{"id":21706,"date":"2024-06-27T09:05:41","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T15:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=21706"},"modified":"2024-06-27T09:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T15:05:41","slug":"cutting-through-to-consciousness-without-a-center","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/cutting-through-to-consciousness-without-a-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Through to Consciousness Without a Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:<\/b> The following transcript is provided in its raw, unedited form and may contain errors. We have not proofread this transcript, so it may include typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this rough transcript as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tami Simon: <\/b>Hello, friends. My name\u2019s Tami Simon, and I\u2019m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True\u2019s new membership community and digital platform. It\u2019s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original, premium, transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> with an aftershow community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you\u2019ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation, our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at soundstruefoundation.org, and in advance thank you for your support.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this episode of <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> my guest is Sam Harris. And I\u2019m so pleased to have this opportunity, Sam, to talk with you. You write and talk about a wide range of topics including the problems with faith, morality, free will, secular enlightenment, gun ownership, the dangers of the Islamic religion, and more. And what really impresses me is not so much the wide range, but you\u2019re what I would call a stand-up guy. You stand up for your convictions, and you speak to them truthfully from your experience, from your knowing. And I really respect that, and I\u2019m really excited to have this conversation with you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me just tell you a little bit more about Sam. He\u2019s the author of five <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> bestsellers, neuroscientist philosopher, host of the widely acclaimed <\/span>Making Sense<\/span><\/i> podcast, and he\u2019s the creator of the Waking Up app for people who want to learn to meditate in a modern scientific context. Sam, welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sam Harris:<\/b> Thank you. Thank you. It\u2019s great to meet you. Happy to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Wonderful to meet you too. I\u2019m surprised that it\u2019s taken so long for our life paths to converge for right here this moment, but I\u2019m so happy that we\u2019re on. OK\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Well, I heard your voice somewhere, I think it was probably on your own podcast, and I thought, \u201cIf ever there was a great podcasting voice, this is a voice I have to meet.\u201d So it can\u2019t be the first time you\u2019ve heard this, but you\u2019ve just got this amazing, timeless radio voice. So congratulations.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Thank you. Thank you. Came with the body and everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> It came with it. So about 10 years ago, I hosted a 23-part interview series called Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean? And the thing that astonished me the most after doing 23 interviews is that people didn\u2019t answer the same way. I was shocked. I was like, \u201cWow, people use the same word\u2014waking up, spiritual awakening\u2014and they mean different things by it.\u201d So I wanted to start there and hear precisely what Sam Harris means by \u201cwaking up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Yeah, well, it can mean a few things. I think the center of the bullseye for me, and this is really the direct influence of non-dual teachings in Buddhism and the Indian tradition on me, this is really Dzogchen and Advaita, it\u2019s not that those two schools think they teach precisely the same thing, but I basically think they do, albeit the methods are different, but I think the goal is the same, and the goal is really to recognize that the sense of self, the sense that there\u2019s a subject in the middle of experience that to whom experience refers that there\u2019s an eye that is appropriate in experience, it\u2019s not identical to experience, but it\u2019s on the edge of it or in the middle of it, the subject in the head, that\u2019s an illusion, right? So you\u2019re waking up from the dream of subject-object perception, and especially certainly when you\u2019re talking about the mechanics of psychological suffering, you\u2019re waking up from the dream of identification with thought, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

The sense that this next arising thought is what you are subjectively, right? And this is not something that people would necessarily assert conceptually. I mean most people, and certainly most educated people in the West, people who believe that we\u2019ve understood something scientifically about the nature of ourselves, they\u2019re not going to think that they really are identical to their thoughts or they\u2019re going to think they\u2019re identical to their bodies probably. And if they\u2019re religious in any sense that they think they\u2019re identical to their souls inside their bodies, very likely. But there\u2019s this sense of feeling identical to thought that really is the default state for most of us. The thoughts sneak up upon us unawares and we just, they inhabit us. And obviously in meditation you learn to recognize them as appearances and consciousness, but unrecognized strangely, this next piece of language or this next image, this next memory, this next judgment, this next kindling opinion just feels like me, right? It just feels like, OK, there\u2019s no subjective distance between me and the voice in my head, which is thinking this next thought. And that\u2019s the default state.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that really is in many ways deeply analogous to being asleep and dreaming and not knowing that you\u2019re dreaming. When we go to sleep, we fall into a dream state. I think the most remarkable thing about dreams is that we\u2019re totally unsurprised to suddenly find ourselves in this new condition, right? You\u2019re safely in your bed, you fall asleep, and then however many minutes later, in subjective time it\u2019s more or less instantaneous, you\u2019re somewhere else, you are surrounded by other people. They\u2019re people you\u2019ve never met or famous people or dead people. And unless it\u2019s a lucid dream, unless you have some reality testing going on that links it to your waking state, the most remarkable thing is that we don\u2019t even notice this transition and we have no sense that the laws of physics have been suspended for us, that our psychological continuity has been interrupted. We\u2019re just ready to feel that we are the subject in the next circumstance.<\/span><\/p>\n

