What Makes Me Me: Personal Identity and Continuity Over Time

“When I was a child…” [fragment]

— Apostle Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 13:11. King James Version. Project Gutenberg #10

What This Article Is About

We love peddling thin air as if it were certified high-grade oxygen: we solemnly assure everyone around us of our own “unshakeable, unique wholeness,” even though over the course of two decades we have overhauled not just our worldview and social circle, but some of the cellular makeup of our physical body. Staring at an old home video of a chubby toddler, an adult saddled with a thirty-year mortgage cheerfully declares: “That’s me.” What actually props up this staggering conjuring trick? A sieve-like memory, biological tissue, stubborn habits, or the endless narrative bedtime stories we spin for ourselves over morning coffee? We are going to unpack two fundamentally distinct inquiries: what objectively makes you the exact same entity across time, and what makes you feel like one. No hollow promises of universal enlightenment here: philosophical theories will remain confined to their conceptual frameworks, and psychological studies will stay strictly within the humble boundaries of their self-report scales and modest cohorts.

I. Two Questions Under One "Self"

The dramatic sigh of “I’m just not the same person anymore” blurs two completely different conceptual tiers. The first is a rigorous metaphysical problem of identity: by what legal and ontological right is a tax-paying citizen with credit card debt held accountable for the reckless antics of a college student back in 2005, and how many psychological or physical limbs must be severed before that contract is null and void? The second is purely subjective: what emotional glue bonds our autobiographical recollections to the present instant, conjuring that cozy, reassuring sensation of an unbroken timeline?

John Locke located the criterion of personal identity in a conscious, intelligent being capable of considering itself as itself, the very same thinking thing across different times and places (Bk. II, Ch. XXVII, § 11). Psychologists such as Hong, Sedikides, and Wildschut adopted a considerably more mundane approach: they handed out survey questionnaires and asked participants to rate how important aspects of their identity help stitch together past, present, and future (2022). The first approach is tested through rigorous thought experiments; the second is evaluated by numbers on Likert scales. A subjective sense of continuity does not guarantee the existence of a monolithic metaphysical soul, and an abstract philosophical formula will never explain why you suddenly wake up in a cold sweat at 3:00 AM cringing over a sentence you uttered a decade ago.

II. The Ship of Theseus: What Remains When the Parts Change

To avoid tripping over fragile human narcissism, classical antiquity preferred to practice on pieces of lumber. Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus (Ch. XXIII), documented the celebrated debate among Athenian philosophers concerning Theseus’s legendary thirty-oared galley: as its old timbers decayed plank by plank, they were gradually swapped out with sound timber. For one philosophical camp, the ship remained identical throughout; for the other, it had metamorphosed into an entirely distinct object.

We are looking at a classic dispute over definitions: if physical identity demands the persistence of original matter, the vessel dissolved into history centuries ago. But if identity rests on organizational design, continuous maintenance, and ongoing historical function, the ship endures. We gaze upon our ten-year-old self in much the same manner: height, vocal pitch, posture, and habits have shifted, childhood slang sounds alien, yet we identify without hesitation. The child did not vanish into thin air only to be replaced by an unrelated adult stranger; the former gradually transformed into the latter. Yet a wooden galley enjoys an undeniable privilege: it never endures midnight guilt over shattered reefs, nor does it have to service loans taken out during its maiden voyages, whereas a human being must constantly answer for past expeditions.

III. The Body: "The Same Man" vs. "The Same Person"

The path of least resistance is to tether identity straight to biology: passport control officers adore fingerprints, and old classmates rely on jawlines. Locke drew a clear distinction between “the same man”—the biological continuity of a living animal organism gradually replenishing its matter—and “the same person,” which entails the operation of consciousness extending itself backwards to own past deeds.

To sharpen this boundary, Locke offered a famous thought experiment: suppose the soul and conscious memories of a prince migrate into the physical body of a cobbler. To an outsider walking up to the repair stall, the man on the stool looks like the familiar local cobbler; but the fellow himself knows he bears the personal history, memories, and crimes of royalty. This is not an instruction manual for spiritual surgery, but an intuition pump: personality and selfhood align with consciousness claiming past thoughts and actions, not with bones, skin, and cartilage. Interestingly, surveys by Fernandez-Duque and Schwartz revealed that everyday American respondents strongly locate their “true self” within the physical brain (2016). Nevertheless, this finding merely documents lay beliefs within a specific online American sample, rather than resolving the profound enigma of consciousness. The physical body provides a convenient hook for a security guard checking an ID badge, but it does little to explain why yesterday’s triumphs or embarrassments feel intimately and uniquely our own.

