Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE)

• MPE is a state characterized by a significant reduction in sensory, cognitive, and self-related content while maintaining global arousal and clarity.
• Empirical findings show that MPE is associated with altered neural dynamics, including changes in Lempel–Ziv Complexity and spectral power, suggesting a shift toward critical brain states.
• Bayesian modeling indicates that mindfulness practices facilitate MPE by suppressing language and self-patterns, thereby isolating core consciousness from narrative overlays.

Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE) is a distinctive class of conscious state typified by a radical reduction—sometimes near-elimination—of sensory, cognitive, and self-related phenomenal content, while tonic alertness and global responsiveness are preserved. Introduced in theoretical frameworks by Metzinger and operationalized in recent empirical studies, MPE isolates consciousness from confounding constructs such as internal language and narrative self, producing a “purer” phenomenology. This construct underpins significant developments in contemporary consciousness science, providing a functional analogue of the “frictionless plane” for experimental and theoretical analyses (Worden, 27 Sep 2025, Mago et al., 26 Nov 2025).

1. Phenomenological Definition and Core Features

Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE) designates meditative or non-dual states in which practitioners report pervasive absence of verbal internal discourse (“silence”), dissolution of the agentic ego (“ego-dissolution”), and a timeless, non-narrative “presence.” Metzinger’s 2024 compendium provides over 500 first-person reports that converge on the following features:

• Progressive sensory fading: Systematic withdrawal from both external and internal sensory impressions.
• Loss of self-patterning: Diminution or absence of the felt agent or ego.
• Minimal narrative content: Dissolution of inner verbalization and discursive thought, privileged in typical waking consciousness.
• Preserved arousal and alertness: Despite attenuated content, there is no loss of wakefulness or reactivity; practitioners report heightened clarity and state stability.

Operationally, MPE can be exemplified by the first four “fine-material” jhāna states in Theravada Buddhist meditation, which show graded sensory fading with maintained tonic awareness (Mago et al., 26 Nov 2025).

2. Language and Self as Confounds in Phenomenology

Standard human consciousness is shaped by the brain's continuous application of two pattern classes:

• Word patterns ($W$): Internalized acoustic-semantic templates derived from language learning.
• Self-patterns ($S$): Rapid mind-reading mechanisms linking bodily configurations to socially mediated self-concepts (“what others think of me”), deeply interwoven with emotion and self-image.

These patterns:

• Generate the inner narrative and discursive thought generally taken for granted in introspective reports.
• Construct and maintain the agent-experiencer split—the so-called “agent self”—as a linguistic artefact.
• Drive persistent background affect such as anxiety (dukkha), via cascades of self-referential inference.

MPE is distinctive in that both classes are measurably attenuated, yielding a conscious field unmediated by narrative or self-constructs (Worden, 27 Sep 2025).

3. Bayesian Formalization and Pattern Competition

The brain may be modeled as minimizing a variational Free Energy:

$$F = -\ln p(s,o) + D_{KL}\bigl[q(\theta)\,\|\,p(\theta|s)\bigr]$$

where $q(\theta)$ is the brain's posterior over hidden causes $\theta$, given sensory data $s$. Worden extends this to three human-specific pattern types:

Pattern Class	Prior Formation	Function
$W$ (Word)	Lifetime language exposure	Internal speech, linguistic narrative
$S$ (Self)	Social-status learning	Self-model, emotional drives
$M$ (Mindful)	Mindfulness practice	Raw sensory “just notice” schema

Each class defines a local Free Energy $F_i(d)$ for sensory/bodily data $d$:

$P(i|d) \propto \exp(-F_i(d))$

with

$$F_i(d) = \mathbb{E}_{q_i(\theta_i)}\left[-\ln p(d|\theta_i)\right] + D_{KL}\left[q_i(\theta_i)\,\|\,p_i(\theta_i)\right]$$

Competition is resolved by relative $F$ levels; the class with the lowest Free Energy dominates consciousness. MPE emerges when mindful patterns displace both word and self patterns due to successful Bayesian updating during mindfulness practice, leading to $F_M \ll F_W, F_S$ and suppression of narrative and egoic overlays (Worden, 27 Sep 2025).

