Dr. Sam Harris: Using Meditation to Focus, View Consciousness & Expand Your Mind

Meditation, Consciousness, and Free Will

• Meditation can change conscious experience and allow a person to view consciousness itself
• Understanding the process of consciousness can profoundly shift the way one engages with the world and oneself
• The Waking Up app, developed by Sam Harris, offers meditation practices and tools
• No specific region in the brain has been identified that can entirely account for our perception of self

Perception and Time Perception

• Perception is elastic in the brain, and the frame rate by which we process conscious experience can expand and contract depending on our state of mind
• Understanding how conscious we are about our state of mind can impact our perception of time

Psychedelics

• Discussed therapeutic applications for the treatment of depression and PTSD
• Explored Sam Harris’s experiences with psychedelics and their relation to expanding one’s consciousness

Social Media and Mental Health

• Sam Harris recently closed down his Twitter account voluntarily
• Discussed his rationale for doing so and the impact on his mental health

Sense of Self and Neuroscience

• Neuroscience 101: We wake up every morning and remember who we are
• Sense of self is a complex concept with multiple meanings 
  • Target of meditation and deconstruction by practice and philosophy
  • Some argue self is an illusion, others argue it’s a construct
  • Not every use of the term self is illegitimate
• Illusory sense of self 
  • People feel like they’re a subject inside their body, often in the head
  • Most people don’t feel identical to their bodies
  • Common sense dualism: the idea that the mind and body are separate entities
• Meditation and the sense of self 
  • Two levels of interest in meditation: 
    1. Straightforward, remedial, non-​​paradoxical: stress reduction, increased focus, etc.
    2. Deeper claim: looking for the “I” and discovering it doesn’t exist, leading to psychological freedom
  • Meditation can be seen as a perceptual exercise, focusing on interoceptive events

• The brain and the sense of self

  • The brain is connected to the body through the nervous system
  • There’s something special about the real estate in the head 
    • Lesions in certain brain areas can dramatically change personality and self-perception
  • The sense of self may oscillate below the surface of the body, closer to organ systems and within the head 
    • Certain events can bring the sense of self closer to the surface, making the whole body feel like “me”
      Philosophical Thought Experiment: Brain in a VAT

• We are essentially a brain in a VAT (our skull)

• Procedural memory (e.g., riding a bike) is different from semantic or episodic memory
• Some aspects of ourselves are only accessible when we physically enact them

Consciousness and Its Contents

• Consciousness: the fact that there’s something that it’s like to be us
• Qualitative character of consciousness changes with different states of arousal, neurological deficits, or drugs
• Meditation is about recognizing what consciousness is always like, regardless of its contents

Psychedelics and Meditation

• Psychedelics change the contents of consciousness, while meditation helps recognize the nature of consciousness itself
• Both can be valuable and have therapeutic potential

Visual Saccades and Suppression of Vision

• Visual saccades: rapid eye movements that occur about three times per second
• Efferent copy of motor movement suppresses vision during saccades to prevent the visual scene from appearing to lurch around
• Similar suppression of the sense of self occurs when attention is absorbed in an object or activity

Flow Experiences and Losing the Sense of Self

• Peak experiences often involve a brief period of unity between the self and the experience
• Continual interruption of these experiences by internal dialogue and narration

Default Mode Network and Self-​​Referential Tasks

• Default mode network: midline structures in the brain that increase activity when the brain is idling between tasks
• Activity in these structures diminishes when a person is engaged in a task

• Tasks that upregulate activity in the default mode network tend to be self-​​referential
  Challenging Beliefs and the Default Mode Network

• Challenging personal beliefs, like political or religious beliefs, upregulates activity in the default mode network

• Meditation and psychedelics suppress activity in these regions, which are associated with self-​​talk, mind wandering, and self-representation
• Default mode network is somewhat autobiographical and accesses memory systems

Hypnosis and the Default Mode Network

• David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry, and his father founded hypnosis as a valid clinical practice in psychiatry
• Hypnosis involves heightened attention with deep relaxation and is known to dramatically suppress the default mode network