And something like that happens with thought more or less every moment of our waking lives, we just are born away by this voice in our heads or by this stream of imagery, and it totally defines our sense of being in the world. I mean, if you think a thought of self-hatred or you think a thought of regret or you think of the person who died who you deeply miss, and if you have no perspective on those thoughts, all of a sudden that is you, that is your emotional state, that is your life. And it\u2019s very strange that thought has this kind of power over us. I\u2019m not saying that thought is something we want to get rid of. Obviously thought is quite necessary for our functioning as human beings, but it is the mechanism that delivers virtually all of our psychological suffering and meditation offers a way to break that spell.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Sam Harris is not the thinker. You\u2019re waking up from something, I get that, from identification with thought and with being the thinker.<\/span><\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a waking up from, but what about the waking up to? What do you discover you are? How would you language that?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Well, I tend to use the word \u201cconsciousness\u201d or \u201cawareness.\u201d I use those synonyms for what remains when you\u2019re not shattering experience with concepts. So see, there really is just consciousness and its contents, and the contents are in some basic sense indivisible from consciousness itself, right? This is a very traditional view in Advaita or in Dzogchen or in Mahamudra or even Zen. I mean, any non-dual school would give you some version of this where you have this condition that is the basis of all experience, all subjectivity, the feeling that it\u2019s like something to be what you are is consciousness. And this would be no less true even if you were radically confused about everything. I mean, even if this is all a dream, even if this is all an illusion, even if nothing is as it seems, there is this seeming, there is this experience of something, and for lack of a better word, many of us call that consciousness or awareness. And everything you can experience is appearing in that space.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I should be clear, I\u2019m not making any metaphysical claims about this. I\u2019m not saying that consciousness is the foundation of all reality, that it proceeded the Big Bang, say. I\u2019m not saying that insight into non-duality teaches you anything about cosmology, right? It clearly doesn\u2019t, right? So I think we can bracket all of those metaphysical questions about how consciousness relates to the brain or the physical universe, those are very interesting. I get that they\u2019re consequential for certain questions and we haven\u2019t figured all of that out yet, obviously, but it really doesn\u2019t matter for the claims I\u2019m making about the possibilities of experience and about the nature of human suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n

So you can bracket the metaphysics. I\u2019m happy to talk about it if it interests you, but I just want to be clear that I am talking about the nature of experience and what can be realized from the first person side if you simply pay close attention to what it\u2019s like to be you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Right. But here\u2019s where I\u2019d love to understand a little bit more from your perspective. In the waking up process, there\u2019s this discovery of consciousness or awareness that isn\u2019t touched by the contents that come and go. And yet you\u2019re over there wherever you are. What geography are you in? I\u2019m over here. We have different experiences, perspectives. There\u2019s a uniqueness of Sam Harris, the stand-up guy that I mentioned, and Tami Simon with the radio voice. How do you understand that?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Well, I think that it\u2019s obvious that the consciousness of contents and our minds is\u2026 these things, these phenomena are in some unavoidable sense born of our body and our entanglement with the world, right? I mean, I don\u2019t think you can be a\u2026 Again, I would like to bracket the metaphysics because I\u2019m somewhat agnostic about the final answers here. It\u2019s pretty clear we don\u2019t know them. So consciousness for me is distinct from mind in the sense that it still remains a mystery as to how it relates to neurophysiology. But mind itself, right, the functions of a human mind, our ability to process language, our ability to map the physical world and our visual field onto our visual cortex, right, I mean, all of that is clearly based on what the brain is doing, right? We know through now about 150 years of neurology and emerging neuroscience and psychology that the mind as such isn\u2019t independent of the brain, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

So the information processing of the brain really is creating a lot of the phenomenon that we can be conscious of. So this is, again, slightly confusing, but I would hold consciousness itself aside, the fact that it\u2019s like something to have a mind, the fact that it\u2019s like something to be what you are, I would hold that aside as still a remaining mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as to the phenomenon, what it\u2019s like to be you is powerfully dependent upon you as a physical system over there, wherever you are, right? And so it is for me. So the fact that I don\u2019t wake up with your memories and you don\u2019t wake up with mine, that\u2019s not a mystery from my point of view. I mean your memories are encoded in the neural substrate of your brain, right? Now, whether we could copy them onto the hard drive of some future computer, that\u2019s an open question. This is all interesting and questions about progress in AI come here. And if in fact, consciousness is just an emergent property of information processing on some level, well then questions of conscious AI will one day be something we have to entertain. But again, that\u2019s still not yet known.<\/span><\/p>\n

