A Radical Question To Put Your Problems Into Perspective | Annaka Harris

Summary

Podcast Summary: "A Radical Question To Put Your Problems Into Perspective | Annaka Harris"

Podcast: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
Host: Dan Harris
Guest: Annaka Harris
Release Date: March 24, 2025
Duration: Approx. 75 minutes

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of 10% Happier, host Dan Harris welcomes Annaka Harris, a respected writer with a deep fascination for the enigmatic subject of consciousness. Although sharing a last name, Dan and Annaka are not related but share a profound mutual respect and admiration. Annaka, the author of the bestselling book A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, joins Dan to delve into the intricate mysteries of consciousness and explore how understanding it can offer practical benefits for psychological well-being.

Dan Harris [00:04]: "Today we have a conversation that will, I strongly suspect, put your problems into perspective."

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Understanding Consciousness

Annaka Harris initiates the discussion by unpacking the concept of consciousness, emphasizing that it extends beyond the human experience to potentially encompass all forms of matter. She posits that consciousness, defined as the mere fact of felt experience, is one of the most enduring mysteries in science.

Dan Harris [05:36]: "What is consciousness and why does it matter? Like why should I care what consciousness is?"

Annaka explains that consciousness isn't limited to complex beings like humans but might also exist in simpler organisms such as insects or even inanimate objects, challenging the conventional view that consciousness arises solely from intricate brain processes.

Annaka Harris [07:53]: "Consciousness is the felt experience, the internal experience of the system."

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Consciousness as a Fundamental Aspect of the Universe

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the radical idea that consciousness might be a fundamental feature of the universe, akin to gravity. Annaka and Dan explore the possibility that all matter possesses some degree of consciousness, raising profound questions about the nature of reality.

Annaka Harris [19:05]: "My first questions were more about does consciousness go deeper in nature than the sciences and myself and included, had previously assumed."

Dan elaborates on this by drawing analogies to spacetime, suggesting that consciousness could warp and shape reality in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Dan Harris [32:17]: "If consciousness is fundamental, and I really don't know, and I'm not claiming that it is, I think it's a Valid path of inquiry, scientific inquiry."

This paradigm shift challenges deeply ingrained intuitions, urging both scientists and the general public to reconsider their understanding of existence and the interconnectedness of all things.

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Implications for Well-being and Happiness

The discussion seamlessly transitions to the practical implications of these profound insights. Annaka articulates how contemplating consciousness can significantly impact one's sense of well-being and happiness by alleviating feelings of isolation and fostering a sense of awe.

Annaka Harris [33:16]: "If you imagine living 300 years ago that like, every time we get new information, we feel different in the world."

Dan agrees, emphasizing that understanding consciousness as a fundamental aspect can reshape our ethical frameworks and interpersonal relationships, leading to a more connected and compassionate society.

Dan Harris [34:29]: "If consciousness is fundamental, I think we always have to be careful to not anthropomorphize it, especially with the experience of self."

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The Illusion of the Self

A pivotal theme explored is the concept of the self as an illusion. Drawing from Buddhist teachings, Annaka and Dan discuss how meditation practices can help dismantle the entrenched belief in a separate, unchanging self, revealing instead a fluid, interconnected existence.

Annaka Harris [15:58]: "You have all of this sand, it's all the sand. But then one grain of sand says, no, I'm Janelle and I'm not part of this. And that's how the suffering begins."

Dan complements this with his own analogy of the self as an ocean wave—ephemeral and part of a larger system—thereby dismantling the notion of a static, isolated identity.

Dan Harris [17:14]: "We understand the phenomena, we can point them out. We can talk about how one wave's different from another. But there's no sense in which an ocean wave is a static thing."

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Challenging Intuitions: Meditation Practices

Annaka introduces practical meditation techniques designed to challenge and transcend our habitual intuitions about consciousness and the self. She highlights the transformative potential of meditation retreats, where prolonged practice can lead to lasting shifts in perception and understanding.

Annaka Harris [60:01]: "There's this kind of progression that I do in my meditation practice, and it's particularly when I'm doing walking meditations to my eyes are open..."

Dan shares his experiences with meditation, underscoring the profound and often permanent changes it can instill, akin to paradigm shifts in scientific understanding.

Dan Harris [61:37]: "Those shifts and insights remained stable. So I think there's something really to be said for many days at a time of practicing, for sure."

Annaka also discusses guided practices, such as imagining oneself without a head or floating in outer space, to deconstruct the illusion of a separate self and foster a deeper connection with the universe.

Annaka Harris [67:00]: "Trying to let go... imagine that I was just floating in outer space, coming into being for the first time."

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The Value of Challenging Intuitions

The conversation culminates with a reflection on the importance of challenging our innate intuitions. Annaka emphasizes that while intuitions often serve survival purposes, re-examining them can lead to a more accurate and fulfilling understanding of reality.

Annaka Harris [73:25]: "It's useful to always be open to the fact that the things that seem to be true may have a different reality when you look closer."

Dan concurs, advocating for a balance between honoring useful intuitions and remaining open to questioning and redefining them in light of new insights.

Dan Harris [72:01]: "What is true so that you can be more in touch with the reality of your situation."

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Annaka promoting her new audio documentary series, Lights on, which explores these themes in greater depth. She also highlights her guided meditations available on the Waking Up app, encouraging listeners to engage in practices that foster a deeper understanding of consciousness and enhance personal well-being.

Annaka Harris [75:00]: "Lights on the audio documentary can be purchased wherever you purchase audiobooks. You can also get more information about it on my website, which is just my name, annikaharris.com."

Dan provides final thoughts, thanking Annaka and encouraging listeners to explore her work to continue their journey toward greater happiness and understanding.

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Notable Quotes

• Dan Harris [00:04]: "Today we have a conversation that will, I strongly suspect, put your problems into perspective."

• Annaka Harris [07:53]: "Consciousness is the felt experience, the internal experience of the system."

• Annaka Harris [19:05]: "My first questions were more about does consciousness go deeper in nature than the sciences and myself and included, had previously assumed."

• Dan Harris [32:17]: "If consciousness is fundamental, and I really don't know, and I'm not claiming that it is, I think it's a Valid path of inquiry, scientific inquiry."

• Annaka Harris [15:58]: "You have all of this sand, it's all the sand. But then one grain of sand says, no, I'm Janelle and I'm not part of this. And that's how the suffering begins."

• Dan Harris [17:14]: "We understand the phenomena, we can point them out. We can talk about how one wave's different from another. But there's no sense in which an ocean wave is a static thing."

• Annaka Harris [67:00]: "Trying to let go... imagine that I was just floating in outer space, coming into being for the first time."

• Annaka Harris [73:25]: "It's useful to always be open to the fact that the things that seem to be true may have a different reality when you look closer."

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a profound exploration of consciousness, urging listeners to question deeply held beliefs and engage in practices that can shift their perception of self and reality. Through thoughtful dialogue, Annaka and Dan present a compelling case for viewing consciousness as a fundamental aspect of existence, with significant implications for personal well-being and our understanding of the universe.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Annaka Harris's Book: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
• Annaka Harris's Audio Documentary Series: Lights on (available on Spotify, Audible, Apple Books)
• Waking Up App: Guided meditations by Annaka Harris (wakingup.com)
• Donald Hoffman: Author and speaker on consciousness
• Susan Blackmore's Book: 10 Zen Questions
• Joseph Goldstein: Buddhist teacher and mutual friend
• Jack Kornfield: Renowned mindfulness teacher
• Jennifer Egan's Book: A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House (fictional references)

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Connect with Annaka Harris:

• Website: annikaharris.com
• Audio Documentary: Lights on (lightsondocumentary.com)
• Guided Meditations: Available on the Waking Up app

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This summary aims to capture the essence of the conversation between Dan and Annaka Harris, highlighting key discussions and insights while providing actionable takeaways for listeners seeking to enhance their understanding of consciousness and improve their well-being.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Dan Harris]

It'S the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Okay, folks, today we have a conversation that will, I strongly suspect, put your problems into perspective. For me, at least when I'm engaged in my lifelong habit of ruminating on my stuff, that mental activity, that noise blots out the sun, driving me further into my head and cutting me off.

