The Multidimensional Framework

A seemingly outstanding barrier to our field is that various disciplines with different themes of interest, goals, histories, and socioeconomic incentives are insufficiently connected.

These and other significant disconnections that silo knowledge within individual academic and professional disciplines and seemingly prevent new innovations are the core problems to be addressed here.

Can skilful dialog between the sometimes seemingly orthogonal perspectives of the academic disciplines (the humanities and sciences), modern medical disciplines, and spiritual, mystical or religious traditions, lead to a fruitful, integrative synergy to advance our understanding of emergent experiences and development?

We think that it can, and that significantly reduced barriers to knowledge sharing through a multidisciplinary approach can yield valuable new knowledge and integrate old yet useful knowledge into contemporary emergent modalities, science, and global clinical practice.

Attempting a synthesis of the perspectives and epistemologies of phenomenology, medicine, and emergent traditions would likely solve numerous problems currently encountered in this nascent yet still siloed and scattered research domain.

It is to that end that we developed the present framework, hoping it will help integrate thematic and disciplinary domains and stimulate bridges and innovations, would be helpful to resolve this issue and inform future research work.

In many ways the development of this framework started from similar observations as made by Locke and Kelly in their Preliminary model for the cross-traditional analysis of ASCs (1985) that the complexity of studying "altered states" cross-culturally and across-modalities calls for "interdisciplinary and multidimensional explanation drawing upon emerging lines of evidence from separate disciplinary studies" (p.5). We wish to thank these authors for their stimulating work which in large part inspired the present initiative.

Expanding on the work done in Sandilands and Ingram (2024), which synthesized various theoretical and empirical models of human subjectivity and function from theoretical phenomenology, qualitative and biomedical research, this scaffolding was enriched by additional categories uncovered through the thematic re-analysis of the qualitative content found in 50 recent peer-reviewed articles reporting on various emergent phenomena, experiences and effects.

For the present framework we first identified, reviewed, and synthesized existing frameworks with a similarly global, integrative scope and outcomes-based/therapeutic orientation (listed at the bottom of this page). We then complemented these findings with relevant themes and domains borrowed from the literature of various fields of research dealing with various aspects of the various levels identified in the first phase. Much of this relevant literature was found in the Emergence Research Database.

The framework has three major levels with further subdivisions, focusing on the individual first, then on the different levels of social and cultural structures, and finally the ecological level.

Individual Level

Subjectivity

This covers all relevant domains of experiencing, which constitute the manifest world or the field of consciousness for a given individual from their own perceptual perspective. As is the case overall with this framework, not all domains will be of equal relevance. Note that from a phenomenological perspective, this is the "first-person view", while from a medical perspective, this corresponds to symptoms.

• Aesthetics
• Arousal and vigilance/wakefulness
• Beliefs and Worldviews
• Cognition
• Desire and Pleasure
• Emotions
• Existential domain
• Intuition
• Language, Symbols, and Meaning
• Perception

• Psychology
• Sense spheres
• Sexuality
• Space and Time
• Values and Virtues
• Will

Physiology and biological systems

Third-person phenomenology, and what, to a medical doctor, would be the domain of "signs".

A lot of the elements of in the previous section also manifest or have correlates on this level, but not all of them — for instance the content of mental images is hard to observe apart from a 1st person perspective.

Clearly, not all levels will be of equal relevance for the study of the determinants involved in emergent processes and outcomes. How important are the lower levels of organization like quarks, atoms, to consider, for our present focus, is also indeterminate, but likely not very ...

In the case of the physiology of emergence and emergent phenomena, it seems that e.g. the skeleton or the genome are unlikely to be changed that much (yoga could break a bone, teeth whitened after meditation retreats…), while changes in more plastic components like the brain-immune-gut-system, heart-brain-axis, etc., could well be very significant mediators/correlates on the longer term.

Punctual and longitudinal exploration of the collective and/or individual role, impact, and modifications in the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal (e.g. gut microbiome), endocrine, inflammatory, and nervous systems, in transient EPEEs, including challenging ones, but also on the long-term of consistent cultivation over years in all possible doses, could yield important insights and open possible avenues for prevention and management and perhaps optimisation of cultivation, by contrast with studies focused solely on e.g. neurological aspects.

• Biological rhythms and cycles
• Cardiovascular and respiratory system
• Endocrine system
• Fascia
• Gastrointestinal system
• Immune system
• Genome
• Lymphatic system
• Metabolism
• Muscles and bones

• Nervous system
• Other relevant biological characteristics of the individual
• Proteome
• Reproductive system
• Sensory systems
• Skin and hair
• Urinary system

Behavior and Action

There is a spectrum of scales in time and space, from short "internal" micro-gestures (e.g. meditative activities, reactivity patterns) to long-term "external" habits like lifestyle choices.

Ethics (behavior)

Habits and Lifestyle (Lifestyle, Sleep, Perceptive "habitus", Physical activity )

Gross and fine motor patterns

Expression/Communication style

Non-verbal (Gestures, tone of voice, demeanor, etc.)