The Illusion of Antagonistic Circuitry

• The default mode network seems to fight for our attention unless we give ourselves a visual target or an auditory target
• Meditation reduces activity in the default mode network, even though it often involves paying attention to a perceptual target

The Optic Blind Spot and Selflessness

• The optic blind spot is a consequence of the optic nerve transiting through the retina
• The blind spot can be demonstrated through a simple experiment with a piece of paper and two marks
• The insight into selflessness and the nonduality of subject and object is as close to ordinary consciousness as the insight into the optic blind spot
• The data for this insight is right on the surface, almost too close to notice

Ocular Dominance and Visual Perception

• Ocular dominance can be established early in life through activities like swimming, bow hunting, or playing billiards
• This dominance can create a permanent asymmetry in the flow of visual information from the eye to the brain

• Reversing this dominance requires intentionally covering up the dominant eye for a period of time
  Bistable Percepts and Meditation

• Bistable percepts: visual illusions where perception alternates between two interpretations

  • Examples: vase-​​face diagram, Dalmatian dots
  • Once you see the hidden image, it’s hard to unsee it
• Meditation can help recognize the unity of experience 
  • Initially, it may feel like you’re on the riverbank, watching the flow of consciousness
  • Eventually, you realize you are the river, and there’s no separation between you and your experience
  • This understanding can be achieved through meditation

Extreme States and the Unity of Experience

• Extreme states of ecstasy or fear can reveal the unity of the observer and the actor 
  • These states are rare for non-meditators
• This unity may reveal something fundamental about the algorithm of our nervous system 
  • Different species have different sensory experiences (e.g., mantis shrimp, pit vipers)
  • Understanding these different experiences can be informative

Questions about the Design of the Nervous System

• Why would the system be designed to hide the unity of experience? 
  • Neither of us were consulted during the design phase, but it’s an interesting question to explore

• More tractable question: How does development play a role in this process?

  • Understanding the development of the nervous system and perception may provide insights into the unity of experience and meditation
    Developmental Wiring and the Self

• Neural circuits in childhood stem from initial demands of internal vs. external states

  • Child feels anxious due to discomfort (e.g., hunger, cold, diaper change)
  • Vocalizes discomfort, external source relieves it
  • Fundamental rule: when uncomfortable, externalize discomfort for relief by an outside player
• Circuitry repurposed for adult romantic attachments
• Most non-​​practiced meditators live without awareness of actor and observer 
  • Deliberate intervention needed to understand and resolve the gap in the algorithm

Evolution and Development

• Evolution doesn’t prioritize human flourishing and well-being 
  • Focuses on reproduction and survival
  • Human traits like tribalism, xenophobia, and other flaws were advantageous for ancestors
• Humans have evolved to do more than just survive 
  • Language, culture, and cognitive/​​emotional hardware allow for mathematics, music, and democracy
• Evolution is blind to human potential and achievements 
  • Mother Nature doesn’t prioritize human survival; 99% of species die off

Individual Development

• Humans are born as flexible, learning creatures 
  • Long period of immaturity allows for greater adaptability and learning
  • Language and culture play a significant role in development
• Early development involves recognizing others and self 
  • Orient to human faces, detect good and bad moral actors
  • Language use helps develop self-​​awareness and self-concept
• Narcissistic structure in early childhood 
  • Attention from others creates a sense of self-importance
  • Realization of being the center of attention

Losing Sense of Self in Media Consumption

• Absorption in television and film allows for loss of self-consciousness 
  • Brain perceives it as a social circumstance without personal implication
  • Close examination of facial expressions and emotions without social pressure

• Contrast with early childhood development

  • Child is not invisible, constantly observed and attended to
    Internal Chatter and External Stimuli

• Language as an ongoing backdrop

  • Varies in structure and volume for different people
  • Some people have more structured internal dialogue, others have less
• Importance of recognizing the internal dialogue 
  • Can be valuable in understanding one’s own thought processes
  • Can lead to better self-​​awareness and understanding of the mind

