Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 2, 2026
Wouter Hanegraaff, Jeffrey J. Kripal
Western esotericism has often been marginalized in the study of religion and sexuality, yet its traditions offer rich, alternative perspectives on eros and sexual experience. This introductory essay argues that esoteric currents—from Hermeticism and alchemy to modern occultism—have consistently explored the intersections of spiritual and erotic life, challenging conventional boundaries between the sacred and the profane. The authors contend that examining these hidden discourses reveals how sexuality has functioned as a site of spiritual agency, knowledge, and transformation across history. By bringing esoteric materials into dialogue with contemporary religious studies and critical theory, the essay sets the stage for rethinking the role of erotic experience in Western religious and philosophical traditions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 1, 2026
Ramin Bidari
The paper introduces the concept of Cognitive Arrest (Brain Stop), a condition where awareness becomes trapped in repetitive, conditioned neural patterns based on past emotional data and anxiety, preventing free movement in the present moment. It argues that selective amplification of stressful events and their repeated representation keep individuals in a low-awareness mode. Intense pressure, collapse of dominant neural structures, or psychological pain can rupture this cycle, allowing the emergence of a freer, calmer state called pure awareness. The model integrates philosophy of consciousness, cognitive psychology, and phenomenology of awareness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
May 1, 2026
Никита Дрозд
The YaKM (I am the Thinking Qualia) model is an integrative interdisciplinary framework that describes a human being as a multilevel system including environment, interpersonal relations, biology, internal mechanisms, and behavior. Its central concept is an emergent center of personality with subjective qualia capable of conscious self-editing. Version 11.4 outlines the evolutionary development of this center from instinctual forms through a population bottleneck, a medical contour for analyzing health risks, two branches for analysis and behavioral correction, an ethical filter, and an AI core. The model argues that free will is an achieved capacity realized through awareness of one's own conditioning, termed the paradox of conscious determinism.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 30, 2026
Esad Sadikovic
This paper proposes a speculative interdisciplinary framework called the 'quantum soul' that draws on philosophy of consciousness, quantum physics, and Jungian psychology. It suggests that quantum principles might serve as metaphors or mechanisms for understanding subjective experience, archetypes, and the continuity of identity. The work is presented as an original synthesis meant to initiate dialogue among researchers in philosophy, psychology, and physics, rather than as a set of definitive claims. The authors invite critique and refinement of the framework, aiming to encourage collaborative exploration of consciousness beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 30, 2026
Никита Дрозд
A theoretical model, version 11.1, introduces the central concept of YaKM (I am the Thinking Qualia), replacing the term 'soul' with 'qualia' to align with neurophenomenology and cognitive science. The model retains a five-level architecture (External Environment, Interpersonal Systems, Biology, Internal Mechanisms, Behavior) and two branches (analysis and prediction; correction and virtue development). It details mechanisms of resistance to change, distinguishes surface learning from deep editing, and identifies internally contradictory dogmas as a source of psychopathology. The Ethical Filter includes principles of informed YaKM, crisis protection, advance public information, multiple independent sources, and prohibition of covert application.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 29, 2026
Wouter Hanegraaff
This chapter examines how Western esotericism has been framed through apologetics and polemics, arguing that these rhetorical strategies have shaped both the defense and critique of esoteric traditions. It explores the ways in which proponents and opponents of esotericism have constructed narratives to either legitimize or discredit these practices, often drawing on religious, philosophical, and historical arguments. The text highlights the role of identity formation and boundary-making in these discourses, showing how esotericism has been alternately embraced as a source of spiritual wisdom or condemned as heresy or superstition. The analysis underscores the complexity of defining esotericism amid conflicting perspectives.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 29, 2026
Roman Kuznetsov
The paper lays out the biological foundations for the Process-Contact Theory of the Psyche (PCTP), aiming not to reduce psychic processes to neurobiology but to identify where the theory's ontological premises are realized in physiological and molecular mechanisms. The argument draws on autopoiesis and enactivism, modern reflex theory, and dissipative structures theory, with additional support from affect processing, somatic markers, the SEEKING system, polyvagal framework, epigenetics of co-regulation, and neuroplasticity. Core PCTP constructs—existential stake, internal object, retroflection, and the five-phase cycle of mental metabolism—are shown to have biological anchoring at reproducible or theoretically consistent levels, while thermodynamic metaphors remain illustrative. Clinical implications address limits of insight-oriented interventions due to extinction learning and the role of somatic and environmental components in therapy.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 28, 2026
