Making Sense with Sam Harris - Subscriber Content #227 - Knowing the Mind
Dec 7, 2020
Neurologist Stephen Laureys interviews Sam Harris about meditation, mindfulness, the search for happiness, wisdom vs knowledge, our relationship with death, the hard problem of consciousness, meditation and free will, dangerous knowledge, the power of hypnosis, and more.
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Drug Sparked A Meditation Path
- Sam Harris began exploring meditation after an MDMA experience at age 18 that revealed different modes of self-experience.
- That drug-initiated curiosity led him to study meditation techniques and sit retreats for deeper introspection.
From Vipassana To Nondual Practice
- Sam studied Vipassana with teachers like Joseph Goldstein and later moved toward non-dual practices like Dzogchen.
- He spent years on silent retreat and returned to school to get a PhD in neuroscience afterward.
Subject-Object Illusion In Meditation
- Dualistic mindfulness feels like a subject in the head attending objects, producing struggle with distraction.
- Non-dual practice recognizes the absence of a central subject and makes that recognition the focus of meditation.