Nirvana Road: Dissociative Experiences Predict “Eastern” Beliefs About Postmortem Existence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Three studies (N = 338) tested the idea that endorsement of postmortem beliefs most closely associated with Eastern religious traditions (that is, continuation of consciousness and the explicit dissolution of personal identity, possibly via reincarnation) would map onto a history of dissociative experiences. As hypothesized, a history of dissociative (including depersonalization/derealization) experiences, as well as altered experience of body/space/time during a discrete positive episode, predicted endorsement of “Eastern” postmortem beliefs among religiously heterogeneous (non-Buddhist, non-Hindu) participants. This relationship became stronger when dissociative tendencies were heightened following a traumatic loss (i.e., the suicide of a close other within the past year; Study 3). In contrast, dissociative tendencies did not predict belief in either annihilation or postmortem continuation without identity loss, most typically linked to atheism and Western religious traditions, respectively. These results suggest that some metaphysical beliefs may be embraced because they “make sense” in light of personal experience.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".