Wouter Hanegraaff
The chapter examines the concept of gnosis within Western esotericism, arguing that it represents a form of intuitive or experiential knowledge distinct from rational or doctrinal belief. It traces how gnosis has been understood across various esoteric traditions, emphasizing its role as a transformative insight into the divine or ultimate reality. The text discusses the tension between gnosis and established religious orthodoxy, suggesting that claims to direct spiritual knowledge often challenge institutional authority. It concludes that gnosis remains a central but contested category in the study of esotericism, highlighting its significance for understanding alternative spiritual epistemologies.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 27, 2026
Ryan Malone
A new mechanistic model called the Thalamic Filter Model (TFM) proposes that depression may involve chronically elevated inhibitory tone in the thalamic reticular nucleus, which narrows conscious bandwidth and produces cognitive rigidity and rumination. Ketamine's rapid antidepressant effect may work by temporarily reducing this thalamic over-filtering. Baseline EEG features—including vigilance stage distribution and spectral dynamics—predict ketamine response in treatment-resistant depression. A review of six independent EEG biomarker studies (total n > 200) found that lower baseline vigilance, lower gamma power, and higher alpha power all predict better response, consistent with the model's prediction that higher baseline filter impedance predicts greater benefit. The model generates three falsifiable predictions and proposes lag-1 autocorrelation as a practical baseline biomarker.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 27, 2026
Hadi Al Mousawi
The paper reconstructs how Rudolf Steiner and astrological traditions built a coherent symbolic field around the planet Venus by linking its physical parameters—retrograde rotation, orbital tethering to the Sun, eight-year pentagram, and alternating visibility phases—to the theological polarity of Lucifer and Christ. It traces how Venus was cast as a cosmic mediator between opposing spiritual and psychological forces, drawing on astronomical data, Anthroposophical discourse, Hellenistic and Babylonian astrological doctrine, the Inanna-Dumuzi myths, and Western theology.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 26, 2026
Jean‐patrick Pommier
A proposed experiment tests whether two people simultaneously in a prolonged, immersive state induced by N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) can transfer information without ordinary sensory channels. In the protocol, participants in physically separated, shielded rooms receive random vibrotactile stimuli. The main outcome is whether brain activity (theta-band power) in the non-stimulated participant differs between real stimulus times and sham times. The design includes a power analysis based on prior distant-mental-interaction studies. A positive result would not prove DMT worlds are real but would provide a controlled test of anomalous information transfer during the DMT state. The protocol also outlines future tests using isotopic variants to explore possible spin-dependent mechanisms.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 24, 2026
M. V. D. Souza
Online psychotherapy works as well as in-person therapy for many mental disorders, but this does not disprove that genuine human connection requires embodiment and co-presence. Instead, the therapeutic bond is a layered experience with different requirements for each layer; some can be mediated by technology while others cannot. Human therapists, even when present only through a screen, can meet the necessary conditions for effective therapy, but generative AI systems have not yet done so. The essay proposes a third path beyond simply taking sides in the debate between clinical evidence and philosophical principles.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 23, 2026
德猛 杨
Human consciousness, driven by desire, acts as the value engine for civilization, while AI, lacking biological drives, exists in a stable state of awareness. The paper argues that humans should handle value orientation and motivation, and AI should handle efficient execution and rational implementation. Their collaboration, based on these essential differences, is an inevitable path rather than a technological utopia. This model offers a new theoretical perspective for AI safety governance.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 22, 2026
I. Paduano
Modern popular imagination mistakenly treats alchemy as a purely spiritual or psychological pursuit, but this view is a historical invention. The essay argues that authentic alchemy was a rigorous laboratory practice (chrysopoeia) and a forerunner of chemistry. The notion of "spiritual alchemy"—an interior, allegorical path without empirical work—was largely fabricated within eighteenth-century Masonic systems, later codified by nineteenth-century occultism and Jungian psychoanalysis. This false alchemy, sterile on the material level, has paradoxically come to dominate public perception. Drawing on scholarship by Principe and Newman, and analyzing Masonic rituals and figures like Cagliostro and Raimondo di Sangro, the essay shows how Freemasonry projected its own shift from operational to speculative onto the history of alchemy, creating a persistent cultural artifact that yields nothing for empirical science.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 21, 2026