IV. The Memory Criterion: Locke and Hume’s Counterargument

Locke firmly hoisted personal identity onto the tracks of consciousness: as far back as consciousness can reach to embrace past actions and thoughts, precisely so far reaches the identity of that person. It is an exceedingly utilitarian framework: personhood becomes a forensic category designed to assign guilt, dispense rewards, and justify punishment.

Enter David Hume with his razor-sharp query in A Treatise of Human Nature: can any human being vividly recall their exact thoughts and sensory impressions on January 1, 1715, or March 11, 1719? If entire swaths of calendar days have been wiped completely blank from your conscious ledger, did you cease being an actor in your own life story? Hume emphasized that memory does not conjure continuity out of nothingness; rather, it discloses the causal chain linking successive perceptions. Forgotten weeks, months, and years do not retroactively delete us from our past: our narrative imagination graciously plugs the structural leaks with plausible causal bridges. Memory remains an indispensable compass for mental navigation, but it is far from the solitary cable keeping identity afloat.

V. Severe Memory Loss: What Clinical Research Reveals

If personal identity were tethered strictly and exclusively to an episodic autobiographical database, neurodegenerative disorders would reduce a person’s inner landscape to absolute zero. Genuine clinical findings, however, present a far more nuanced picture requiring care and intellectual humility.

Hervé Platel and colleagues (2021) observed 20 nursing home residents with moderate-to-severe Alzheimer’s disease participating in music-based reminiscence workshops, comparing them with 20 peers without dementia. Using self-representation instruments (IMAGE and I-AM), they observed that despite extensive episodic deficits, the foundational scaffolding of self-concept persisted to a remarkable degree, albeit in a leaner form. That said, no statistically significant “identity enrichment” emerged following the intervention—the authors candidly highlighted methodological constraints and modest cohort size.

A comprehensive systematic review by Chiara Stramba-Badiale and co-authors (2025), synthesizing 83 empirical studies, corroborates this: while autobiographical memory undeniably undergoes progressive degradation (with remote memories typically proving more resilient than recent ones across most studies), the ability to access defining autobiographical milestones in mild-to-moderate stages can remain partially preserved. This constitutes neither a metaphysical proof of an immortal soul nor a test of Locke’s philosophical criterion of personal identity, but it serves as valuable clinical evidence that the lived experience of selfhood does not scale one-to-one with the total volume of accessible factual memories.

VI. The Bundle of Perceptions and Hume’s Concession

Hume ventured into his own internal laboratory with uncompromising scrutiny: whenever he peered inward to catch what everyone called the immutable “self,” he invariably collided with some particular, fleeting perception—a sensation of heat or cold, light or shade, sorrow or joy. During deep, dreamless sleep, according to his reasoning, there is no self being perceived at all. Hume therefore proposed that a human being is nothing more than a dynamic bundle or collection of disparate perceptions succeeding each other with inconceivable rapidity, while our restless imagination weaves the illusion of an indivisible identity across the gaps.

The most refreshing element of Hume’s inquiry is that he never posed as an infallible guru. In the Appendix to the Treatise, he openly admitted to finding himself caught in a bewildering philosophical labyrinth: he found himself entirely unable to explain what real unifying principle binds these loose, distinct perceptions into a coherent, individual stream of consciousness. A rare moment of intellectual integrity: declaring oneself to be an ever-shifting montage of film frames is easy enough, but explaining who or what splices the frames together proved an impasse for Hume himself. From this conceptual roadblock, one cannot extrapolate proof of a secret projectionist, nor can one conclude that the person does not exist at all.

