ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUS SELF AND TIME DURING...

《禪與人類文明研究》第 7 期（2020）

International Journal for the Study of Chan Buddhism and Human Civilization Issue 7 (2020)

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ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUS SELF AND TIME DURING MEDITATION

Marc Wittmann (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) ABSTRACT

Subjective time emerges through the existence of the self across time as an enduring and embodied entity. This relation is prominently disclosed in studies on altered states of consciousness such as in meditative states but also in everyday states of consciousness such as transiently being in states of boredom or flow. Mindfulness meditation, as the most frequently studied meditation technique in the West, stems from the Buddhist Theravada tradition, practiced traditionally as Vipassanā meditation and conceptualized in Western and secular contexts. Empirical research on meditation practice reveals quantitatively measured changes in the senses of self and time. Being mindful in every-day life is equivalent to being conscious of one’s body states and feelings at a particular moment in time. Because the feeling of time is created through the embodied self, being mindful slows down the passage of time and it expands present moment awareness. A peak experience as reached in meditation states by experienced meditators can occur as culminating in ‘selflessness’ and ‘timelessness’ – a reported universal spiritual experience where time is not experienced at all and the self becomes one with the world. KEYWORDS Time Perception, Self, Altered States of Consciousness, Meditation, Timelessness



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I. SELF AND TIME DURING ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

States of consciousness are by definition not stable. As the title of a book on the varieties of consciousness implies, “the tides of mind” appear in normal waking consciousness as fluctuations between drowsiness and highly focused attention, between passive relaxation and extreme excitement, between boredom and engaged flow during pleasant activity (Gelernter, 2016). These fluctuations can be phenomenally described through variations on three dimensions of (1) awareness, (2) emotion, and (3) time, all of which through their intrinsic dynamics affect the constantly changing sense of self (Berkovich-Ohana & Glicksohn, 2014). That is, different states of ‘self’ vary continuously according to variations on these dimensions. Among these three dimensions ‘subjective time’ is particularly sensitive to fluctuations of emotional self-awareness (Berkovich-Ohana & Wittmann, 2017). With this description the three dimensions are combined: subjective time is strongly dependent upon variations of affective states and the direction of attention towards or away from oneself. In waiting situations without the possibility of distraction, potentially combined with the feeling of boredom, time is more in the focus of awareness, self-consciousness is most pronounced and subjective duration expands. In contrast, when we are absorbed in pleasant activities, we are less aware of ourselves, we hardly notice time and therefore subjective duration contracts (Wittmann, 2009; Zakay, 2014).

These constant modulations of conscious states appear in normal waking consciousness. In altered states of consciousness the three dimensions of awareness, affect and time can reach extreme levels leading to distortions of the self. In some cases a joint dissolution of the feelings of self and time is experienced, culminating in the feeling of ‘selflessness’ and ‘timelessness’ (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2013; Wittmann, 2015). Such altered states can be induced through psychological techniques such as meditation, sensory deprivation, or rhythm-induced trance (Block, 1979; Vaitl et al. 2005), they can appear when one is absorbed in musical experience (Schäfer, Fachner, Smukalla, 2013), or they are induced through the intake of psychotropic substances (Shanon, 2001; Studerus et al., 2012). Systematic studies of peak experiences under hallucinogens such as LSD or psilocybin show that subjects report a loss of body connection which is related to the loss of the sense of an individuated self and time (Studerus et al., 2011). That is, the experiences of self-dissolution as well as the collapse of the three time perspectives of past, present, and future (‘timelessness’) are closely related to the accompanying feeling of detachment of the body and may come along with a spiritual feeling of unity of the self with the universe. Recent neurobiological evidence is indicative of the relationship between the bodily self and the sense of time. Conceptualizations point to the emergence of the notion of time through affective and interoceptive (bodily) states (Craig, 2015; Droit-Volet et al., 2013; Wittmann, 2015). Because we feel the body we experience time. Subjective time changes according to changes in the awareness of the body. Affective states are related to specific body feelings (Nummenmaa et al., 2014). Therefore emotions change the feeling of time. Many studies have shown that subjects overestimate duration when it is filled with arousing emotions (Droit-Volet & Meck, 2007; Dirnberger et al. 2012; Wackermann et al., 2014). During periods of anxiety or depression subjective time slows down considerably (Wittmann et al., 2007; Zakay, 2014); again, ‘time’ being closely linked to emotions and bodily feelings. Related to the assessment of body parameters, empirical findings have shown an association between different psychophysiological measures of the heart-beat and duration estimation in the milliseconds (Cellini et al., 2015) as well as seconds range (Meissner & Wittmann, 2011; Pollatos et al., 2014; Bowen et al., 2017). What these study



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results have in common is that a direct measurement of a body state (measured through heart rate variability) is related to the conscious experience of time.

