Dr. Sam Harris: Using Meditation to Focus, View Consciousness & Expand Your Mind
Dr. Sam Harris is a renowned neuroscientist, philosopher, and author who has been a leader in the field of meditation and mindfulness for decades. He is the founder of the Waking Up meditation app, which has been downloaded by millions of people around the world. He is also the author of several books, including Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, The End of Faith, and Free Will.
Dr. Harris has been a proponent of meditation for many years, and he believes that it can be used to help people focus, view consciousness, and expand their minds. He has developed a unique approach to meditation that combines traditional Buddhist techniques with modern neuroscience. This approach has been proven to be effective in helping people to reduce stress, improve concentration, and gain insight into their own minds.
The Benefits of Meditation
Meditation has been shown to have numerous benefits for both physical and mental health. It can help to reduce stress, improve concentration, and increase self-awareness. It can also help to reduce anxiety and depression, improve sleep, and increase creativity.
Dr. Harris believes that meditation can be used to help people to gain insight into their own minds and to view consciousness from a different perspective. He believes that meditation can help people to become more aware of their thoughts and feelings, and to gain a better understanding of how their minds work.
The Waking Up App
The Waking Up app is a meditation program developed by Dr. Harris. It is designed to help people to learn how to meditate and to gain insight into their own minds. The app includes guided meditations, lectures, and exercises that are designed to help people to become more mindful and to gain a better understanding of their own consciousness.
The app also includes a variety of tools and resources that can help people to learn more about meditation and to practice it on their own. It includes a library of articles, videos, and audio recordings that can help people to gain a better understanding of meditation and to learn how to use it to improve their lives.
The Huberman Lab 105
The Huberman Lab 105 is a research lab at Stanford University that is dedicated to studying the effects of meditation on the brain. The lab is headed by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist who has been studying the effects of meditation for over a decade.
The lab has conducted numerous studies on the effects of meditation on the brain, and the results have been very promising. The studies have shown that meditation can help to reduce stress, improve concentration, and increase self-awareness. It can also help to reduce anxiety and depression, improve sleep, and increase creativity.
Conclusion
Dr. Sam Harris is a renowned neuroscientist, philosopher, and author who has been a leader in the field of meditation and mindfulness for decades. He has developed a unique approach to meditation that combines traditional Buddhist techniques with modern neuroscience. This approach has been proven to be effective in helping people to reduce stress, improve concentration, and gain insight into their own minds. The Waking Up app and the Huberman Lab 105 are two resources that can help people to learn more about meditation and to practice it on their own.
FAQs
What is Dr. Sam Harris known for?
Dr. Sam Harris is a renowned neuroscientist, philosopher, and author who has been a leader in the field of meditation and mindfulness for decades. He is the founder of the Waking Up meditation app, which has been downloaded by millions of people around the world. He is also the author of several books, including Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, The End of Faith, and Free Will.
What are the benefits of meditation?
Meditation has been shown to have numerous benefits for both physical and mental health. It can help to reduce stress, improve concentration, and increase self-awareness. It can also help to reduce anxiety and depression, improve sleep, and increase creativity.
What is the Waking Up app?
The Waking Up app is a meditation program developed by Dr. Harris. It is designed to help people to learn how to meditate and to gain insight into their own minds. The app includes guided meditations, lectures, and exercises that are designed to help people to become more mindful and to gain a better understanding of their own consciousness.
What is the Huberman Lab 105?
The Huberman Lab 105 is a research lab at Stanford University that is dedicated to studying the effects of meditation on the brain. The lab is headed by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist who has been studying the effects of meditation for over a decade. The lab has conducted numerous studies on the effects of meditation on the brain, and the results have been very promising.
I gained so much more respect for Sam Harris when he discussed the clear distinction between the endless seeking of peak experiences, epitomized by psychedelics, and the more genuine and lasting freedom gained from meditation practice. This seeker delusion of spiritual materialism is such a tragic waste of life that many of us who have the mystical experiences spontaneously fall into. He starts this discussion sometime after the 3 hour mark
Steve Jobs didn’t want the iPhone to be fragmented and the user to be able to view two apps at once because he knew about the attention deficit.