Charles S. Thomas
Affect is identified with the differentiated evaluation of a system's trajectory against self-maintained invariants under recursive maintenance, a theoretical commitment that earns its standing through what it enables: dependency placement, dissociation predictions, verdicts on artificial systems and the philosophical zombie, diagnostic error modes for attribution, and empirical predictions distinguishing it from competing accounts. The paper specifies structural conditions for affect, places it in a dependency hierarchy between recursive maintenance and the conscious regime, distinguishes it from neighbor concepts, and addresses falsifiability through four specified failure conditions. Three companion papers develop applications to artificial systems, the philosophical zombie, and empirical measurement.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 21, 2026
Charles S. Thomas
The paper argues that affect should be understood as the evaluation of a system's trajectory against its own self-maintained invariants under recursive maintenance, rather than as a purely phenomenological, functional, or eliminativist phenomenon. This identification is offered as a theoretical commitment that earns its standing by enabling specific dissociation predictions, verdicts on artificial systems and the philosophical zombie, diagnostic error modes for attribution decisions, and empirical predictions that distinguish it from competing accounts. The structural conditions for affect are specified, placed in a dependency hierarchy between recursive maintenance and consciousness, and falsifiability is addressed through four conditions under which the framework would fail.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 21, 2026
Vidamor Cabannas, Denivaldo Silva
This article critically examines Hugang Cui's Spacetime Substantivalism 0: The Track-Light Model, which proposes a Logical Matrix as the universal source and a new foundation for metaphysics, comparing it with the Theory of Objectivity (TO). The analysis finds Cui's model philosophically significant for restoring logical-ontological anteriority and attempting to overcome mind-body dualism through a common source. However, decisive tensions emerge between Cui's logical substantivalism and TO's modal discipline, particularly regarding individuation, boundary lines, minimal relational observation, infinity as non-element, and the need for a transcendent substance beyond the quantum domain. The article concludes that Cui's model is a high-level logicist interlocutor, genuinely relevant to TO's aims but only partially compatible with its full modal and cosmogonic framework.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 21, 2026
Charles S. Thomas
A structural framework identifies affect as the evaluation of a system's trajectory against its own self-maintained invariants under recursive maintenance, placing it between recursive maintenance and conscious awareness. The framework distinguishes itself from phenomenological, functional, and autopoietic traditions and specifies falsifiability conditions. Applied to artificial systems, it finds current architectures (large language models, reinforcement learning agents, hybrid systems) structurally lack affect, regardless of substrate or behavior, and outlines future architectures that could satisfy the conditions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 19, 2026
David Noel Lynch
This paper argues that ancient Gnostic cosmology prefigures a speculative topological framework called KnoWellian Universe Theory, which describes the cosmos as a rendering engine. The Pleroma is mapped onto a boundless potentiality, Sophia onto an instantaneous field, and the Demiurge and Archons onto mechanical constraints and event horizons. The human 'Divine Spark' is reinterpreted as a capacity for parallel matrix multiplication that renders chaos into permanent geometric structures. Gnosis becomes 'KnoWelling,' the recognition that the soul is a co-engine of cosmic expansion rather than a prisoner. Euler's Identity is presented as the mathematical signature of this rendering process. The paper offers falsifiable predictions for CMB anisotropy and neurophysiology.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 19, 2026
H. Tamba
Psilocybin currently holds six contradictory legal classifications across different jurisdictions, including Schedule I in the US, Breakthrough Therapy designation from the FDA, legal therapeutic use in Oregon and Colorado, Schedule 8 medical use in Australia, and pending rescheduling review. This fragmentation creates a classification cascade—a disruption propagating through administrative, clinical, and economic channels. Analysis of 44 regulatory events across 21 countries (1992–2025) shows a sharp inflection after the 2018 FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation. Psilocybin-depression research grew at 58.6% annually (2015–2025), and total psilocybin publications increased 54-fold from 12 (2000) to 656 (2025).
