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

Andrew Huberman 0:00 (music plays) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Sam Harris. Dr. Sam Harris did his undergraduate training in philosophy at Stanford University and then went on to do his doctorate in neuroscience at the University of California Los Angeles. He is well-known as an author who has written about everything from meditation to consciousness, free will, and he holds many strong political views that he's voiced on social media and in the content of various books as they relate to philosophy and neuroscience. During today's episode, I mainly talk to Dr. Harris about his views and practices related to meditation, consciousness, and free will. In fact, he made several important points about what a proper meditation practice can accomplish. Prior to this episode, I thought that meditation was about deliberately changing one's conscious experience in order to achieve things such as deeper relaxation, a heightened sense of focus or ability to focus generally, elevated memory, and so on. What Sam taught me, and what you'll soon learn as well, is that while meditation does indeed hold all of those valuable benefits, the main value of a meditation practice, or perhaps the greater value of a meditation practice, is that it doesn't just allow one to change their conscious experience, but it actually can allow a human being to view consciousness itself, that is, to understand what the process of consciousness is, and in doing so, to profoundly shift the way that one engages with the world and with oneself in all practices, all environments, and at all times, both in sleep and in waking states, and in that way making meditation perhaps the most potent and important portal by which one can access novel ways of thinking and being and viewing one's life experience. We also discussed the so-called mind-body problem and issues of duality and free will, concepts from philosophy and neuroscience that fortunately, thanks to valuable experiments and deep thinking on the part of people like Dr. Sam Harris and others, is now leading people to understand really what free will is and isn't, where the locus of free will likely sits in the brain, if it indeed resides in the brain at all, and what it means to be a conscious being, and how we can modify our conscious states in ways that allow us to be more functional. We also discussed perception, both visual perception, auditory perception, and especially interesting to me and I think as well hopefully to you, time perception, which we know is very elastic in the brain. The literal frame rate by which we process our conscious experience can expand and contract dramatically depending on our state of mind and how conscious we are about our state of mind. So we went deep into that topic as well. Today's discussion was indeed an intellectual deep dive into all the topics that I mentioned a few moments ago, but it also included many practical tools. In fact, I pushed Sam to share with us what his specific practices are and how we can all arrive at a clearer and better understanding of a meditation practice that we can each and all apply so that we can derive these incredible benefits, not just the ones related to stress and focus and enhanced memory, but the ones that relate to our consciousness, that is, to our deeper sense of self and to others. Several times during today's episode, I mentioned the Waking Up app. The Waking Up app was developed by Sam Harris, but I want to emphasize that my mention of the app is in no way a paid promotional. Rather, the Waking Up app is one that I've used for some period of time now and find very, very useful. I have family members that also use it. Other staff members here at the Huberman Lab Podcast use it because we find it to be such a powerful tool. Sam has generously offered Huberman Lab Podcast listeners a 30-day completely free trial of the Waking Up app. If any of you want to try it, you can simply go to wakingup.com/huberman to get that 30-day free trial. During today's discussion, we didn't just talk about meditation, consciousness, and free will. We also talked about psychedelics, both their therapeutic applications for the treatment of things like depression and PTSD, but also the use of psychedelics, and we discussed Sam's experiences with psychedelics as they relate to expanding one's consciousness. I also asked Sam about his views and practices related to social media, prompted in no small part by his recent voluntary decision to close down his Twitter account, so we talked about his rationale for doing that, how he feels about doing that, and I think you'll find

Andrew Huberman 4:36 that to be very interesting as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and behaviors affect your health by giving you real-time feedback using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in your immediate and long-term health are your blood sugar levels, and not just your overall blood sugar levels, but your blood sugar levels throughout the day in response to different foods you eat, to fasting if you're into fasting, to exercise, and so forth. I started using Levels some time ago in order to figure out how different foods impact my blood sugar levels, and indeed it does that very well. It allowed me to see how certain foods really spike my blood sugar and others keep it more level.... and in particular, how foods that I eat after exercise can help raise my blood glucose just enough, but not so much that then I get a crash two or three hours later, which was what was happening before I started using Levels. I've made certain adjustments to my diet. I can now eat post-exercise and still have plenty of energy throughout the day without any issues. It also has helped me understand how different behaviors impact my blood glucose levels. If you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself, go to levels.link/huberman. Again, that's levels.link spelled L-I-N-K /huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable device that tracks your daily activity and sleep, but goes beyond activity and sleep tracking to provide real-time feedback on how to adjust your training and sleep schedules in order to feel and perform better. Six months ago, I started working with Whoop as a member of their scientific advisory council as a way to help Whoop advance their mission of unlocking human performance. And as a Whoop user, I've experienced firsthand the health benefits of their technology. It's clear based on quality of research that Whoop can inform you how well you're sleeping, how to change your sleep habits, how to change your activity habits, even how to modify different aspects of your nutrition, exercise, sleep, and lifestyle in order to maximize your mental health, physical health, and performance. 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Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to announce that we are now partnered with Momentous supplements because Momentous supplements are of the very highest quality, they ship internationally, and they have single-ingredient formulations. If you'd like to access the supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab Podcast, you can go to livemomentous, spelled O-U-S, so livemomentous.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Sam Harris. (footsteps) Dr.

Andrew Huberman 8:54 Sam Harris.

Sam Harris 8:54 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 8:56 We were just talking about this.

Sam Harris 8:57 Yes, doctor.

Andrew Huberman 8:58 You are indeed a doctor. You're a science-

Sam Harris 8:59 I cannot save your life, but, uh, I am, I might, I might, I might save your non-existent soul if we talk long enough.

Andrew Huberman 9:05 (laughs) Well, neither of us are clinicians, but we are both, um, brain explorers from the-

Sam Harris 9:12 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 9:12 ... different perspectives, some overlapping.

Sam Harris 9:14 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 9:15 And I'm really excited to have this conversation. I've been listening to your voice for many years, learning from you for many years, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that my father, who's also a scientist, is an enormous fan of your Waking Up app.

Sam Harris 9:31 Nice. That's great.

Andrew Huberman 9:32 And has spent a lot of time over the last few years, um, he's in his late 70s, he's almost 80, he's a theoretical physicist, walking to the park near his apartment and spending time meditating with the app or sometimes separate from the app, but using the same sorts of meditations in his head.

Sam Harris 9:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 9:48 So he kind of toggles back and forth, and even, I shouldn't say even, but yes, even in his late 70s, has reported that it has significantly shifted his awareness of self and his conscious experience of things happening in and around him.

Sam Harris 10:04 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 10:05 And he was somebody who I think already saw himself as, uh, a pretty aware person, thinking about-

Sam Harris 10:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:13 ... you know, quantum mechanics and, and, and the rest. So a thank you from him indirectly.

Sam Harris 10:18 Oh, that's great.

Andrew Huberman 10:19 A thank you from me-

Sam Harris 10:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:21 ... uh, now directly, and I really want to use that as a way to frame up what I think is one of the more interesting questions in, uh, not just science and philosophy and psychology, but all of life, which is, what is this thing that we call a self? You know, as far as I know, we have not localized the region in the brain-

Sam Harris 10:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 10:39 ... that can entirely account for our perception of self. There are areas, of course, that regulate proprioception, you know, our awareness of where our limbs are in space, maybe even our awareness of where we are in physical space. There are such circuits, as we both know.

Sam Harris 10:53 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:54 But when we talk about sense of self, I have to remember this kind of, uh, neuroscience 101, um, thing that we always say. You know, when you teach memory, you say, "You know, you wake up every morning and you remember who you are." You know who you are. Most people do. Even if they lack memory systems in the brain for whatever reason-

Sam Harris 11:12 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 11:13 ... pretty much everyone seems to know who they are. What are your thoughts on what that whole thing is about, and do we come into the world feeling that way? I would appreciate answers from the perspective of any field-

Sam Harris 11:26 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 11:26 ... including neuroscience, of course.