So from my point of view, consciousness itself is in some ways deeply impersonal because the thing that would make it personal is the specifics of its contents, right? My consciousness is I would imagine totally identical to yours, except for the fact that over here it\u2019s populated by my memories and my pains and pleasures, and attitudes, et cetera. And that again is not a mystery because the only place my particular pain in my knee can appear is over here where my knee is, and in the nervous system that is mapping the inputs to my knee, in the cortex of my brain.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it certainly seems that not every part of the human brain is producing conscious experience. I mean, again, this is another mystery. It\u2019s still not entirely mapped, and I can\u2019t be entirely confident of this. I mean, it\u2019s possible that parts of the brain that we think are consciously dark may in fact be conscious in ways that would surprise us. But certainly at the gross level, it seems that the totality of what I can be conscious of as a mind is a subset of the neural activity that\u2019s occurring in my brain and perhaps a smallish subset. I mean, there\u2019s a lot that my brain is doing that I can\u2019t inspect consciously. And the truth is, as a matter of my conscious experience, I can\u2019t even tell that I have a brain, right? That\u2019s a pretty big blind spot. I mean, there\u2019s no experience you\u2019re going to have in meditation that is going to deliver the details of neurophysiology, and it won\u2019t even deliver the fact that your brain exists or really plays any role at all in driving your experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

So subjectively, we don\u2019t have a perfect idea of what we are in our totality, but I would argue that again, that doesn\u2019t really matter for when we\u2019re talking about the promise of meditation and the nature of the self, the kinds of illusions we\u2019re taken in by and the way in which they produce suffering for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

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TS:<\/b> OK, let me ask you a few direct questions here, because when it comes to putting meditation\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

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SH:<\/b> Am I avoiding the topic somehow?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> No, no, but I want to generate greater clarity for myself. When it comes to meditating in a, quote unquote, \u201crational or scientific context,\u201d a couple of times you\u2019ve used the word, mystery, and I\u2019m wondering from your perspective, what exists in the realm of mystery that we don\u2019t know the answers to when it comes to 21st century secular enlightenment? We just don\u2019t know. That\u2019s a mystery, even though we\u2019re being very rational here.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Well, and hopefully I would give you two different types of mystery and one I think we never get rid of. So there are ordinary mysteries where it really is a statement, as you just made, of us just not having the right information. We don\u2019t understand something conceptually, and we will one day understand it. There was a time where we had no idea how people got sick and we didn\u2019t know about viruses, we didn\u2019t know about bacteria. And then we learned something about that, the germ theory of disease, and you wash your hands before surgery, et cetera, and we made progress. And so certain mysteries got resolved there, and there are yet further ones that we need to resolve.<\/span><\/p>\n

That kind of mystery for the topic of this conversation relates to consciousness itself. The fact that there\u2019s something that is like to be what we are, the fact that the lights are on in any sense, how that is emerging out of information processing in the brain or any other physical system that is a, or even the fact that it is emerging, I mean it\u2019s possible that it goes deeper than information processing, it\u2019s possible that there\u2019s something that it\u2019s like to be an electron, and we just don\u2019t know that, that\u2019s a genuine mystery. We don\u2019t understand the so-called neural correlates of consciousness. There are theories about this. Some don\u2019t make a lot of sense even at first glance, but none are persuasive enough at this point for me to say as a neuroscientist or a philosopher of mind, that we are confident that we know how consciousness relates to the brain or to any physical system, and this has certain consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, I think we will build increasingly advanced AI, we will eventually build truly humanoid robots that strike us as utterly compelling, and we\u2019ll design them in such a way so as to seem conscious. And if we haven\u2019t figured out how consciousness actually relates to information processing, we won\u2019t know whether they\u2019re conscious. And I think this is a very interesting and potentially ethically fraught situation that we are going to find ourselves in I think in probably a few short years, I mean maybe 10 years or 15 years at the outset. So consciousness, just how it arises is a mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I would argue that there are other sorts of mysteries or another principle of mystery that we really never dispel in science. And it relates to the nature of just what it\u2019s like to be conscious from the first person side. And it\u2019s that on some basic level are conceptual understanding of things, doesn\u2019t really reach into the core of experience, and dispel mystery. So you can look at any ordinary object and you can look at your hand or you can look at a cup on your desk, and if you just pay close attention to it and ask yourself what is it? As those seeing it for the first time, gaze upon this object and ask yourself what is it? You\u2019ll find that you have a lot of language you can throw at it, right? You can begin thinking about how this thing relates to other things. You have a name for it. You can keep reiterating that name in your mind. You can say hand over and over again. But that doesn\u2019t really reach into the thing itself. There\u2019s a kind of suchness to any experience, even the most ordinary experience that is intrinsically mysterious.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s just this mystery of being that begins to shine through everything. And that is itself the mystery of consciousness, the mystery that anything is appearing at all, right? And I would say that the mystery of consciousness presents us in every moment with the subjective version of the fundamental mystery of the cosmos, which is why is there something rather than nothing? Why is anything here? Why are there laws of nature? I mean, it is not enough to say, \u201cOK, we\u2019ve begun to understand the laws of nature and they have produced everything that we can be aware of,\u201d but why is there anything including the laws of nature, right, that\u2019s I think an irreducible mystery?<\/span><\/p>\n