4. Mechanistic Learning: Mindfulness, Updating, and Emergence of MPE

A mechanistic pathway outlines how mindfulness training yields MPE:

1. Triggering: A self-pattern matches input $d$, mapping bodily sensations onto self-referential narrative.
2. Mindful intervention: Practitioner attends to $d$ without narrative addition.
3. Bayesian updating: This close, non-interpretive noticing updates a new “mindful” pattern $M_d$, reducing $F_{M_d}(d)$.
4. Pattern competition: Once $F_{M_d}(d) < F_S(d)$, the mindful response dominates, blocking the self-pattern cascade and associated affect.
5. Repertoire expansion: Repetition across many triggers builds a large set $\{M_{d_k}\}$, shifting the competitive balance toward mindful patterns.
6. Phenomenological outcome: When $F_W$ and $F_S$ are high relative to $F_M$, the conscious state becomes MPE—absent of familiarity-based linguistic and self-model overlays.

Relative pattern dominance in consciousness is characterized by the inequality $F_M(d) < F_S(d)$ implying $P(M|d) > P(S|d)$ (Worden, 27 Sep 2025).

5. Neurophysiological Markers: Critical Brain Dynamics in MPE

Empirical studies applying electrophysiological and complexity metrics to meditative MPE analogues (notably the jhānas) identify neurodynamic signatures:

• Signal diversity (Lempel–Ziv Complexity): Jhāna (MPE-proxy) states show elevated LZc (p=0.004), entropy (Shannon, sample, permutation), indicating greater information capacity.
• Chaoticity (Largest Lyapunov Exponent): Reduced λ_max (p<0.001), denoting less chaotic, more stable neural dynamics.
• Long-range correlations (DFA exponent α): Band-specific reconfiguration, with lower α in θ, α, β bands and higher α in γ, suggesting selective rebalancing of temporal coordination.
• Spectral features: Flatter aperiodic slope (β; p<0.001), decreased α-band power (p<0.001), increased γ-band power (p<0.001).
• Perturbational sensitivity (MMN amplitude): Stronger mismatch negativity response (p=0.037), denoting heightened sensitivity to deviant stimuli despite overall reduced sensory content.

These observations support a shift toward a metastable, near-critical regime—maximizing diversity and perturbational responsiveness without incurring instability. The negative correlation between LZc and λ_max (r=–0.95) underscores a critical balance between repertoire and stability. This constellation of features is proposed as a neurophysiological marker of MPE’s absorptive dimension (Mago et al., 26 Nov 2025).

6. Theoretical and Comparative Implications

MPE represents a natural “frictionless” regime for consciousness research, revealing the core structure of conscious generative modeling unsullied by the elaborate overlays of language and constructed self. Comparative theoretical consequences include:

• Animal consciousness: Absence of human-specific word and self patterns in nonlinguistic animals implies their phenomenology may resemble MPE, suggesting self-awareness is a contingent, linguistically enabled add-on.
• Testing signatures: Reduced fronto-temporal coupling and increased criticality markers can serve as candidate neural signatures distinguishing MPE from standard consciousness.
• Information-processing substrate: Investigating MPE may narrow the substrate for minimal sufficient consciousness, helping to disentangle mechanisms responsible for fundamental awareness from those responsible for self and narrative elaboration.
• Active inference: Dynamics of $F_W, F_S, F_M$ can be explored through active inference, contrasting curiosity-driven exploration (mindful, low expected surprisal) with social/narrative driven exploitation (self, minimization of social surprisal) (Worden, 27 Sep 2025).

7. Empirical Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Studies to date on MPE-like states, such as those using the jhānas, are limited by small, expert-only cohorts and confinement to object-based absorption. Criticality metrics, while informative, provide proxy indices rather than direct, causal neurophysiological fingerprinting. Open problems and proposed next steps include:

• Generality: Expansion to other contemplative techniques and “objectless” MPE to verify universality of criticality transitions.
• Metric development: Application of alternative dynamical metrics such as neural avalanche statistics and perturbational complexity indices (PCI).
• State-space mapping: Integration of granular phenomenological reports with real-time perturbational paradigms (e.g., TMS-EEG) to delineate the functional and neurodynamic landscape of MPE.
• Longitudinal tracking: Evaluation of how sustained mindfulness or meditative absorption modulates markers of criticality over time and across practices (Mago et al., 26 Nov 2025).

In sum, Minimal Phenomenal Experience provides an empirical and theoretical microcosm for isolating consciousness from superimposed linguistic and self-related confounds, offering tractable ground for interrogating the core generative architectures and dynamical principles underlying conscious awareness (Worden, 27 Sep 2025, Mago et al., 26 Nov 2025).