These quite recent neurobiological and psychological findings are actually in accordance with a long standing phenomenological tradition (the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty) suggesting that felt time is created through the experienced self. Subjective duration thereafter is related to the conscious self as an enduring entity over time (for an elaborated view, see the work of Zahavi, 2005, and Kiverstein, 2009). Moreover, in following Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) subjective time is in essence embodied, i.e. tied to the self-experience of having a body. The notion of self, body, and time are also in the focus of many traditional meditation techniques. Therefore, the study of what an individual experiences during states of meditation as well as how meditation changes an individual in the long run are of interest for the understanding of self-consciousness and time consciousness. II. LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF MEDITATIVE PRACTICE

Across cultures there is a wide range of meditation techniques with a multitude of spiritual connotations which are translated and adapted into different social contexts (Schmidt, 2014). In Western research laboratories, the most frequently studied meditation techniques are variants of the traditional Vipassanā meditation, which have been conceptualized into Western and secular contexts (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). In general, mindfulness can be understood as bringing awareness to each present moment with an accepting and non-judgmental attitude. An even more condensed working definition is: meditation can be understood as self-regulating practice of training attention (Cahn & Polich, 2006). This notion fits with the term samatha from Buddhist practice which in Pali language means concentrative tranquility (Novak, 1996). A heightened awareness of the present moment can be developed and cultivated through meditation practice, when meditators learn to attend to an “object”, i.e. the breathing in and breathing out without letting the mind wander off. Of course there is a huge variety of different meditation techniques. However, meditation can be divided into two broad forms of ‘focused attention’ and ‘open monitoring’ (Lutz et al., 2008). In focused attention techniques one learns control over one’s focus of attention by using a stable object, such as a mantra, an image, or the breath. Furthermore, a focused body scan can be used to quiet the mind. ‘To quiet the mind’ means that constantly upcoming thoughts and memories become less dominant and fade out with increasing practice. In open monitoring techniques awareness is without any focus on a specific object. One remains open and attentive in a non-reactive mode to whatever comes into the focus of experience. What these procedures of attentional self-regulation achieve is that the continuous “pull” towards the future concerning what might happen and what could be rewarding becomes less habitual (Novak, 1996). Too often we habitually direct our attention at some future goal, thus being in an autopilot mode not realizing what actually is happening right now.

At least three functional aspects can be discussed as being targeted through regular mindfulness meditation practice, namely attention regulation, body awareness, and emotion regulation (Hölzel et al., 2011). That is, during mindfulness meditation one learns to focus one’s attention on the (bodily) self with an accepting attitude (emotion regulation) to whatever comes into the mind. Initially, when feeling the own body subjective time relatively expands, the experienced passage of time is slow. Actually, beginners of meditation are very much aware of the



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passage of time, they might long for the end of the meditation session as they get bored. Only later, when a meditator is more experienced time is perceived in a different way or not at all (see below).

Mindfulness in daily life means concentrating on the moment at hand: focusing and maintaining attention on experience as it is given, with curious observation of one’s thoughts and feelings (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). ‘Being more mindful’ means that an individual is able to experience more and in a more nuanced way at present. Moreover, being more attentive to the present moment also has an effect on long-term memory, i.e. leading to more entries in episodic memory. It has been shown that experienced mindfulness meditators feel that time in general is relatively slowed down and past intervals feel longer (Wittmann et al., 2015). This relation can be explained by the fact that retrospective duration judgements are dependent on the retrieval of episodic memory, i.e. the more we have experienced, the longer past time intervals seem to have lasted subjectively (Zakay & Block, 2004). This can be intuitively grasped. A week of vacation full of exciting events in a new and unexplored surrounding lasts subjectively much longer than a week spent in everyday routine. During vacation novelty leads to relative more experiences and therefore felt duration expands. Also through a mindful attitude normal experience becomes meaningful and worth remembering – leading to an expansion of lived time (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). As has been pointed out, the ancient Pali word for mindfulness is sati which also has the meaning of ‘to remember’ (Anālayo, 2004). This reflects the fact that full attention to the present moment in the long-run facilitates memory function, i.e. encoding and retrieval of experience. Empirically it has indeed been shown that after a few weeks of regular meditation practice focused attention and working memory capacity are enhanced (Jha, Krompinger, Baime, 2007; Zeidan et al., 2010; for an overview see: Sedlmeier et al., 2012).

