Information For Those Interested In Or Seeking Fundamental Wellbeing

The Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness is one of the world’s leading research organizations that is dedicated to the rigorous scientific study of the highest forms of human wellbeing.

For millennia, these ways of experiencing life have been known by (and often been the foundation of) religious, spiritual, and philosophical systems worldwide. Common terms for them include enlightenment, nonduality, persistent mystical experience, unitive consciousness, the peace that passeth understanding, and literally hundreds of others – though it is important to know that atheists and agnostics also routinely experience them.

Our work in this area is widely recognized. It’s been presented for over a decade at leading scientific conferences and prominent academic institutions, well known and highly regarded public events, featured in countless video segments, articles, and interviews, mentioned in leading books, and much more.

Academically, we refer to these ways of experiencing the world as “Persistent and Ongoing forms of Non-Symbolic Experience” (PNSE/ONE). Publicly we refer to them as “Fundamental Wellbeing”. People who experience this are referred to as “Finders”.

The Scientific Research Cycle and This Project

Generally speaking, science follows a simple cycle of hypothesis exploration, formation, and testing. This is exactly what this project has done.

Our large global research project started by building a large, global population of research participants (1,200+) who reported experiencing Fundamental Wellbeing. Then, it systematically examined them using the latest cutting edge tools from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience – including:

• A wide variety of “gold-standard” survey measures covering wellbeing, emotion, development, personality, psychopathology, emotional intelligence, general intelligence, flow, relationships, loneliness, depression, stress, and many more – to begin to get our arms around who these people were in a comprehensive sense using the most proven methods of measurement, and what might make them different from the general population.
  
• Long-format (6 hours to 12 hours), in-depth interviews that focused on: sense of self, cognition (i.e.: thoughts and thinking), affect (i.e.: emotion), perception and memory – to dig in deep and form a more comprehensive understanding of how they experienced life.
  
• Biology and Neuroscience (fMRI, EEG, EDA/GSR, HR/HRV, breath analysis, etc.) – to get a sense of what might be different in their physiology from other people.
  • We then tested the conclusions arrived at from the above research in a wide variety of experiments spanning over 10 years at this point. This included creating protocols that successfully transitioned a majority of research participants who used them to Fundamental Wellbeing so that we could measure changes in the pre/post Fundamental Wellbeing.
  • You can see the timeline for the various project stages and more information on this page.
  • Dive deeper on our Publications page, which contains links to peer-reviewed articles and presentations, as well as selected public articles and interviews.
  • Check out an easy-to-read summary of our research on our two major protocols for transitioning research participants to Fundamental Wellbeing