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Remembering the Future: Wild Time and the Cosmic Imagination
Full text linkEntropy – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – is generally held to prove “time’s arrow”: that time is linear and unidirectional, and that the universe is following this trajectory. This paper presents a preliminary exposition into a new, integral ontology of time in which time is hyper-dimensional, non-linear and flows in both directions. This is supported through trans-disciplinary praxis at the intersection of aesthetics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. The metaphysical implications of reverse causality are investigated, and confer a teleological universe that is coherent with the paradigm of an intelligent, self-realising cosmos in which beauty is a fundamental property
Evolution of Women’s Consciousness: Toward Integral Consciousness
Full text linkThis article presents research materials which demonstrate historical consciousness for women of ancient European descent, the cultural heritage of the author. Awareness is examined from various historical angles in a transdisciplinary approach to the work. I explore the possibility that women’s historical and continued oppression may be a sign of the disintegration of the mental and a re-emergence of the integral structure of consciousness. A broad examination of women’s historical roles and corresponding thought shows how ancient consciousness may be used to accelerate a path toward integral consciousness today. Finally, this essay proposes that women’s historical consciousness and primordial memories of gender neutral societies may be unseen factors–gifts yet to be unveiled–that women may contribute toward hastening the assimilation of integral consciousness
Two Dimensions of a Bodhisattva
Full text linkThis paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting the innate qualities of mind express themselves. In contrast, the bottom-up approach is better described as “breaking the cycle” of suffering. That is to say, this orientation toward a bodhisattva’s practice involves restraint and discipline to train the mind by turning it away from habitual, destructive patterns to shape it into spontaneous and skillful responses and expressions. This paper will discuss both of thes
Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study of Participants\u27 Experiences
Full text linkThere are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all participants experienced benefits from the MBI, they felt that the mindfulness training they received lacked spiritual depth. Implications for the design and delivery of MBIs are discussed
The joy of watching the film Arrival with Whitehead and O’Donohue
Full text linkThis paper offers a discussion of the film Arrival that is situated in the perspective of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and John O’Donohue. The themes discussed include language, communication, context, time, and reality and includes a speculative perspective that the philosophers may have contributed to interpretation of the film’s meaning. It concludes with a view of the relevance of the film in light of current technology advances in artificial intelligence and with the authors own reflection on how this film is relevant to her current research inquiry on the topic of jo
Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing the Drake-S Equation for Postmortem Survival of Consciousness
Full text linkThis participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the ‘Drake equation’ to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., anomalous effects ) or refutes (i.e., known confounds ) the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of ‘living agent psi’ via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found that putative psi was a meaningful variable, although it along with other known confounds still did not account for 30.3% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing after physical (biological) death. Thus, the popular conventional variables that we measured here are seemingly insufficient to account for a sizable portion of the purported empirical data that has been interpreted as evidence of survival. Our conclusion is nonetheless tempered by several assumptions and limitations of our speculative exercise, which ultimately does not affirm the existence of an ‘afterlife’ but rather highlights the need for measurements with greater precision and/ or a more comprehensive set of quantifiable variables. Therefore, we discuss how our probabilistic approach provides important heuristics to guide future research in this highly controversial domain that touches both parapsychology and transpersonal psychology
Psi-entific Approach to Post-Mortem Survival: Employing the Multiple Sources of Psi (MSoP) and Discarnate Psi Hypotheses in the Calculation of a Drake-S Equation
Full text linkThe continued investigations of the paranormal facilitated the development of novel theories and methodologies. Psi functioning of the living and the deceased in survival phenomena suggested the living agent psi (LAP) and discarnate psi hypotheses, but neither has demonstrated sufficient explanatory power to claim superiority in explaining survival data. Mediumship studies cannot determine whether paranormal information is sourced by means of discarnate psi or LAP, presenting the source-of-psi problem. Anomalous information can be obtained from joint sources (LAP, survival, or some other source), which supports the multiple sources of psi (MSoP) hypothesis. The maximized explanatory potential of the MSoP hypothesis makes the inclusion of the LAP and discarnate psi factors in the calculation of a Drake-S equation for post-mortem survival required and appropriate. This paper concludes that 1) the aggregate effect of skeptical explanations for survival was calculated at 65.6%, leaving 35.4% to paranormal explanations, which contradicts skeptical claims and is inconsistent with the existing laws of conventional science; 2) 16% of paranormal experiences reported among the general population appeared genuine; and 3) the calculated purified probability for all paranormal phenomena equaling 40% can be attributed to paranormal causes. This suggests reasonable plausibility of the survival hypothesis. To refine the existing factors and find new empirical factors related to known confounds and anomalous effects, future research should include more robust procedures and methods of data selection, gathering, and analysis
Wild Otherness Within: A Jungian and Zen Approach to the Untamed Self in the Ten Oxherding Pictures
Full text linkThe Ten Oxherding Pictures are an ancient allegory for the process of enlightenment. This article analyzes the series of ten paintings through the lenses of Jungian psychology and alterity studies to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the images. This interpretation highlights the relationship between the oxherd and the ox, suggesting that the ox is a wild other that seeks intersubjective understanding. In questioning the meaning of domestication in these images, this investigation deconstructs the traditional allegory of enlightenment as a process of domestication, suggesting that these images instead point towards the importance of releasing the appropriative attitude. Ultimately, the oxherd in the series must surrender his perceptual lens to make space for what seems untamed and unencompassable to speak to and through him
Continuities of Consciousness, Life-Worlds, and Numinous Experience: Cognitive-Phenomenological Foundations for an Empirical Neo-Shamanism
Full text linkNuminous experience—as the felt sense of the sacred—evokes feelings of allone unity, communality, humility, and healing. Its schematization in the absolutes of traditional religion can also be seen as all-encompassing symbolic unifications of an otherwise fragmented human life-world—as more analytically depicted in the life-world phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger. In both feeling and concept the numinous would be the semantic amplification of the more concrete organism-surround nonduality of non symbolic organisms—as reflected in a primary consciousness shared across Uexkuell’s sentient animal umwelten and Gibson’s “envelopes of flow.” H usserl’s phenomenology of passive synthesis and James on pure experience can be understood as intuiting the implicit forms underlying such a primary transspecies consciousness, as both differentiated into these concrete lifeworlds, to the level of the inferably sentient protozoa, and abstractly amplified as the human numinous. The latter, with its original social template in an ethically responsible shamanism, becomes similarly responsible in the contemporary context of a human caused global climate crisis for the care and conservation of that Spirit it both develops as such and accurately intuits as a universal is-like shared with all sentient beings