The Illusion of Self and the Role of Meditation

Sam Harris joins the Know Thyself Podcast today for a deep dive into consciousness, free will, and artificial intelligence. He explains the illusory nature of self, our daily psychosis, and why it's essential to wake up from the 'dream' of our thoughts. Sam shares how the practice of meditation can help set us free, and how to break the spell of negative emotions. 

He also dives deep on the pitfalls of the spiritual path, explaining the drawbacks of non-dual thinking, emptiness in Buddhism, and why some Gurus misbehave. 

Sam gives a thorough explanation into his present thesis on solving the hard problem of consciousness, explains how the concept of free will can be limiting with understanding psychopaths, and if he believes that artificial intelligence will one day become conscious.

https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself for free 30 days of Waking Up App

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Timecodes:

(0:00) Intro

(2:41) The Illusion of Self and the Process of Suffering 

(11:08) Our daily psychosis - Identification with thought 

(16:35) The Transitory Nature of Thought and the Benefits of Meditation

(27:14) When ego is useful, and when to let go 

(32:40) Breaking the Spell of Negative Emotions

(35:19) Understanding Impermanence and its Relation to Suffering 

(43:31) The concept of "Emptiness" in Buddhism

(56:32) Pitfalls of the ‘goal’ of enlightenment

(59:11) The Duality of the Spiritual Path

(1:12:15) The Illusion of Seeking and False Beliefs in Meditation Practice

(1:14:58) How non-dual teachings got twisted

(1:17:31) Waking up vs embodiment 

(1:25:21) Why spiritual teachers misbehave 

(1:30:57) Sam’s Personal Pivotal Moments in the Journey of Self Inquiry

(1:44:46) The hard problem of consciousness 

(2:09:24) Consciousness and Intelligence in AGI

(2:17:42) Do we really have Free will?

(2:29:57) Why Gratitude & Reason Heals Us

(2:40:02) Conclusion

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Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Sam’s work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), The Annals of Neurology, among others. He also hosts the Making Sense Podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of the “iTunes Best” and has won a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education category.

Sam received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has also practiced meditation for more than 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. Sam has created the Waking Up app for anyone who wants to learn to meditate in a modern, scientific context.

https://www.samharris.org

https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself for free 30 days of Waking Up App

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Know Thyself

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André Duqum

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