And I do think consciousness, why is there anything that it\u2019s like to be what you are presents the subjective version of that mystery. It\u2019s just, it is irreducibly mysterious that the lights are on. And I don\u2019t think, even if we understand consciousness conceptually, I don\u2019t think this is the so-called hard problem of consciousness and philosophy of mind, I think it will always seem like a miracle to us. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a way of describing unconscious complexity and asserting that some pattern there produces consciousness that\u2019s going to be self-explanatory, that\u2019s going to seem like it should have been intuitively obvious that, OK, well that explains consciousness, now I get it, right? I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have that experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s important to point out that for that purpose, consciousness is unlike any other phenomenon we\u2019ve ever sought to explain scientifically. I mean, there are things that we thought we would never explain and we\u2019ve explained them, things like life, right? I mean, people thought life just, you can\u2019t explain life. And there was a point where we had this notion of an \u00e9lan vital, life essence or life spirit that would differentiate an inanimate object from an inanimate one or a dead organism from a live one.<\/span><\/p>\n

But now we know that life can be defined in terms of how systems function, and whether they metabolize energy, whether they grow, et cetera, whether they reproduce? And we have all these extrinsic criteria that demarcate living systems from dead ones. And there are certain cases where it\u2019s arbitrary, and we are not even sure whether something\u2019s alive or not. Like in the case of a virus, I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve decided whether we think viruses are alive or not. Really, they\u2019re at the boundary. But consciousness is intrinsically what it is from its own side, right? Consciousness, it\u2019s not defined, and I would argue it cannot be defined from the outside. I mean, there\u2019s no evidence of consciousness in brains. There\u2019s no evidence of consciousness in the universe apart from the fact that we know it to exist from its own side in our direct experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so I would say that even if we\u2019re confused about everything, consciousness is the one thing in this universe that can\u2019t be an illusion, right? Because even if everything isn\u2019t illusory, even if we\u2019re in the matrix or if our brains\u2019 in vats, I mean we\u2019re just totally confused about what we are, this seeming appearance demonstrates the reality of consciousness as much as any veridical appearance could.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I mean, consciousness is the ground truth of our being moment to moment. And again, I\u2019m not making metaphysics out of that, but I think it is from the point of view of our flourishing as conscious creatures I think realizing this and experiencing it more deeply is the most important thing we can learn to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> I\u2019m curious to hear your perspective when it comes to appreciating the mystery of consciousness, but applying rational analysis to things that people report. I interview a lot of people who share with me things like, \u201cThis tree told me X, Y, Z,\u201d or \u201cI met an angel in my room when I woke up at three in the morning who told me this or that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve had a willingness myself to be open and just hear their reports and accept their reports for what they are, their experience without knowing what\u2019s actually happening. Are they tapping into some collective\u2014I\u2019m going to project\u2014I don\u2019t know. And I\u2019m curious, how would you apply your neurobiological rational lens to such reports?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Well again, I\u2019m open-minded on many questions of just how spooky this universe might be. I\u2019m not a dogmatic materialist. I mean, I think you\u2019re on firm ground if you want to claim to be a materialist or a physicalist in science. But I\u2019ve always been open on the question of psychic phenomenon and rebirth and all that stuff is something that I think is worth patiently entertaining, right? But some of it, I mean, certainly psychic phenomenon would be among the most easily tested things we could ever get our hands on in the lab. I mean, so it really is a\u2026 it should be a concern for anyone who wants to believe in many of these things that they have not been demonstrated in the lab.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, something like telepathy, say, I mean and this is an experience many of us think we\u2019ve had. You knew exactly what this person was going to say, or you knew who was calling. This person hasn\u2019t called you in four years and the phone rang and you immediately thought of them, and that was them lo and behold, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