[Annika Harris]

From the world in all of its.

[Dan Harris]

Mundane glory from the beauty and horror of this whole being alive thing. Anyway, my guest today is one of my favorite people, Annika Harris. We are not related, despite sharing a last name, but she is an old friend and somebody I really respect and admire. Annika is a writer with a long and abiding fascination with the subject of consciousness. Do not worry if you don't understand.

[Annika Harris]

Right away what that word means.

[Dan Harris]

Annika will explain it. For now, just know that consciousness is one of the most enduring mysteries in all of science, and that it's a mystery that can have profound practical implications for you and your psychological well being. Just to sum up what I'm trying to say here, we're going to talk about the mystery of consciousness. A subject so head swimming and brain breaking and fascinating that it is very likely to put your problems in perspective. Moreover, discussing this mystery is going to lead us to discussing some practical meditation techniques that can genuinely change your experience of being alive. Just to say a little bit more about Annika before we dive in here, she's the author of the best selling book A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, which came out a few years ago. Now she's back as the writer and producer of a new audio documentary series called Lights on, which I listened to and blurbed. It's awesome. In this conversation we talk about what consciousness is and why we should care about it. The question of whether or not consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe. So literally is consciousness embedded in the chair I'm sitting in? For example, why? Thinking about this mystery can create a sense of awe, which is a reliable antidote to suffering, meditation techniques for exploring consciousness, the illusion of the self, the importance of challenging tuitions, and much more. Before we get started, I want to make sure that you know about all.

[Annika Harris]

The good things we've got going on@dan.

[Dan Harris]

Harris.Com that is my newish online community built in partnership with Substack, where paid subscribers get cheat sheets and transcripts for every podcast episode. Plus, I do regular live amas that's Ask Me Anything sessions where I take.

[Annika Harris]

Your questions and more.

[Dan Harris]

It's a lot of fun. You'll Also get to meet virtually lots of other folks who take all of this stuff seriously. Go to danharris.com Annika Harris coming right up.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Annika Harris]

Annika Harris, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. Great to be back. Great to see you.

Great to see you. It's always great. Yes, yes, absolutely. Most of our communication is trading cat pictures via text.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was just going to mention that too. That's funny. I usually see your cat, not you.

[Annika Harris]

All right, so I mean, I just love this work. I mean, I've been, as you know, a fan and follower of your work for many, many years and I really love this new project, this audiobook. Is that the right way to describe it? Audiobook?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean it's a new genre really. So we're calling it an audio documentary. It really, that's the most natural term that fits it best. It really is a documentary. It's almost as if you were watching a documentary with the video turned off. So yeah, I mean, I'm narrating the documentary and then I have all the people I interviewed and it follows my path of asking all these questions and where they led me and who they led me to speak to. And so I'm kind of telling this story of a path I took over the course of four or five years.

[Annika Harris]

That's really palpable in listening to it. And I.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's good to hear.

[Annika Harris]

I blurbed it. And one of the things I was saying is that it has the feel of a mystery, kind of a rollicking good time, scientific mystery. And it really does tie to like, you know, how we live our lives and how we can do that better and organize our mind and train our mind. So there's, it's kind of a center of the bullseye, my interests.

That's really wonderful to hear because that was the intention.

[Unknown Speaker]

And yeah, when you spend that long on a project, you just don't know, you get lost in and you don't know how it will be received. But that was the intention. So that's wonderful to hear.

[Annika Harris]

Before we get to the specific kind of mind bending question that you're chasing in the audio doc, let me just ask a broader question. What is consciousness and why does it matter? Like why should I care what consciousness is?

[Unknown Speaker]

That's a great question to start with. So people use the word in a variety of ways. And many people, when they use the word consciousness, think about human consciousness. They think about very complex brain processing, self awareness, complex thought. But I'm using the term in the most basic sense. And so the thing that I am so fascinated by and that is still completely mysterious to the sciences, is just the fact of felt experience. And so if you can imagine the most minimal felt experience in an insect or a worm, if there's some feeling.

[Annika Harris]

Of moving through the dirt, if there's.

[Unknown Speaker]

Some sensation, you know, when a bee is flapping its wings, obviously we don't.

[Annika Harris]

Think a bee is self aware or.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thinking any thoughts or, you know, it's a very simple system, but we can imagine it's possible that there's an experience from the inside of being that system. And so the mystery and the thing that I love thinking about and that I hope we learn more about in the future is how is it that this universe seems to be composed of all this non conscious matter. But in some cases, this matter gets arranged in a way that the matter.

[Annika Harris]

Itself has an experience from the inside.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of being that matter. So if you think of what it's like for us to see the color green. Green, the seeing of green, that experience of, you know, what it's like when you see the color green. That's an experience that arises in the universe. But there is no green property out there. The thing we're seeing is inside. It's the felt experience. We can talk about how the light waves, certain wavelengths of light are bouncing off a leaf and some are getting absorbed and then they enter the retina and get processed by the brain. And that's how this experience of green materializes. But the fact that that experience, experience is there, which is separate from anything else we can say about it, it's.

[Annika Harris]

That felt experience, the internal experience of the System.

[Unknown Speaker]

And that's how I'm using the word consciousness. That's what I'm calling a mystery. I hope that answers.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah, I mean, I once heard it articulated in this way by our mutual friend Jack Kornfield. And I don't know if this is his phraseology or he was quoting somebody else, but the question was, how did we go from rocks on this planet to singing opera?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, that's a nice way of illustrating it. Although computers could sing opera, you can imagine a version of singing opera or of music. You know, when I play music over a Bluetooth speaker, I don't think there's an experience there. We can get into how far my thinking has gone and how I now have question marks about that. But, you know, the way we typically experience the world, there's almost nothing you can imagine, behavior that you could see from the outside that we can't imagine happening without consciousness. It's almost like you only know it when you feel it. We only know it by our experience of it. And I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but that's one of the areas of questioning that got me to become more interested in this is the realization at some point, after many years of working with neuroscientists and many years of thinking about this, it had never really dawned on me that there is.

[Annika Harris]

No way to know for sure about.

[Unknown Speaker]

Any conscious experience except the one you're. You're having yourself. It's a unique, unique thing about consciousness.

[Annika Harris]

And so you are sort of hinting at the tip of the spear in terms of what you're exploring in the, in this new audio doc. But before we get to that, let me go back to the second part of the question, which is, who cares? Like this. Is this just a supremely academic exercise?

[Unknown Speaker]

Ah, that's a good question. I could answer it many ways. I think one is the only thing we actually know at all that is real and know firsthand is our conscious experiences. I mean, if you think of trying to name something that you care about, but it's something that you don't experience that's not conscious. I mean, it actually doesn't even make sense to utter that phrase. Right. So everything we experience, by definition, is a conscious experience. It is everything. So we could be, you know, there could be many explanations for the universe and the structure of the universe. And I'm sure many of your listeners are familiar with this thought experiment of a brain in a vat. Everything we think is true about the universe could be wrong. But the one Thing we know is this experience I'm having right now is happening, whatever is causing it, whatever the outside description of it is. When I touch this table, I know that that experience of touch is happening.

[Annika Harris]

That's real.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whatever is causing it, whatever the outside reality is. And so in some sense, I think almost everyone is interested because everything that we're interested in takes place in our conscious awareness. And then beyond that, I think as a scientific investigation and question, it really does cross over into all of the areas of science. And then, you know, to the extent that the general public is interested in black holes and understanding, you know, more about our solar system and understanding more about how the brain works. And I think there's this innate curiosity that the vast majority of people have where understanding our world better, especially something that relates so closely to our personal experience. Experience is always just something we want.

[Annika Harris]

The full story on or we want.

[Unknown Speaker]

To know everything that the scientists know.

[Annika Harris]

Yes to all of that. And I think what you explore in this audio doc is how investigating for ourselves the nature of consciousness can have some profound impacts on our experience of being alive and our happiness levels. Can you just say a little bit more about that?

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, and that's been a very interesting path for me personally, because I've been practicing meditation for 25 or so years now.