The topic of subjective time as related to mindfulness has only just begun to attract more attention in research. In one pioneering experiment the duration of the subjective present moment was operationalized with the perceptual switches of the Necker cube, a well-known visual ambiguous figure, which can be perceived in one of two perspectives, either from a lower or from an upper perspective. It has been suggested that the switching of the perspectives of the Necker cube every few seconds is based on a general segmental processing mechanism which creates temporal “windows” that provide the logistical basis for conscious representation and the experience of nowness (Pöppel, 1997; Atmanspacher & Filk, 2010; Wittmann, 2011). Thereby, practitioners of mindfulness meditation techniques, as compared to control subjects, showed longer “dwell times”, that is, there was a longer duration of seeing one aspect of the ambiguous figure before it switched again – in the condition when instructed to hold a given percept as long as possible (Sauer et al., 2012). The interpretation of this finding was such that the subjective “now”, as operationalized through the duration of the dwell time, was longer for meditators than for non-meditators. This result adds to findings of an earlier study, where Tibetan Buddhist monks with extensive meditation practice were able to voluntarily prolong mental percepts of a different visual bi-stable image (Carter et al., 2005).

Besides these very first studies on the concepts of mindfulness and the ‘present moment’, a few studies exist which show that the estimation of time is in general altered in more mindful individuals. In one investigation, subjects with no prior experience in meditation took part in a 1-week mindfulness meditation program which consisted of one 30-minute meditation session per day (Sucala & David, 2013). Presented with a video-clip lasting 5 minutes at the end of the week, the meditation group relatively over-estimated the duration relative to a group that had not participated in the meditation program. In another investigation, more mindful students – as assessed with questionnaires – were more accurate in estimating and differentiating presented



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intervals with milliseconds and multiple-seconds duration (Wittmann et al., 2014). These findings are corroborated by a study with students, where more mindful individuals relatively perceived duration in the minutes’ range to last longer (Weiner et al., 2016). Furthermore, a group of experienced meditators of transcendental meditation practice, who had higher self-reported levels of mindfulness, were more accurate than control subjects without experience in meditation in perceiving stimuli with duration in the milliseconds range (Schötz et al., 2016). Another study looked at time perception performance and correlates of brain activation (EEG) and found a decrease of gamma power in midline structures and relatively longer produced temporal intervals in experienced meditators as compared to controls (Berkovich-Ohana, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2012). Midline structures are functionally coupled to processes of mind wandering. That is, a decrease in activation in these areas can be interpreted as sign of less upcoming thoughts and memories during the time perception task. To sum up, these very first findings suggest a close association between dispositional mindfulness, potentially related to higher cognitive capacities, and the perception of time. More mindful individuals are more accurate when judging duration and report of a relative expansion of subjective time. III. SUBJECTIVE TIME DURING STATES OF MEDITATION

What happens during meditation? How is time experienced while people meditate? The above mentioned findings were all related to long-term effects of meditation or dispositional mindfulness. Again, only a few studies exist so far which have investigated how time perception in the seconds-to-minutes range is altered after or during a meditation session. In one study students who had no prior experience with meditation were exposed to a pre-recorded mindfulness meditation session of 10 minutes duration (Kramer et al., 2013). Using a task of duration judgment with stimuli lasting around 1 second, it was shown that the meditation group relatively overestimated the duration of stimuli after the session as compared to before the session. This difference was not seen in a control group before and after listening to an audio drama. Remarkably, this meditation effect of a prolongation of subjective time was registered when meditation-naïve subjects had to meditate. A similar effect of an expansion of subjective duration in experienced mindfulness meditators was seen with a task using stimuli ranging between 4 and 8 seconds duration (Droit-Volet, Fanget, & Dambrun, 2015). What these studies all seem to show is that time perception directly after a meditation session is expanded relatively to before the session. Thereafter, the increased and steady focus on the body during meditation (the breathing, the body scan) could have led to an expansion of subjective time. A stronger awareness of the bodily self inevitably affects subjective time in the direction of feeling a slower passage of time and relative overestimation of duration.