Movements/Gestures  

Expression and meaning-making largely rely on gestures, sometimes considered as the source of thought and meaning (Petitmengin, 2006, 2007, 2017). Micro-phenomenology has shown that unique expressive information can be deduced from gesture. Observation and imitation are spontaneous and traditional forms of learning, as well-documented by anthropology (Jousse, 2008). This is important in our present context, as many of the R/S/Mystical/Psychedelic (emergent) traditions are oral and gestural, or include major such components, which are non-verbal and/or non-textual, and are rooted in different epistemologies and modes of learning (Battiste and Henderson, 2021). First nations pedagogy in general for instance largely relies on experiential learning. The gestural can also be an interesting, likely understudied, focus of research, or aspect of research designs.

Verbal

Capacity to elicit reactions from social environment

                       Charm

                       Agreeableness

                       Benevolence

                       Attractiveness

                       Cuteness, etc.

Skills and Challenges Physical defects Experience Knowledge

Motricity Balance Bodily control Coordination Reflexes

• Some have observed that baseline improvement of reflexes (speed/precision) is one of the possible outcomes of long-term meditative cultivation.
• Meditative expertise (individuals having gone through intensive meditation practice) seems associated to attenuated sensory habituation

Emergent Modalities

Sociocultural characteristics of the individual

Occupation Education level Wealth

Society and Culture

• Family
• School/Work
• Community
• Subculture
• Culture
• Society

Environment

• Cosmic Influences
• Fauna
• Flora
• Geography
• Geology
• Natural Cycles

Main sources

Reference	Name of model	Discipline/Field
1. Bickley, L. S., Szilagyi, P. G., & Hoffman, R. M. (2017). Bates’ guide to physical examination and history taking (Twelfth edition). Wolters Kluwer.	Physiological Systems	Medicine
2. Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2007). The Bioecological Model of Human Development. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology (1st ed.). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0114	Bioecological Model of Human Development	Developmental Psychology
3. Cuthbert, B. N., & Insel, T. R. (2013). Toward the future of psychiatric diagnosis: the seven pillars of RDoC. BMC Medicine, 11(1), 126. https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-11-126	Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)	Psychiatry/Medicine
4. Emmons, R. A., & Paloutzian, R. F. (2003). The Psychology of Religion. Annual Review of Psychology, 54(1), 377–402. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145024	Multilevel Interdisciplinary Paradigm (MIP)	Psychology of religion
5. Engel, G. L. (1978). The Biopsychosocial Model and The Education Of Health Professionals. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 310(1), 169–181. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1978.tb22070.x	Biopsychosocial Model	Theory of health
6. Lehman, B. J., David, D. M., & Gruber, J. A. (2017). Rethinking the biopsychosocial model of health: Understanding health as a dynamic system. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(8), e12328. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12328	Biopsychosocial Model (revised)	Theory of health
7. Locke, R. G., & Kelly, E. F. (1985). A Preliminary Model for the Cross-Cultural Analysis of Altered States of Consciousness. Ethos, 13(1), 3–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/640008	Preliminary Model for the Cross-Cultural Analysis of Altered States of Consciousness	Cross-cultural Anthropology
8. Mahoney, A., & Shafranske, E. P. (2013). Envisioning an integrative paradigm for the psychology of religion and spirituality. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research. (pp. 3–19). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-001	Integrative Paradigm for the Psychology of R/S	Psychology of R/S
9. Riggs, D. W., Yeager, R. A., & Bhatnagar, A. (2018). Defining the Human Envirome: An Omics Approach for Assessing the Environmental Risk of Cardiovascular Disease. Circulation Research, 122(9), 1259–1275. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.117.311230	Human Envirome	Health and the Environment
10. Schoenberg, P. L. A., & Gonzalez, K. M. (2022). Systematic Review of High-Dimensional Omics in Mind-Body Medicine. OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, 07(04), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.21926/obm.icm.2204052	High-Dimensional Omics in Mind-Body Medicine	Mechanistic accounts of mind-body medicine based on inflammatory markers
11. Taves, A. (2020). Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(3), 669–690. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619895047	Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences	Psychology and Nonordinary Experiences
12. Vion-Dury, J., & Mougin, G. (2016). Modalisations Of The Consciousness Field: A Phenomenological And Morphodynamic Approach. PSN - psychiatrie, sciences humaines, neurosciences. https://hal.science/hal-01580235/document	Phenomenological and Morphodynamic Model of the Consciousness Field	Phenomenology and medicine
13. Wright, M. J., Sanguinetti, J. L., Young, S., & Sacchet, M. D. (2023). Uniting Contemplative Theory and Scientific Investigation: Toward a Comprehensive Model of the Mind. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02101-y	THIN Model	Contemplative science
14. General Inventory of Emergent Phenomena in Sandilands, O., & Ingram, D. M. (2024). Documenting and defining emergent phenomenology: theoretical foundations for an extensive research strategy. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1340335. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1340335	Domains of Experience and Function	Multidisciplinary and varied qualitative and theoretical sources

~~~Olivier Sandilands