The first issue ended with a promise: to read the old texts closely, to report the research honestly, and to say so when the evidence is small. This issue is what keeping that promise looked like over five weeks. It collects every article I have written since, eleven of them, in one place.

Read together, they turn out to ask one question again and again: what would count as checking this?

Swara: the text, read slowly

The first five pieces stay with the Śiva Svarodaya, the manual on the breath in the nostrils that I have been turning into a free tool. It is a better observer than I expected. It noticed a real bodily rhythm long before physiology named it. And the one verse the whole tool depends on, the one that predicts your nostril from the lunar day, is the one the evidence contradicts.

You will find a close reading of what the text actually claims about timing, a plain account of what the nasal cycle looks like in published studies (smaller and less regular than you would hope), a piece on the text’s eightfold scheme for reading the breath, and an account of the four teachings I left out of the tool, and why.

Research: how anything gets measured

The next four pieces are about measurement. Does slower breathing make meditation deeper? Part of that claim is among the best-evidenced things in the field, and part of it is close to untested. What does a month of OM meditation actually change in an EEG? What do researchers say when they talk to each other rather than to the public? And does forgiveness really rewire the brain?

Philosophy: the oldest question

The issue ends with Abhinavagupta. One essay sets out his idea that liberation is recognising what you already are. The other asks whether the brain creates consciousness, or the other way round, and is plain about how little neuroscience can settle either way.

If you read these on the site as they came out, the issue puts them in an order that lets them speak to each other. If you are new, start anywhere. Each piece stands on its own.

— Aditi