Neuroimaging studies show that among other regions the insular cortex is functionally modulated through mindfulness meditation practice. The instructions to concentrate on ‘being in the present – here and now’ and ‘focusing on breathing in and out’ transiently lead to an increase in neural activation in the insular cortex in trained meditators (Farb et al., 2007; Farb, Segal, & Anderson, 2012). Two further studies disclosed long-term effects of mindfulness meditation where experienced meditators as compared to meditation-naïve control participants had larger cortical thickness and density of the right anterior insula (Hölzel et al., 2008; Lazar et al., 2005). These findings taken together can be discussed as resulting from increased body awareness during mindfulness meditation which is correlated with insula activation, the insular cortex being the



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primary cortical area for the integration of body signals (Craig, 2015; Wittmann, 2016). In addition, regions of the lateral pre-frontal cortex, which are related to attentional capacities, are activated during meditation. That is, when attention is directed to the bodily self, attentional systems together with brain areas integrating bodily feelings are activated (Hölzel et al., 2011).

The aforementioned studies with computerized timing tasks used short stimuli in the milliseconds-to-seconds range which had to be judged. The question was how accurately subjects were able to estimate duration after a meditation session versus before. The rationale behind such an experimental design is that during meditation conscious states are transiently altered. Therefore, researchers assess individuals directly after a meditation session to measure these transient changes before they fade out. However, how do meditators judge duration of the meditation session itself? Beginners of meditation often complain about a slow passage of time and the feeling of boredom. This stems from the fact that a person has to focus on herself or himself without the possibility of distraction. More experienced meditators however might report that time passed very quickly, say 30 minutes seemed like only five. At least two recent studies have tackled the question systematically and empirically (see below).

When investigating meditation states, one problem a researcher faces is the selection of the control condition. That is, results on how meditation changes states of consciousness are relative in the sense that the effect of meditation is compared to effects of a different type of intervention. For example, in one of the above mentioned studies an overestimation of duration after 10-minute meditation guided by a prerecorded session was measured in relation to a 10-minute session where people listened to an audio drama (Kramer et al., 2013). The rationale in selecting a comparison intervention is that the main “features” of meditation are not present. That is, in the audio drama condition, people listen to a prerecorded audio file for the same duration as the meditation session lasts (for comparison reasons often also a prerecorded file). Moreover, people are positioned in the same way as during meditation (that is, in a generally relaxed way: lying on a mat or sitting comfortably on a chair). Mindfulness meditation brings awareness to the present moment through focusing on the body. In contrast, when listening to an audio drama subjects are directed away from the bodily self and into an imaginary world. The question remains what an ideal control task or situation is.

Two recent studies looked at the judgment of time during meditation sessions and thereby used two different comparison settings. In the first study, the effects of yogic mindfulness meditation (Shavasana) were assessed on retrospective duration judgments, the subjective experience of passage of time, and subjective levels of relaxation (Thönes & Wittmann, 2016). Study participants were individuals with no or only moderate experience in meditation. The meditation session lasted 13 minutes and 20 seconds. As comparison task a classic music relaxation session of the same duration was chosen. Stress-reducing and relaxing effects of music have repeatedly been shown, and particular for classical music. However, in contrast to Shavasana meditation and similar mindfulness meditation techniques, music does not involve the explicit focusing of attention on the mental and bodily self. Relative to the music condition, levels of experienced relaxation were higher after the yogic meditation and these higher levels of relaxation were associated with a faster passage of subjective time. At the same time subjects estimated the elapsed duration more accurately but relatively underestimated it after yogic meditation (13.32 seconds) as compared to the music relaxation condition (15.16 minutes). That is, the meditation session passed by more quickly and lasted shorter in duration than the music condition. This result can be explained by the model of retrospective time judgments, where duration is reconstructed from memory (Zakay & Block, 1997). Since in the classical music condition there will have been



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more contextual changes – possibly evoking stronger emotions than the yoga condition – experienced duration lasted longer in retrospect (Bailey & Areni, 2006). This study clearly shows the importance of choosing adequate comparison conditions. However, the study also revealed significant correlation within both intervention sessions. Valuable insight was gained as significant correlations – both within the meditation and the music condition – indicated that the more relaxed subjects were the faster time was experienced to pass.

