Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
John Cantellow
This paper proposes that phenomenological consciousness—the first-person experience of being—may serve as a middle ground connecting physical descriptions of consciousness (based on neural correlates) with spiritual descriptions emphasizing continuity, witness, and enduring presence (historically associated with the soul). The author suggests that experiential persistence offers a minimal point of contact between these two domains. Combining this with earlier work on constraint organization, the paper outlines a bidirectional phenomenological bridge: physical processes relate to consciousness through neural correlates, while phenomenological relationships become reflected in embodied behavior through patterns of constraint organization,...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 13, 2026
John Cantellow
A conceptual framework for extraordinary conscious experiences is developed, shifting focus from variable contents to conserved phenomenological characteristics. Six candidate invariants are proposed, including positive and negative invariants. Observer-oriented and actor-oriented organizational regimes are introduced, with Transitional Regime as a metastable intermediate condition. Extraordinary experiences are treated as perturbations revealing ordinarily obscured organizational features. The framework does not claim survival after death, dualism, supernatural causation, or violations of physical causal closure. It offers a speculative but disciplined architecture to organize diverse reports, generate falsifiable questions, and complement neural correlates with organizational correlates. Absences, constraints, and epistemological limitations are argued to be informative features of consciousness research.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 31, 2026
John Cantellow
Conscious experience may have a more fundamental and persistent feature than the forms of selfhood usually associated with it. Drawing on reports from dreaming, contemplative practice, psychedelic states, and nondual awareness, the paper introduces the concept of experiential presence: the minimal fact that experience appears present at all. This is a heuristic construct, not a metaphysical entity. Autobiographical identity, agency, embodiment, and self-boundary can transform while conscious experience remains. The paper considers competing interpretations and raises methodological and epistemological issues about whether experiential presence may be part of the condition under which consciousness becomes available for investigation. It does not claim experiential presence is universal, but aims to clarify questions for future research.