Meditation and Mindfulness

• Concentration practice in meditation 
  • Cultivating mindfulness, or careful attention to the contents of consciousness
  • Goal is to notice thoughts as thoughts, not being lost in them
• The 30-​​second experiment 
  • Most people cannot pay attention to something for 30 seconds without being lost in thought
  • Even those who think they can are often mistaken
• Meditation retreats
  • Participants spend hours in silence, focusing on breath, sensations, and thoughts
  • Progress is often marked by realizing how distractible one is
  • Goal is to see the relationship between thoughts, self, and other perceptions

Time Perception

• Neuroscience can somewhat explain time perception, but not completely 
  • Circuits and mechanics are not yet fully understood

• Time perception is an important aspect of understanding the mind and consciousness
  Time Perception and Meditation

• Time perception can vary based on distance and speed of objects

  • Example: Sitting on a train, objects close by seem to move faster than those in the distance
• Visual system and time perception are interconnected 
  • Hawks have twice the degree of acuity, but still experience distance-​​associated shifts in time perception
• Multiple streams of time perception and cones of attention 
  • Meditation may help align frame rates for different streams of attention

Mindfulness and Attention

• Mindfulness practice can increase the frame rate of perceiving time 
  • Example: After a three-​​month silent meditation retreat, participants can make finer-​​grained discriminations in sensory channels
• Classic mindfulness practice (Vipassana meditation) involves paying scrupulous attention to sensory experiences 
  • Breaks down experiences into microscopic sensory moments
  • Helps to differentiate between being lost in thought and being mindful

Pain and Emotional States

• Paying attention to pain or negative emotions can change the experience of them 
  • Resistance to feeling pain or emotions can cause suffering
  • Focusing on the sensations can lead to relief and equanimity
• Mindfulness can help separate sensations from self-​​concept and meaning

Dualistic vs. Non-​​Dualistic Meditation

• Dualistic meditation involves a sense of self directing attention 
  • Can reinforce the sense of self and subject-​​object duality
• Non-​​dualistic meditation recognizes that there is no place from which to aim attention 
  • Subject-​​object duality is not present
  • Can lead to a bistable percept, where the sense of self and duality can be easily switched

Controlled vs. Uncontrolled Thought

• Controlled thought involves deliberately thinking in complete sentences and structuring thoughts 
  • Example: Stanford physician and engineer who practices controlled thinking

• Uncontrolled thought recognizes that thoughts simply arise and the sense of control is an illusion

  • Connects to the topic of free will
  • Thoughts can be unpredictable and arise from various categories or experiences
    The Mystery of Thoughts and Free Will

• Thoughts and decisions can be influenced by various factors

  • Languages, famous people, memories, and experiences
  • Neurological factors, such as visual, semantic, or episodic memory
• Thoughts and decisions are fundamentally mysterious 
  • We don’t have full control over what comes to mind
  • Even with reasons for decisions, there’s still a mystery as to why we chose one over the other

Neurological Explanations for Thoughts and Decisions

• Evolutionary explanation: Directed attention and action are metabolically demanding 
  • Inefficient to be in constant deliberate action with access to all relevant information
  • Ideas spring to the surface at the last possible moment to offset metabolic requirements
• Developmental explanation: Brain is initially crudely wired, with progressive pruning and strengthening of connections 
  • Fine random wiring maintained in some systems, leading to background spontaneous activity
  • Noise in the system may or may not have a purpose

The Illusion of Command Over Thoughts

• Engaging in speech or action can give the illusion of more command over thoughts 
  • Following linguistic patterns and having a script for certain topics
  • Phenomenologically different from waiting for the next thought to come
• Free will is still an illusion, even with seemingly deliberate decisions

The Role of Noise in Neural Systems

• Background spontaneous activity present in various species, including humans

  • Most neural activity is “hash,” or noise, rather than specific signal
  • Debate over whether noise is truly noise or serves a purpose
    Spontaneous Thoughts and Meditation