[Annika Harris]

My practice in meditation for the longest.

[Unknown Speaker]

Time did not actually seem relevant at all to my work in the sciences. At some point, I got very excited when the neuroscientists I was working with became interested in what's happening at the level of the brain in meditation. And so there were. I'm sure you've talked about these a lot. There are all these FMRI studies. And so neuroscientists started to study. Study people's brains during meditation. But that was the most crossover I ever thought there would be. And then, you know, as you heard in my story in the documentary, at some point these things started to completely overlap where I realized there are certain experiences had in meditation that might actually inform the science beyond neuroscience. And that remains to be seen. I don't know. But suddenly the work I was doing, the personal work I was doing, the psychological and spiritual work I was doing with my meditation practice had all this crossover with the science I was studying. And so I was mentioning to you earlier that actually doing this work now kind of has a similar effect on me as my meditation practice used to, where it actually all feels more conducive to, well, being. It feels like therapy when I'm going through a hard time focusing on these subjects, I'm finding that they all kind of point in the same direction in terms of human well being. And that's interesting and unexpected.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah. How exactly is it like therapy for you specifically? And then how is it that they're all pointing toward human well being?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So we might need to get more into the weeds before that picture becomes totally clear. But, you know, I can. I can loosely say that where most science, you know, when you get deep enough in whether you're talking about biology, neuroscience, physics, what you find at this.

[Annika Harris]

Bottom layer of it all is that it's very clear.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's hard to find separations between things. There's a sense of oneness. There's a realization that we're all literally made of the same ingredients, that it's almost impossible to find boundaries between things. The most recent thing I was reading about with our microbiome and how, you know, bacteria in our gut affect our brain, once you look at the details, the more we learn about the underlying science, the more we realize this universe is one thing and there kind of be these ever changing fluctuations and evolutions and things arising and passing away, which is exactly what you realize. It's one of the main insights in a meditation practice is that that is.

[Annika Harris]

The truth of the universe.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so it's kind of these two very different ways of arriving at a truth that's not only satisfying because you have a deeper understanding, but it's a truth that is beautiful and awe inspiring and kind of an antidote to most.

[Annika Harris]

Of our human suffering. And most of our human suffering comes.

[Unknown Speaker]

From this feeling of separation. And so in the type of science that I've been involved with for this project, it continually comes back to this point that this is in some sense all one system taking on different forms.

[Annika Harris]

That's beautiful. And it reminds me of this. I was on a retreat several years ago with this meditation teacher who I really love. Her name is Spring Washam, and she'd been on the show many times. I'll put some links in the show notes. And she's quite a character. And at one point during the retreat, she said, think about it like a. You have all of this sand, it's all the sand. But then one grain of sand says, no, I'm Janelle and I'm not part of this. And that's how the suffering begins.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, that's right. Yeah, I love that image. I actually use the image of an ocean wave to talk about the illusion of self. I mentioned it a few times in the documentary and have just Been using it more and more because I think it gets at that point very viscerally that our experience of being a self is actually more like an ocean wave than a static object like a rock. And so the illusion is that there's something static inside of all of us that moves throughout our life from moment.

[Annika Harris]

To moment, that's unchanging and somehow separate from the rest of the world, not.

[Unknown Speaker]

Connected to the universe, completely isolated. And even after, you know, years of meditation practice and dropping this illusion a lot, I still, you know, the intuition I have most of the time, my daily life, is that I'm in here somewhere, and I'll talk about my thoughts, my brain, my body, as if the my of that situation isn't all those things. It's somehow separate from them. And an ocean wave is an interesting thing to contemplate and look at, because we can talk about you in the same way. We can talk about the self and say useful things about it.

[Annika Harris]

We can talk about an ocean wave.

[Unknown Speaker]

We understand the phenomena, we can point them out. We can talk about how one wave's different from another. But there's no sense in which an ocean wave is a static thing. It's a phenomena in nature. It's a continually changing dance of molecules, right? And so that is closer to the truth of what our experience of self actually is. And what our conscious experience actually is.

[Annika Harris]

Is just an ever evolving, ever changing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Arising and passing away of conscious experiences. And there's no center to it. There's nothing that's separate from everything else. We're completely embedded in the universe and are part of the universe. And not separate from nature, not separate from each other. We're kind of all part of this larger thing.

[Annika Harris]

You are nature. Every embarrassing thought that skitters through your mind is nature.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right?

[Annika Harris]

Okay. So we've given a tantalizing sense, I think, to listeners about how this can matter to them. And we'll come back and dwell in these things in more depth later. But let me get to the specific question that you're chasing in this document, and I'll see if I can frame it correctly, because I find that this subject kind of breaks my brain a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Little bit in a good way.

[Annika Harris]

So you had written a book, and you came on the show to discuss it back in 2019, I believe, called Conscious. And after writing that book, you started to have some conversations about an issue that you had touched on in the book but didn't fully explore. And it's the question of whether consciousness is fundamental meaning. I think that all matter in the universe has some degree of consciousness which can the listeners probably thinking, oh, is this chair? No, my butt's on it. Yeah, exactly. So can you just take it from there and also correct any mistakes I made?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, so no, you didn't make any mistakes. I would just take one step in between, which is. My first questions were more about does consciousness go deeper in nature than the sciences and myself included, had previously assumed. So, you know, how far down can we take it?

[Annika Harris]

I mentioned worms and insects earlier.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's still debate among neuroscientists about whether worms and insects are conscious, even though they have brains and central nervous systems. But, you know, once you grant that, then again, in my work and in.

[Annika Harris]

Science in general, the closer you look.

[Unknown Speaker]

The harder it is to find boundaries between things. And so my first exploration was just how far down might this go? And how would we, no, how could we prove or disprove this? And that in and of itself became.

[Annika Harris]

Fascinating because I realized there were all.

[Unknown Speaker]

These questions I didn't know we had and all these questions that no one has answers to. And that once you start to ask them, you realize that our intuitions about consciousness, many of them are wrong and turn out to be based on illusions, but most of them just have no.

[Annika Harris]

Evidence to support them.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so we're kind of relying on, even science has been relying on these very deep, ingrained intuitions as if they're.

[Annika Harris]

Truth, as if we have evidence for them.

[Unknown Speaker]

And when you dig in, you realize we are actually just making an assumption based on everything we can sense and tell from our human experience. So the first question was just about, you know, whether it can go deeper and the fact that we are always relying on self report. And so, you know, there's this very interesting thing about language and how language relates to conscious experiences and how I can't give you my conscious experience, I can explain it to you. And because we're such similar systems, you know, you see green and I see green, and so we can talk about that pretty seamlessly. But, you know, if you imagine trying to talk to someone who was born blind about something you're seeing, there is.

[Annika Harris]

Nothing you can say that will generate.

[Unknown Speaker]

The experience for them that that experience isn't there. And so the more things that you.

[Annika Harris]

Take away, the less you have in.

[Unknown Speaker]

Common, the less there's any ability to.

[Annika Harris]

Communicate, because we have to share the qualia.

[Unknown Speaker]

This is a philosophical term. Qualia is the type of conscious experience you're having. So the felt sensation I'm having right now when I do this on My fingertips. The experience of seeing blue, Any quality of any type of experience we can have is called qualia, referred to as qualia. And there are other animals that have qualia that we don't have. So animals that experience the Earth's magnetic field, they're feeling something that we don't feel. They have a qualia that we don't have. And that's actually a good example for, you know, certain animals. Even if we could discover a common language, we couldn't talk to fish about the Earth's magnetic field and what that feels like and our intuitions about it, because we don't. You have to have the experience in order to be able to communicate about it. And so this became clearer and clearer to me as I did these investigations, realizing we have assumed that consciousness is a complex phenomenon in nature because we are the most complex things we know of in the universe.

[Annika Harris]

The human brain is the most complex.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thing we know of in the universe. We are complex. We do all of these things.

[Annika Harris]

We are conscious.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it's pretty obvious that all the.

