Consciousness is often described as having a subject-object structure, but studying its subjective aspects empirically is challenging. Meditation traditions, particularly Buddhist ones, have been used to manipulate this structure. This paper presents the Tantric Yoga tradition, especially the Ananda Marga school founded by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, as an alternative framework. It translates Tantric Yoga philosophy into a systematic phenomenological account of consciousness divided into four structures spanning from subject to object. Stepwise meditation procedures are detailed that allow a practitioner to experientially reduce these structures from object to subject, aiming for self-realization. The paper discusses how these states overlap with those from other traditions and could advance empirical consciousness research.
Meditation training improves mental well-being by engaging a metacognitive process. During meditation, a person tries to maintain a target content in consciousness, requiring monitoring and regulation of conscious contents. This involves a metacognitive template of the target; comparing this template to actual conscious content generates a "metacognitive prediction error" (MPE). MPE helps fine-tune the frequency of monitoring, unconscious processing, and the template itself, enabling efficient regulation. The framework explains existing neuroscientific findings on meditation and generates testable hypotheses.