Sam Harris 11:27 Yeah. Well, big question. I mean, the problem is we, we use the term self in so many different ways, right? And, and there's one sense...... of that term, which, um, is the target of meditation and, and, and it's the target of deconstruction by the practice and by just a- any surrounding philosophy. So, you'll, you'll hear, and you'll hear it from me, that this self is an illusion, right? And, and that there's a, there's a psychological freedom that, eh, can be experienced on the other side of discovering it to be an illusion. Um, and some people don't like that framing. Some people would, would insist that it's not so much an, uh, an illusion, but it's a, it's a construct, and it's not wha- what it seems, right? Um, but it's not that every use of the term self is illegitimate, and there are certain types of selves that are not illusory. I mean, uh, you know, I'm not saying that people are illusions. I'm not saying that you can't, um, uh, talk about yourself as distinct, uh, yourself as, as the whole person and, and, you know, with, as, you know, psychological continuity with your past experience, uh, as being distinct from the person and psychological continuity of some other person, right? I mean, obvio- obviously, we have to be able to conserve those data. It's not fundamentally mysterious that you're gonna wake up tomorrow morning still being psychologically continuous with your past and not my past, right? And, and, you know, if we swapped lives, you know, that would, you know, demand some explanation. Um, so the illusoriness of the self doesn't cut against any of those obvious facts. So the, the, the, the sense of self that is illusory, um ... And again, we might wanna talk about self in other modes because they- there's, you're, there's just a lot of interest there psychologically and, you know, ultimately, um, scientifically. Um, the, the thing that doesn't exist, uh, it certainly doesn't exist as it seems, and I would w- I would wanna argue that it actually is just a proper illusion, uh, is this, the sense that there is a subject interior to experience, in addition to experience. So most people feel like they're having an experience of the world, and they're having their, an experience of their bodies in the world, and in addition to that, they feel that they are a subject internal to the body. You know, very likely in, in the head. Most people feel like they're behind their face as a kind of locus of awareness and thought and intention and ki- and, and that ev- it's, it's almost like they're, you're a passenger inside your body. You don't, most people don't feel identical to their bodies, and they can imagine this, this is ... So the origin, the psychological origin, you know, the, the folk psychological origin of, of the sense of that there's, there might be a soul that could sur- survive the death of the body. I mean, most people are, are what my friend Paul Bloom calls common sense dualists, right? You, you, you're used to the- the default expectation seems to be that whatever the relationship between the mind and the body, there's this, there's some promise of separability there, right? That the,, eh, and whenever you g- really push hard on the science side and say, "Well, no, no, the mind is really just what the brain is doing," that begins to feel more and more counterintuitive to people. And there still seems some, some residual mystery that, you know, at death, maybe something is gonna lift off the brain and go elsewhere, right? So there's this sense of dualism, uh, that ma- many people have. And obviously, th- that's supported by many religious beliefs. Um, but this feeling, it, it is a very peculiar starting point with the, the ... People feel that in a, in a, they don't feel identical to their experience, right? As a matter of experience, they feel like they're on the edge of experience, uh, somehow appropriating it from the side, or they're kind of on the edge of the world, and the world is out there. Your body is, uh, is in some sense, an object in the world, uh, which you, you know, you, it's different from the world, you know. The, uh, y- the boundary of your skin is still meaningful. You can sort of, uh, loosely control your body. I mean, you can't control, you c- can't control your gross, you know, and, and subtle, you know, voluntary motor movements, but, uh, you can't. You're not controlling everything your body is doing. You're not controlling your heartbeat and your, you know, your, um, hormonal secretions and all of that. And so there's a lot that's going on that is in the dark for you, and then you ta- you t- you give someone an instruction to meditate, say, and you say, "Okay, well, let's, let's examine all of this from the first person's side. Let's look for this thing you're calling I." And again, I is not identical to the body. People feel like their hands are out there, and they're go- when, if they're gonna meditate, they're gonna close their eyes, very likely, and now they're gonna pay attention to something. They're gonna pay attention to the breath or the sounds. And it's from the point of view of being a locus of attention that is now aiming attention strategically at an object, like the breath, um, that there's this dualism that is set up, and ultimately, the ultimate promise of meditation, I mean, there are really two levels at which you could be interested in, in meditation. Um, one is, you know, very straightforward and remedial and non-paradoxical and very well subscribed, and it's, it's the usual set of claims about all the benefits you're gonna get from meditation, right? So you're gonna lower your stress, and you're gonna increase your focus, and you're gonna, you know, stave off cortical thinning, and there's all kinds of good things that science is saying meditation will, will give you. Um, and none of that entails really drilling down on this paradoxical claim that the self is an illusion or, or, or anything else of that sort. But from my point of view, the real purpose of meditation and its real promise is not in this long list of, of benefits. And, uh, you know, I'm not discounting any of those, though, you know, the science, uh, for many of them is quite provisional. Um, it's in this deeper claim that if you look for this thing you're calling I, if you look for the sense that, that there's a thinker in addition to the, the, the mere arising of the next thought say.... you won't find that thing. And y- and you can, what's more, you cannot find it in a way that's conclusive, uh, and that matters, right? And it, and it, and it has a, uh, there's a host of benefits that follow from that discovery, um, which are, uh, quite a bit deeper and more interesting than engaging meditation on the side of its benefits. You know, de-stressing, increasing focus, and all the rest.

Andrew Huberman 18:08 I have a number of questions related-

Sam Harris 18:09 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 18:09 ... to what you just said. And, uh, first of all, I, I agree that the evidence that meditation can improve focus, reduce stress, et cetera, it's there. It's, um, not an enormous pile of evidence, but it's growing.

Sam Harris 18:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:21 And I think that e- e- especially for some of the shorter meditations, which I, these days, view more as perceptual exercises. You know, uh, talked about this on the podcast before, but for those that haven't heard it before about, you know, perception, you can have exteroception, extending to things beyond the confines of your skin. Interoception, which is, think also includes the surfaces of the skin, but everything inward.

Sam Harris 18:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 18:43 Um, and meditation through eyes closed typically, um, involving some sort of, um, attentional spotlighting. Something we'll get into, uh, to more interoceptive versus exteroceptive events, et cetera, including thoughts. And, uh, so I think of at a, at a basic level, meditation as a somewhat of a perceptual exercise. Um, you can tell me where you disagree there. And I, I would expect and hope that, that you would.

Sam Harris 19:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:09 Um, but I would like to just touch on this idea that you brought up, 'cause it's such an interesting one of this idea that our bodies are containers, and that we, um, somehow view th- ourselves as passengers within those containers. Uh, that's certainly been my experience. Um, and the image that I have is of, uh, as you say that is of myself or of people out there that sit a, a few centimeters below the surface or that sit entirely in their head, and, of course, the brain and body are connected through the nervous system. I think sometimes a brain, uh, is used to replace a nervous system, and that can get us into trouble-

Sam Harris 19:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 19:45 ... in terms of coming up with real, real directions and definitions. But the point is that there is something special about the real estate in the head. I think for, as much as my laboratory and many other scientists are, are really interested in brain-body connections through the nervous system and other organ systems of the, that the nervous system binds, that if you c- cut off all my limbs, I'm going to be different, but I'm fundamentally still Andrew.

Sam Harris 20:11 Right.

Andrew Huberman 20:11 Whereas, if we were to lesion a, you know, couple square millimeters out of my parietal cortex, um, it's an open question as to whether or not I would still seem as much like Andrew, uh, to other people and to myself even.

Sam Harris 20:22 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:22 And so there is something fundamentally different about the real estate in the cranial vault.

Sam Harris 20:27 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:27 Uh, right? You could even remove both of my eyes, I'd still be Andrew. And those are two pieces of my central nervous system that are fundamental to my daily life. But I'd still be me.

Sam Harris 20:37 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:37 Whereas, um, and this doesn't, I think, just apply to memory systems. I mean, I think there are regions of the frontal cortex that, when destroyed, have been shown to modify personality-

Sam Harris 20:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:46 ... and self-perception in, in dramatic ways. So, I, it's a sort of obvious point once it's made, but I do think it's worth, um, highlighting, 'cause there does seem to be something special about being in the head. The other thing is that sitting a few centimeters below the surface or riding in this container makes sense to me, except I, I wonder if you've ever, um, experienced a shift as I have when something very extreme happens, let's use the, the negative example of, you know, all of a sudden you're in a fear state. All of a sudden, it feels as if your entire body is, is you or is me-

Sam Harris 21:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 21:23 ... and is f- and, and now I need to get this thing, the whole container, a- and me to some place of safety in whatev- whatever form. Um, this is also true, I think, in ecstatic states.

Sam Harris 21:33 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 21:34 Where you can feel really ph- when people say embodied, I wonder whether or not we normally oscillate below the surface of our body. When I say oscillate, I mean, in neural terms. I mean, maybe our sensory experience is not truly at the bodily surface but sits below the bodily surface more at the level of organ systems and within our head. And then certain things that jolt us, our autonomic nervous system into heightened states-

Sam Harris 21:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 21:55 ... bring us into states of, um, you know, bring us closer to the surface, and therefore include all of us. A- again, I, I don't want to take us down a, a mechanistic description of, of something that doesn't exist, but does any of that resonate, um, in terms of how you are thinking about or describing the self?