We know many things about this. One, we know we\u2019re very bad judges of the probability of events, and we know that a very low probability of events happen all the time. There are one in a billion probability of events that are going to happen to you today, and you\u2019re just not going to notice them as some super low probability. And we know we keep score really badly. We know in this case, you\u2019re not keeping score of all the times the phone rings and you don\u2019t know who\u2019s calling and you just pick it up and then you find out who\u2019s calling. You\u2019re noticing the one time in a month where you knew who was calling. And the truth is, you don\u2019t know that many people. There are not that many people who call in the first place. And so there are ways that we just know we\u2019re bad consumers of these kinds of synchronicities and coincidences, and we\u2019re readily given to superstitious interpretations. So we should be skeptical of our impulses there.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as I was saying, a phenomenon like this, like telepathy in particular, should be absolutely trivially easy to test in the lab. So the fact that some psychic hasn\u2019t strolled into Harvard and gotten their powers demonstrated by legitimate scientists, the fact that when you ask them they are disinclined to do this because they would not want to\u2026 it would be selling out, they wouldn\u2019t want to so crassly demonstrate their powers in such a context. All of that is just an obvious dodge. And my feeling is is that if anyone had these powers in any significance, if it wasn\u2019t just a tiny departure from randomness over the course of thousands of trials, which is the laboratory result that some people claim shows that people have these powers to some degree, if someone really had them, if someone really could read your mind, could really tell the future, you could really remotely view things clairvoyantly, right, they would recognize that they would do humanity a lot of good by demonstrating these powers because it would completely change our worldview, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

So if your favorite guru, whether it\u2019s Sathya Sai Baba, or anyone else really had these powers, it\u2019s just a lie to say that it was just spiritually uncouth for them not to demonstrate them in a lab, but they could demonstrate them for their credulous devotees in India where nobody\u2019s really thinking as clearly about this situation and everyone\u2019s desperate to believe. So that, so while I really am open-minded about these things, many of these things are eminently testable, and the fact that they haven\u2019t been shown to exist is the dog that didn\u2019t bark spiritually here. I mean, it should be of concern to people who believe these things.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there are other things to point out. Someone who thinks they\u2019ve seen a ghost, they woke up in the middle of the night and someone was standing at the foot of their bed, right? Well, we know that sleep is associated with all kinds of unusual experiences, and we know, I mean, obviously the most common one is just dreaming, which we all do or most of us do most nights, whether we remember it or not. And we know from dreaming that our brains, our minds have the power to fully create whole worlds for us and people them with apparently sentient beings who act totally autonomously. When you\u2019re in a dream and you don\u2019t know it\u2019s a dream and you\u2019re talking to your dead friend, you don\u2019t know what he\u2019s going to say, you feel like you\u2019re talking to your friend, you\u2019re every bit as surprised by the words coming out of his mouth as you are in the waking state with a living person.<\/span><\/p>\n

