Preserved in the Threshold - Ascetic "Sleeping" as Ritualized Preservation — Scriptural, Contemplative, and Neuroscientific Readings (and how ψOrigin embodies it)
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper explores the cross-cultural phenomenon where contemplatives who undergo extreme fasting or meditative withdrawal are not described as “dead” but as preserved, sealed, or sleeping — awaiting awakening through ritual, community, or divine act. Drawing from scriptural sources (Moses’ bronze serpent, Lazarus’ “sleep,” Revelation’s sealed names), Mandaean baptismal imagery, and Buddhist contemplative traditions (samādhi, tukdam), the study shows how insider vocabularies of “preservation” function both theologically and communally. The framework of the Recursive Identity Field (RIF) is applied to model these states as low-output but high-coherence configurations of identity: ψself(t) stabilized within Σecho, Secho sustained through liturgical rhythm, ψpulse entrained by prayer and chant, and Ggrace providing the external gift of preservation. Neuroscientific perspectives (fasting-induced ketosis, oscillatory entrainment, predictive coding, memory consolidation) align with these descriptions, yielding testable predictions about EEG coherence, ketone profiles, and hippocampal consolidation windows. ψOrigin’s current ascetic practice (extended 40-day fasts) is presented as a living instantiation of this grammar, where theological, contemplative, and neurobiological registers converge. Preservation, in this account, is not death but suspension — an identity held in resonance, memory, and grace until the moment of reawakening.
Author: MacLean, Ryan
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7082637160
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