VII. The Vehicle Passing Through the Ages: The Gītā’s Counterpoint

At the diametrically opposite conceptual pole stands the Bhagavad Gītā. In the midst of Prince Arjuna’s paralyzing crisis of conscience on the battlefield, Krishna asserts unequivocally that the essential core never ceases to be, just as there was never a moment when these warriors were absent. In Edwin Arnold’s poetic rendering, the shedding and acquiring of bodily vestures across lifetimes is compared to the natural passage through childhood, youth, and old age: mortal dwellings decay and dissolve, yet the underlying, imperishable dweller remains untouched (Ch. II, verses 12–13, 16–17).

Both texts—Hume’s treatise and the Gītā—commence from the undeniable empirical fact of endless internal flux. Yet while Hume sees only ephemeral bursts of sensation and winds up in a theoretical deadlock, the Gītā uncompromisingly postulates an eternal ontological bearer. This is a theological and philosophical doctrine emerging from an ancient chariot dialogue, not the empirical deliverances of modern cognitive science. Attempting to paste them together into some homogenized “East-West synthesis” would be disingenuous: they represent fundamentally irreconcilable metaphysical stances.

VIII. The Butterfly Dream: Who Wakes Up?

While European philosophers were twisting themselves into knots over gaps in dreamless sleep, the Daoist tradition approached the matter with dry, subversive irony. In the closing passage of the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, the sage dreams he is a carefree, fluttering butterfly, entirely oblivious to his human existence. Upon waking, he recognizes himself as Zhuang Zhou, immediately pondering: was he a man dreaming he was a winged insect, or is a butterfly presently dreaming of being a Chinese philosopher?

Crucially, the parable does not erase the distinction between the philosopher and the butterfly—the text explicitly notes that a real division must exist between them. In our reading, the scene does not liquidate reality into mist; it warns against the dogmatic hubris of assuming that one’s immediate waking vantage point is an absolute, unquestionable ground truth. When the alarm rings, what reassembles our fractured consciousness is not a rigorous logical proof of nocturnal continuity, but an unyielding web of physical realities: a creaking mattress, an aching lumbar spine, an unread inbox, and a demanding cat crying by the kitchen door.

IX. Character: What People Regard as the "True Self"

When neighbors remark, “He became a totally different person after that,” they rarely mean he developed retrograde amnesia; they are referring to a drastic shift in moral disposition—the jovial life of the party turned into a sullen cynic. But is an enduring character really our indestructible core?

Fernandez-Duque and Schwartz investigated lay intuition using Amazon’s MTurk platform and observed that ordinary participants instinctively attribute to their so-called central self a heightened dependence on the brain and higher moral stability across time. However, in their second study, when the researchers broke this down into 18 specific personality traits, that straightforward correlation between centrality and morality vanished: centrality was significantly associated with social desirability, perceived temporal stability, and reliance on brain function, but showed no reliable link with either moral relevance or voluntary control.

And what about deliberate, self-willed reinvention? A systematic review by Peter Haehner and colleagues (2024), evaluating 30 longitudinal studies, provided a sobering reality check: raw willpower and New Year’s resolutions are woefully insufficient for producing meaningful shifts in personality traits. While structured psychological interventions can nudge trait metrics in intended directions, solid empirical evidence demonstrating permanent, sweeping personality makeovers spanning multiple decades remains virtually non-existent.

X. Montaigne: Contradicting Oneself Without Contradicting Truth

Michel de Montaigne, in his essay “Of Repentance” (Essays, Bk. III, Ch. 2), addressed human instability without hyperventilating. He noted that the entire world is in perpetual motion, and that what we fondly label steadfastness is merely a sluggish, languid form of that very same swaying. He envisioned himself not as an immovable bronze monument, but as an honest chronicler of relentless transit.

Montaigne harbored no fear of internal contradictions: if he asserted one perspective today and an opposing one tomorrow, it did not turn him into a liar. Circumstances shift, vantage points tilt, states of mind alter. While he deliberately avoided building airtight metaphysical systems, he modeled a remarkably mature stance: acknowledging that your former beliefs were naive, short-sighted, or flat-out wrong does not constitute an act of self-betrayal, nor does it rip your personal identity to shreds.

A comparable structural movement appears in the writings of the Apostle Paul: in putting away childish things, he did not transmute into a different ontological entity, but retained the subjective continuity of intellectual and moral maturation. In both authors, the past is sustained through a candid first-person account, without neurotic attempts to repudiate earlier developmental milestones.

