Enlightenment, the goal of long-term meditation, involves a dissolution of the self-boundary experienced as nondual awareness. The Executive Awareness Cognition Theory (ExACT) proposes that enlightenment results from a functional reversal of the brain's resting state networks: the Central Executive Network (CEN) replaces the Default Mode Network (DMN) as the default network. This neural shift corresponds to nondual awareness becoming the default perception mode, with the subjective self experienced as virtual. The theory aims to provide a reference for future meditation research and establish enlightenment as a distinct cognitive state with specific neural and phenomenological markers.
Meditation practices can be broadly classified into focused attention (FA), open monitoring (OM), and automatic transcendence (AT) types, each associated with distinct brain networks: FA activates the executive control network (ECN), while AT engages the default mode network (DMN). The authors hypothesize that an individual's position in Maslow's hierarchy of needs determines which brain state predominates, with those lower in the hierarchy relying more on ECN for survival. This framework suggests that meditation selection should be tailored to an individual's daily life challenges and predominant functional brain state, rather than based on intuition or general recommendations.