The Tim Ferriss Show #342: Sam Harris, Ph.D. — How to Master Your Mind
MDMA and the Mind
- Sam Harris's first psychedelic experience with MDMA at age 19 profoundly shifted his understanding of the mind's potential.
- It led him to explore meditation and Eastern spirituality, including extended silent retreats in India and Nepal.
Reasons for Belief
- There's a crucial difference between believing things for good reasons versus bad reasons.
- We should strive for profound understanding without self-deception about reality.
Gradual vs. Sudden Realization
- Sam Harris practiced Vipassana and Zogchen meditation, exploring gradual and sudden paths to realization.
- He found that focusing on distant enlightenment can distract from present moment awareness.
Sam Harris (@SamHarrisOrg) received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D in neuroscience from UCLA. Sam is the host of the Waking Up podcast, and he is the author of multiple books including 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).
This experimental episode came about because a few months back Sam asked me to be a beta tester for his Waking Up meditation app that he was creating at the time. It was recently released, and I highly recommend it. I anticipated it would be good because Sam's work is always good, and he's one of those rare humans who seems to think and speak in finished prose, and he has a voice that can very easily lull you into a semi-psychedelic state while you are completely sober. You'll hear what I mean soon.
Sam has a unique combination of experiences and areas of expertise, and his approach is that of a logical progression of layering on different types of training for learning the skill of meditation. In this episode, Sam will discuss his experiences with MDMA, his spiritual exploration, contact with so-called gurus, duality versus non-duality, and lots more. If you want to dive right into a beginner level guided meditation, skip to [52:32].
Make sure to check out the bonus episode that is released at the same time as this one if you enjoy what you find here and want to jump straight to the guided meditations. The bonus episode also features additional content from Sam not found in the longer episode. Enjoy!
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