A second study assessing subjective time during meditation had an alternative and elegant way to avoid the problems associated with choosing a comparison intervention. In that study Depth Relaxation Music Therapy (DRMT) induction formed the experimental condition for students without prior meditation experience (Pfeifer, Sarikaya, Wittmann, 2016). In this study, the duration under investigation was a period of silence lasting 6:30 minutes as part of the relaxation in duction method. And this period was compared to an identical period of silence lasting 6:30 minutes after a university seminar. Thus, this design meant that two identical periods of silence were compared – one after a meditation induction, one after a seminar. DRMT induction in essence can be regarded as a form of meditation with components comprising the sensitization to feeling comfort in the body, sensitization to emotional feelings, mental images, and thoughts. In a final step individuals are exposed to a period of music or silence, the latter option which was chosen in the particular study. Using different subjective scales assessing states of consciousness, the silence after DRMT was judged as more relaxing than the silence after the seminar. Participants also had a lower sense of space and time, as well as a diminished future perspective. Moreover, participants estimated the silence as having lasted longer in the condition following the DRMT session. That is, silence after DRMT was regarded as more relaxing, individuals did not pay so much attention to time and to the future, time passed by more quickly, but duration was relatively judged to have lasted longer. This paradoxical effect of time passing more quickly, but duration being judged as seemingly longer has been shown in several investigations (e.g., Weiner et al., 2016). Possibly, different mechanisms underlie the judgement of passage of time (“how time seems to pass by”) and of duration estimation (“this interval lasted approximately 8 minutes”). More systematic studies have to be conducted to answer this open question. IV. PEAK EXPERIENCES DURING STATES OF MEDITATION

In his article with the title “The myth of the present moment” Purser (2014) argues that the instruction of “focusing on the present moment” creates an artificial and dualistic divide between subject and object, between the self and the present moment. That is, the self seemingly takes a position outside of time and focuses on an outside temporal flow. As Purser rightly argues this is not the case. The self is itself temporal and transient. According to the Japanese Zen master Dōgen (1996) the term uji, which captures a form of felt temporality, translates as “being-time” meaning a form of “dynamic presencing” (Purser, 2014). These translations of uji try to capture the notion that the self is part of perception, temporality is the nature of all existence including the sensing self: time is not passing outside of ourselves, but we are time. We are inseparably part of the world with its temporality.

The notion that we are part of the world can be experienced through meditative states. According to their Self-centeredness/Selflessness Happiness model, Dambrun and Ricard (2011) develop the idea that people become self-centered when they take their personal condition to be more important than the condition of others; the self is experienced with sharp boundaries and as



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separate from the others and the world. In recent work Dambrun (2016) empirically showed that through meditation people are transiently led to feeling diminished body boundaries. Interestingly again, the study participants were not experienced meditators but students of the local university. They followed either a 21-minute audio tape with a body scan meditation instruction or spent the same time resting. In comparing the two intervention groups it became clear that those students who had meditated felt their body boundaries to a lesser degree and they felt afterwards happier than the control group. During a body scan meditation, initially, one feels a stronger sense of the body – and of the passage of time. After a while, however, you lose your sense of bodily self and of time – one is in a meditative flow. According to this study, even people who are not experienced in meditation, within a short period of time, can get into a state where the feeling of a self is less dominant and happiness increases.