[Annika Harris]

Humans around us are conscious.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's also obvious that the cats and dogs are conscious. And then the less like us a system is, the less we can have any behavior that tells us about conscious experience. And so I just started wondering, are there other somewhat complex systems in nature that we have no common experiences with? If they're experiencing something, how would we ever know? I actually talk about this. I've named this the Strong Assumption. And the strong assumption is what I'm talking about, that consciousness only arises in complex systems like human beings or potentially AI that we might create one day.

[Annika Harris]

But something that is as complex as.

[Unknown Speaker]

A human being, that's where consciousness arises. That's kind of the strong assumption out of really only two assumptions we can make. I just had this thought one day. You know, if you're just standing and you're looking out at the universe, and you're just a scientist, and you want to figure out, okay, which of these systems that I'm observing have conscious experiences associated with them and which don't. And your starting point has to be.

[Annika Harris]

Broad, and the starting point either has.

[Unknown Speaker]

To be some of them do or all of them do. We know it can't be none because we have evidence of our own conscious experiences.

[Annika Harris]

So conscious experiences exist in the universe.

[Unknown Speaker]

Of everything I can perceive. Either some of them have conscious experiences or all of them do. And so we're so limited by the science at this stage that it makes perfect sense to begin with this assumption that only some do. And that's the only evidence we can acquire is from these, you know, other systems like us, like other human beings. But I think it's important for scientists and the public at large to realize.

[Annika Harris]

That is purely an assumption based on.

[Unknown Speaker]

Our limited access to information. And we could do science, especially at this point, and it's what I'm advocating for. We could conduct science with the other assumption. Not getting rid of the first assumption we made, but starting with this other assumption. What if consciousness is actually a basic.

[Annika Harris]

Feature of the universe?

[Unknown Speaker]

What if it's more like gravity? And that doesn't mean it's not special or incredible, but we are just assuming that it arises out of complex processing. And we don't really have good evidence for that.

[Annika Harris]

And so there's this question about whether.

[Unknown Speaker]

It'S actually a very basic feature and whether very simple systems have very simple types of qualia that arise in them. And complex ones just have much more complex content arising. I started answering one question. I think I answered four other questions. But I'll stop and let you interject now.

[Annika Harris]

That's all. It's all good. So are you saying I'm going to ask a simplistic question. Are you saying that this microphone into which I'm speaking may have some degree of conscious experience?

[Unknown Speaker]

I can't believe that. My answer to that is yes, but the short answer to that is yes, but I would say that we are misled when we put it in those terms. And this is another place where the illusion of self becomes an obstacle. So we think of consciousness as being a self because that's how we experience consciousness. It's a little bit easier for experienced meditators who've dropped this illusion to follow me here. But, you know, you can intellectually follow me even if you haven't had the experience. If consciousness is fundamental, there are conscious experiences arising in every point in space time, across the universe, all the time. I think my best guess, based on the atoms that compose this microphone, there's nothing to suggest that it's a integrated system like a brain, that it would feel like a self, that there's even a microphone as a. You know, it's like we can talk about human beings kind of as being one system. But the truth is, if consciousness is fundamental, there are many other conscious experiences arising in my brain and body right now that I am not aware of. So the I that I can report on is kind of a stream of memories that get created because of the way my brain works, right? So I have access to many different conscious experiences in the past because memory strings them along. But in the same way that, you know, I have many, I've had many experiences that I don't remember, right? And so those are experiences that arose and passed away in the universe. And there may be a very minimal conscious experience that arises out of the processing that's happening in my liver.

[Annika Harris]

Out of blood flow, out of cells.

[Unknown Speaker]

Connecting and disconnecting out of. If consciousness is fundamental, it truly is like an infinite number of experiences arising.

[Annika Harris]

And passing away in each moment.

[Unknown Speaker]

And as you know, that actually is.

[Annika Harris]

The truth of our own experience as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

There is no self that carries the experiences along. What we have is memory.

[Annika Harris]

Memory is a huge part of what creates the illusion of self.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because even though we are more like.

[Annika Harris]

Waves, our conscious experience is more like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Waves in that things are coming into and out of being.

[Annika Harris]

Some of the things that come into.

[Unknown Speaker]

Being are other conscious experiences from the past. So we have. It's interesting to think about in this other way that we are connected to our previous selves. Like if you think of yourself as.

[Annika Harris]

A five year old kid, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

The truth is, physically, your brain is probably more similar to my brain right now than it is to your brain at 5 years old. But you have this connection through time, time to this other person at this other time and this other place and time and space. Because memory has given the conscious experience you're having now access to conscious experiences that happened to that person a long time ago. And conscious experiences can't be shared in the same moment, but they can be shared across time. And we can get into some crazy thought experiments I've been having about maybe future technologies will actually change this. I think it's not unlikely that in the future there will be technology that potentially gives us an ability to share conscious experiences. Not perfectly, but your memory of your.

[Annika Harris]

5 year old self isn't perfect either.

[Unknown Speaker]

But in that same way that you can conjure up an experience of being yourself many years ago, you have that memory, you broke your knee and the pain of that experience in the same way that you have access to that. We might be able to live in a future where you could have access to my experience right now, looking at you from over here, I think that type of thing will really help dispel this illusion of self. But yeah, that's another rabbit hole.

[Annika Harris]

I think it's a part of the plot of Jennifer Egan's book, the Candy House, right? I might be. You didn't read it?

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't know it. Okay, Jennifer Egan, I'm write it down, actually.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah, she wrote a book. She's been on the show too. I'll drop a link to that. She wrote A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I believe won a Pulitzer. And then she wrote a later book. I think it's called the Candios or something. I'll probably, I'm probably screwing it up, but one of the people in the book invents this technology where you can experience other people's consciousness.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Annika Harris]

Okay, so let's just go back to some of the points you made earlier. When you're talking about consciousness as fundamental. You are saying this far out thing that, yes, there may be some level of consciousness experience in the table I'm leaning on right now, the chair I'm sitting in, the microphone I'm speaking into, it's not consciousness the way we as complex systems would experience consciousness, where we experience it as a self who's existed through time, which again is an illusion. But it's still, I mean, I don't.

[Unknown Speaker]

Think there's any experience of being the microphone. I think that wouldn't make sense.

[Annika Harris]

But there's a, you know, and one of your interviewees in the audio documentary talks about this and he uses it because this is a guy who, the scientist you're talking to has done no small amount of Buddhist practice. And he talks about the fact that some of these what we would call inanimate objects have what a Buddhist might call bare awareness, meaning that there's just some raw knowing faculty available, unhindered by this sense of, of self or my motion.

[Unknown Speaker]

My guess is, and the way I view things now, but this is jumping a lot of steps, is that anywhere we're perceiving mass, structure, things in the universe, that is kind of a warping or shaping of consciousness. So that there would be some kind of content and that consciousness is kind of what everything actually is at bottom. That consciousness is what the universe is made of. And so, you know, if there is something like pure consciousness, we wouldn't, if we're perceiving something that's not where we would find it. It's probably much closer to that. But I think wherever we see matter, I often use the analogy to spacetime. Einstein gave us this incredibly brilliant, you know, new way of viewing the situation we're in, which is that gravity is not a force in the way we used to think about it, but it's a warping of space time, that there's kind of this fabric of space time and it gets warped. And that explains how things move and why mass Changes the shape of space, time, and then changes the direction of objects. And so if consciousness is fundamental, for some reason, it takes these different shapes and forms and causes all of these different types of qualia to arise. What we are perceiving when we perceive anything, a pencil, a tree, you know, even sound waves, that to me, my guess is that's part of the structure.

[Annika Harris]

Of some type of warping that is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Causing these experiences to happen. And that if there is truly something in the universe that is bare awareness or pure consciousness, that is kind of the fundamental stuff, that's what consciousness is.

[Annika Harris]

And then content arises when it takes.

[Unknown Speaker]

These different shapes and forms.

[Annika Harris]

Okay, so let me represent the listener here for a second. If it's true that consciousness is fundamental, what does that have to do with my life?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So in many ways, nothing. I think it's like many other paradigm shifts. So you could say the same thing about Einstein's discoveries and intuitions. What does it matter to me that it's not three dimensions of space? And then, you know, time is this other thing. These paradigm shifts, I think, truly end up affecting everyone because they almost literally.

