Yair Dor-Ziderman - Holding on to existence: self-models, mortality denial, and the phenomenology... скачать в хорошем качестве

Yair Dor-Ziderman - Holding on to existence: self-models, mortality denial, and the phenomenology...

Self-models have evolved in tandem with human development, increasing its adaptive strength by extending its predictive horizons. However, this predictive capacity can also generate existential terror as it lays bare the reality of death, whose characteristics of imminent and certain non-existence coupled with temporal vagueness run counter to the prime evolutionary directive of securing the organism’s, and by proxy, its self-models’, existence. Summarizing a series of studies, we introduce a neurophysiological visual mismatch-response paradigm indexing a prediction-based neural mechanism associating death-related stimuli to the ‘non-self/other/world’ part of the experiential field (termed death-denial). We then provide evidence that this sub-personal defense mechanism is absent in meditators, but not in ayahuasca veterans. On the other hand, we show that higher level (self-report/behavioral) mortality defenses are equally lower in meditator and ayahuasca samples relative to controls. Finally, we present neurophenomenological evidence linking the valence of meditative self-world boundary dissolution experiences–a training of self-models in non-existence–to computational equanimity regarding the coupling of death- and self-related stimuli (termed death-acceptance). We argue that as the training path to pure awareness passes through the down-regulation to cessation of minimal self-modelling, preliminary practices training death acceptance may be crucial for inculcating a predictive horizon of non-existence. Full Title: Holding on to existence: self-models, mortality denial, and the phenomenology of meditative self-dissolution