Sam Harris 22:11 Yeah, yeah. There's, there's a lot there. Um, it first, on the point of the brain being, uh, you know, the, the locus of, of what we are as minds, um, yeah. I mean, there, there are people who will insist that sort of the whole nervous system has to be thought of as

Narrator 22:26 (music)

Sam Harris 22:27 ... the, when you're talking about our emotional life and you, you know, the, the, um, the insulas connection to, uh, the gut and you just, so the, the, the sense of, of self extends beyond the brain. But I, I mean, I totally take your point that a brain transplant is a coherent idea, and you would expect to go with the brain rather than with th- the viscera. And, um, so in that sense, we really are the, the old philosophical s- thought experiment of, uh, of being a brain in a vat. I mean, we essentially are already, you know, the, the vat is our skull, and we're, you know, virtually in that situation. Um-

Andrew Huberman 23:03 Horrible movie, I'm sorry, can't help but interrupt.

Sam Harris 23:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 23:05 When I was a a teenager, my sister and I used to go to the movies every once in a while, and we'd trade off who could pick the movie.

Sam Harris 23:11 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 23:11 And, um, she took me to see once the movie Boxing Helena, the-

Sam Harris 23:15 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 23:15 ... David Lynch film where-

Sam Harris 23:16 Which I never saw that, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 23:17 ... where he amputates the limbs of a woman who he's obsessed by and keeps her. It's a really horrible film.

Sam Harris 23:23 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 23:23 And about 20 minutes into it, my sister just turned to me and said, "I'm so sorry."

Sam Harris 23:27 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 23:27 And the question then was whether or not two siblings should actually persist in a movie like that.

Sam Harris 23:31 Right.

Andrew Huberman 23:31 Uh, we decided to persist in the movie, so that we could laugh about it later. Um, but it was rather disturbing. I don't recommend the movie nor do I recommend seeing it with a sibling. But in that movie, the, the woman, he, he takes her as a container and, and restricts her movement, right?

Sam Harris 23:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 23:45 Quite sadistic and-... horrible thing, really. Um, David Lynch, um, interesting mind, perhaps, but-

Sam Harris 23:53 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 23:54 ... the, the idea was that, uh, was to question how much of the person persists in the absence of their ability to move, et cetera. Could there be love? Could there be these- the other affections? Um, anyway, a rather extreme example, but, um, one that I- that still haunts me-

Sam Harris 24:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:07 ... and I suppose I'm thinking about still now.

Sam Harris 24:09 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:09 Yeah.

Sam Harris 24:09 Well, so but they- just to follow that point, um, there's a l- there's a lot about us that we don't have access to un- unless we enact it physically. Like, you know, if I ask you, you know, "Do you still know how to ride a bike?" Right? There's no place in your memory where you can- you can inspect by, you know, just sitting in your chair that you- you've retained the knowledge of how to ride a bike, right? Like it's- procedural memory is different from semantic or episodic memory. If I asked you, you know, do- you know, "Do you know your address?" Yes, you can recall your address just sitting there. But if you- if you had had a microstroke that neatly dissected out your ability to ride a bike, you know, and- and left everything else intact, you know, you might think you could ride a bike, but suddenly you stand up next to one and you have no idea what to do with it. And that would be a discovery that would only happen if- if you were, you know, motorically engaged with that, you know, object. Um, and I'm sure there's- you know, we could probably come up with 100 things about us that really seem core to us and we- it- and- and are not separable for our- you know, from our, you know, personhood, which seem to only cut- you know, only get invoked when we're, you know, out there moving in the world and, you know, we have limbs, et cetera. Um, and, uh,

Sam Harris 25:29 but yeah, no, it- it's- the- the seat of- of consciousness, I mean, th- the- the- the right framework to talk about all of this from my point of view is consciousness and its contents, right? So we have consciousness, the fact that there's something that is like to be us, right? The fact that- that the- the world and our internal experience is- is illuminated, that it has a qualitative character. Um, and then there's the question of what is that qualitative character? What is- you know, what kinds of information do we have access to? What does it feel like to be us? How do- how do different states of arousal change that? So you talked about fear. Yeah, I mean, fear can change a lot of things, but, um, uh, and, you know, various neurological deficits or, you know- you know, you can add drugs to the mix, you add psychedelics that you- they radically tr- transform the contents of consciousness. From my point of view, consciousness itself is simply the- the cognizance, the awareness, that's b- that- that- uh, is the- the floodlights by which any of that stuff appears, right? So, um, consciousness doesn't change, but its contents change. And, um, to come back to meditation for a second, many people think meditation is about changing the contents of consciousness. You- there's some con- some contents you wanna get rid of, like anxiety, other contents you want to- to encourage, like calm and, you know, uh, unconditional love or, you know, some other, you know, classically pleasant pro-social emotion. Um, and that's all fine, that's all possible, but the real, uh, wisdom, uh, of, you know, the- the- the 2,000-year-old wisdom of meditation that really is the- you know, the- the chewy center of the- the Tootsie Pop is a recognition of what consciousness itself is always already like regardless of the contents and- and the changes in contents. And this is why, I mean, we- we might talk about this, but this is why they're mutually compatible. Uh, psychedelics and meditation for me are somewhat orthogonal because psychedelics is all about making wholesale changes to the contents of consciousness. And- and there's a- you know, some wonderful consequences of doing that, there can be some harrowing and terrifying consequences of doing that. But, uh, generally speaking, I think, you know, used- used wisely, they can be incredibly valuable and- and the therapeutic potential there is enormous. But the crucial disjunction here is that there really is something to recognize about ordinary waking consciousness, the- the consciousness that's compatible with my driving a car to get here on time, right? You- you don't have to- you don't have to have the pyrotechnics of b- being on LSD to see the- the- this- this- to transcend the central illusion that I'm- I'm saying is- is the thing to be transcended, which is the sense that there is a duality between subject and object in every moment of experience. Um,

Sam Harris 28:25 and to take it back to- to something you said about just all of our different modes in ordinary life, the interesting thing is I think people are constantly losing their sense of self and they're not aware of it. And, I mean, there- there's a, um, probably an analogy to the visual system here which is, um, to, uh, visual saccades, which perhaps you've spoken about at some point on your podcast.

Andrew Huberman 28:48 Not enough, so please, yeah.

Sam Harris 28:50 Yeah. So- so what happens with our- you know, every time we move our eyes, this is called a- a saccade, and we do that about, you know, three times a second or so, uh, just normally. Um, there is a- you know, the- the region of motor cortex that- that affects that movement sends what's called an- an efferent copy of that motor movement, uh, which is- which is used as information that propagates back to visual cortex that suppresses, uh, the data of vision while the eyes are moving. Because otherwise, if you weren't doing that, every time you moved your eyes, it would seem like the visual scene itself was lurching around. And people can experience this for themselves if they just, you know, touch one of their eyeballs on the side, you know, not all that hard and kind of jiggle it, you know, and then you can roll it around, you can jiggle it from side to side. You can see that a- a, um, a movement of the eyeball that's not governed by your ocular motor system delivers a jiggling of the world because it's not- your brain is not anticipating it in the same way and it's not- you're not producing that- that same, uh...Uh, you know, predictive, uh, copy of- of the movement.

Andrew Huberman 29:57 It's a little bit like, um, uh, we have some action sports filmers on our staff here, the- the gimbal, you know, that holds a f- an iPhone, like you see the kids with- on with the-

Sam Harris 30:06 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:06 ... surfboards or skateboards or something. They're gonna hold a phone while moving around, or the people who are the vloggers. Does anyone even still use that phrase, vlog? (laughs)

Sam Harris 30:14 Uh, yeah. Uh, yes.

Andrew Huberman 30:15 Um, moving around and to, it's- it's image stabilization essentially-

Sam Harris 30:19 Right.

Andrew Huberman 30:19 ... um, that keeps the- the camera steady and, uh, these are more than cameras, of course. The- the, for those listening, I'm pointing at my eyes, but they do far more than just what a camera would do. But, yeah, this internal system of- of image stabilization, yeah, I can see, uh, perhaps where you're going with this, um, that- that it allows us to remain in a self-referencing scheme as opposed to, um, sort of paying attention to just how confusing it is-

Sam Harris 30:46 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:46 ... to- to track the visual world at some level. Right?

