.Will ad
This project examines how neuroscience challenges traditional notions of free will and human agency. Several research, beginning with Libet’s 1983 study and subsequent experiments, demonstrate that unconscious neural processes initiate actions that precede our conscious decisions; what we perceive as conscious choice may be an endpoint of a complex preconscious build-up process. Philosopher Hillary Bok offers a compelling counterargument: although external prediction is determined, our internal deliberative processes remain uncertain until we actively choose. Bok’s argument resonates with Libet’s “veto” moment – a temporal gap in which individuals can consciously self-reflect to override a preconscious process. Christian perspective enriches this debate by highlighting self-reflection as a divine gift essential to authentic freedom, as presented by Augustine and Aquinas. These interdisciplinary insights can extend to practical applications, such as designing brain-machine interfaces that protect user autonomy and pastoral care to address unconscious and conscious dimensions of decision-making.
The debate over the epistemological reliability of religious experiences between Perennialism and Constructivism remains unresolved. Perennialism argues that religious experiences reveal a shared ultimate reality, supported by Robert K. C. Forman’s Pure Consciousness Event (PCE) and Richard Swinburne’s principle of credulity. However, critics challenge this view due to cultural inconsistencies and naturalistic explanations. Constructivism contends that religious experiences are shaped by cultural and cognitive frameworks, questioning the possibility of unmediated encounters with the transcendent. Nonetheless, it faces criticism for its reductionism, potentially overlooking the existential and transformative dimensions of religious experiences. To bridge this gap, this paper explores Carlos Miguel Rincon’s embodied cognitive approach, which interprets religious experiences as existential events that provide practical guidance rather than epistemological truths. This perspective reconciles Perennialism and Constructivism by emphasizing the lived, transformative impact of religious experiences while addressing the question of epistemic reliability.
Building upon a previously proposed model of comparative mysticism (Trivedi, 2024), this work proposes a newer method called nesting or the nesting method (NM). In recent work, I proposed a model of comparative mysticism that based its rationale for comparison in the dynamic interaction between three components: neurocognitive mechanisms and substrates, phenomenal experiences, and noetic accounts. While examining the phenomenon of ego-dissolution (EDn), I identified universal and contextual components of the ego-dissolution experiences of the contemporary Indian mystic Sadhguru (1957–Present) and the medieval Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila (1515–1583), respectively. In nesting, I aim to present several accounts of Indian, Hindu mystics (Advaita Vedānta, Kāśmīrī Śaivism, etc.) experiencing what is deemed as non-dual, ego-dissolution at multiple levels (neuroscience, phenomenology, theology, sociology, etc.), that encourage interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary theories and methodologies. The former levels are "nested" within the latter levels, proposing a step-by-step dynamic interaction that presents the EDn experience as ultimately, holistic.
During the nineteenth century, spiritualist, Theosophical and psychological thinkers developed what I call “evolutionary theologies” to explain the human-animal relationship in light of Darwin and other biological theories. I apply both historical and comparative methodologies as well as conceptual metaphor theory to examine the development of these new theologies, which continue to be influential in spiritual but not religious and “New Age” communities. These thinkers used both the Bible and Asian myth to reimagine human transformation, with animal qualities playing a role in both our evolutionary futures as well as our pasts. Thinkers evaluated include the spiritualists Andrew Jackson Davis and Emma Hardinge Britten; Theosophists Helena Blavatsky and A.P. Sinnett; and psychologist Frederic W.H. Myers. They developed new threads of commonality with non-human animals while also finding new reasons to be wary of the body and its “animal” passions.