danielmingram

Applied ethics, meditation, music, heliotropic wizardry, late-night noodles, research into emergence, philanthropy

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@Engineer_Wong Fit-tested elastomeric P100, anyone?

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

The issue with centralized governments is that, unless you solve the general problem of psychopaths taking over centralized power structures, (as well as creating pathways around them), you will just end up with more powerful psychopathic institutions and will not likely get the safety you dream of… long, slow, rambling rant about that here: https://t.co/zeWnV1Zta5

[Matthew D. Sacchet @MatthewSacchet]

I'm delighted to announce the inaugural Science of Advanced Meditation Award, a $10,000 award presented by our Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, in affiliation with Harvard Medical School.

The Science of Advanced Meditation Award recognizes outstanding scientific research that contributes to our understanding of advanced meditation, including states, stages, and endpoints of meditative development.

The award recognizes outstanding empirical, theoretical, and applied research related to advanced meditation. Its scope includes:
– Broad processes and trajectories of meditative development, including long-term meditation practice, the cultivation of meditative skills and expertise, as well as associated psychological, behavioral, and neurobiological effects.

– Exploring connections between advanced meditation and related research areas, such as altered states, consciousness science, cross-tradition comparisons, and relations between meditation and psychedelics.

Reflecting this broad and interdisciplinary scope, the award celebrates excellence across domains including but not limited to theory, phenomenology, epidemiology, experimental psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, developmental science, clinical psychology and psychiatry, psychedelics, neuromodulation (including neurofeedback and neurostimulation), and consciousness science, as well as research examining the broader implications of advanced meditation for the mind, body, consciousness, eudaimonia, well-being and thriving, and beyond.

I envision a field in which these perspectives inform one another, helping us understand the radical possibilities of advanced meditation.

Award details:
– Award: $10,000 USD
– Submission window: May 1 - June 30, 2027
– Eligible submissions: Scientific papers, including published articles and preprints, published or made publicly available on or after July 1, 2026

Submission procedures, evaluation criteria, and other frequently asked questions will be announced before submissions open on May 1st on our website: https://t.co/KHnHyulsnx

I warmly invite researchers across disciplines and from around the world to consider submitting their work. Please do feel free to share this opportunity with anyone who may contribute to this vision.

For questions, please contact [email protected].

May our work benefit many 🙏

[Matthew D. Sacchet @MatthewSacchet]

For thousands of years, Theravāda Buddhism has described a state known as nirodha samāpatti, which is reported as complete cessation of feeling and perception. In this tradition, it is considered the highest meditative attainment and closely connected to nirvana/enlightenment.

Now, modern brain imaging is opening a window into this extraordinary phenomenon, bringing the deepest aspects of ancient contemplative practices into conversation with science.

I'm delighted to share our new study, now published in Imaging Neuroscience: "Endogenous suspension of phenomenal consciousness during extended cessation: Regional homogeneity analysis of multi-participant 7T fMRI of an advanced meditative endpoint"

This publication presents the first-ever brain imaging study of this unique phenomenon, which we have operationalized and termed “extended cessation” (EC). Practitioners enter and exit EC voluntarily, providing science with a rare, self-generated way to study what happens when awareness disappears.

Using 7T fMRI, we intensively scanned advanced meditators across EC sessions, and also during non-meditative control tasks. Retrospectively describing how they experienced EC, the meditators reported a complete absence of thought, bodily sensation, feeling, and experience during the state. On emerging, participants reported feelings of exquisite clarity, sensory vividness, radical openness, and lasting inner peace and joy.

Our neuroscience findings included:

-- In visual and posterior brain regions, neighboring signals became more synchronized, rising and falling together.

-- Synchrony decreased in areas involved in memory, emotion, and self-related processing, including the hippocampus, insula, and orbitofrontal cortex, and in brainstem nuclei.

-- Against a database of prior brain imaging studies, the EC pattern resembled brain maps associated with attention and perception, and most strongly diverged from maps associated with fear, stress, and pain.

-- EC-related neural changes tracked the distribution of histamine receptors, which are involved in the regulation of arousal and attention.

These findings shed light on an important question: how does brain organization relate to inner peace and consciousness?

In our study, consciousness ceased without a global shutdown of brain activity. Sleep, anesthesia, and disorders of consciousness are typically associated with broad suppression. EC instead showed selective disengagement of systems that bind perception to feeling, memory, and self-relevance.

These findings, although preliminary, converge with practitioners’ reports and offer a starting point for testing theories of inner peace and consciousness against a rare, emotionally and perceptually powerful, voluntary absence of experience.

Sharing congratulations and gratitude with our first author Winson Yang (@winsonfzyang), and co-authors Akila Kadambi, Ruby Potash, and Terje Sparby (@terjesparby). I also thank the meditators and our funders who made this work possible.

Please like and share if you find this work meaningful, our work depends on the support of our incredible global community.

Full article in the comments ⤵️

May this work benefit many 🙏

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@FundamentalLack @mryoung151 @gwladwr Fit-tested elastomeric P100, anyone? N95 certainly better than the others you list, but definitely not best. 😷

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

Some of you may have received an email from QRI's newsletter today. Addressing it here: it refers to an administrative issue with QRI's California state status that dates back to 2021. It's fixable, and we're on it. I didn't write or approve that email.