• Spontaneous thoughts arise from background brain activity

  • Deliberate thoughts and actions are metabolically expensive
  • Evolution has led to a balance between spontaneous thoughts and deliberate actions
• Meditation can reveal that the gap between actor and observer was never there 
  • Profound experience for those who practice meditation
• Contradiction: illusion of thoughts being from us vs. illusion of the gap between actor and observer 
  • Sense of self is the feeling of being the locus of attention and agency
  • Thoughts are often attributed to authorial intent

Free Will and the Illusion of Self

• Free will and the illusion of self are opposite sides of a coin 
  • Both relate to the feeling of being the author of thoughts and actions
• Volitional actions are different from involuntary ones 
  • Distinction matters in various contexts, such as legal situations

The Missing Tourist Analogy

• Story of a tourist who unknowingly joins a search party looking for herself 
  • Realizes she is the object of the search, but not in the way the search party expected
• Similar to the meditative journey of looking for the self and not finding it 
  • The self is thought to be the center of problems and unhappiness
  • Meditation is seen as a remedy to realize the self isn’t where or as we thought it was

The Surface of Meditation

• The thing being looked for in meditation is right on the surface

  • There is no one looking, no center of experience
  • The sense of being the one who is looking is actually what it’s like to be thinking and not knowing that you’re thinking
  • Continual looking for the mind and the center of experience can be an orienting practice in meditation
    Meditation and Conscious Experience

• Meditation is not about adding a practice to your life, but ceasing to do something

  • It’s about recognizing what consciousness is like when not distracted by thoughts
• Thoughts are not the enemy in meditation 
  • They are spontaneous appearances in consciousness that can be observed
• Mindfulness is the practice of paying careful attention to whatever arises on its own 
  • Can start with a single object like the breath as an anchor
  • Can open up to sounds, sensations, moods, emotions, and thoughts
• Goal is to be more equanimous with changes 
  • Not grasping at what’s pleasant or interesting
  • Not pushing away what’s unpleasant or boring
  • Developing a sky-​​like mind that allows everything to appear without clinging or reacting

Language and Perception in Meditation

• Everything in biology is a process, not a noun 
  • Perception is an arc of processes that exist on different timescales

• Effective meditation practice involves discarding noun and adjective modes of language

  • Focus on the fleeting nature of perception without focusing on any specific event or object
  • Recognize the limitations of language in describing the workings of the brain and conscious experience
    Exploring Mindfulness and Perception

• Mindfulness as a verb to describe the process of paying attention to the mechanics of perception

• Dualistic and nondualistic ways of experiencing the world 
  • Dualistically, everything is a process
  • Reification of noun talk can be misleading
• Self as a process or verb, rather than a fixed state 
  • Different states of self based on context (e.g., customer, student, parent, spouse)
  • Changes in context can cause psychological changes and shifts in states of consciousness
  • Some people can consciously manipulate these states of self to achieve desired outcomes

Personal Anecdote: Misunderstanding Context

• Author’s experience of misunderstanding context in a restaurant 
  • Mistook a woman for a hostess, leading to increased confidence and engagement
  • Woman returned to give him her phone number, an unexpected outcome
• Recognizing and playing with these mechanisms can lead to desired outcomes 
  • No invocation of free will, but conscious decision-​​making can influence states of self

Graduate School Experience and Shifting Self States

• Author’s experience of being an older graduate student and feeling a sense of urgency 
  • Took an 11-​​year leave of absence from Stanford before returning to complete degree
  • 9/​​11 event led to writing first and second books, delaying PhD progress
  • Simultaneously becoming a “cautionary tale” in grad school and a semi-​​famous writer
• Experiencing opposite self states in different contexts 
  • Meeting with advisor, feeling like a failure
  • Meeting with advisor’s boss, feeling like a successful author
  • Shifting self states based on context and environment

Developing Mastery and Virtuosity

• Recognizing and understanding the shifts in self states can lead to personal growth and development
• Becoming an intelligent curator of conscious states and capacities by noticing changes in oneself

• Balancing different aspects of life and self states to achieve desired outcomes and personal growth
  Psychological Integrity and Context-​​Dependent Rule Sets