Wow. Best spent 4+ hours of listening. And for me it was more like 6 hours because of all the time I would stop the video, so I could go back and re-listen to make sure I was understanding the information (to the best of my abilities). Plus, all the terms and names I jotted down to research further (i.e. Cal Newport, Stephen Jay Gould & spandrels, etc.). I will be listening to more of your podcasts and to Sam's podcasts in the future. Thank you both!!!
400 mics!
Sheeew!😅
I can attest from personal experience that Sam’s “nondual” approach to practice is not full and complete. It is actually where the path taught by the Buddha really begins. Self-view is overcome in the first stage of awakening—the attainment of stream entry (sottapana). Awakening is not full and complete, however, until craving is complete uprooted. While beginning with this non self awareness pov helps people avoid wasting a lifetime of spiritual materialism (chasing after ideas and experiences elicited by practice) it also gives people the wrong impression that they have gained the full goal of practice and, more severely, nonduality just like duality just becomes another idea/view the mind concocts and holds on to. If Sam was to develop dementia, for example, and completely forgot this nondual philosophy he has intellectually grasped and perfected in articulating, but he has not fully uprooted craving, his mind would quickly reconstruct the same self-world relationship (samsara) characterized by dissatisfaction.
The Buddha’s path is complete. He identified craving, rooted in ignorance, as the primary agent (the builder of this house). The perception of non self is one tool for disenchantment, releasing mind from the craving that ties it to its cycles of dissatisfied and delusion. Full awakening results in unconditioned awareness that if completely and permanently free of desire. Since desire is the engineer of the self, the world, and the tense relationship between the two, then no self or world appears to the mind that is fully awake. All that exists is a flow of energy coming into and out of form. The deep imperturbable pleasure of this state is impossible to understand because our idea of pleasure is based on the pleasure we derive from our never ending pursuit and acquisition of objects of desire . Desirelessness is a primary quality of fully awakened awareness. Settling with any idea (even nonduality) is inherently unsatisfying.
is it only me or the consciousness and self part are quite heavy and difficult to understand. 😅
01:30:00
I'm not sure where to turn or who to talk to. My meditation has led something to me. I was woken up my something greeting me good morning I heard it while I was sleeping woke up and continue to hear it while I was awake so it wasn't in my sleep. This is happening quite frequently. What is going on???????? I have so much more to tell. This is real and I now I'm not going crazy!
This is my favorite Huberman video yet. And that’s saying A LOT because every single one is just so extraordinary. I’m so grateful for this channel!!!
You really need to learn to read the teleprompter like you're not reading the teleprompter. Just sayin…
Sam Harris, oh god. I love him, because he shoved you can be a normal ambitious guy and still be present and shit.
The film "Boxing Helena" was directed by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch! 23:50
Boxing Helena is a film by David Lynch's daughter, not David himself. 🙂
The director of "Boxing Helena" is Jennifer Lynch. ;D
Thanks Andrew and Sam! What great sharing today! I'm definitely going to try the waking uo app.
Taking Hindu philosophy and adding western gibberish is what is going on here. unsurprising …
Just read the book from late Anthony de Mello: Awareness (1990) – the ultimate book. It's all there, and more said more precise and to the point that Sam Harris could ever articulate. Sam is one of the greatest thinkers of our time but I'm suprised how money people "live in darkness" thinking this knowledge about self etc. is something new.
A lot to unpack here
Great interviewing skills! Andrew really doesn’t cover air-time.
Much love!
Fhh
Amazing!!! More content like this!
I usually consume a HLP over a week or so and I ate this up in 2 days! & will listen a second time. So much wisdom to absorb.
Thank you!
Ch
This podcast is gonna change my life
8:57 to skip straight to actual start of Podcast
Whata going on in American with people catchin streep throat Andrew ?