QRI's federal 501(c)(3) status is intact (the IRS lists QRI as eligible for tax-deductible donations), QRI isn't shutting down, and the research continues.

Until we regain control of QRI's newsletter and website domain, please disregard messages from QRI's newsletter or the @QualiaRI account, and follow this account for official QRI updates.

For now, please don't send emails to any @qri.org address. If you need to reach me, DM me here. Sorry for the lack of details. We're sorting things out as best we can, and more will follow soon. Hold tight 🙏

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@MatthewSacchet @winsonfzyang Congratulations! 🎊🎈

[Kathryn Devaney @kathryndevaney]

The full episode is on Spotify here:

The Science of Awakening and What Is Possible for Humans | Kathryn Devaney

Light the Campfire

What happens at the far edges of human consciousness and what can science actually tell us about it?

https://t.co/Mb0yCawsYR

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@quasa0 @nosilverv @_postal_ And some who live relative unwholesome lives may yet have some strong meditation abilities sometimes

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@quasa0 @nosilverv @_postal_ I recommend all three trainings, and they do interact and often reinforce each other, but one can pursue each on its own, and they often develop unevenly and not always in the predicted or orthodox sequence.

[Matthew D. Sacchet @MatthewSacchet]

How might meditation support preparation for, navigation of, and learning from psychedelic experiences?

I'm delighted to share our new manuscript, "Exploring the Interface of Meditation and Psychedelics: A Qualitative Analysis of Experienced Practitioners' Perspectives on Psychedelic Preparation," now published in Psychedelics.

We analyzed open-ended responses from 82 regular meditators across 18 countries, each with at least one psychedelic experience, such as psilocybin or LSD.

Three core themes emerged:

1️⃣ Optimizing Pre-Psychedelic Mindset: Participants described meditation as cultivating a positive mood, openness, cognitive flexibility, and a capacity to surrender before the experience.

2️⃣ Navigating Challenges: Participants felt that meditation made non-dual states and intense emotions feel more familiar, and helped them meet difficult moments with acceptance, equanimity, and an understanding of impermanence.

3️⃣ Facilitating Psychological Development: Participants used meditation to both set intentions before their experience and to integrate insights afterward. They viewed the changes from psychedelic experiences as short-term and opposed treating them as a “magic pill.”

These accounts suggest meditation and psychedelics may work synergistically along a continuum of psychological development, with psychedelic experiences embedded in a longer trajectory of meditative development.
These findings are based on participants' self-reported experiences. Because participants were recruited for their experience with both meditation and psychedelics, their responses may be biased in favor of meditation-based preparation for psychedelics. Future research is needed to fully understand possible synergies between these practices.

Congratulations to our first author Mia C. Riedel, and co-authors Rosalind G. McAlpine (@rosmcalpine) and Terje Sparby (@terjesparby). We are grateful for the practitioners who participated in our research.

Do our results resonate with your research, teaching, or practice? Let us know!

The full article is included in the comments below ⤵️

May this work benefit many 🙏

[DMT Quest @dmt_quest]

11-17-26... Austin, Texas IMAX premier.

https://t.co/qt2SuHDp06

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@TenpayNyima @doristsao This is still an open question, and I personally would be astounded if there weren’t neural correlates, but hopefully we will get to see in our lifetimes.

[Malcolm Wright @punk_utopian]

@delsonarmstrong Our work on risk factors:

https://t.co/kfI7QSdSD0

I would suggest the lineage is maybe important for pastoral reasons, but not as a gate keeping to the dharma 🙂❤️

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

Both, but in different degrees and based on somewhat different philosophical and practical grounds. The consciousness of anything is hard to either prove or disprove, basically equivalent to p-zombie problem which is reframing of age-old solipsism un-falsifiability problem, essentially chose your epistemic frame and you get your answer based on your priors and soteriological drives. But, as to the utterly complex thing the human brain/body/mind system, no way they upload that to a dry binary silicone device.

[Haley Maria Dourron @HDourron]

✨🧘🍄 New study 🍄🧘✨ Many people think that meditation & psychedelics might have similar effects. Our new study examines how beliefs & cognitive processes might be similar or different in consistent meditators versus psychedelic users
Share widely!

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

Ah, would not have come up with that interpretation in my own. Thanks. Zero chance the info in your brain gets uploaded the way the religious Transhumanists believe it will in the next 100k years, so I would happily bet could the future be known. I am sure the info in your brain is useful, obviously. Might check out the underlying base soteriological drives of Transhumanist dreams to see why they are so salient at the moment.

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@RomeoStevens76 @personneoutis What is the “it” and how is it “useful”? Do you mean this thread is useful as a philosophical debate?

[danielmingram @danielmingram]

@personneoutis @RomeoStevens76 I would bet everything I own that there is zero chance in the next 100,000 years we succeed in uploading anything conscious to a digital anything, much less a copy of our “own consciousness”. Not speaking as a “Buddhist” here, don’t need to get nearly that sophisticated.