So we know that it\u2019s possible for the mind to fully fabricate that kind of situation. And so if someone told me that they woke up at 3:00 a.m. and there was someone standing, there was an ethereal presence at the foot of their bed and that it said something interesting and then wandered away is the best explanation of that, that there really are ghosts or spirits or genies or et cetera, or is it that the mind has the power to superimpose that dream-like phenomenology onto the waking state or the seeming waking state, or maybe this person was just having a dream. I\u2019ve had all kinds of weird dreams, and I\u2019ve had\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Sure\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> Dreams where I was having a conversation like this, and I didn\u2019t know I was dreaming. I had a dream where I was trying to convince people that this might be a dream that we\u2019re all in, and I didn\u2019t know I was dreaming. The people I\u2019m talking to are looking at me like, \u201cYeah, yeah, we get it. This might be a dream.\u201d And then I woke up, right? I mean, dreams are actually states quite analogous to psychosis. I mean, you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re about unless it\u2019s a lucid dream. You don\u2019t know where you are. You don\u2019t know who anyone is. I mean, you\u2019re totally mad, really. And yet this is a normal state of perfectly normal brains every night of the week for hours, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Sure\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SH:<\/b> It\u2019s quite amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Well, you made a bold prediction, Sam, about how there are going to be robots that look and seem very human-like in not so many years, and I\u2019m going to go ahead and make a bold prediction that I think we\u2019re going to have a lot more science related to subtle energy healing, subtle body phenomenon, psychic phenomenon. I think it\u2019s coming. So let\u2019s see. I\u2019m going to leave it open like that, but I\u2019m going to give myself a whole decade for all the necessary fundraising and testing to come forward to impress you. We\u2019ll see.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Here\u2019s what I want to know from you. You said the most important thing from your perspective is this discovery of consciousness, this dimension of our experience. I\u2019d like to know from you how that has changed you, if you will, and how you vacillate within yourself from having that connection to that unalloyed, untarnishable state and then being like, oh, Sam identified with his thoughts and emotions person? Where you are in that process and how this discovery has changed you?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Well, it\u2019s changed me quite fundamentally because it\u2019s given me a perspective on my suffering and my wellbeing. I mean, just what it means to live a good life, how I depart from that experience moment by moment. It\u2019s just given a totally different perspective on the deepest questions of how to be happy in this world. And it\u2019s a perspective that it just would be impossible to have by merely thinking about it, by merely having new beliefs or new opinions or new thoughts to lay over your experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It\u2019s not a matter of believing anything. It\u2019s a kind of skill on some level. It\u2019s being able to pay attention in a certain way and notice something very specific about the nature of all conscious experience of experience in any moment, whether it\u2019s just an ordinary experience of just having a conversation like this or you\u2019re checking your email, or if it\u2019s just a peak experience, I mean an experience you might have on psychedelics or in some altered state. This is always there to be noticed. And again, this is the fact that there\u2019s really no self in the middle of experience. There\u2019s no thinker of our thoughts. There\u2019s no one to which it all refers. There\u2019s just experience. There\u2019s just this openness in which everything is appearing, and as such, there\u2019s no problem with it really, the moment you notice that you\u2019re noticing what it\u2019s like when you\u2019re no longer grasping at what\u2019s pleasant or pushing what\u2019s unpleasant away, so there\u2019s an equanimity intrinsic to that recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So it\u2019s given me this capacity to the moment I notice I\u2019m suffering, the moment I notice that I\u2019m contracting, I\u2019m unhappy, I\u2019m reacting negatively to experience, it gives me an alternative to the usual, to the default response, which is to locate the source of my pain and unhappiness out in the world. So somebody does something that annoys me and I\u2019m reacting to that person as this unpleasant stimulus. Someone cuts me off in traffic or someone says something that I find offensive, whatever it is, and I begin to contract and react, and I\u2019m disposed as everyone is just now begin to figure out how to rearrange the world so as to make me happier. There is an alternative. And the alternative is to recognize that the actual source of your suffering in that moment is you, is something you\u2019re doing. It\u2019s something you\u2019re not seeing. It\u2019s something you\u2019re now collapsing into. It\u2019s almost like a muscular contraction. It\u2019s like you\u2019re pinching yourself and you\u2019re wondering why you\u2019re uncomfortable.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So the meditative journey really is one of becoming more and more sensitive to that process and more and more honest about it, and to relinquish that reactivity sooner and sooner so that the half-life of one\u2019s departures from a feeling of wellbeing, the half-life of one\u2019s anxiety and anger and impatience and whatever the negative emotion is, becomes much, much shorter because the moment it arises, it becomes a kind of mindfulness alarm, and then you are beginning to punctuate it with just moments of clear seeing of just which breaks the link between thought and you\u2019re no longer thinking about what a jerk that guy is, you\u2019re just noticing the physiology of anger and patience begin to dissipate.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The non-dual side, I mean, what I just described there is even possible with a dualistic practice of mindfulness, you can still feel like a subject in the head and pay scrupulous attention to the arising of thought and the arising of emotion and delink them by just patiently noticing them and let the negative mental state just dissipate on its own. And so that is a kind of superpower you can get even when you\u2019re practicing dualistically and you still feel like you are the meditator doing something. The non-dual part allows you to recognize that consciousness is free even before the character of experience has changed. So even before the physiology of anger has dissipated, the moment you recognize there\u2019s no center to it, there\u2019s just this condition of freedom, you\u2019re free of self, you\u2019re free of a problem, and yes, the anger will dissipate again over the course of seconds, but your freedom there is no longer a contingent upon it\u2019s dissipating, right? It\u2019s just energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I mean, this actually is where Tantra, which I\u2019ve never explicitly practiced, but which comes in here, I mean Tantra, as you probably know, is a system of practice where you begin to use these energy states, even classically negative energy states like anger, you just contact them as raw energy and they on this account begin to arise as bliss. I mean, you can begin to just contact the pure energetics of even negative emotions and use that, bend them back into meditative energy and expand your mind that way. Well, a non-dual recognition essentially accomplishes that where it\u2019s just energy. Like the anger, the moment the center drops out doesn\u2019t have the psychological implications it had a moment before and it is just energy and there\u2019s nothing to do with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So as to how often I vacillate between these kinds of conditions where I\u2019m recognizing consciousness without center or I\u2019m getting identified with thought and reacting and contracting, this happens thousands of times a day. I mean, I\u2019m certainly not stable in this recognition of non-duality, but the crucial change in me that happened once I started practicing this way, and this was after some years of practicing dualistically with some real diligence, I mean I probably spent about a year on silent retreat mostly on vipassana retreats in increments of three months to two months, to one month, to one week. I mean, I did lots of retreats of various lengths, again, mostly in a vipassana context. Even after a year of doing that, I still wasn\u2019t able to practice this way.<\/span><\/p>\n