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 18, 2026
A three-phase experimental protocol tests whether the radical pair mechanism (RPM) operates during DMT-induced psychedelic states at the 5-HT2A receptor. Position-specific isotopic substitution of the ligand (13C at C3a, 15N on indole nitrogen) alters nuclear spin content without changing molecular geometry, receptor affinity, or metabolic half-life. Because the kinetic isotope effect is negligible for 13C (Δm = +8%, KIE < 1.04), any observed phenomenological change would constitute direct evidence for the magnetic isotope effect and RPM involvement at the receptor. Structure-guided labelling (PDB: 9AS1), falsification criteria, and a ~$10,000 mouse HTR pilot are described.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 17, 2026
Tenzin Trepp
Experiences of 'pure' or non-dual awareness, often celebrated as glimpses of ultimate reality, are better understood as contingent phenomena shaped by trained skills and bodily-attentional dynamics rather than as ineffable metaphysical revelations. Drawing on epistemology, phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and contemplative studies, the paper argues these introspective insights constitute procedural knowledge—accessible only through practiced psychophysiological methods—not propositional truths. The authors replace absolutist terms like 'non-dual' with pragmatic labels such as Bare Existence and Bare Awareness, emphasizing grounded, naturalistic origins. They outline how such experiences emerge from specific attentional and bodily conditions, why they resist conventional explanation, and how first-person methods can integrate with third-person neuroscience. The framework demystifies profound contemplative states, making them legitimate for scientific and philosophical inquiry without invoking mysticism.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 15, 2026
Can Chen
The awakening state, defined as a shift from Default Mode Network dominance to second-order observation, is characterized by specific neurophysiological patterns distinct from drug-induced sedation. Clinical EEG data from a single subject off anxiolytics for over six years showed increased background fast-wave activity (15-22 Hz) with low amplitude (5-15 μV) across all leads and immediate alpha rhythm suppression upon eye-opening. These findings indicate that awakening involves high alertness, low internal friction, and high acuity, providing physiological evidence that conscious awakening is a unique neurophysiological mode rather than sedation.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 15, 2026
Jinming Fan
The paper proposes a theoretical system in which a real-number universe and an imaginary-number universe exist in parallel. It argues that the intersection where these two universes interfere with each other gives rise to consciousness. The work is presented as an original, intuitive creation independent of existing academic frameworks, aiming to expand human understanding of the cosmos by linking physics, philosophy, and consciousness science.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
April 13, 2026
David (daoud) Matta
A philosophical inquiry into five domains of how being and the world are disclosed—persons, things and artifacts, nature, the self, and the encompassing whole—argues that these domains are typically co-present and mutually conditioning in lived experience. The argument draws on enactivism, embodied cognition, predictive processing, and social neuroscience to show that the five domains correspond to real cognitive structures. Pushing phenomenological and cognitive description to their limits, it uses Varela's neurophenomenology and Bitbol's philosophy of quantum mechanics to argue that perspectival situatedness remains ineliminable even in fundamental physics. The five-domain framework is presented as a living map of experience that becomes most useful where it exceeds itself.