[Annika Harris]

Change the universe we live in.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. So if you imagine living 300 years ago that like, every time we get new information, we feel different in the world. We don't feel like we live on a flat earth. We don't feel like. And of course, most of the time these things aren't relevant, but I think in the big picture, they are. And they kind of seep into the way we live our lives. It's also, I think many of these scientific truths are a source of awe and inspiration for so many people. So it is getting out of your daily life and lying out on a field and looking at the stars at night that gives you that feeling of awe, partly because you know that the vast universe is out there and you have a sense the more we understand about the situation we're in, in many ways, the more awe inspiring things become. And so in the same way that I think everyone would want to know the truth of our situation, that we're orbiting the sun, and this is how things work. And there are these things called black holes that we don't understand and don't affect my everyday life. But what is that and how is it possible that light disappears and we don't understand how things work in those.

[Annika Harris]

Zones in the universe?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think if it's true that consciousness is fundamental, and I really don't know, and I'm not claiming that it is, I think it's a Valid path of inquiry, scientific inquiry. But if we become more and more convinced that is the case to the point where we think it's more likely than not, that is a completely paradigm shifting thing. And if you can, I mean, I now spend a lot of my time.

[Annika Harris]

Doing this, running through these thought experiments.

[Unknown Speaker]

But if you just think about the fact that we now understand that everything you see, everything, not just the people, not just the dogs and the cats, not just the mice, but everything you perceive in the world is actually a representation of conscious experiences, I think that changes the way we live our lives. I think it changes how we think about ethics. I think there are things we couldn't even possibly imagine now that it will change about the way we feel and behave and conduct science and all the rest, I think will also just lead to many new discoveries because we haven't gone down that path. And so I think once some really brilliant scientific minds start with this assumption and see where it leads, it's like anything else, like any other scientific discovery, the discovery comes first and then it leads to all these things that you never could have dreamed of. I guess that's another. That's a further point in how it's not necessarily relevant now, but eventually this becomes relevant for our everyday lives because, you know, the discovery of quantum mechanics gives us quantum computing.

[Annika Harris]

Once you learn more about how the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Universe works, there are just these inevitable, you know, new ideas and technologies and sciences that come out of it. So I find it very exciting to imagine this paradigm shift happening.

[Annika Harris]

Well said, Zoe. Yes, I can imagine that it would matter to us, as you said, because it could lead to scientific developments that would have everyday implications. But there is even just at the level of the mind, and I think this is probably available now to most of us. This contemplation of. I was thinking about a friend was telling me about another friend who had taken some psilocybin out of, eaten some chocolate with a little bit of mushrooms in them and just a microdose. And she was sitting in her backyard and all of a sudden felt like, oh, yeah, the trees are breathing back at me.

[Unknown Speaker]

Connected.

[Annika Harris]

So if you're lying, just to go back to the scenario you posited earlier, you're lying on the ground on a summer night and you're looking up at the stars. To think that what you're lying on and what you're looking at, it all has some level of experience to it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well beyond that even that that's what actually everything is at bottom, that the.

[Annika Harris]

Things we perceive as being out there.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, the atoms and the ways that, that they appear to us in our conscious awareness are actually not things in the way we think of them at all. They are our view on other conscious experiences that that's all there really is. And yes, I think there's something very profound and I think it significantly shifts the way we feel in the world. And I would say for the better, for the most part. And so I would actually invite your listeners to just run that thought experiment. You know, you don't have to believe it, but just, just spend a little bit of time. I walk the listener in my documentary through this process of an experience I had of when I was going for a jog. And I'm around a lot of people and birds and I just started letting my intuition for understanding that other conscious experiences exist in the joggers around me and the dogs and the mice and maybe the ants. And then I kind of let that, that intuitive understanding I have that there are these other.

[Annika Harris]

I mean, the truth is even doing.

[Unknown Speaker]

That, like we're so. We're usually so stuck in our own experience, it's almost surprising to us that other people are having their own conscious experiences.

[Annika Harris]

Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, it's amazing that it's surprising to us, even to someone like me who thinks about this all the time. And actually it's the way I'm getting a little off topic, but I'll come back. But I love. My daughters often have this experience where it's a little bit of like a spiritual epiphany where. And I think it's in moments when they're really connected. And I've noticed this too.

[Annika Harris]

This happens to me with Sam sometimes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Or close friends, when we get connected, you feel like you're sharing a moment. You feel so connected that you're in this moment together. And then you realize, but wait, they're in this perspective. They're over there having this experience with me. That's not my experience at all. I think it's spiritually useful. It's useful for our well being to actually focus on this.

[Annika Harris]

Anyway, the places where we know conscious.

[Unknown Speaker]

Experiences exist to just kind of be in the world and realize these lights.

[Annika Harris]

Are on all around us.

[Unknown Speaker]

This ineffable and mysterious and beautiful light of consciousness, this experience I'm having, that there are many of them all around me. And there's something I think quite beautiful about that. But then the deeper you let that sink in, I think the more of that feeling starts to overcome you. And I think it's interesting just to see how would you feel if you knew that, you can let that thought experiment you're doing with the cats and the dogs, assuming they're all having their experience, probably something you can hardly imagine what it's like to be a dog, what it's like to be a mouse, what it's like to be an ant. And then suddenly it's grass and trees and plants and flowers and the earth and, you know, it's all just teeming with this sense of being. I think it's a pretty big shift.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, Annika Harris talks about why thinking about consciousness can do wonders for your well being, the illusion of the self, and how meditation might inform science. I love in an Airbnb this time last year, three families went down to Plantation, Florida to see a pro soccer game. The game itself was very exciting, but we got this incredible house. My boy Glenn hooked up this incredible house in Plantation. The backyard had like volleyball, a pool, a little soccer net. We had five kids in the house.

[Annika Harris]

And they just went bananas all weekend.

[Dan Harris]

And what's cool is with Airbnb is.

[Annika Harris]

You can be a customer or a provider.

[Dan Harris]

Maybe you're planning a trip for a long weekend while you're away. You could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. Maybe there's a big tournament in town and lots of fans will be visiting. You could Airbnb your home or extra room and make some extra money while people are in town. Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun, your home or spare room might be worth more than you think. Find out how much [e-mail] hosting.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Annika Harris]

My mind's going in two directions with this. One is at the shallower level. Not that any of this is shallow, but on the easier to access level. Just thinking about other people's consciousness experience, never mind the conscious experience of a blade of grass, is kind of pushes you in a Copernican direction like you're no longer the center of the universe. There are Lots of centers. There's no center. And then the, the other thing that's coming to mind is I interviewed a few months ago, Sebastian Younger. And I know Sam on the Waking up app also interviewed Sebastian, who's a journalist and had this near death experience.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I've been in touch with him about this, actually.

[Annika Harris]

Oh, you have? Okay. And so one of the things he was saying, and this is me summarizing his non scientific summary of what scientists actually think. So this is probably a lot that's going to get lost in this translation, but roughly speaking, the idea. It's funny, you know, in spiritual circles you sometimes hear people referring to source energy like the source. And that always kind of rubbed me the wrong way just because it sounded highfalutin or just kind of, I don't know, it just felt off to me. And yet I think what Sebastian was saying, and you'll correct mehim, is that there's an intuition among scientists that there may just be one bucket of consciousness that we're all getting a share of. And so that goes right to oneness and not being isolated and separate and lonely in this world, you know, navigating a cold, indifferent universe.

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, I think you said it. Well, I think that's right. I mean, I frame it a little differently, but that is the takeaway. If consciousness is fundamental, I think we always have to be careful to not anthropomorphize it, especially with the experience of self. Because for most people, I mean, I.

[Annika Harris]

Even can fall into this.

[Unknown Speaker]

I have to kind of keep breaking my intuition so that I can think clearly. For most of us, we almost feel like self and consciousness are the same thing. So when we imagine consciousness being pervasive, it's very hard for us to do that without adding a self. And this is where I have to be very careful with my terminology.

[Annika Harris]

And I also have to be careful.