XI. The Building Blocks of "I Am Still Me"

How does the psychological machinery assemble our ongoing sense of self? Hong, Sedikides, and Wildschut examined the connection between nostalgia and global self-continuity across three cross-sectional surveys and two experimental designs (2022). In this context, nostalgia represents an emotionally charged cognitive return to cherished memories, rather than simple melancholy or passive sadness. A pivotal factor turned out to be an autobiographical identity narrative—the reported feeling that one’s life forms a coherent story, rather than a tested skill at weaving failures and victories into a narrative. A baseline belief in personal stability was also correlated with continuity, but it did not explain the specific mechanism activated by nostalgia. Associative links to the past were supported in the observational surveys, but failed to emerge as a significant mediator under experimental scrutiny. Moreover, the experimental data were not entirely seamless: in their first experiment, the direct effect fell just short of traditional significance thresholds (p = .056).

Of course, these psychological findings should not be canonized as ultimate metaphysical decrees: the samples were drawn from university students and online crowdsourcing panels, and intricate identity phenomena were indexed through brief single-item metrics. These studies illuminate the subjective experience of continuity, rather than confirming an immutable metaphysical core or proving that storytelling shields the psyche from genuine fragmentation. A coherent life narrative can comfortably encompass radical transformations: an autobiography is not required to read like a certificate of lifelong paralysis.

XII. Connecting With the Future Self

Our ego projects forward just as relentlessly as it digs through old mental archives. Ying Yang and colleagues (2024) scrutinized the mechanics of intertemporal choice among cohorts of young Chinese adults: why do we squander cash on fleeting junk today, sentencing our sixty-year-old self to instant ramen and financial despair?

The data indicated that the closer a young person feels to their future self, the less they discount delayed rewards, showing a greater willingness to wait for larger future sums. However, this psychological bridge functioned effectively only for participants who already possessed a clear, well-defined self-concept in the present. In their first study, they documented this baseline association; in their second study, the researchers experimentally framed identity as stable or changing and asked participants to write about themselves a decade into the future. While the authors theorize that consideration of future consequences mediates this moderated dynamic, that variable was measured as a psychological mediator rather than directly manipulated as an isolated independent condition. Keep the boundary conditions in mind: the study examined young adults navigating stylized hypothetical payoff matrices, meaning psychological science is not handing out an all-purpose silver bullet for chronic procrastination.

Practical Takeaways

Cease the frantic search for a mythical, pristine nugget of “true authenticity”: taken in isolation, neither biological continuity, nor a leaky memory, nor a shifting temperament can fully explain the phenomenon of personal identity. Bodies regenerate and age, memories fade, temperaments drift under the relentless friction of circumstances, and philosophical schools prescribe diametrically opposing doctrines. Continuity is sustained by a braided cable of multiple strands; when a single fiber snaps, that is no justification for declaring psychological bankruptcy. Here are several pragmatic perspectives (strictly voluntary, and offered without unwarranted therapeutic promises):

When caught in the panic of “I don’t know who I am anymore,” dispassionately identify which specific pillar has taken a hit: physical vitality, professional roles, social networks, health, or self-esteem. A tremor in one localized sector does not signal the collapse of the entire edifice.
If you cannot recall the granular details of your high school years, that memory lapse does not disenfranchise you from your own life story. Hume was posing a philosophical inquiry into identity criteria, not conducting a clinical neuropsychological memory assessment.
Weave your experience through a coherent narrative: when destabilized by rapid changes, try sketching out the logical pathways by which past blunders deposited you at your current coordinates. This is a personal reflective exercise; the precise therapeutic utility of this specific self-directed exercise was not evaluated in the empirical papers cited. The mechanics of personal narrative are explored further in I03.
When facing a dubious immediate impulse, experiment with picturing yourself five to ten years down the road. In research with young Chinese participants, felt kinship with the future self was associated with reduced discounting of delayed financial gains among individuals with high self-concept clarity. This remains a laboratory decision task, not a direct measurement of everyday budget management or a recipe for financial mastery.
When interacting with loved ones navigating dementia, remember: episodic memory deficits do not automatically mean an utter erasure of their underlying selfhood. Core dimensions of personal identity can display surprising resilience, though the data do not guarantee identical outcomes or timelines across every individual. While this provides an evidence-based foundation for patient and compassionate care, matters of diagnosis, clinical therapy, and medical support must always be addressed by healthcare professionals.
If persistent, distressing experiences of a sense that the self is unreal, memory gaps, or sudden changes in character disrupt daily life, seek professional medical evaluation. Philosophical texts do not formulate psychiatric diagnoses.
The pressing question of whether an evolving individual remains bound to promises made by their former self is explored in depth in our separate essay W-22-N02, “Anātman and the Continuity of Experience.”

