Sublime

Fundamentally, the brain is a prediction machine, and that is the driving engine behind its constant self-reconfiguration. By modeling the state of the world, the brain reshapes itself to have good expectations, and therefore to be maximally sensitive to the unexpected.

Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att

Common to many transformative experiences is the dissolution of the self, including loss of ego and the body it is chained to.

This is the Functional Freeze - a term coined by Peter Levine, whose background is in medical biophysics and psychology. He is another incredible contributor to our understanding of nervous systems.