[Unknown Speaker]

To be clear that I'm not adding advocating a whole wide range of new age claims that have some crossover here, because I'm really coming at it from a scientific standpoint of this is something we truly don't understand. And there's this other option that we haven't yet investigated and we don't know. But I think we need to think very carefully if we're moving forward with an assumption that consciousness is fundamental. And what does that mean about the universe? What does that mean about the physics.

[Annika Harris]

And the math that we see around us?

[Unknown Speaker]

This, I think, the way to think about it.

[Annika Harris]

I often, I've been using two analogies.

[Unknown Speaker]

I often Use the analogy of a pot of boiling water, you know, where water is the fundamental stuff.

[Annika Harris]

Well, everything is essentially water.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the bubbles represent different conscious experiences arising and passing away. And it's not that water has a mind or a personality or anything like.

[Annika Harris]

What we experience, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's just that that the answer to the question, when you break things apart and break things apart and you get to the atoms and you get to the quarks and you get to the bottom of everything, what is this stuff? What is the stuff of the universe? And the answer to that, if consciousness is fundamental, is that stuff we perceive.

[Annika Harris]

Isn'T stuff out there.

[Unknown Speaker]

It is how one conscious experience affects another conscious experience. And so it's these molding of qualia.

[Annika Harris]

And felt experiences that arise.

[Unknown Speaker]

And again, I'll go back to this.

[Annika Harris]

Analogy of seeing green because I think.

[Unknown Speaker]

It'S useful here too, where in the same way that we feel that green is something that's out there, and science has fell for this for a long time too. Now, you know, scientists understand what the mechanism is that causes us to see green and that there's no greenness out.

[Annika Harris]

There in the universe. Our intuitions are very hard to get past there, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Like we're, especially if we're just human beings without a lot of science trying to, you know, I see green, you see green. We can talk about green. Like the leaf is green and there's.

[Annika Harris]

A green leaf, and it's right there.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I know it's there right? When in fact it is how my brain responds to light waves that come in this direction and get processed and so on. And so it's interesting where physics, where fundamental physics is headed. Now most physicists are on the same page about agreeing that space is not fundamental, that space is something that's emergent. So I've been thinking a lot about this lately too, to help kind of rattle my intuitions. Is it possible that there's an analogy.

[Annika Harris]

To the seeing green with space, where.

[Unknown Speaker]

Space isn't even something that is real? There's no space out there. Our brains are mapping something where we're getting a sense of the structure of reality. But is it more like energy frequencies?

[Annika Harris]

And George Messer, who I interview for.

[Unknown Speaker]

The series, speaks about this beautifully and gives an analogy about music and about. I won't go into the details there, but that's in the chapter on space and time. But he gives really interesting ways of conceiving of how it's possible. Space is not space in the way that green is not green. And it is our Experience of something that we're interacting with. And it's a very good approximation of a map of whatever our brain is mapping for us. But the idea that space is a real thing, the way we perceive it, I think is very likely false. This actually comes back to a question you had earlier, which is how insights and meditation might inform science. And I want to be very careful here too, because I think there's no reason to believe that any insight you have in meditation is necessarily a scientific insight. I think it's interesting to me because there are a few key insights and.

[Annika Harris]

Meditation that have been had over and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Over and over again that clearly map.

[Annika Harris]

On to what we understand about the physics of things.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so I think it's possible that there are ways to get a clearer sense of reality. And it actually is a great tool for breaking intuitions, so, you know, seeing through the illusion of self having experience that is spaceless and timeless. I think there's a way in which meditation breaks our evolved patterns that have. Have evolved to keep us alive, but.

[Annika Harris]

Have not necessarily evolved to get us to see the truth.

[Unknown Speaker]

Clearly, that it's possible that meditation can.

[Annika Harris]

Be used as a tool in some.

[Unknown Speaker]

Cases to gain deeper insights about the true nature of reality, largely because it's short circuiting.

[Annika Harris]

All of these evolved tools that actually create illusions for us, that are useful.

[Unknown Speaker]

For our everyday lives, but that create illusions in terms of being able to see the underlying reality clearly.

[Annika Harris]

So many things I want to talk about. You brought me right to where I was hoping to get, which is I think we should talk about some of the practical meditation things we can do to help us knock on this door ourselves or really explore this mystery. But let me just pick up on the evolution thing, because I sometimes think about how evolution bequeathed us these minds that kept us alive, but kept us unhappy, because in order to stay alive, we needed to constantly be in a state of anxiety and desire. And so what's called for now at this moment in human history, when we have these ancient brains wielding these very modern weapons in terms of nukes and AI and bioweapons and whatever, and never mind the climate crisis, what's called for now is kind of the next step in evolution, which is, in my view, to be able to see through some of the illusions with which we've been wired so that we can do smarter shit going forward. Does that all land for you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, it does. I actually talked to Joseph Goldstein, who is our mutual friend, but I spoke to him a few times for my documentary series. And one thing is one of my favorite parts of our conversation is he said that he had a conversation with.

[Annika Harris]

Another friend of his once talking about.

[Unknown Speaker]

How meditation is essentially going against evolution. Yeah, I mean, if you really follow your meditation practice perfectly, eat or, you know, you won't do any of the things that are going to keep you alive. And you know, that also makes sense.

[Annika Harris]

We are entropy fighting machines. And in order to fight entropy it takes energy.

[Unknown Speaker]

And inherent in that is competition and.

[Annika Harris]

Pain and injury and death and desire.

[Unknown Speaker]

And all the sources of suffering are just part of the energy and structure it takes to maintain life. And so, yeah, I mean, this is something I struggle with in my own practice really is just, just finding this.

[Annika Harris]

Balance of not leaving this world completely.

[Unknown Speaker]

And finding a way to be in it with the wisdom that can be.

[Annika Harris]

Gained from seeing how much it all.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is just a suffering generating machine. Really.

[Annika Harris]

The spiritual traditions do have an answer to this, which is that it's a balance that two things are true at the same time. One is that at the level of, of subatomic particles, it's, you know, mostly this chair isn't really a chair, it's just empty, you know, particles spinning in empty space. And the same is true of yourself. Like if you look for Annika behind your eyes, you won't find some homunculus of Annika. It's all just conscious experiences arising and passing away in the present moment. That's all true. But it would be a mistake to arrive at a nihilistic conclusion that none of this matters. Because it is also true that on the day to day level, you are Annika and I am Dan and I should be nice to you.

[Unknown Speaker]

And a lot of the happiness and well being depends on how we use these systems.

[Annika Harris]

So in the, you know, in some of the famous Buddhist art over time, the final stages of enlightenment include a return to the marketplace. You know, that we can have these big insights into the nature of reality, but it's not that. That none of it matters.

No.

[Unknown Speaker]

And they, they help relieve the suffering that, that exists that is inherent.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah.

The suffering that prevents you from being useful, from being in the marketplace or sort of in the world as a useful, helpful human being.

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Helping to alleviate suffering.

[Annika Harris]

Correct. Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

So Donald Hoffman wrote a book and also has a, a great TED talk on this subject where he argues that evolution actually works to hide the truth from us. And so the more evolved a system is and the better at survival it is, the less it sees the truth of the underlying reality. Of course it sees the truth of how to survive, but the Better you are at surviving, the less you are.

[Annika Harris]

Able to see the truth, which makes.

[Unknown Speaker]

A lot of sense. And his worth is really worth checking out. I'm still trying to remember the name of his book, book, but. So I had just had a conversation with Donald Hoffman when I then had that conversation with Joseph. And it made clearer for me why meditation can actually be such a useful tool for scientists, especially scientists interested in fundamental science and in consciousness. Because we can use it as our tool to break through all of the intuitions we have evolved that make us think, for instance, that there is green out there in the universe.

[Annika Harris]

Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

So a lot of scientific breakthroughs and paradigm shifts cause us to. I would say probably all the ones I can think of cause us to shift our intuitions or shatter an intuition we have. And I think that the cool thing is that we are able to shift.

[Annika Harris]

Our intuitions, we're able to remold them.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so through understanding, I still, on a day to day basis, feel like.

[Annika Harris]

Green is out there in the world.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I feel differently about it now.

[Annika Harris]

That I understand the mechanics of how.