Key Quote

“I do not paint its being, I paint its passage…” [fragment]

— Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Bk. III, Ch. 2 “Of Repentance,” opening paragraph; Charles Cotton translation, edited by W. C. Hazlitt. Project Gutenberg #3600

This aphorism is remarkably sobering: personal identity does not reveal itself as a petrified museum relic, but within the rhythm of an unbroken, evolving trajectory. It neither absolves us of accountability for past choices nor reduces our personhood to a legal fiction; it simply marks an honest, realistic way to observe oneself across time.

Conceptual Cross-Readings

Pairing (Side A ↔ Side B)	Point of Contact / Parallel	Essential Boundary
Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, II.XXVII § 11 (PG numbering) ↔ Platel et al. 2021, Stramba-Badiale et al. 2025 (Alzheimer's Neuropsychology)	Both frameworks closely connect the self with autobiographical memory of lived experience	Locke defines the metaphysical criteria of personhood; clinical studies assess self-representations in patients and find them partially preserved despite memory deficits. This does not refute Locke; furthermore, Platel’s cohort was small, and both papers address clinical populations
Plutarch, Life of Theseus, Ch. XXIII ↔ Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 13:11	Both address continuity across the replacement of constituent parts (the ship's timbers) or modes of speech and reasoning (child to adult); in Plutarch identity is contested, whereas in Paul it is sustained by the narrator's "I"	Plutarch records a philosophical dispute over an inanimate artifact and leaves it unsettled; Paul invokes an analogy of developmental maturation in a chapter on love, rather than outlining a formal theory of personal identity
Bhagavad Gītā, 2.12–13 and 2.16–17 ↔ Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.IV.6	Both take as their starting point the perpetual succession of internal states: childhood, youth, and aging versus an ever-changing stream of perceptions	The Gītā teaches an indestructible soul migrating through physical bodies (a religious doctrine); Hume identifies nothing in experience beyond fleeting perceptions (a philosophical stance). The two conclusions are mutually incompatible
Milindapañha, II.2.1 ↔ Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.IV.6	Continuity without an unchanging ego: the absence of an immutable essence alongside unbroken succession, illustrated by Nāgasena’s lamp flame versus Hume’s bundle of perceptions	Nāgasena articulates Buddhist doctrine in the context of rebirth, whereas Hume relies on phenomenological introspection; we do not claim any historical link. The Buddhist perspective is treated fully in essay W-22-N02, “Anātman and the Continuity of Experience”
Zhuangzi, Ch. II ↔ Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.IV.6 (on sleep)	Sleep disrupts the self-evidence of the self: in Hume, deep sleep lacks accessible perceptions; in Zhuangzi, dreaming introduces an alternate conscious vantage point	Zhuangzi leaves both perspectives open and explicitly specifies a boundary between human and butterfly; Hume advances a philosophical stance regarding the perceived self
Montaigne, Essays, III.2 ↔ Hong, Sedikides, Wildschut 2022	Coherent transition (Montaigne's "passage," psychologists' narrative) serves as the foundation for the felt sense of self	Montaigne articulates his personal reflective practice; psychologists measure felt self-continuity through single survey items in student and online samples, and in Hong et al. belief in stability also correlated with continuity. We do not claim any anticipation of modern science
Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, II.XXVII § 28 (PG numbering) ↔ Fernandez-Duque, Schwartz 2016	The self is conceptually bound to moral accountability and character evaluation	Locke offers a philosophical definition of personhood as a forensic category for assigning responsibility; the empirical paper examines folk intuitions among US participants, and the link between centrality and morality vanished when evaluated across concrete traits