I'm really happy for Sam about Twitter, he seemed almost like a different person on there at times. Now he seems so much more calm and happy. Good for him 👍
So, 1 h of total nothing… it seams like you ate just fokin with us mr Ben Stiller 😅
Don't forget to keep taking those boosters, Sam…❤
I don’t think Andrew understood anything Sam said for the entire 4 hours. (Not sure I did either…. Wish I could )
Meditation first thing in the morning before your mind starts to process its amazing…. we have an inner being inside us who reflects our vortex through meditation we align with our inner being and enter our vortex of creation
Honest responses please:
What is good, liberating, about non-duality if the experience is bad? It is not all that difficult to see how there is no separate self experiencing experience. What is for me difficult to grasp is what makes this good news. If something really awful (or just moderately awful) is occurring, are you not bound or trapped in the pain of that negative circumstance ALL THE MORE SO, if we take what Sam is saying to be a kind of enlightenment or self realization. I don’t see how one derives joy (moksha) for it.
🫤
Love your channel. Thanks for sharing.
What do you think of Shirzad Chamine's work/ Positive Intelligence please?
Would you consider having an interview with him?
An extraordinarily lucid description of the meditative state- I don't think I have ever heard a better explanation. Kudos!
I like Huberman because he is smart enough to admit what he doesn't know. Sam Harris lacks that discipline.Lke all of us; he knows nothing about free will; consciousness or even "self" but decides they all must be illusions, even though he is engaging and.exercising them.. neuroscience – great field for real give processes. Nothing in neuroscience or physicalist physics informs us on these issues.
If it hadn't been already said: Boxing Helena was directed by Jennifer Lynch (not David).
Could you do an episode on the health benefits on forest bathing? that would be awesome !
Be one with the Mantis Shrimp
Finally a conversation with Sam Harris where we get to truly dig into his thoughts, love this.
I'm at Meditation and The Paradoxical now. Huh?
Upanishads: Hindu philosophy in a nutshell. If you are appropriating it, give the credit.
having watched the 1st hour, I just have to say that I find the idea that in meditation 'we are watching consciousness' contents flow by' highly misleading and problematic as it looks like mr Harris' argument starts from the wrong assumption then spends way too many words and thoughts to just get rid of it while presenting the whole process as an 'aha' moment. It seems it would be useful to distinguish consciousness from the instinctive constant thought flow (which is what our minds as organs
for lack or a better way of putting itare made to do: constantly produce thoughts mostly geared towards locating possible problems/threats and finding solutions). Meditation more likely reveals the instinctive mind doing its thing, not the contents of our consciousness 'flow by', instead I would argue, the contents of our consciousness in meditating INCLUDE the watching of our instinctive mind do its thing… .. the constantly ruminating mind is not our 'self' or our consciousness, it is what our mind-as-organ does, the same way that our constantly beating heart is not our 'self' or our feelings, it is what our heart-as-organ does… consciousness feels way more all-encompassing than just our thought process. So it's more likely that when we find ourselves in activities where we are so-called 'losing ourselves' we are in fact uniting the two, the consciousness part and the instinctive mind part, rather than literally 'losing the self'- instead we are actually becoming the self more fullyTaking Vitamin d3 as a supplement is a hoaks and can even make somebody sick if overdosed. There is an article about it from the new york times
'Boxing Helena' it's not a David Lynch's movie, but Jennifer's Lynch – a huge and important difference 🙂
What an insightful and enlightened conversation on so many levels. I appreciate the time you both put into this episode. These are not "light" subjects and require depth and nuance – which mainstream media has neither the inclination nor bandwidth to produce. Thank you!
P.S. Have you had Dr. Gabor Maté as a guest?
I bet half of huberman's viewers just have the hots for him or a guy crush on him, depending if u r a guy or girl
Sam "Nonexistent Soul" Harris: Science 101: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I came here because of Sam Harris, and now I also discovered a great podcaster.
This conversation is so deeply nourishing. Sam's ability to explain clearly an experience of existence that can come from a dedicated meditation practice has been a clear mirror to what I have witnessed within my inner journey. Very much appreciated, thankyou.J.