    I mean, it wasn\u2019t until I spent some time explicitly getting non-dual teachings in the Dzogchen tradition with some great lamas in Nepal and I spent some time with some Advaita teachers in India. I mean, just for me, Dzogchen was the crucial piece, I mean and specifically the teachings I got with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who\u2019s this, really just the most wonderful meditation teacher I really have ever met, just in terms of the skill with which he pointed out the nature of mind. It wasn\u2019t until I got those teachings that I could say this about my practice, which is that any moment of mindfulness for me is now synonymous with noticing the illusoriness of the self or the centralistness of consciousness or non-dual awareness, depending on how you want to describe it, or the Buddhist concept of emptiness, right? I mean, these are slightly different concepts, but they\u2019re naming the same experience from a different angle.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Whereas before, when I was practicing mindfulness, again, even very diligently, I mean on a silent retreat where you\u2019re doing nothing but you\u2019re in silence for months and you\u2019re doing nothing but practice and you\u2019re just trying to link one moment of mindfulness to the next, it was true of me to say for most of that time that I could be mindful in a way that was not delivering this insight into the illusoriness of the self. I still felt like a subject paying attention to objects. I still felt like there was somebody meditating. And so the hallmark for me of non-dualism is for your mindfulness to become synonymous with the cutting through of that illusion. And it just becomes the\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

    So that\u2019s the first time in practice where one can honestly say that one doesn\u2019t have a goal any longer in practice, one\u2019s not trying to get anywhere because in each moment of mindfulness, you really are arriving at the goal. And in Dzogchen they talk about taking the goal as the path. And in my view, in my experience, that\u2019s not just hype, that really is what differentiates that kind of practice from other styles of practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> I\u2019d like to learn more specifically, if you\u2019re able to share it with us, what happened when you were studying with Tulku Urgyen because you wrote about it and you said, \u201cThe instruction I received from him was without question the most important thing I\u2019ve ever been explicitly taught by another human being.\u201d And I wonder if you can say more about this cutting through and the technique specifically that you learned.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah. Well, so in the Dzogchen tradition, which your listeners might be familiar with, it is one of the strands of non-dual teaching within Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Mahamudra is the other. And Madhyamaka is a philosophical system there, which gets at the same condition of emptiness from another side. But I think you can spend a lot of time studying that philosophy without getting the point. Dzogchen is often described and held as a secret teaching within Vajrayana Buddhism.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And the reasons for that secrecy are, I mean there\u2026 It\u2019s an approach to teaching that I don\u2019t necessarily agree with. And to some degree in my own work, I have jailbroken the Dzogchen teachings to some degree, certainly in Waking Up, the app, I mean I give my version of these teachings. And again, I do think the same thing is being taught by non-dual teachers in the Indian tradition, the Advaita tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When I spent time with Poonjaji who, I mean you may have spoken to some of his teachers who are teaching his style of inquiry, he was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi who was teaching this sort of thing, I studied with Ramesh Balsekar very briefly and he was a disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj who was certainly teaching this sort of thing. Again, people get misled by some of the superficial differences in the language. In the Advaita tradition, people talk about sometimes they talk about the Self, capital S, and assert the reality of this grander self, and that is just anathema in any kind of Buddhist language game, right? I mean, Buddhism is all about the illusoriness of the self and non-self and emptiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So there\u2019s an emphasis on negation in Buddhism, and in the Advaita tradition, there can be a kind of assertion of some spiritual reality. And these two things can seem quite discordant, but I don\u2019t in fact think they are. But what I will say is that there are differences in the methods, there are differences in the conceptual clarity in various traditions, and there are even differences within a tradition between the ways in which various teachers teach it to the same view. And in my experience, Tulku Urgyen was really unique in the clarity with which he did this. And I can\u2019t just totally recapitulate what he said, but\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Not what he said, but what you heard.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah, I mean, the crucial principles are that\u2026 So I guess one more thing I should say by way of preliminary throat clearing. In the Tibetan tradition there it\u2019s taught that you have to do a lot of preliminary practice to prepare yourself to be ready to receive the Dzogchen teachings. They don\u2019t just teach it to anyone who walks through the door. And again, they have reasons for this, and I am not sure I agree with all the reasons, but one reason is clearly valid, which is, you need a modicum of concentration and mindfulness to be able to do what is being asked of you and to pay attention in the requisite way so as to have the necessary insight.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So if you haven\u2019t practiced enough mindfulness, if you haven\u2019t done enough meditation of some kinds to teach you the difference between being lost in thought and paying attention to something, whatever it is, a mantra, a visualization, whatever, if you haven\u2019t exercised that muscle enough, well then when a Dzogchen master of whatever skill is pointed out to you, you\u2019re just going to be confused. You\u2019re just not going to be able to thread the needle you\u2019re being asked to thread.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And the analogy I have given many times to people in a Western secular scientific context is to noticing the optic blind spot. This is something that most high school kids at some point gets shown. And so almost everyone is familiar with this. The blind spot is highly non-obvious. You can\u2019t see it until you\u2019re shown how to see it. And this little experiment entails a piece of paper where you draw a small fixation cross and then a dot to one side, and you close one eye, and then you move the paper closer to your eye, to the point where while staring at the fixation cross the dot on the periphery of your visual field disappears. And as you interrogate this, as you move the paper back and forth, you can assure yourself that this is not an illusion, you\u2019re not hallucinating, you can play with this for an hour and a half if need be, but you can assure yourself that, OK, there really is this area in the retina where you\u2019re not getting any conscious information because the dot keeps vanishing.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And this is just a curious thing to discover. Doesn\u2019t have any great implications for how we live our lives, obviously. But it\u2019s there to be discovered, and yet it\u2019s overlooked routinely by everyone. And obviously there are many people on earth who don\u2019t know anything about this and will never see it. And what\u2019s interesting is that it\u2019s when you think about how far away is this insight, when you\u2019re showing the blind spot and you\u2019re doing this practice of just moving the paper and noticing the dot vanish and reemerge, it is true to say that the insight is right on the surface. It\u2019s almost too close to you to be seen, right? It\u2019s not far away. It\u2019s not deep within, it\u2019s not this profound journey up to the mountaintop to get there, right? It\u2019s right on the surface of things, it\u2019s literally overlooked, right? It\u2019s not deep.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So there\u2019s an analogous structure to this insight into non-duality. We are, and this is one reason why I\u2019ve been so critical, at least in certain contexts of dualistic practice, it\u2019s not to say it\u2019s not a necessary starting point for many of us, but it\u2019s a misleading starting point for virtually all of us. We are led by the way we\u2019re training our attention, whether it\u2019s in a Buddhist vipassana context or in any other. We\u2019re led to believe that spiritual progress and the meditative journey entails this search for subtlety. You\u2019re going deep within, you\u2019re getting closer and closer to increasingly refined objects of attention, and you get this sense, whether it\u2019s explicitly stated or it\u2019s just implicitly absorbed, you get this sense that freedom is elsewhere. You are at the base of the mountain and freedom really is at the top, and you have to schlep up the mountain, right? There\u2019s no way you\u2019re going to instantly be there. And so that\u2019s where people start and that\u2019s where people stay sometimes for their whole lives, either spiritually.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And so Dzogchen teaching and this pointing out of the nature of mind cuts through all of that. And again, it is not unique to Dzogchen it\u2019s just, in my experience it was uniquely precise in the way it was communicated. But when I\u2019d read Zen teachings or when I read Advaita or when I read even other Buddhist teachings that are often traditionally dualistic, but when the great masters of those teachings talk, I hear the same kind of pointing out, but it lacks a certain kind of precision, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

