Framework Index

A neuroscientific framework proposing that the quality of consciousness is related to the entropy (information-theoretic complexity) of brain activity. Normal waking consciousness occupies a 'critical' zone of moderate entropy, maintained by the default mode network (DMN). Psychedelics increase neural entropy — measured via Lempel-Ziv complexity in EEG — by disrupting top-down predictive models, producing richer, less constrained conscious states. The REBUS (Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics) extension proposes that psychedelics relax the precision weighting of prior beliefs, allowing bottom-up sensory information to reshape rigid cognitive patterns.

A psychotherapeutic model developed by Richard Schwartz proposing that the mind is naturally multiple — composed of sub-personalities called 'parts' organized around a core Self. Parts fall into three roles: Exiles (wounded, carrying pain), Managers (protective, preventive), and Firefighters (reactive, emergency responders). Healing occurs when the Self — characterized by curiosity, compassion, and calm — develops relationships with burdened parts.

A neurophysiological framework developed by Stephen Porges describing the autonomic nervous system as a three-tiered hierarchy: ventral vagal (social engagement, safety), sympathetic (fight/flight, mobilization), and dorsal vagal (freeze/shutdown, immobilization). The theory proposes that the nervous system continuously evaluates safety through a process called 'neuroception,' and that social connection is the primary regulator of physiological state.

An ancient Greek philosophical school teaching that virtue (wisdom, courage, justice, temperance) is the sole good, and that tranquility comes from aligning with nature and distinguishing what is 'up to us' (our judgments, intentions, responses) from what is not (external events, others' actions, bodily sensations). Applied to altered states, Stoicism offers tools for maintaining equanimity during overwhelming experiences and for interpreting difficult states as opportunities for practicing virtue.

The oldest surviving Buddhist analytical tradition, offering a comprehensive phenomenology of mind. Consciousness is understood as a rapidly arising and passing stream of momentary mind-states (cittas), each conditioned by mental factors (cetasikas). There is no permanent self (anattā) — what we call 'I' is a process, not an entity. Suffering (dukkha) arises from clinging to impermanent phenomena. Liberation comes through direct insight (vipassanā) into the three characteristics of existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anattā).