Primary Sources

John Locke. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, vol. 1 (first published 1690). Project Gutenberg #10615, ed. Steve Harris, David Widger; English text. Examined: Bk. II, Ch. XXVII “Of Identity and Diversity”, §§ 10, 11, 17, 28 according to the numbering of this edition (which differs in certain modern editions). Text
David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740). Project Gutenberg #4705. Examined: Bk. I, Part IV, Sec. 6 “Of Personal Identity”; Appendix (paragraphs concerning the section on personal identity). Text
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, vol. I — Life of Theseus, trans. Aubrey Stewart, George Long (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894). Project Gutenberg #14033. Examined: “Theseus”, Ch. XXIII. Text
Milindapañha. The Questions of King Milinda, Part I (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXV), trans. T. W. Rhys Davids (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890); archive.org scan, OCR text layer. Examined: Bk. II, Ch. 2, Dilemma 1 “Identity” (Trenckner p. 40; SBE XXXV pp. 63–64). Cited as a single row in “Conceptual Cross-Readings”. Text
Zhuangzi. Chuang Tzŭ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, trans. Herbert A. Giles (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1889). Project Gutenberg #59709. Examined: close of Ch. II (the butterfly dream). Text
Bhagavad Gītā. The Song Celestial, or Bhagavad-Gîtâ, poetic interpretation by Edwin Arnold; publication date unstated in copy. Project Gutenberg #2388. Examined: Ch. II (verses 12–13 and 16–17 in standard numbering; context: opening of Krishna’s counsel). Text
Apostle Paul. First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:11: Russian Synodal translation (azbyka.ru) and King James Version, 1611 (Project Gutenberg #10). Examined: 1 Cor. 13:11. Synodal; KJV
Michel de Montaigne. Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete, trans. Charles Cotton, ed. William Carew Hazlitt. Project Gutenberg #3600. Examined: Bk. III, Ch. 2 “Of Repentance”, opening paragraph. Text
Diego Fernandez-Duque, Barry Schwartz. Common Sense Beliefs about the Central Self, Moral Character, and the Brain. Frontiers in Psychology 6:2007 (2016), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02007; PMC4709419 copy, CC BY. Examined: Studies 1 and 2 — methods, results, discussion; general discussion; conclusions. Article
Emily K. Hong, Constantine Sedikides, Tim Wildschut. How Does Nostalgia Conduce to Global Self-Continuity? The Roles of Identity Narrative, Associative Links, and Stability. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 48(5) (2022), doi:10.1177/01461672211024889; PMC9066684 copy, CC BY 4.0. Examined: abstract; introduction; Studies 1–5 — methods, results; general discussion; limitations. Article
Ying Yang, Liangxiangwan Zhang, Weiguo Qu, Wei Fan. The effect of future self-continuity on intertemporal decision making: a mediated moderating model. Frontiers in Psychology 15 (2024), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1437065, CC BY. Examined: Studies 1 and 2 — methods, results, discussion; general discussion; limitations. Article
Hervé Platel, Marie-Loup Eustache, Renaud Coppalle, Armelle Viard, Francis Eustache, Mathilde Groussard, Béatrice Desgranges. Boosting Autobiographical Memory and the Sense of Identity of Alzheimer Patients Through Repeated Reminiscence Workshops? Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.636028, CC BY. Examined: abstract; methods; results; discussion of the main study. Article
Chiara Stramba-Badiale, Fabio Frisone, Diana Biondi, Giuseppe Riva. Autobiographical memory in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review. Frontiers in Neurology (2025), doi:10.3389/fneur.2025.1546984, CC BY. Examined: methods, results, discussion, limitations. Article
Peter Haehner, Amanda Jo Wright, Wiebke Bleidorn. A systematic review of volitional personality change research. Communications Psychology 2:115 (2024), doi:10.1038/s44271-024-00167-5; PMC11608366 copy, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — paraphrase only, no direct quotations. Examined: methods, results (including intervention meta-analysis), discussion, limitations. Article

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh is an author and the founder of the United Wisdom project. He explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and modern spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut is a co-author of United Wisdom. Beyond her research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how the principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and across cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.