Contribution
The paper tests two claims long made in the academic study of mysticism: that “contentless” meditative states lack all content, and that they are therefore one identical state of pure consciousness. It does so by a systematic evidence synthesis of the texts of the teachers of three practices, coded feature by feature. Its answer is that, on those texts, the states lack the familiar forms of content but keep many others, and differ across practices. It is the first feature-by-feature comparison of the three goal-states.
Key insight
“Contentless” in the meditation literature means contentless “in the limited sense that they lack well recognized forms of content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images” (p. 44). What remains is not nothing. Wakefulness, stillness, calm, bliss, a non-conceptual knowing, freedom and unity are reported as present, and are presented as discovered, not added. Once that is seen, the question whether all such states are identical becomes a question about these features, and on some of them the practices plainly differ.
Assumptions
- Expert texts are evidence about the experience. The goal-states are reconstructed from 135 publications by eight teachers: Alan Wallace for Shamatha; Pearson, Rosenthal, Roth, Shear and Travis for TM; Meares and McKinnon for Stillness Meditation (p. 6, Figure 1). The authors list this as the key limitation: the experts’ traditional knowledge “is not the same as having the skills in science or phenomenology that may be necessary to provide or obtain reliable reports of experience” (p. 47).
- Majority descriptions count. Where experts disagree, the analysis follows the more widespread description and notes the minority (p. 7). The main minority is Shear’s: that the TM goal-state “lacks all or virtually all forms of content other than being conscious and awake” (p. 7).
- “Content” is broad. It covers any reported feature of the experience, including wakefulness, affective tone, and qualities such as simplicity or depth. The paper does not define content more narrowly than that.
- A goal-state is what the practice aims at, distinguished from the interim-states on the way (p. 4). Some descriptions are reclassified as interim states when they include perception (pp. 9, 27).
Key results
- Shared and absent (§3.2, pp. 9–12). In all three practices the goal-states are said to have no thoughts, concepts, images or memories, no awareness of the meditation object, and no sense or body perception (only very dull perception in Stillness Meditation’s shallower states). The experts’ “no feelings” means the feelings of daily life: “what they actually have in mind is particular feelings that are experienced in daily life” (p. 10). Bliss, goodness, calm and peace are presented as innate, not as feelings of that kind.
- Not flat (p. 11). Each tradition says the emptiness has depth or fullness. Wallace: “This space is not an empty nothingness” (as quoted, p. 11).
- Nonduality and recognition after the fact (§3.3, pp. 12–13). All three report no subject–object duality. Wallace says the dichotomy between meditator and object “is constructed by concepts” (p. 12). And “the meditator only becomes aware that they have experienced the goal-states once they emerge from them”: a thought such as “My mind is still” means they are not then in the goal-state (p. 13).
- Present content (§§3.1, 3.4–3.13). Conscious, awake and heightened wakefulness; stillness, silence, simplicity, naturalness; calm, relaxation, rest, no discomfort, no anxiety; bliss or joy; luminosity (Shamatha); a knowing distinct from knowledge of things; no deliberate doing or control, and effortlessness; loss of ego; freedom; unity, wholeness, security; timelessness; a spiritual aspect for some meditators.
- Ground-states and the true self (§3.14, pp. 27–29). Shamatha and TM call the goal-state consciousness itself. TM and Stillness Meditation call the deepest state pure being and the true or deepest self. Meares says the deepest Stillness state is somehow beyond calm. The authors suggest this could reconcile Shear’s minority view with the majority’s.
- Interpretation (§§3.13, 3.18). Two passages concern interpretation directly. Shamatha and Stillness Meditation texts say “two meditators may have the same experience but interpret it differently”, for instance as spiritual (p. 26). And Wallace holds that in the absence of conscious concepts “certain implicit or subliminal conceptualization persists”, and that differences in it can make experiences of what looks like one state “significantly different” (p. 36, citing Wallace 2000).
- Attention, the main difference (§3.16, pp. 32–35). Shamatha’s goal-state has “exceptional” or “perfect” stability and vividness, holding for four hours or more without deviation. TM and Stillness practitioners cycle in and out of the state several times in a session, so their stability is lower, and their vividness appears lower too. Shamatha alone describes high arousal with deep calm (“attentional balance”).
- Tallies (§4.1, p. 40). 65 features. 51 are reported or implied in all three traditions. The goal-states are the same on 14, different on 4 (stability, vividness, balance, and very dull perception in Stillness), and unclear on 47. Of the 14 “same” features, 12 are absences or the bare facts of being conscious and awake.
- Conclusions (§§4.4–4.5, pp. 42–45). If these goal-states count as contentless experiences, then contentless experiences “can involve considerable variation” (p. 42), and in “many and perhaps most cases these experiences are not truly contentless” (p. 2; also pp. 44–45). §4.6 maps the reported losses onto Millière et al.’s dimensions of self, and notes that the TM and Stillness ground-states may not be totally selfless. §4.7 argues that TM is not a jhana practice, since its attention is not single-pointed.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | The three goal-states are described as lacking thoughts, concepts, perceptions, images and memories | strong as a finding about the texts | §3.2, Table 2 |
| C2 | They are described as keeping many forms of content: wakefulness, calm, stillness, bliss, knowing, freedom, unity and others | strong as a finding about the texts; weak as a finding about the experience | §§3.1–3.15; p. 44 |
| C3 | Shamatha’s goal-state has far greater attentional stability and vividness than TM’s or Stillness Meditation’s | moderate: inferred partly from cycling in and out, and from TM and Stillness texts that rarely discuss vividness | §3.16, Table 16 |
| C4 | Contentless experiences are not all identical | moderate on the texts: four differences found, 47 features unresolved | §§4.2–4.4 |
| C5 | In many and perhaps most cases, states called contentless are not truly contentless | moderate on the texts; depends on counting qualities such as calm and simplicity as content | §4.5 |
| C6 | Implicit conceptualization persists in the goal-state and can make apparently identical states differ | weak: one teacher’s statement, not made of Shamatha’s goal-state specifically | §3.18, p. 36 |
| C7 | TM is not a jhana practice | moderate on the texts | §4.7 |
Concepts
- Contentless experience: “an absence of mental content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images” (p. 2), as the academic literature uses it.