The effects measured with the student sample are encouraging because they show that small and transient changes during meditation are detectable in individuals without prior experience. However, profound changes during meditative states as well as long-term transformations are realized only after extensive meditative practice within the context of spiritual development. What happens for experienced meditators during peak states to some degree lies in the realm of the ineffable. However, experiential reports show strong communalities. As an example, a versed meditator such as the Tibetan Buddhist Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt reports of his meditative experiences (Wittmann, 2018):

The timeless awareness during meditation is an awakening. It has no beginning and no end. This timeless time is an immersion into a being where no comparing happens. When we are comparing there are always relations between a before and an after. It is timeless presence without the sense of an ‘I’, without observer. Perception and perceiver are one. How does this happen? Is there an explanation for how we can lose the sense of self and

time? Since the two entities are so closely related – they are modulated together in different states of consciousness (Wittmann, 2015; 2018) – the answer must lie in a “mechanistic” aspect that affects the two. According to phenomenological analyses by Edmund Husserl (1928/1991) everyday experience of the present moment is not a duration-less instant in time but extended, reaching into the past as memory and into the future as anticipation. Through this tripartite structure of a possible future (what is about to occur) and a history (of what has just happened) within present experience self-reflective consciousness is enabled (Lloyd, 2012; Kiverstein, 2009). We become aware of what is happening to me through memory of what has happened to me and expectations of what might happen to me. Through this temporal structure of consciousness, the realization of a self emerges. That is, in each moment we are in a process of becoming a self rather than being a self. The becoming self is created through the constant becoming of time as experienced continuity of the anticipated future self and the experienced past self (Giersch & Mishara, 2017). What the meditation induction does is to focus on the experience in the present moment, without distractions from thoughts and feeling and expectations stemming from long-term memory. This meditative focus may result in getting initially into a state of “dynamic presencing”. This experience of presence however goes hand in hand with a radically diminished past and future perspective – and with it the past self and the future self are diminished. Moreover, in experienced meditators the dimensions of the future self and the past self at some point might collapse completely and any sense of dynamic movement will cease – timelessness. Since the self is bound to the dynamics of experiencing a past and a future, also the self disappears. This state of consciousness described by timelessness – (past, present, future are no longer distinguishable) and



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selflessness (inside and outside of oneself are no longer distinguishable) – is where deep personal transformations are possible (Tota, 2016).

“Timeless awakening” can be seen as the highest level of spiritual meditative experience, the ultimate state of timelessness and selflessness. Mindfulness in general means that one experiences the “tides of mind”, the transient existence of thoughts, feelings, motivations, overall, of the self. In that way, through experiencing the fundamental reality of temporality, one loses the conception of a rigid self. What we call ‘self’ is also according to certain Western philosophical conceptualizations not a thing but a process. For example, according to Metzinger (2004) the subjective experience of a self is continuously created by complex patterns of activations in the brain. Thereafter, the ego is not a stable material entity but instead is processed as a self-model that constantly creates variations of itself. Therefore, one should not speak of the self as being an illusion but as a process of constant construction which stems from an individual’s conditioned mind craving and grasping for pleasure and reward (Thompson, 2015). The sensed and dynamic self as part of the world, just as the experienced world around us, is in ongoing flux. The peak experience thereby is a limit case where the senses of self and time disappear. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to mention all those collaborators with whom I had continuous discussions on the topic presented here: Anne Giersch, Luisa Weiner, Karin Meissner, Stefan Schmidt, Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt, Thilo Hinterberger, Niko Kohls, Sven Thönes, Eric Pfeifer, Liam Clancy, Mary Reich, Vanessa Deinzer, Sebastian Kübel, Damisela Linares Gutiérrez. I thank Gert Scobel who made me aware of Zen master Dōgen’s concept of uji and Michael von Brück for repeated dialogues on the topic presented here. My empirical work on meditation and time is financed by the Bial foundation Porto, grant no. 52/12 to Marc Wittmann, Karin Meissner, and Stefan Schmidt: “The embodied experience of time: modulations of mindfulness meditation.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Anālayo, V. (2004). Satipatthāna: The direct path to realization. Cambridge, Windhorse. Atmanspacher, H. & Filk, T. (2010). A proposed test of temporal nonlocality in bistable

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BIOGRAPHY

Marc Wittmann studied Psychology and Philosophy at the Universities of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Munich (LMU), Germany (1989-1994). He received his Ph.D. (1997) and his Habilitation (2007) at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Medical School, University of Munich. From 2000 to 2004 he was head of the Generation Research Program Bad Tölz, University of Munich. Between 2004 and 2009 he was Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. Since 2009 he is employed at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, Freiburg, Germany.

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