of spiritual experience. The exponents of this kind of psychology claimed their concept as an integration between science and religion as well as it was can be universally accepted by all religions. Since this study reveals religious issues especially religious experience that in Islam is often said to be a...
The assumption that psychological states and processes are computational in character pervades much of cognitive science, what many call the computational theory of mind. In addition to occupying a central place in cognitive science, the computational theory of mind has also had a second life supporting "individualism", the view that psychological states should be taxonomized so as to supervene...
Correspondence: chpmiller@ucdavis.edu University of California, Davis, USA Welcome to a special issue of the International Journal of Dharma Studies. Here readers will find five articles that approach contemplative practice from various philosophical, pedagogical, and scientific perspectives. The diverse contents presented here will likely interest a broad range of readers including scholars,...
Neuroimaging studies have identified functional interactions between the thalamus, precuneus, and default mode network (DMN) in studies of consciousness. However, less is known about the structural connectivity of the precuneus and thalamus to regions within the DMN. We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to parcellate the precuneus and thalamus based on their probabilistic white matter...
The very presence of hallucinations raises puzzling and fascinating questions about reality … However, my real questioning did not fully occur until the voices started, which was once again a gradual process … When the voices occurred, I perceived them as omnipotent and omniscient … To me, auditory-verbal hallucinations are the result of thought processes of which I am unaware. Humpston 2014...
Integrated information theory (IIT) has established itself as one of the leading theories for the study of consciousness. IIT essentially proposes that quantitative consciousness is identical to maximally integrated conceptual information, quantified by a measure called $\Phi^{max}$, and that phenomenological experience corresponds to the associated set of maximally irreducible cause-effect...
This study suggests the psyche is hard wired for spiritual experience, for aesthetic and ethical expression, and that transpersonal expression in literature and the arts is a universal human exploration of perhaps a fundamental ground of being.
In the following meditation I investigate how life is disclosed to human consciousness. I use phenomenology to avoid reducing life to the natural sphere has to avoid the common mistake of objectifying it, that is, of taking life as something, as a property of being. A more justified phenomenological approach that remains open to the supernatural character of life would focus rather on how life...
Interoception refers to the sensing of the internal state of one's body. Interoception is distinct from the processing of sensory information concerning external (non-self) stimuli (e.g. vision, hearing, touch and smell) and is the afferent axis to internal (autonomic and hormonal) physiological control. However, the impact of interoception extends beyond homeostatic/allostatic reflexes: it is...
Mystical-type experiences were infrequent after LSD, possibly because of the set and setting used in the present study. LSD may produce greater or different alterations of consciousness at 200 μg (i.e., a dose that is currently used in psychotherapy in Switzerland) compared with 100 μg (i.e., a dose used in imaging studies). Ego dissolution may reflect plasma levels of LSD, whereas more...