- Goal-state and interim-state: the experience a practice aims for, and those passed through on the way (p. 4).
- Everyday content: the authors’ shorthand for what is absent: thoughts, perceptions, images and the like. It “does not include the sense of being conscious or awake” (p. 11).
- Ground-state: a goal-state described as the essential nature of mind or being (§3.14).
- Attentional stability, vividness and balance: Wallace’s constructs, used to compare the practices (§3.16).
- Truly contentless: lacking all content, or all content except being conscious and awake (p. 44).
Connections
The paper answers the “pure consciousness event” literature of Stace, Forman and Shear, and joins its critics (Katz, Gennaro, Metzinger 2020) in finding subtle content. It is one of a pair with the authors’ synthesis of techniques and interim-states (Woods et al. 2021, cited here as 2020 and 2021, and as “Submitted”), which is not filed. It supports Metzinger’s remark that pure consciousness reports share “common phenomenological denominators” without one single character (p. 43). It uses Millière’s dimensions of selfhood and Windt’s spatial self-location. The record holds no reading of Forman, Shear, Metzinger 2020 or Millière.
Bearing on the record
- CLAIM-412 (experience constituted by interpretive organization). The exchange cited this paper for the point that apparently contentless states keep features such as wakefulness and calm, so that they may still carry interpretive structure. The paper supports the first half directly. It does not argue the second: it never uses interpretation as a category of analysis. Two of its passages bear on the claim more directly than the exchange’s description did. Wallace’s view that “implicit or subliminal conceptualization persists” and shapes the experience (p. 36) is a teacher’s statement that organization below report fixes the character of a state with no conscious concepts. That is the claim’s pattern, though on one source. Against it, the texts’ claim that two meditators “may have the same experience but interpret it differently” (p. 26) puts interpretation after the experience, as a label laid on it. That is the production-or-description reading the claim must distinguish itself from, and the texts give no way to tell which is right. In the claim’s terms the paper’s chief lesson is limiting: the residual content (calm, stillness, knowing) is not conceptual, so if the claim needs interpretation here, it is the broad sense of TERM-073, and the case does not distinguish that from bare organization.
- CLAIM-411 (much interpretation not shown to be experiential). It gives the counter a mirror case: states reported as experience while explicit interpretation is reported absent. If the claim keeps such states as experiential, what does the work must be organization below the level of concepts, which is where the counter says the unconscious cases also sit.
- QUESTION-254. The features said to survive when everyday content goes (wakefulness, unity, a non-conceptual knowing, no subject–object duality) are candidate marks of what keeps an organization experiential. They come from texts, not from tests.
- TERM-072 (perspective, three senses). The reported loss of subject–object duality and of ego, with consciousness persisting, is the case where the represented perspective (sense 2) fails and a phenomenal one (sense 3) is still claimed. The TM and Stillness “true self” reports complicate that: some self-content may survive (§4.6).
- THEORY-063 (unity without a self-model). Reports of unity and wholeness with ego gone fit Metzinger’s claim that unity does not need a self-model. This is report-level consonance, not support.
- LIT-1354 (Chandia-Jorquera et al.). The paper’s §4.4 asks imaging studies to allow for variation among contentless states. That study’s scale defines TM’s state as “free from content”, the very description this paper finds the TM texts do not support. Its practitioners came from the TM organisation, whose teachers are among the sources here.
- THEORY filed. THEORY-866 states the finding, scoped to the texts.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- The evidence is texts by teachers. Some passages describe specific experiences, others are generalisations (p. 47). Several are teaching materials or popular books by people who run or promote the practice. No meditator was asked anything.
- “Unclear” dominates. 47 of 65 features could not be judged the same or different. The finding of non-identity rests on four differences, three of them about attention.
- Content is undefined. Counting calm, simplicity or depth as content is what makes the states non-contentless. A reader who holds that only intentional or representational content counts may grant the data and deny the conclusion. The paper does not argue the point.
- Coding by one author. The first author coded the texts, and has practised Stillness Meditation for over 20 years. Samples were checked by the third author (p. 47). No inter-rater agreement is reported.
- The submitted version was read. The cover says the final version is likely to differ. The version of record (2022, 52 pp.) may revise features, counts or wording.
Open questions
- Do meditators’ own reports, gathered by micro-phenomenology or similar methods, show the features the texts name, and the same four differences? The paper proposes this (p. 43).
- Is the residual content (calm, knowing, unity) a feature of the experience, or a description applied after emerging from it, since the state is said to be recognised only on emerging (p. 13)?
- Does “implicit conceptualization” (p. 36) name anything testable? A study that varied meditators’ doctrinal training and compared their reports of the same practice would bear on it.
- Are there practices whose goal-states are contentless in the fuller sense the paper leaves open (p. 45)?