Sam Harris 30:48 Well, uh, actually where I'm going is that, so people are having this suppression of vision s- three times a second on average, and they're not experiencing it, right? So like you're, like you're literally like, you're- you're- you're effectively going blind and you're not noticing it. And, um-

Andrew Huberman 31:06 Because it's very fast.

Sam Harris 31:07 Yes, because it's very fast. Now, there- there's an analogous, uh, suppression, I would say, of the sense of self that occurs every time attention gets absorbed s- significantly in its object, right? So like, like we, uh, we even have this concept of, you know, losing yourself in your work or, you know, losing your... I mean, the, uh, the classic flow experiences have this- this quality where there's th- and this- this tends to be why they're so rewarding, um, where there's just, if you're in- in some, you know, athletic activity or, you know, an- an aesthetic one, um, uh, or you could be having sex, or you could be, whatever it is, some peak experience, its peakness usually entails there being some brief period where there was no distance between you and the experience, right? There was, for that moment, you were no longer looking over your own shoulder or anticipating the next moment or trying to get s- somewhere w- where you weren't or, you know, micromanaging errors or, you know, like this, you know, there's not... there's just a flow of unity with whatever the, th- you know, whatever the experience is. You know, a surfer on hi- on the wave, right? Um, and we love those experiences, um, and then we are continually abstracted away from them by our thinking about them. We- we're thinking, "Oh my God. That- that was so good," or, "How do I get back to that?" Or, you know, you're looking at a sunset, it's the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen, and then you're continually interrupting the experience of merely seeing it with a commentary about how amazing this is and, "I- I wonder, you know, what our real estate prices are here? I mean, could, is it possible to actually, we could, we could move here?" And like your- your- your mind is just continually narrating a c- a conversation you're having with yourself, however paradoxically. I mean, you're telling yourselves thing, y- yourself things that you already know, uh, as though there were two of you rather often, right? Like, you know, you're just, you know, "I'm looking for, um, wha- you know, whi- which is the water?" And I say, "Oh, there it is." Right? But like, I'm the one seeing it. Who am I saying, "Oh, th- you know, there it is" to? As though there's someone else who needs to be informed about the thing I already saw, right? So it's- it's, um, there's something about our internal dialogue that is paradoxical. Um-

Andrew Huberman 33:29 Is there

Andrew Huberman 33:30 any, um, neurologic condition, um, uh, colosectomy or- or anything like that where somehow people feel more unified with the self on a continual basis? Um, the observer and the actor within?

Sam Harris 33:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 33:44 Whether it... State more- more, um, as a- as a complete sentence. Is there any known neurological syndrome, (laughs) makes it sound like a bad thing, but it could be a good thing, whereby people feel that the actor and the observer within them are unified continually?

Sam Harris 34:01 The- there's not a pathological one, but, uh, some of the- the work on the default mode network suggests that that's at least part of the story, right? So the- the default mode network, um, which has been talked about a lot of late because it's, it has come up both in the- in the meditation literature and in the psychedelic literature. Um, but its original, uh, discovery was that, you know, and the reason why it was called the default mode was, is- is that in virtually every neuroimaging experiment ever run, they found that between tasks when the brain was just in its default state, the- these- these midline structures would- would, uh, increase their activity. Uh, and then they would, then they would reliably diminish whenever the person in the scanner was- was on task. And usually that meant some kind of outward looking, um, you know, visual discrimination task. I mean, but it could be, it could be, you know, it could be visual, it could be semantic, it could be... But their, th- it tends to be their eyes are open and they're paying attention to something that's being broadcast to them through, you know, monitor goggles, um, or, you know, they're looking at a mirror that's showing them a computer monitor. Um, but the, so the- the general insight was there are these midline structures in the brain that seem to be, uh, increasing their activity when the brain is just kind of idling between tasks waiting for something to happen. Mm-hmm. Um, and then further experiments found tasks that actually upregulated, um, uh, activity there, b- beyond baseline and those tasks seemed to be self-referential, so that when you ask people, you know, you give 'em a list of words and you say, "Well, do these, any, any of these apply to you?" Right? You know, and so people are... Or- or you ask people to think about, um, uh, you know, actually in o- one experiment I did when you, you know, when you're ch- challenging people's beliefs, uh, when you're challenging beliefs that- that have more of a personal significance like political or religious beliefs, you get an upregulation in these regions as opposed to just g- generic beliefs about, you know, you're in Los Angeles, this is a table, you know, there's something to which, you know, people are not, you know, uh, holding fast as a matter of identity. Um-So, anyway, both meditation and psychedelics seem to suppress activity in these, in these regions, which we know are associated with both self-talk, mind-wandering, and, and explicit acts of self-representation, right? So...

Andrew Huberman 36:30 Could we say that they are somewhat autobiographical because they access memory systems and in the way you're describing them and in the way that, uh, a colleague of mine who's been a guest on this podcast, I don't know if you've interacted with him before, but I think you'd very much enjoy whatever interaction you'd-

Sam Harris 36:44 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:45 ... would have is, um, David Spiegel, he's our associate chair of psychiatry, so-

Sam Harris 36:48 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:48 ... he and his father actually, his father, then he, uh, founded, um, hypnosis as a valid clinical practice in psychiatry-

Sam Harris 36:55 Right.

Andrew Huberman 36:56 ... and hypnosis, which is obviously a heightened sense of attention with deep relaxation is known to, uh, dramatically suppress the, the default mode network.

Sam Harris 37:03 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:04 Uh, he talks about this a lot, and I, I always wonder as we, um, take down activity within the default mode network, what surfaces in its place and is what surfaces in its place, um, does that somehow reflect that the two are normally in a push-pull? Because that's not necessarily the case, right?

Sam Harris 37:24 Right.

Andrew Huberman 37:24 When I fall asleep, I can hallucinate, but that doesn't mean that during the day my, uh, the fact that I'm looking at objects is, is what's preventing me from hallucinating. If I close my eyes, I can get imagery-

Sam Harris 37:33 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:33 ... but, you know, there's this kind of a, a different illusion, the illusion of antagonistic circuitry sometimes. Um, I don't want to take us off course, but the default mode network seems to, um, want to be there, quote unquote.

Sam Harris 37:46 Right.

Andrew Huberman 37:46 It seems to be fighting for, for our attention, um, unless we give ourselves a visual target or an auditory target or some salient experience of some kind it sounds like, and then if... Um, I'm surprised to hear that meditation reduces activity in the default mode network at some level because meditation to me oftentimes involves, um, paying attention to a, some sort of perceptual target.

Sam Harris 38:10 Right. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 38:10 Maybe you could, um, eventually e- explain as to, uh, how it might do that or why it might.

Sam Harris 38:15 Yeah. And I don't, I don't think it's the whole story because obviously outward going attention is not, um, even if you're having the kind of egoic saccade that I'm talking about where you're like, you're actually not clearly aware of, of yourself, you're not clearly defining yourself as separate from experience, um, for the moment of paying attention, so you are sort of losing yourself in your work. That's not the same thing as having the clear meditative insight of selflessness that I'm, that I'm claiming is the goal of meditation. Um, but there is a, well, you know, to, to wind back to the original point I was making and the reason why I drew the ref- the analogy to visual saccades, I do think there's a continuous interruption in our sense of self that goes unrecognized. And, um, but, but the conscious, uh, acquisition of, of, of the understanding that the self is an illusion is a different experience, and it's, I mean, 'cause it, you're-

Andrew Huberman 39:17 (laughs)

Sam Harris 39:17 ... you're then, you're then focusing on this absence, actually there's another analogy to, to, you know, the visual system that applies here which is to the, the optic blind spot. I mean, it's like so, um, which is a good analogy for me because it cuts through a, a bunch of false assumption as to where we kind of, h- where that you would look for this or how this relates to ordinary experience. So as many people know that we have, you know, in both eyes, we have, um, what's called the blind spot which is a consequence of the optic nerve transiting through the retina. I mean, un- unlike cephalopods I think, I mean, I think cephalopods-

Andrew Huberman 39:55 (laughs)

Sam Harris 39:55 ... uh, have their optic nerve, you know, as, you know, a, a, an omniscient being would have engineered it, c- connecting the retina from the back and therefore there is no blind, ar- area of blindness associated with its transit back through the retina but there are s-

Andrew Huberman 40:10 Photoreceptors on the outside.

