Mystical experience is best understood not as a special kind of consciousness but as the removal of the factors that construct ordinary, standard consciousness. Standard consciousness is built from the mutual connectedness of mental contents; when those connecting factors are suppressed, the resulting experience is largely negative—defined by what is absent rather than by positive content. This account explains why mystical experiences are often described as ineffable and provides a framework for assessing their epistemic status. It also suggests implications for how we think about mind, consciousness, and the self, by showing that ordinary consciousness is a constructed phenomenon that can be dismantled.
The article examines whether the Buddhist noble truths are actually true, using recent neuroscience and psychology, particularly Mark Solms's theory. It focuses on how memories shape personality and how memory reconsolidation could affect those memories, explaining how the cessation of suffering and desire are plausible. Access to relevant memories is a poorly understood process, and the author proposes ways it might be achieved.
The essay argues that the confusing descriptions of meditation in Jaina canonical texts, such as the Āyāraṅga and Uttarajjhayaṇa, led to many discontinuities and innovations in the history of Jaina meditation. The term dhyāna (jhāna) is used for both meditative and non-meditative mental activity, and canonical lists of four types of dhyāna were typically misread as types of meditation. Only one type, "pure meditation," was considered truly meditative, but it was often thought to occur only in the last moments before death or to be inaccessible in the present age. Post-canonical writers like Hemacandra filled the resulting vacuum, sometimes drawing on experience and external influences.