• People have different versions of themselves when talking to different people (e.g., mom, best friend, stranger)

• Goal is to have a level of psychological integrity that is not influenced by these different contexts
• Prefrontal cortex establishes context-​​dependent rule sets (e.g., Stroop task)
• Coherent sense of self can encompass different functional roles and toggle between them as needed

Distraction and Identification with Thought

• Distraction can be internally generated (e.g., thoughts pulling attention away) or externally generated (e.g., impulsively focusing on the wrong things)
• The feeling of self is bound up in the sense of being the thinker, the one attending, and the one vulnerable to experience
• Distraction is one component of this issue; the other aspect is identification with thought

Meditation as a Starting Point

• Meditation is often recommended as a starting point for developing psychological integrity
• Initially, people may close their eyes and practice sitting meditation
• Ultimately, meditation is about recognizing the intrinsic character of consciousness in each moment
• Goal is to erase the boundary between formal practice and the rest of life

Breaking the Spell of Thought

• The practice of meditation involves transitioning from being lost in thought to waking up and breaking the spell of thought
• Breaking identification with thought is similar to waking up from a dream
• When you see the mind as larger than a single thought, you gain a degree of freedom that was previously unthinkable

Meditation and Flow Activities

• People often claim that activities like running, skiing, or playing guitar are their meditation
• However, these activities alone will not teach the practice of meditation

• Once you know how to meditate, it can be compatible with any ordinary activity
  Meditation and Self-Awareness

• Meditation is a training to get used to, can be done formally or informally

• Can be experienced during various activities, such as sports or conversations
• Formal practice can be done with eyes open or closed
• Losing the sense of self can be vivid with eyes open due to visual cues

Social Situations and Sense of Self

• Sense of self is often anchored by visual cues, especially in social situations
• Perception of self through the eyes of others shapes our behavior and reactions
• Four-​​arrow model of relationships: me to you, you to me, and two arrows representing our perceptions of each other’s thoughts about us

Meditation and Losing the Sense of Self

• Goal is to get off the “ride” of self-​​consciousness and simply pay attention to the other person
• Losing the sense of self allows for greater relationship and comfort in the presence of others
• Meditation can be practiced during conversations, helping to notice when we contract or react to others

Situational Awareness vs. Self-Awareness

• Both are necessary, but in emergencies or motivated situations, self-​​awareness should be dialed down for greater effectiveness
• Fear and threat detection act as flags, but should not persist in the same way once the emergency is dealt with
• Broadening the gaze can help with problem-​​solving and experiencing life more fully

Meditation Practice and Progress

• Meditation can be practiced for a few minutes each day or with an app
• Progress may be nonlinear, with step functions and varying levels of improvement

• Dissolving the myth of the self through meditation can lead to a deeper understanding of life and self-​​awareness
  Dissolving the Myth and Meditation Progress

• The myth: people are living in a state of unhappiness and meditation can dissolve it

• Two doorways into meditation: 
  • Suffering and unhappiness
  • Intellectual interest in understanding the mind
• Step functions in meditation progress: 
  • Dualistic mindfulness: noticing the difference between being distracted by thought and being on the object of attention
  • Nondualistic mindfulness: being aware of all possible objects of attention, including thoughts
• Benefits of mindfulness: 
  • Compatible with all possible experiences
  • Not artificially contracting attention to one object
  • Allows for noticing the connection between thoughts and emotions, leading to psychological freedom

Anger and Mindfulness

• Being lost in thought about anger fuels the physiology of anger
• Noticing thought as thought dissipates anger quickly
• Mindfulness allows for the choice of how long to be angry and whether it’s useful
• Without mindfulness, one is a hostage to negative states of mind and can only divert attention to something else

Meditation Practice Over Time

• Meditation can be threaded through daily life activities, such as jiu jitsu, writing, and spending time with loved ones
• Continual practice allows for increased awareness and control over thoughts and emotions
• Dualistic and nondualistic mindfulness can be applied to various aspects of life for improved mental well-being