Sam Harris 40:11 Exactly, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:12 But humans for whatever reason, uh, put photo-

Sam Harris 40:15 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 40:15 Well, I always say, I wasn't consulted in the design phase, something, uh, put, uh, photoreceptors, um, combination of things, but photoreceptors in the back, and so you actually have to send the highway of information-

Sam Harris 40:25 You need the cables, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:26 ... through, through the pixel center of the, of the eye.

Sam Harris 40:29 Exactly, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:29 Yeah, cephalopods and Drosophila-

Sam Harris 40:33 Uh-huh.

Andrew Huberman 40:33 ... basically, um, uh, invertebrates.

Sam Harris 40:36 Right.

Andrew Huberman 40:36 Uh, the design is more at its face logical-

Sam Harris 40:40 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:40 ... mammals, very illogical design at least as far as w-

Sam Harris 40:44 Right.

Andrew Huberman 40:44 ... our judgments go.

Sam Harris 40:45 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:45 Yeah.

Sam Harris 40:45 But it gives, it gives me a good analogy so I'll,

Sam Harris 40:48 I'll, I'll take it.

Andrew Huberman 40:49 I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains digestive enzymes and adaptogens. I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012, so that's 10 years now of taking Athletic Greens every single day, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens is that it covers all of my foundational nutritional needs, so whether or not I'm eating well or enough or not, I'm sure that I'm covering all of my needs for vitamins, minerals, probiotics, adaptogens to combat stress and the digestive enzymes really help my digestion. I just feel much better when I'm drinking Athletic Greens. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and for the month of January, they have a special offer where they'll give you 10 free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Vitamin D3 and K2 are vital for immune function, metabolic function, hormone health, but also calcium regulation and heart health. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim their special offer in the month of January of 10 free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3

Andrew Huberman 41:57 K2.

Sam Harris 41:57 So in any case, we have this blind spot which you can, y- uh, I think most people learn this in school although my daughters had not been taught this in school, I just showed them this for the first time, like, a month ago which, and they were briefly fascinated and then wanted to return to their screen time. Uh, but, uh...... anyway, you can take a piece of paper and you make, you know, two marks on it. And then you cover one eye and you fixate on, on one mark, um, I mean, you can look this up online if you need, uh, details about how to do this. And you, eh, while staring at one fixation point, you move the, the paper back and forth and you can get it to a place where the other mark disappears. And that, uh, and if, and, you know, you can run this experiment long enough to satisfy yourself that there is in fact a blind spot in your visual field which you, we, with one eye closed you don't normally notice. Um, the reason why you have to cover, c-cover one eye is because each eye compensates for the, the blind spot of the other, so. Um, but wh- which is to say that if you close one eye and, and survey the visual scene, something really is missing, whatever you're looking at. If you're looking at a crowd of people, somebody is missing a head and you're not noticing it. And it's not, it's not easy to notice because, um, you know, the, the brain doesn't tend to vividly represent the absence of information. I mean, it's just like, th- this is part of the game that's not being rendered. It's not, it's not showing up as a, a break in your, in the visual field. It's just not there, and you're, um ... I mean, the, people have argued that there's a, a kind of filling in phenomenon that happens, but I think that can be, you know, um, misunderstood or, or exaggerated.

Andrew Huberman 43:33 But the eye movements themselves that you described before, I, I guess I should say that the saccade analogy of about, um, tr- transiently and repetitively erasing the self-

Sam Harris 43:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:44 ... works perfectly here because indeed micro saccades, little smaller saccades that occur all the time also prevent our eyes from fixating at one location for long enough-

Sam Harris 43:52 Exactly. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:52 ... to observe our blind spot even if one eye is closed.

Sam Harris 43:54 Right. Right.

Andrew Huberman 43:55 So if we, uh, the per- the experiments done with paralytics to essentially lock eyes at one location basically things just start disappearing.

Sam Harris 44:01 Yeah. It just fades away. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:02 We would all love to think that we start hallucinating, but actually we start going blind.

Sam Harris 44:06 Right.

Andrew Huberman 44:06 And those experiments have been done and on humans. Uh, I hear they're quite terrifying.

Sam Harris 44:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:11 Yeah.

Sam Harris 44:11 But I mean you can do that for yourself too. It just, you know, it begins to just all f-

Andrew Huberman 44:15 Melt away.

Sam Harris 44:16 ... melt away in, in a gl- in a warm glow. Um, no psychedelics required. But the, um, the interesting point there is that when you ask yourself ... Okay, so this, because of the, as a consequence of the eye's anatomy, there's this, this thing you can see, uh, that, that is absent from your experience. But the question is where is that in relationship to the rest of you, to your mind? Is that deep within or is that in some sense right on the surface of experience? And there's, there's expectation that people have, again, I think conflating meditation with, with a search for changes in the contents of consciousness. They're looking for, you know, eh, you know, um, much more subtle things to, to, to notice about the mind or much, you know, vaster things to notice. Um, psychedelics sets up this, this expectation that, you know, you, you do, you know, a, a massive dose of mushrooms or LSD and everything changes. I mean, you just get the, this full, you know, beatific vision, um, and you know, you get, you know, not only visual changes but, you know, emotional changes, and, and you get, uh, synesthesia where you're like, you're just, you have much more mind in, in, in so many ways. Um, so they begin ... Y- you having these experiences or reading the mystical literature you begin to think, "Okay, well then freedom is, is really elsewhere or it's, it's really, it's deep within." It's like it's not, it's not coincident with the ordinary awareness that can, well, that can see this coffee cup clearly and that can just transition attention to, you know, reading an email, uh, you know, with, with, with a sort of full sobriety of just, you know, you know ordinary waking consciousness. Um, but the truth is this insight into selflessness, this insight into the non-duality of subject and object is as close to ordinary consciousness as this insight into the optic blind spot. Like what, where do you have to go to have this insight into the blind spot? No, you just have to s- you don't have to go anywhere. You just have to set up the, the experiment correctly such that, you know, you, you can see the data, but the data's right on the surface. It's like it- it's, it's almost too close to you to notice. I mean if, if it's at all hard to notice, it be- it's because it's so close rather than it's, you know, deep within or far away. Um, and there are other analogies like, um, I don't know remember those mind's eye pieces of artwork that were those, the random dot stereograms-

Andrew Huberman 46:49 Oh, yeah.

Sam Harris 46:49 ... where, that we have an image that pops out. Um, I f- always find it very difficult to see those 'cause I have a very-

Andrew Huberman 46:55 Like

Narrator 46:55 Of course.

Sam Harris 46:55 ... dominant eye, you know? But-

Andrew Huberman 46:57 Yeah.

Sam Harris 46:57 ... some people can see.

Andrew Huberman 46:57 If people can't see those, these are these images that used to be at the kind of like touristy shops of a bu- ... People would say, "Oh, there it is, the whale." And I'm thinking, "I don't see it."

Sam Harris 47:04 Yeah. Right.

Andrew Huberman 47:04 Um, you know, kids that swim a lot when they're younger-

Sam Harris 47:08 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 47:08 ... and they're, uh, tend to breathe just to one side.

Sam Harris 47:11 Right.

Andrew Huberman 47:11 I don't know if this was you. This was definitely me.

Sam Harris 47:13 No. No. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:13 They tend to, um, will keep one eye closed. You get, set up a pretty strong ocular dominance. Uh, biasing your vision to one or the other eye early in life-

Sam Harris 47:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:21 ... whether or not you're learning how to be a bow hunter or you're learning how to throw darts or shoot billiards or anything involves, um, selectively viewing the world through one eye for even a couple of hours can set up a permanent, um-

Sam Harris 47:34 Huh.

Andrew Huberman 47:35 ... asymmetry in the weighting of, of visual flow-

Sam Harris 47:38 Right.

Andrew Huberman 47:38 ... uh, in f- uh, flow of visual information from the eye to the brain. Um, it's reversible but only through the reverse gymnastics of covering up the other eye intentionally.

Sam Harris 47:46 Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:46 So I should be, I had to be reverse patched for a while 'cause I was seeing double because I lost binocular vision. I don't stand-

Sam Harris 47:52 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 47:52 ... a chance in hell of seeing an image pop out of a random-

Sam Harris 47:56 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:57 ... dot stereogram.

Sam Harris 47:57 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:57 Which is kind of ironic 'cause I did my PhD on binocular circuitry.

Sam Harris 48:01 Right. Right. Right.