[Unknown Speaker]

That happens than I did when I didn't understand that. In my series I talk about the germ theory of disease and how intuition.

[Annika Harris]

Shattering that was for people.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, it's. And this goes again back to how we almost live in a different world.

[Annika Harris]

After we have new information about it.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, people used to live in a world that did not include microscopic things.

[Annika Harris]

We didn't know they existed.

[Unknown Speaker]

We didn't know that's how people got sick.

[Annika Harris]

There were many theories about how people got sick.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was confusing. We were trying to figure it out. Then this theory came along and eventually of microscopes and we can actually see them for ourselves. After that invention and after the acceptance of this scientific breakthrough, we now live in a new world where there are microscopic things that we can pass to.

[Annika Harris]

Each other through the air that we can't see or feel or taste or.

[Unknown Speaker]

Touch that can make us sick and ultimately kill us, these harmful things that are invisible. And so meditation can be used to further that process. And in some cases, I think to begin that process of breaking through the intuition that is preventing us from seeing a deeper truth. And I can give a couple of examples. So self is an obvious one. It can break through intuitions, I think, in a way that doesn't necessarily give us true information, but is just useful to break the intuition. So the fact that people can have an experience of a spaceless, timeless form of consciousness, it turns out that space is very likely not fundamental. And so that is kind of an.

[Annika Harris]

Insight into a truer version of the situation we're in.

[Unknown Speaker]

But even if that weren't true, I think being able to sit in an experience of no space and no time, time opens up your ability to think.

[Annika Harris]

Creatively about how the universe works in.

[Unknown Speaker]

A way that is almost impossible when you're stuck in these evolved intuitions. And I think the same is true for psychedelics. It so drastically changes the way we experience the world that it gets you to realize how different things could be. So for someone like Einstein to be able to think about the universe and to think about the forces we understand and to reframe the whole thing as not that large massive bodies are like magnets pulling things in, but that the fabric of space time is curving and things are falling towards it. He was gifted with this incredibly creative and brilliant mind. But part of what that brilliance and creativity came out of is an ability to let go of the way we typically experience things, to not trust that the way we experience things in a.

[Annika Harris]

Day to day way is the true.

[Unknown Speaker]

Is the true way things are. And so that's my answer to how meditation can be scientifically useful. I mean, I think there also are.

[Annika Harris]

Now some insights that we know which.

[Unknown Speaker]

Are in fact truer.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, Annika talks about some practical meditation techniques to explore consciousness and the importance of challenging your intuition.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Annika Harris]

What I keep wanting to drive us to is like actual practices people can do to help them, like experience this. And by this I mean the illusion of the self, the nature of consciousness in ways that will improve their actual lives. I know you posted on your blog for a while ago, years ago, some of Joseph exercises for looking at like what is a thought or.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, so anything that comes to mind.

[Annika Harris]

That can help us really experience this for ourselves and see the liberative potential of seeing through this illusion.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, I think regular meditation practice is really all it's about. And I will say, I'm sure your listeners have heard this a million times, but I will say sitting a meditation or a the reason I made use instead of meditation retreat is because I do believe there's something that we don't yet understand at the level of the brain about spending that kind of time. I think it's very different from even if you practice an hour a day for years and years, I think there's a different shift that happens that's very likely physical at the level of the brain when you commit to just days of the practice all together in one go. I know that that's where I've had my biggest shifts and insights have been on meditation retreats. So I cannot recommend that highly enough. I force as many of my friends as will let me to sit a retreat.

[Annika Harris]

I remember there was a time when you and the girls were at our apartment back when we lived in New York City and we were talking about meditation retreats and I asked your older daughter, would you be okay if mommy went on a meditation retreat? She said, no, no, she can't. And I say, what about Daddy? She's like, oh yeah, he can go, yeah, fine.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I have sat some retreats now since I had children, but it's definitely, it's definitely harder. But I'm so grateful actually for those long ones I had before I had children because those feel like permanent changes. I don't quite understand how that's possible, but. And I'm not the only one who says this, but it feels like a permanent, lasting change.

[Annika Harris]

Those shifts that happen on retreat even after a year.

[Unknown Speaker]

I didn't go on retreat probably for 10 years after we had kids, those shifts and insights remained stable. So I think there's something really to be said for many days at a time of practicing, for sure.

[Annika Harris]

One thing that works for me, and I just want to run this by you in terms of being able to experience a very sort of accessible level. To me, this doesn't work for every mind, so I'll just say it out loud. But there's this kind of progression that I do in my meditation practice, and it's particularly when I'm doing walking meditations to my eyes are open where. And this is a Joseph Goldstein technique where I will use the passive voice. So seeing is being known, or hot or cold is being known. Pressure is being known. And then you ask by what? And you don't have to look too hard, just like, simply, what? What? What is knowing all of this? I know all I know I'm seeing a bunch of stuff right now. And I know I'm hearing my own voice, which is slightly grating, like, but who is taking delivery of those packages? And the not finding is the finding.

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

You know, it's interesting. That works for me now.

[Annika Harris]

Before I had the insight myself, that type of instruction was not helpful to me.

[Unknown Speaker]

So maybe I can help the listeners who don't find that helpful.

[Annika Harris]

And I think there are a lot.

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because for me. And, you know, I don't know if it has to do with how active.

[Annika Harris]

An imagination someone has, but when I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Would look, I would see that the image that would come up for me is an image of myself. So I found it, you know, and it almost went again, like, it was almost bad for my practice because it was pushing me more into the feeling of self. It was just bringing back the illusion for me. It was like, kind of accentuating the illusion in a sense. The first thing that really worked for me was Harding's work on having no head. I think that's the name of his book.

Yeah.

[Annika Harris]

The book is called On Having no Head. And I forget his first name, but Harding is his last name.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I'm forgetting his first name, too. Yeah. And before I even read the book, book, just hearing the title of the book was hugely transformative to me because in my meditation practice, I just kind of took the advice from the title, like, imagine you have no head. And that was almost instantaneous for me. So I recommend that to people who have a hard time looking for the looker, and that doesn't really shift their feeling at all. For me, it feels more of an experiential Practice in the moment of the idea of your head is also an idea. And so you can reframe the way you imagine yourself to be in the world. And when you drop that to me, that does something really interesting. It just shows me the truth immediately. So I would highly recommend reading that book and trying that practice.

[Annika Harris]

That's what did it for me on having no head. Yeah, your husband recommended it to me, and then I brought it with me on a meditation retreat.

[Unknown Speaker]

Interesting.

[Annika Harris]

The thing about this is, is that. And Sam is really good in his guided meditations on this. Like, he writes about this in his book also called Waking Up. Like, don't look too hard because it's actually right there on the surface. And don't expect white lights and like, string music. It's not that kind of insight. It's, like, just super obvious. Yes.

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

The other thing I was going to say, actually, before you mentioned that practice and dropping of self at all as an intention or goal of some sort. One practice that I used to do kind of intuitively and spontaneously before I learned formal meditation practice, I think when I was just purely in this mode of being intensely curious about consciousness and what we are, what our place is in the universe. Closing your eye, you know, in the.

[Annika Harris]

Same posture that you would for a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Meditation practice, sitting in a quiet space, closing your eyes. And actually, you know, it's funny, I never thought about. It's kind of a continuation of. Of the having no head imagery. So what spontaneously came to me was imagining that I was just floating in outer space, coming into being for the first time.

[Annika Harris]

So trying to let go.

[Unknown Speaker]

Just start with the bare minimum try.

[Annika Harris]

And anytime I had a concept, so.

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, you know, I'd have a sensation in my right hand. And, you know, when I first started this practice, I'd imagine then I would kind of like split.

[Annika Harris]

See in my mind's eye a right hand, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, then I'm in a body again. And I try to.

[Annika Harris]

Every time that happened, I tried drop it and just be like, no, what is that?

[Unknown Speaker]

What is that sensation, actually? Because it doesn't feel like a hand, you know, what is it?

[Annika Harris]

It's a kind of pressure.

[Unknown Speaker]

And where in space is it?

[Annika Harris]

It's not so clear.

[Unknown Speaker]

And the more time you spend just on your perceptions, imagining you're just this being that's almost like a brain in a vat that's kind of just being.

