Papers by Zoran Josipovic
Frontiers in Psychology, 2024
Some consider phenomenal consciousness to be the great achievement of the evolution of life on ea... more Some consider phenomenal consciousness to be the great achievement of the evolution of life on earth, but the real achievement is much more than mere phenomenality. The real achievement is that consciousness has woken up within us and has recognized itself, that within us humans, consciousness knows that it is conscious. This short review explores the reļ¬exivity of consciousness from the perspective of consciousness itselfāa non-conceptual nondual awareness, whose main property is its non-representational reļ¬exivity. In light of this nondual reļ¬exivity, dierent types of reļ¬exivity proposed by current theories can be seen as a gradation of relational or transitive distances between consciousness as the knower and consciousness as the known, from fully representational and dual, through various forms of qualiļ¬ed monism, to fully non-representational and nondual.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, May 6, 2016
This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores ... more This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores the possible relevance of this approach to applications of love and compassion meditation in clinical settings. It contrasts the nondual approach with the better known gradual or goal-oriented, dualistic view of meditation. This paper also introduces one of the central ideas of the nondual approach-that love and compassion, like other positive qualities that are ordinarily considered as goals of meditation practice, can be found to be already present within oneself as innate dimensions of one's authentic being.
Progress in Brain Research, 2019
I introduce arguments toward a non-representational reflexivity theory of consciousness-as-such t... more I introduce arguments toward a non-representational reflexivity theory of consciousness-as-such to address one of the key issues in the science of consciousness today: lack of understanding of the nature of consciousness itself. An expanded map of consciousness is outlined, which includes, in addition to the well-known contents of awareness and levels of arousal, the indeterminate substrate and consciousness-as-such or nondual awareness. The central idea presented is that consciousness-as-such is a non-conceptual nondual awareness, whose essential property is non-representational reflexivity. This property makes consciousness-as-such phenomenologically, cognitively and neurobiologically a unique kind, different from and irreducible to any contents, functions and states, including the indeterminate substrate. Our previous hypothesis on the precuneus network for nondual awareness is further discussed in relation to non-representational reflexivity, and in the light of other hypotheses on the neural correlates of consciousness-as-such.
Duality and nonduality in meditation research
Consciousness and Cognition, Dec 1, 2010
Frontiers in Psychology, Nov 10, 2015
Contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness have recently gained increased acceptance... more Contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness have recently gained increased acceptance in science and clinical practice, although a number of issues related to their phenomenology and to experimental designs still remain (Dahl et al., 2015).
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2012
Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction ... more Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related. The cerebral cortex appears to be divided into two corresponding systems: an "extrinsic" system composed of brain areas that respond more to external stimuli and tasks and an "intrinsic" system composed of brain areas that respond less to external stimuli and tasks. These two broad brain systems seem to compete with each other, such that their activity levels over time is usually anti-correlated, even when subjects are "at rest" and not performing any task. This study used meditation as an experimental manipulation to test whether this competition (anti-correlation) can be modulated by cognitive strategy. Participants either fixated without meditation (fixation), or engaged in non-dual awareness (NDA) or focused attention (FA) meditations. We computed inter-area correlations ("functional connectivity") between pairs of brain regions within each system, and between the entire extrinsic and intrinsic systems. Anti-correlation between extrinsic vs. intrinsic systems was stronger during FA meditation and weaker during NDA meditation in comparison to fixation (without mediation). However, correlation between areas within each system did not change across conditions. These results suggest that the anti-correlation found between extrinsic and intrinsic systems is not an immutable property of brain organization and that practicing different forms of meditation can modulate this gross functional organization in profoundly different ways.
Perception without a Perceiver In Conversation with Zoran Josipovic
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2006
Rafael Malach is currently a professor in the department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institut... more Rafael Malach is currently a professor in the department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. His current research is aimed at understanding how the neuronal circuitry in the human brain translates a stream of sensory stimuli into meaningful perception. Rafael Malach received his PhD in physiological optics from UC Berkeley and did his post-doctorate research at MIT. Originally doing research on the organization of neuronal connections in the primate brain, his focus has recently shifted to the study of the human cerebral cortex using fMRI. Professor Malach has begun this research at Massachusetts General Hospital, exploring a new object-related region called the lateral occipital complex. Since then he expanded this research, studying the human visual cortex using a variety of methods, including adaptation paradigms, backward masking, and more recently naturalistic stimuli ā all aimed at deciphering the intriguing link between perceptual experience and brain activity.
Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Sep 4, 2013
Consciousness is multi-dimensional but is most often portrayed with a 2-D map that has global lev... more Consciousness is multi-dimensional but is most often portrayed with a 2-D map that has global levels or states on one axis, and phenomenal contents on the other. On this map, phenomenal content is conflated with awareness itself, which contributes to ongoing difficulties in the scientific understanding of consciousness. Previously (Josipovic 2014, 2019; Josipovic and Miskovic, 2020) I have proposed that consciousness as such, or nondual awareness-a basic non-conceptual, non-propositional awareness in itself free of subject-object fragmentation, is phenomenally, functionally and neurobiologically, a unique kind that cannot be adequately specified by a 2-D map of levels/modes and contents. Here, I propose an implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness to be added as the third dimension on z-axis. an axis to the 2D map of consciousness. Alternatively, within the multi-dimensional state space model of consciousness, nondual awareness can be specified by several vectors, each representing one of its properties. I explore how including the implicit-explicit gradient of nondual awareness as an additional axis clarifies certain features of everyday dualistic experiences and is especially relevant for understanding the unitary and nondual experiences accessed via different contemplative methods, mind altering substances, or spontaneously. I discuss the relevance of this for current theories of consciousness.
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscienc... more Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. They can be thought of as episodes of greatly reduced or even absent phenomenal content together with a reduced level of arousal. It has also been proposed that MPEs are cases of consciousness-as-such. Here, we present a different perspective, that consciousness-as-such is first and foremost a type of awareness, that is, non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual, in other words, non-representational. This awareness is a unique kind and cannot be adequately specified by the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the phenomenal content or by their mental representations. Thus, we suggest that to understand consciousness-as-such, and by extension consciousness in general, more accurately, we need to research it as a unique kind.
Freedom of the mind
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2016
This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores ... more This paper discusses meditation from the unique perspective of the nondual approach and explores the possible relevance of this approach to applications of love and compassion meditation in clinical settings. It contrasts the nondual approach with the better known gradual or goal-oriented, dualistic view of meditation. This paper also introduces one of the central ideas of the nondual approach-that love and compassion, like other positive qualities that are ordinarily considered as goals of meditation practice, can be found to be already present within oneself as innate dimensions of one's authentic being.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
Contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness have recently gained increased acceptance... more Contemplative practices like meditation and mindfulness have recently gained increased acceptance in science and clinical practice, although a number of issues related to their phenomenology and to experimental designs still remain (Dahl et al., 2015).
Guide to Brain-Computer Music Interfacing, 2014
This is the authors' original unrevised version of the manuscript. The final version of this work... more This is the authors' original unrevised version of the manuscript. The final version of this work (the version of record) is published by Springer in the book Guide to Brain-Computer Music Interfacing, ISBN 9781447165835. This text is made available on-line in accordance with the publisher's policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
Commentary: Duality and Nonduality in Meditation Research
nondualityinst.org
Abstract: The great variety of meditation techniques found in different contemplative traditions ... more Abstract: The great variety of meditation techniques found in different contemplative traditions presents a challenge when attempting to create taxonomies based on the constructs of contemporary cognitive sciences. In the current issue of Consciousness and ...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2013
Dualities such as self versus other, good versus bad, and in-group versus out-group are pervasive... more Dualities such as self versus other, good versus bad, and in-group versus out-group are pervasive features of human experience, structuring the majority of cognitive and affective processes. Yet, an entirely different way of experiencing, one in which such dualities are relaxed rather than fortified, is also available. It depends on recognizing, within the stream of our consciousness, the nondual awareness (NDA)-a background awareness that precedes conceptualization and intention and that can contextualize various perceptual, affective, or cognitive contents without fragmenting the field of experience into habitual dualities. This paper introduces NDA as experienced in Tibetan Buddhist meditation and reviews the results of our study on the influence of NDA on anticorrelated intrinsic and extrinsic networks in the brain. Also discussed are preliminary data from a current study of NDA with minimized phenomenal content that points to involvement of a precuneus network in NDA.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2013
What Can Neuroscience Learn from Contemplative Practices?
Frontiers Research Topics, 2016
Nondual Awareness and Minimal Phenomenal Experience
Frontiers in Psychology
Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscienc... more Minimal phenomenal experiences (MPEs) have recently gained attention in the fields of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. They can be thought of as episodes of greatly reduced or even absent phenomenal content together with a reduced level of arousal. It has also been proposed that MPEs are cases of consciousness-as-such. Here, we present a different perspective, that consciousness-as-such is first and foremost a type of awareness, that is, non-conceptual, non-propositional, and nondual, in other words, non-representational. This awareness is a unique kind and cannot be adequately specified by the two-dimensional model of consciousness as the arousal level plus the phenomenal content or by their mental representations. Thus, we suggest that to understand consciousness-as-such, and by extension consciousness in general, more accurately, we need to research it as a unique kind.
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Papers by Zoran Josipovic