Andrew Huberman 48:01 But, um, (laughs) nonetheless, y- if people can see these, um, or if they can't, what I think they provide a really terrific example of what you're talking about it as a larger theme which is that perceptually you see a bunch of dots and then all of a sudden-

Sam Harris 48:16 Right.

Andrew Huberman 48:17 ... what-

Sam Harris 48:17 ... you thought wasn't there is suddenly there, but can dis- disappear again. Or there are certain visual illusions, if we were to include others, that once you see them, you cannot unsee them. Right. Uh- So, there's the faces vases. You know, figure ground type stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very, uh- It's a bit bistable percepts, yeah. Yep, bistable percepts. And then there's sort of, um, ocular competition. You show two different images to the eyes, uh, each of the two eyes. Right. And it is, uh, near impossible for people to perceive them both simultaneously. Yeah. Um, so it's a little bit of what you're describing. I mean, these seem to be fundamental features about the way the neural circuits are organized. That they don't want to stably r- We don't, they don't wanna stay fixated on any one thing for very long. To do so either takes training, intense interest, intense fear, intense excitement. When I say intense, I guess I come back to this idea that the autonomic nervous system is somehow governing our ability to, um, spotlight at any one location for very long. Mm-hmm. Does that, is that a useful framework or is that gonna take us down a, a different path? Well, it's, it's sort of a different path for this. I mean, for, the only point I was making is that the seemingly paradoxical claim that something can be right on the surface, uh, and yet hard to see, right? So like there, there, there are things that are, um... Because it's... And again, this, this, uh, this seems to justify the expectation held by, uh, I would think, you know, the vast majority of people who get interested in these, you know, spiritual things, for lack of a better word. Um, that the truth must somehow be deep within, right? Like that there, like there's really like a, there's some distance between where you're, b- between the one who is looking and the thing that has to be found, right? And that you have to go through this, this long evolution of changes. I mean, there are many metaphors that set this up. It's like you're at the base of a mountain and you have to climb to the top. And so, you have to find the path, however secure, circuitous to get you there. Um, but there really is a distance between where you're, uh, between your starting point and the goal. And what I'm arguing, uh, you know, and this is a kind of a non-dual, uh, to use a term of jargon. Um, this is a non-dual approach to meditation e- as opposed to a dualistic one. That there really is a, a, the, the, the path and the goal are, are, are coincident, right? That there's a, the- that you have to unravel the logic by which you would seek something that's outside of y- y- th- you know, the pre- the present moment's experience. Um, you know, i.e. not available, really not available to you now, um, because so many things worth having, so many, so many skills worth acquiring really are not available to you now. It's like, it's like, you know, if you wanna be a, a pianist or if you wanna speak Chinese or if you want... Like, like th- You, there's something you don't know and then you wanna learn that thing and there's a whole process, right? And you might not be capable of doing it, right? You might... And, and real mastery is far away, right? If you, if you've never hit a golf ball and you wanna hit a golf ball 300 yards straight, right? You know, I can pretty much guarantee you're not gonna do that e- initially and you're not gonna do it, uh, you know, on day two, and, uh, you're not gonna do it reliably for the longest time. (laughs) And there's real training, uh, you know, in, in front of you to, to be able to do that reliably. A insight into, and really the core insight... I mean, the, the insight that is, uh, the core of, you know, the Buddha's teaching to take one, one, uh, historical example of this, um, really is available now and it is not... I mean, you know, granted it can be very hard won for people. I mean, I, I had probably spent a year on silent retreat in, in, you know, one week to three-month increments before I sort of got the point I'm making now, right? So like I... You know, it's qui- it's, it's... I mean, literally, and this is... These are, you know, these are retreats where you spend, you know, 12 to 18 hours a day just meditating. Trying to, to, uh, you know, unpack the kinds of claims I'm, I'm, you know, making now. Um, so there... It's po- it's, it's possible to rigorously overlook this. It's possible to stand in front of the mind's eye image and stare in a way that is guaranteed not to give you pop-out, right? And to be ch- to be adept at, you know, staring in that way. Um, so it's possible to be misled. And so what I'm, what I'm trying to argue here is that there is, um, there's a fair amount of leverage you can get with, with better information, which can kinda cut the time course if you're searching for this thing and, and, and kinda cancel your false expectations about just where this is in relation to your ordinary waking consciousness. Um, and it's possible to get that information and to have a bunch of experiences. Mm-hmm. You know, you go e- you go and do an ayahuasca trip and you have... It's incredibly valuable and it's valuable for all the ways in which it changed the contents of your consciousness in, in, you know, startling ways. And you had insights into your past and into your relationships and into why you're not as loving as you might be and there's lots to think about. And you're like, "Okay, that's all great. That's all something that, you know, we can talk about." But there is... It's, it truly is orthogonal. I mean, if it makes a point of contact to what I'm talking about, it's really just at one point, you know? And it's at the point where this sense of, of subject-object division in consciousness is illusory and vulnerable to investigation. And if you investigate it at sort of the right plane of focus, you know, you pick the analogy you want from... Eh, you know, whether it's setting up the, the, um, the optic blind spot experiment in just the right way so that you can see that, you know, it's actually not... The data is not there. Or, um... I mean, the bistable percept is great because, you know, when you see one of these images like the vase face, um, diagram or, you know, the Dalmatian. You know, that looks like just a mess of dots and then you see a- the image of a Dalmatian dog pop out. Once you see it-You really can't unsee it. I mean, w- like, once you have the, the requisite conceptual, you know, anchor to it, then every time you look, you're gonna find it again and, and, and it eventually becomes effortless. And that's what ultimately meditation is. I mean, th- this kind of meditation. You, you ultimately learn to recognize that there's no separation from you, between you and your experience. Right? There's not the experience on the one hand and the self on the other. There's just experience. Right? There's just seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, feeling, you know, proprioception. Add, add whatever channels of information you want to that. Um, but there's just the, there's just the totality of the energy of consciousness and its contents. And there's no... It's not that you're on the riverbank, uh, and this is, this is how it can seem in the beginning even when you're practicing meditation fairly diligently. It can seem like you're on the riverbank watching the contents of consciousness flow by. And, and meditation is the act of doing that more and more dispassionately. So you're no longer grabbing at the, at the pleasant or pushing the unpleasant away. You're just kind of relaxing and in a, in the most non-judgmental frame of mind just witnessing the flow, right? But if you's doing that dualistically, you feel like the meditator. You feel like the subject aiming attention, and so now you're on the riverbank watching everything go, go past. But the truth is that you are the river, right? Experience itself is the, there is just experience itself. You're not, you're not on the edge of experience. And everything you can notice is part of the fl- y- of the flow, right? And there's, and there's no point from which t- to abstract yourself away from the flow, to stand outside it, and to say, "Okay, this is, this is my life. This is my experience. This is my body." Yes, you can do that. I mean, those are all just thoughts, but that's more of the flow, right? And so there is a, there's a process by which you would eventu- eventually recognize that there's no distance between you and your experience. And again, you can, you can wait for those moments in life where experience gets so good or so terrifying, you know, or it's just so salient, right? Your amygdala is driving so hard. I mean, so you're in a, in a war and you can't think about anything because th- uh, that, you know, the enemy's shooting at you and this is the most thrilling video game you've ever played in your life, uh, and your life is on the line. Or you're, you're, you know, at the peak of, of some, you know, athletic event where there's just you don't know how you're doing the things you're doing, but it's all happening automatically, right? Um, but, you know, those are, those are, you know, 1/100 of 1% of one's life, you know? And, you know, what I'm calling meditation is a way of simply understanding the mechanics of attention w- whereby you are denying yourself that unity of experience so much of the time and recognizing that that's, you know, it, it's based on a, a misperception of, of the way consciousness, uh, always already

Sam Harris 57:32 is.

Andrew Huberman 57:32 Well, if there wasn't an incentive to learn how to meditate properly, um, that was one. And I've been meditating for- uh, a fair amount since I was in my teens, um, but more along the lines of just paying attention to breath and, um, you know, recognize, that sort of observer, uh, open observer type meditation-

Sam Harris 57:53 Right.

Andrew Huberman 57:53 ... or focused attention, I would suppose more of the focused attention type. We'll get into these a little bit later. But I have a number of questions related to what you just said.

Sam Harris 58:00 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 58:00 Um, I love the idea that this thing that, um, we would all do well to, uh, understand, to observe consciousness as self as opposed to, um, trying to alter the contents of consciousness, um, may sit much closer to us than, um, one might think.

Sam Harris 58:22 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 58:22 That it... Um, and that because it sits so close to us that, that might be one of the reasons why we miss it.