[Annika Harris]

Connected one module at a time.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm actually realizing now I did a version of this in my book, kind of walking the reader through this type of thinking. But I think I find this to be a very useful meditation practice. Just try to drop all of it. And you're just born now as this conscious being. Maybe no body, just outer space. And then what are those feelings and.

[Annika Harris]

Do they happen in space?

[Unknown Speaker]

It can really, really get you to feel like consciousness is kind of all.

[Annika Harris]

Over and it takes on these different.

[Unknown Speaker]

Forms and you can really lose the sense of having a body and then therefore a self. And yeah, I mean, again, I think because our only direct contact with reality.

[Annika Harris]

Is through our conscious experience, it's through our felt experience.

[Unknown Speaker]

The rest of it is just kind of ideas that we map onto it and many of them are incorrect or based on illusions. And so I think getting closer to what the actual experience is, I don't.

[Annika Harris]

Know, clears the mind in a way.

[Unknown Speaker]

And opens us up for different ways of thinking about our circumstance.

[Annika Harris]

I do want to say to the listener that these practices where you're kind of gently putting the sense of self through a cheese grater and so that you're not so stuck in your own head, for many people it can just take a while and just don't get sweaty about it. Try it out, Be gentle. If it's not working, back off and do your quote unquote regular meditation practice where you're watching the breath and then every time you get distracted, you start again. This, it comes for some people slowly, it comes for some people quickly. Just play with it.

[Unknown Speaker]

I agree with all of that. And I would say coming from a.

[Annika Harris]

Place of curiosity rather than having a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Goal really covers everything because. And that is. I mean, I'm lucky that that's kind of where I started with my interest.

[Annika Harris]

In all of this.

[Unknown Speaker]

You and I talked about this the last time we spoke. That the first time I really found myself doing what was essentially a meditation practice was when I was young and having incredibly intense migraines.

[Annika Harris]

So I was in severe pain as a child and just forced to sit.

[Unknown Speaker]

And be with the pain. There's something about getting curious. I mean, even for just a science minded person. The scientist in me finds this practice so interesting. Forget about whatever goal I might get to to just like I said, you're in outer space. This is your first experience. What is the experience? We so rarely do this, but it's pretty wild to realize everything is so amorphous. It's hard to know what a sound even is, what a feeling of pain is, what you know, I love to focus on the more amorphous emotions too. Like touch is more concrete. Sight, hearing is more Concrete. But when you think about the moment you feel hungry in meditation, what is hunger? Like, how do you know what hunger is? It's really interesting. And so, just from a scientific, curious human perspective, it's a great practice to kind of let go of all of the goals and just say, I want to understand my experience better. I want to know what these things actually are. I think I know what they are, but when I look at them, I, I. They're more interesting than I thought.

[Annika Harris]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

And actually there's. I have a conversation with Susan Blackmore in the chapter on meditation. And she wrote a book called 10 Zen Questions. And that's mostly what we talk about. In my conversation with her, she talks about sitting a meditation. This book, 10 Zen Questions, is essentially created out of her journal on a Zen meditation retreat. And she talks about her interest really coming from a scientific perspective. She went in kind of as a scientist with this journal, just wanting. And she writes about consciousness. She wrote a textbook about consciousness. She is a neuroscientist, is very interested.

[Annika Harris]

In the mind and the brain, and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Just went on this retreat with open curiosity. Like, I know that what I think I experience isn't exactly what I'm really experiencing, and I want to know what I'm really experiencing. Her book is great for that, but I think it's just a great way to approach a meditation practice. Because there's no way to fail.

[Annika Harris]

Yes, exactly. Well, last question I want to ask you, and I think it's related, which is the value of challenging your intuitions. I mean, this is. Now, we've talked about it within the context of consciousness being fundamental, possibly, but just as a life practice. How do we do it, and what's the value?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, I actually am noticing, as you say, that I want to give one disclaimer, which is that we.

[Annika Harris]

Have a lot of incredibly useful intuitions.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I spend a lot of time actually talking about how unconscious processing gives us intuitions in circumstances where we might be in danger. And so, you know, there's a whole realm of situations where you want to follow your intuitions because they're probably picking up on all kinds of unconscious cues that are giving you good information about the world. And, you know, one circumstance can be you feel like you're in a dangerous situation, but you can't point to why. And so you kind of shrug it off. But it turns out you were noticing all kinds of cues from the environment you weren't aware of. And so there's kind of. There's that side of honoring your Intuitions and using them the way they're meant to be used and listening to them when they're useful. But I guess it's also part of.

[Annika Harris]

It is just understanding that an intuition.

[Unknown Speaker]

All it is really is, is a feeling that something is true, a strong feeling that something is true. Like you hold that you know the truth but not knowing why, not having the answers, not having the logical reasoning behind it. So you know, in the case of a dangerous situation, your body may be even adrenalized. You can feel like I am in a dangerous situation. But you just consciously, you have nothing to point to. It may, it may be true, it may not be true. And so there, you know, on the useful side of breaking intuitions and shattering intuitions and messing with them, that's kind of more not on the survival side of things, but more just on the how we perceive the world around us. And I think it's incredibly interesting on many levels how the things we feel are true in any given moment.

[Annika Harris]

And this can be relationship wise.

[Unknown Speaker]

This can be a feeling about how.

[Annika Harris]

You'Re being perceived by someone else.

[Unknown Speaker]

All the way down to feeling like I'm on a flat earth and the sun rises. The sun is the thing that's moving and rises and sets and getting an.

[Annika Harris]

Understanding, a deeper truth so that you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Can be more in touch with the.

[Annika Harris]

Reality of your situation.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think it's useful to always be open to the fact that the things that seem to be true may have a different reality when you look closer.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah. And this can be true on a very mundane level of like, yeah, that guy's an asshole. Or you know, I don't like this and I've never like plums or whatever. You know, it's about not being so locked in your certainties and biases.

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Annika Harris]

Thanks for producing this audio documentary. It's really cool. And thanks for making time to come on here and talk about it. I really appreciate it. Just remind everybody again please of the name of the audio documentary and where people can get it.

[Unknown Speaker]

So the audio documentary is called Lights on and. And it's available to purchase as an audiobook. So wherever you buy audiobooks on Spotify, on Audible, on Apple. So most publishers now are creating audio originals and those can be audiobooks, but they can also be documentary series like the one I created. So this world of audiobooks has now expanded and there are many different types of audio original content that you can get in the audiobook category.

[Annika Harris]

Yeah, it's really cool actually.

Yeah.

Also, and I'll put links to all of this, including the audiobook documentary in the show notes but your website socials, you know, what else are you putting out there that if we want to follow you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Lights on the audio documentary can be.

[Annika Harris]

Purchased wherever you purchase audiobooks. You can also get more information about.

[Unknown Speaker]

It on my website, which is just my name. Annikaharris.com youm can also go to lightsondocumentary.com and that will take you to information about the series. We also have the way you would for a podcast. We have show notes, chapter notes for.

[Annika Harris]

Every chapter and so there are a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Lot of links to the relevant science and information for listeners who want to go deeper.

[Annika Harris]

And I will say Annika has guided meditations, including guided meditations for kids and also some loving kindness meditation on the Waking up app.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Annika Harris]

Well it was great to talk to you. It's a pleasure always.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Annika Harris]

Thank you.

[Dan Harris]

Thanks again to Annika. Check out Lights on available wherever you get your audiobooks. Also want to say Annika guides a bunch of meditations over on the Waking up app, specifically some meditations on loving kindness and also some meditations for children. If you want to sign up for the Waking up app, you can do [e-mail] 10% 10 t e n p E R C E n T Just so you know, if you buy a subscription to Waking up through that URL, you are directly supporting me and my team because we have a really cool partnership going with Waking up. So check it out wakingup.com 10% I really do think of it as a great compliment to what I'm doing over on substack danharris.com where you can get access to me and my producers and my guests and one another and we've got this real community vibe going. You can also get ad free versions of this podcast, but if you want a more traditional meditation app experience, Waking up is awesome. Just before I go here, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lawrence Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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