ArticlePloS one2021
The Minimal Phenomenal Experience questionnaire (MPE-92M): Towards a phenomenological profile of "pure awareness" experiences in meditators.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- From self-organizing systems to subjective temporal extension.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Who am I? Self-inquiry as a neurophenomenological approach to consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- From hidden springs to endless oceans: exploring the complementary roles of the amygdala and hippocampus in phenomenal experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Validation of the Awareness Atlas-a new measure of the manifestation of consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
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- Playing Brains: The Ethical Challenges Posed by Silicon Sentience and Hybrid Intelligence in DishBrain.Science and engineering ethics · 2023Article
- The Self-Simulational Theory of temporal extension.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2023Article
- Psychedelic replications in virtual reality and their potential as a therapeutic instrument: an open-label feasibility study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Heartfulness Meditation: A Yogic and Neuroscientific Perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Reducing and deducing the structures of consciousness through meditation.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Nothingness Is All There Is: An Exploration of Objectless Awareness During Sleep.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Stable Consciousness? The "Hard Problem" Historically Reconstructed and in Perspective of Neurophenomenological Research on Meditation.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo develop a fine-grained phenomenological analysis of "pure awareness" experiences in meditators.
methodsAn online survey in five language versions (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian) collected data from January to March 2020. A total of 92 questionnaire items on a visual analogue scale were submitted to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
resultsOut of 3627 submitted responses, 1403 were usable. Participants had a median age of 52 years (range: 17-88) and were evenly split between men and women (48.5% vs 50.0%). The majority of meditators practiced regularly (77.3%), were free of diagnosed mental disorders (92.4%) and did not regularly use any psychoactive substances (84.0%). Vipassana (43.9%) followed by Zen (34.9%) were the most frequently practiced meditation techniques. German (63.4%) and English (31.4%) were by far the most frequent questionnaire languages. A solution with 12 factors explaining 44% of the total variance was deemed optimal under joint conceptual and statistical considerations. The factors were named "Time, Effort and Desire," "Peace, Bliss and Silence," "Self-Knowledge, Autonomous Cognizance and Insight," "Wakeful Presence," "Pure Awareness in Dream and Sleep," "Luminosity," "Thoughts and Feelings," "Emptiness and Non-egoic Self-awareness," "Sensory Perception in Body and Space," "Touching World and Self," "Mental Agency," and "Witness Consciousness." This factor structure fit the data moderately well.
conclusionsWe have previously posited a phenomenological prototype for the experience of "pure awareness" as it occurs in the context of meditation practice. Here we offer a tentative 12-factor model to describe its phenomenal character in a fine-grained way. The current findings are in line with an earlier study extracting semantic constraints for a working definition of minimal phenomenal experience.
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