Sam Harris 58:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 58:28 I, I go right to a visual system example. I mean, if you don't... If you're wearing, uh, corrective lenses and there's a speck on your lens, you know, typically you're looking out through the lens-

Sam Harris 58:36 Right.

Andrew Huberman 58:36 ... and so you wouldn't observe that speck. Um, any number of different analogies could work here. The, the fact that there are states, however few, um, positive and negative, e- ecstasy, extreme ecstasy and extreme fear, uh, being the, the two I think most obvious ones that it seems like we agree on, that allow us to capture the sense of, um, completeness of self or the, the unity of the, the observer and the, and the actor. Um, the fact that those are, are seldom for the non-trained, for the non-meditator, um, suggests to me two things. I think one, um, perhaps worth exploring more than the other. But one is that, um, what's really being revealed in the states where we can feel the unity of the observer and the actor is w- understanding something fundamental about the algorithm that, not the online algorithm, but the algorithm that-

Sam Harris 59:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 59:29 ... is our nervous system. Just as, uh, you mentioned cephalopods, I mean, mantis shrimp see an enormous array of color hues that we don't. Right? Their map, their maps and representations of the world are fundamentally different. Pit vipers see in the infrared.

Sam Harris 59:42 Right.

Andrew Huberman 59:43 We're restricted to somewhat of a limited range within the color spectrum, but still more vast than that of dogs or cats. Okay. So understanding that for seeing what, um, a pit viper can see for moments would be informative, um, perhaps. Um, sensing heat emissions, uh, as a human might be invasive and maybe that's why we don't do it. So the question is, to just make it straightforward, is, um, w- why would the system be designed this way? (laughs) Again, neither of us were consulted at the design phase. But that brings me to perhaps the more tractable question was, which is, um, about development. I mean, I'm a-... great believer that the neural circuits that, uh, encouraged, uh, healthy parent-child relations or unhealthy parent-child relations as the case may be-

Sam Harris 1:00:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:32 ... in childhood stem from the initial demands of internal versus external states, which is exactly that we're talking about, which is that a, a young child feels anxious because it needs its diaper changed. It doesn't really know it needs its diaper change, or it's cold, or it's uncomfortable, or it's hungry, or it's overly full, and so it vocalizes and then some external source comes to us and relieves that hopefully, right?

Sam Harris 1:00:52 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:52 And so the fundamental rule that we first learn is not that we have a self or that, um, things fall down not up, but is that, um, when uncomfortable, um, externalize that discomfort and-

Sam Harris 1:01:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:05 ... it will be relieved by an outside player. And then, of course, there's a repurposing of that circuitry for adult romantic attachments. I don't think anyone doubts that, and that can explain a lot-

Sam Harris 1:01:13 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:13 ... indeed about attachment and so forth. So something about our developmental wiring and the algorithms that these neural circuits run tend to bias most people, the non-practiced meditators, to l- live a somewhat functional life at least, um, without this awareness of actor and observer.

Sam Harris 1:01:38 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:38 And so what you're really talking about is an, a deliberate intervention to understand and resolve that gap in the algorithm. Is that... Do I have that right?

Sam Harris 1:01:49 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:50 I'm, I'm more or less restating what you said in a way that I'm, I'm hoping will serve as a jumping off point as to, you know, why questions are always very dangerous in biology-

Sam Harris 1:01:57 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:57 ... or any-

Sam Harris 1:01:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:58 ... you know?

Sam Harris 1:01:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:59 (laughs) And any-

Sam Harris 1:02:00 Or in relationship, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:01 What's that?

Sam Harris 1:02:02 Or in relationship, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:03 Or in relationship, right.

Sam Harris 1:02:04 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:04 Exactly. Um, although I think it all does really hearken back-

Sam Harris 1:02:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:07 ... to this early developmental wiring, which of course is modifiable. That's the, that's the beauty of, of the, the nervous system is it's the one organ that seems to be able to change itself-

Sam Harris 1:02:14 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:14 ... at least to some degree.

Sam Harris 1:02:16 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:16 Um, so what are your thoughts about the organization of the circuitry to, to essentially under normal conditions to not reveal its, what seems to be one of its more important and profound and, um, for, you know, dare I say enlightening features, right?

Sam Harris 1:02:33 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:33 It's almost as if we are potentially like mantis shrimp. We can see so many more colors than we actually see and yet we don't. We-

Sam Harris 1:02:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:43 ... we sort of opt, most people opt not to. And I would argue that, um, one of the great strengths of the Waking Up app, for instance, that it, it essentially walks you through the process of being able to arrive at the, at these things without having to go do one year or three-year, um, long silent meditation retreats.

Sam Harris 1:03:03 Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:03 So if you could just elaborate for a moment before we move on about, you know, what are your thoughts about how the circuitry is arranged by default versus the, the... And, and what that means, um, for there to be a, an intervention that we have to intervene in the self in order to reveal the self.

Sam Harris 1:03:18 Mm-hmm. Well, so there are two big questions there. One about evolution, one about development. So, uh, with respect to evolution, I mean, i- it's important to recognize that evolution doesn't see our deepest concerns about human flourishing and human wellbeing, you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:03:36 It's all about the

Narrator 1:03:36 (laughs)

Sam Harris 1:03:37 Y- y- it's just, you know, you, you... We are set up to spawn and to survive long enough to, to he- help our progeny spawn if we can do that and tha- and then that's it, right? And so anything that was good for that, including, you know, uh, tribalism and xenophobia and, you know, um, you know, all kinds of hardware and software flaws that are, that are... reveal themselves to be flaws in the present time when we're trying to build a viable global civilization. Um, but, you know, they, they redounded to the advantage of our ancestors somehow, um, or they just... It's there's c- there are things about us that we're simply not selected for, they just kinda came along for the ride, you know? The, you know, what Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel, you know? Um, so, uh, we are not set up by evolution to be as happy as we possibly can be, um, and cert- and, and to do almost anything that interests us well. I mean, we're not set up by evolution to be mathematicians or musicians or to, to create democracies that are healthy. I mean, to... Evol- evolution can see none of this. And we are doing these things based on cognitive and emotional hardware, uh, that we are leveraging in new directions, right? I mean, we have... We are primates and we are, you know, we're communicating with, you know, small mouth noises. I mean, we're language using primates and all of that has clearly evolved. Um, and we're doing these amazing things, including science, you know? However improbably we're, you... we're actually able to, to, you know, almost entirely with language, uh, understand reality that... At, at a scale that exceeds us in both directions. I mean, the ver- the very vast and the very small and, and, you know, also temporally, the very old. Uh, we have, you know, visions of the far future. We can figure out, you know, where an, you know, an asteroid is gonna, you know, cross Earth's orbit 1,000 years from now, uh, if we just do the math. And it's amazing that we can do all of those things, but evolution is blind to all of that, right? And so we have... In terms of what we care about and certainly in terms of what we... what's going to ensure our survival as a species, we have flown the perch that was created for us by evolution. I mean, we're just not... It's not just the primate things. And so, so it is with learning how to regulate our emotions and, and, you know, punch through to a self-concept or beyond a self-concept that is more normative psychologically that allows us to, you know, not be, um, terrorized by our apish genes, uh, as fully as we seem to be even in the presence of more and more destructive technology that... I mean, look, like, you know, we're...We're still practically chimpanzees armed with nuclear weapons, right? And, and that is, you know, uh, increasingly dysfunctional. And, uh, very soon we're gonna be in the presence of minds or apparent minds that we have built, you know, that are as intelligent as we are or... and very quickly, you know, uh, probably 15 minutes after that, far more intelligent than we are. And so, what we do with all of that is, again, something that w- we have to figure out based on the minds we have, the minds we can build, the minds we can, uh, change. You know, we can, we can meddle with our own genomes now and, and that will produce its own consequences, uh, you know, uh, in ou- in ourselves and, uh, in future generations if we meddle with the germ line. And again, all of that is just, you know, e- you know, evolution is just from the womb we came out of, but it's not... it didn't anticipate any of that, right? So it... So they... You know, Mother Nature has just... has simply not had our best interests at heart, right? And it's... Uh, we might die off and, and from the point of view of Mother Nature, that's, that's fine because 99% of e- e- of every species dies off, you know. Um, so there's that. Wh- but when you're talking

