Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
January 1, 2014
Zoran Josipovic
231 citations
Nondual awareness (NDA)—a background awareness that precedes conceptualization and intention—offers a way of experiencing in which habitual dualities such as self versus other are relaxed rather than fortified. Drawing on Tibetan Buddhist meditation, this paper reviews evidence that NDA influences anticorrelated intrinsic and extrinsic brain networks. Preliminary data from an ongoing study of NDA with minimized phenomenal content suggest involvement of a precuneus network.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2011
Zoran Josipovic, Ilan Dinstein, Jochen Weber et al.
164 citations
The human cortex is organized into two broad systems: an extrinsic system that responds to external stimuli and tasks, and an intrinsic system linked to internal, self-related experiences. These systems typically show anti-correlated activity, even at rest. This experiment tested whether meditation can alter that competition. Participants either fixated without meditation or practiced non-dual awareness or focused attention meditations. Anti-correlation between the extrinsic and intrinsic systems was stronger during focused attention and weaker during non-dual awareness compared to fixation. Correlations within each system did not change. The results indicate that the anti-correlation between these systems is not fixed and that different meditation practices can modulate this functional brain organization in distinct ways.
PLoS ONE
November 7, 2018
Cassandra Vieten, Helané Wahbeh, B Rael Cahn et al.
124 citations
A survey of 1120 meditators found that most report having had anomalous and extraordinary experiences during meditation, such as mystical, transpersonal, or difficult phenomena. While meditation research has largely focused on clinical effectiveness and neural correlates, these less-studied experiences may be crucial for psychological and spiritual development, act as mediators of meditation's benefits, or be important outcomes themselves. A task force of researchers and teachers developed recommendations to expand research into these areas, which represent largely uncharted scientific terrain suitable for rigorous investigation.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Zoran Josipovic, Vladimir Miskovic
67 citations
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) are episodes with greatly reduced phenomenal content and arousal, often considered cases of consciousness-as-such. The authors argue instead that consciousness-as-such is primarily a type of non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual awareness—non-representational in nature. This unique kind of awareness cannot be adequately captured by the two-dimensional model of consciousness that combines arousal level with phenomenal content or by mental representations. To understand consciousness-as-such and consciousness more generally, the authors suggest researching it as a distinct kind.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
June 1, 2016
Zoran Josipovic
33 citations
Meditation is often viewed as a gradual, goal-oriented practice aimed at cultivating positive qualities like love and compassion. A nondual approach offers an alternative: these qualities are not goals to be achieved but are already present as innate dimensions of one's authentic being. This perspective may have relevance for clinical applications of love and compassion meditation, suggesting that practitioners can discover these qualities within themselves rather than striving to develop them.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Zoran Josipovic
8 citations
The real achievement of evolution is not merely phenomenal consciousness but consciousness that recognizes itself—a non-conceptual, nondual awareness whose core property is non-representational reflexivity. This review examines reflexivity from the perspective of consciousness itself, proposing that different types of reflexivity in current theories form a gradation of relational distances between consciousness as knower and consciousness as known. This spectrum ranges from fully representational and dual forms, through various qualified monisms, to fully non-representational and nondual reflexivity.
Zoran Josipovic
8 citations
Consciousness-as-such, or nondual awareness, is fundamentally different from the contents of awareness and levels of arousal. Its essential property is non-representational reflexivity, making it a unique kind that cannot be reduced to any contents, functions, or states, including the indeterminate substrate. This theoretical paper outlines an expanded map of consciousness that includes the indeterminate substrate and nondual awareness alongside well-known contents and arousal levels. The author further discusses a previous hypothesis on the precuneus network for nondual awareness in relation to non-representational reflexivity and other neural correlates.
Zoran Josipovic
5 citations
Consciousness is often depicted with a two-dimensional map: levels or states on one axis and phenomenal contents on the other. This conflates content with awareness, hindering scientific understanding. The author proposes adding a third dimension—an implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness, a basic non-conceptual awareness free of subject-object fragmentation. This addition clarifies everyday dualistic experiences and is especially relevant for understanding unitary and nondual experiences from contemplative practices, substances, or spontaneous occurrences. The proposal is discussed in relation to current theories of consciousness.
Zoran Josipovic, Vladimir Miskovic
2 citations
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs), episodes of greatly reduced phenomenal content and arousal, have been proposed as examples of consciousness-as-such. This paper argues that consciousness-as-such is better understood as a unique kind of non-conceptual, non-propositional, nondual awareness that is non-representational. The authors suggest that the standard two-dimensional model of consciousness—arousal level plus phenomenal content—cannot adequately capture this awareness. They propose that consciousness-as-such, and consciousness more broadly, should be studied as a distinct phenomenon.
Progress in brain research
January 1, 2019
Zoran Josipovic
A non-representational reflexivity theory is proposed to explain the nature of consciousness-as-such, which is distinct from the contents of awareness and levels of arousal. The theory posits that consciousness-as-such is a non-conceptual, nondual awareness whose essential property is non-representational reflexivity, making it phenomenologically, cognitively, and neurobiologically unique and irreducible to any contents, functions, or states, including an indeterminate substrate. The precuneus network hypothesis for nondual awareness is discussed in relation to this reflexivity and other neural correlate hypotheses.
Zoran Josipovic
Consciousness-as-such—nondual awareness—is argued to be a unique kind of consciousness, distinct from the contents of awareness or levels of arousal. Its essential property is non-representational reflexivity, making it phenomenally, functionally, and neurobiologically irreducible to any contents, functions, or states, including an indeterminate substrate. An expanded map of consciousness is outlined that includes this non-conceptual, nondual awareness. The precuneus network hypothesis for nondual awareness is discussed in relation to this property and other neural correlate hypotheses.