New paper: "The Core of Me Is That Which Observes"

I am happy to be part of the newly published paper The Core of Me Is That Which Observes: A Mixed-Methods Study of Trait-Level Sense of Self in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. In this study, led by Lena Lindström, we explored the phenomenology of sense of self among participants with different levels of meditation experience. We investigated extents of perspectival ownership (a sense of being an experiencer or of witnessing), non-dual experiences, and states of boundarylessness between the self and the world during meditation. This includes the highly contentious question of whether there really can be any experience without a sense of perspectival ownership.

It was a challenging but very interesting task to analyse this data, and especially to see how many different and sometimes conflicting ways that participants referred to the self. It gave me a lot of new insight on how little we know of phenomena commonly referred to as ego-dissolution or non-dual states of consciousness. 

For anyone interested in exploring this topic further I can recommend having a look at Lena's thesis: Experience without self: Phenomenology and neural correlates of selflessness

Get in touch if you would like a copy of the paper!