Sam Harris 1:07:40 ab-... or when you're talking about the, the individual developmentally, so, you know, we all come into this world, again, as a, as a, um, fairly hairless primate, uh, that needs a tremendous amount of care by others and, um, the logic of that is that, um, you know, you know, the reason why we're not a, a gazelle that can, you know, run, you know, 45 minutes later and then basically do all the gazelle things, uh, perfectly, uh, soon thereafter. Um, the reason why we have... you know, we have this, this time of, of immaturity, uh, and that becomes... has become functional for us is that the... it's just we... we're, we're far more flexible and we can learn based on the needs of, of an environment to do, uh, you know, s- so much more than a gazelle can. And language is part of that and, you know, um, i- in the last 10,000 years or so, culture increasingly has been more and more a part of that, and there's a... probably a layer at which we can plausibly talk about cultural evolution, you know, and cultural evolution interacting with biological evolution to, to change us. Um, when we talk about the development of an individual, each of us comes into this world, uh, I think, um, not recognizing ourselves in any... i- in any sense that w- would make sense to, to reify. Um, I mean, it's not that there's nothing there. I mean, there could be some kind of proto-self differentiation, but I think it's... it takes a... it takes a long while and there is pr-... very likely a coincidence between really recognizing... re- recognizing others. We recognize others first and we're certainly in relationship immediately and we orient to human faces and, and we, uh, you know, even detect, um, other humans as good and bad moral actors very early. I mean, certainly long before we recognize ourselves in, in a mirror. Um, uh, we, um... The experiments run again. This is Paul Bloom and, and colleagues' e- experiments run on kind of the moral hardware and software of, of, uh, developing toddlers. But I think at, at this point, they push it down all the way to like six months of a- of age where you'll get these infants staring at kind of a puppet show and they'll, they'll show a, a... an... a, um, a greater interest in, you know... in classically good actors versus bad actors. You know, cooperators versus, you know, defectors in various, you know, puppet show games. Um, so there's... it's not that we have no mind and no, um, proto-awareness of others and, and of self, but what eventually happens certainly as we become at all facile with, with language use is that we become aware that, that not only are we in relationship to others, but we are an object in the world for them, right? So they're like... Uh, we have enough people pointing at us in our cribs, right? And impinging upon our experience, right? You know, you... y- you're being physically moved and prodded and touched and consoled or not consoled, and just imagine what all of these... Y- you're on the receiving end of 10,000 interventions, right? And you're completely helpless for the longest time. Um, and all of that attention, you have all of these people coming up, you know, to the crib and, and making faces at you. Cheering for you. And... Yeah. And, and it's all pointed at you, right? So there's a... you know, there's a... there's a classic magical nar- narcissism that, that gets constructed there if you... if you take the psychological literature, you know, uh, you know, at least a certain strand of it seriously. Um, and I think it's, it's largely apt to, to think of, of a child at that age as a ki-... a kind of, um, uh... there's a kind of nar- narcissistic structure there where it's, it's, it's all kind of going inward and at a certain point, you realize, "Okay. I'm, I'm the center of all of this." Right? Like, it's not just... it's not just a, a movie that you're... that you're... you're... you know, where you're... that you're completely absorbed in and you've lost your sense of self. I mean, this is t- to talk about the... yet another example of, um, of what it's like as a grownup to lose our sense of self. And one of the things that I think we find so fascinating by, uh, about television and, and film is that when we get totally absorbed in it, we're in this very unusual circumstance where we're... you know, our brain is basically reading it as we're in a s-... in a classic social circumstance. We're presented with, with, you know, the, the, the facial displays of other people. In fact, we... you know, we can get... i- some of the... sometimes these people are 10 feet tall, right? Or their faces are 10 feet tall. Y- you have a close-up in a movie theater. So it's like a super stimulus, y- in terms of, uh, of evolution.And they could make e- they could be making direct eye contact with the camera, right? So you have this gigantic face staring at you, and yet you're totally unimplicated socially. You can't be seen, and you, and something about, you, you know you can't be seen, and so you're completely, you completely lose self-consciousness, and yet you're, you're a-able to examine with completely free attention, again, 'cause you're totally unimplicated, um, the m- the m- the m- facial minutia and the mimetic facial play of people, uh, from, eh, fr- at a very close range. I mean, you're seeing people clo- I mean, you'd have to be, you know, physically just, you know, about to kiss your s- your, your spouse. Like, that's what a closeup is in a film, right? Like, that, you never get that close to people, right? Um, and yet here, you're in a situation where you're unobserved and you know that. And so, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but the, it's, it's the other side of what's happening developmentally for a kid. Um, when you're in a movie theater watching a movie, you are truly invisible and yet you're right there seeing th- eh, you know, the, however harrowing the human drama is, you're seeing it play out and you're seeing it, you're, you're seeing it up close. And it is a, it is in principle a social encounter that your genes are ready for, but they're not ready for you to be invisible, right? And so, that's what's so, uh, um, magical about it. But what happens developmentally for a kid is that you're not invisible. You are an object that is constantly being, being, um, overrun. The boundaries of your, you know, y- you know, your sensory engagement with the world are constantly being impinged upon by others, and at a certain point you recognize, "Okay, I am at the center of this." And the w- and the way this gets enshrined as a self, um, I think is probably coincident with our learning the language game we, we learn to play with others. Where we're, we're talking to others, people are talking to us, and at a certain point, we're talking to ourselves even when the other people leave the room, right? So then, you can hear it e- if you ever have been with a toddler when they're, e- when they're, th- when they're externalizing their self-talk. You know, you hear them talking to themselves. They're playing and they're, and they're, they're having a conversation. Th- they were talking to you, the parent, but then you left the room and th- and they're still talking. You come back in and they're still s- they're still talking, right? And what happens to us, strangely, um, and this comes back to e- the logic of evolution, um, we never stop because e- I, eh, evolution never thought to build us an off switch for this, right? I mean, e- the language is so useful and it gets tuned up so strongly for us, uh, and there was never a reason to shut it off, right? There's never a reason to give you this ability to say, "Ah, I, d- wouldn't it be nice to have four hours of quiet now and, like, no self-talk?" Um, and so for most of us, I mean, I think there are people who, for whatever neurological reason or, you know, idiosyncratic reason, undoubtedly there's, there'd be a neurological, uh, reason for it, don't have any self-talk. But for the m- for most of us, um, we are covertly talking basically all the time. And, and th-there's an imagistic component o-of this for many people. You're v- you're visualizing things as well. But there's just a lo- a ton of white noise in the mind that feels a certain way. And, you know, what I, wha- what you discover in meditation ultimately is that the self is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you're thinking, right? A- a thought arises uninspected and seems to just become you, right? So like, you and I are talking now and you see, you're, people are listening to us. They're, they're struggling to follow the train of this conversation because it is competing with their, the conversation that's happening in their heads, right? So they, I'll be saying something and a person listening will say, "Well, what does that mean?" Or like, "Oh, but wait a minute. He just contradicted himself." Or like, eh, eh, you're, and there's a voice in your head that is also vying for your attention much of the time. And, um, so it's, you know, the, the first discovery people make in meditation is that it's just so hard to pay attention to anything, the breath or a mantra or a sound, whatever it is, because you're thinking every, you're thinking about the thing you need to do in an hour and, "Oh, it's so good that I, I downloaded this app. I'm like, 'This is really good. This is gonna be good for me.'" But, and you're, but you're, that, that chatter isn't showing up. You, you're not far back enough, uh, in the, i- in the kind of the theater of consciousness so as to see it emerge. It's, it is just sneaking up behind you and it feels like me again, right? It feels like... When someone is thinking the thought, "Well, what the hell does that mean," right, they're not seeing it as an emerging object in consciousness. It just feels like me. It just feel, tha- that, that's w- it is, it, the m- the, you know, subjectively, it's like the mind contracts around this appearance in consciousness. And it really is just, it is just a s- you know, it's just a sound with the voice of the mind. If you actually can inspect it, it is, it is deeply inscrutable that we ever feel identified with our thoughts. I mean, how is it that we could be a thought? These thoughts, a thought just arises and passes away and when you inspect, when you go to inspect it, it's, it, you know, it unravels. It's, it's just, it's, yeah, it's, it's the least substantial possible thing. And it, and it could, but yet it could be a thought of self-hatred. You know, it could be a th- a thought that, that unrecognized totally defines your, your mood, you know? It's like, um-I mean, just, e- e- a- again, this, this all can seem kind of abstract, but the-

Andrew Huberman 1:18:35 Well, no. But I, I, but I think it, it's extremely concrete from the perspective of the neural circuits that we'll return to in, maybe in a few minutes.

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