    And the one crucial thing that Tulku Urgyen emphasized was that when you look for what\u2019s looking, when you try to turn attention upon itself, when you look for the looker, when you look for, to use Douglas Harding\u2019s framing, which I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever talked about Douglas on your podcast, but Douglas Harding was nominally Zen, but he was just this architect who came up with his own spiritual exercises, he talked about having no head. You look for your head and you fail to find it. Where your head is supposed to be, if you just look, you\u2019ll see that there\u2019s just the world. There\u2019s just this openness in which everything\u2019s appearing. So when you look, when you turn attention upon yourself and you try to find the subject, and in my experience this is easier to do with eyes open in the beginning, for reasons we could talk about, but it can be done with eyes opened or closed, when you look for the center of experience, it\u2019s in the first instant that you will see that it\u2019s not there.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This is not something you can do gradually. It\u2019s not something that can take a minute or even a full second. It really is the moment you turn, and the turning doesn\u2019t really ever get accomplished. It\u2019s a gesture that is in some sense impossible to make. I mean, it is the attempt to make it that can reveal that there\u2019s no center and there\u2019s nothing to find. The moment you look for yourself, you\u2019re looking at me now, you have a sense, you\u2019re behind your face looking out your eyes at across space and at me as an object. But if you look for what\u2019s looking while still looking at me, you look for what\u2019s looking, in the first instant of looking you might find that there\u2019s and perhaps only for an instant, this might only be true for half a second or less, there\u2019s this moment where your relationship to the object changes, where you have no relationship to the object because you are no longer behind your face. You\u2019re no longer a subject in relation to an object.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There\u2019s just this totality of appearance and there\u2019s no center to it, and you are identical to it, right? You\u2019re not on the edge of it looking in. You look for what is looking, and it\u2019s really brief. I mean, it\u2019s a finger snap. It\u2019s just in that first instant while you can still hear the echo of the finger snap, it\u2019s that instant of the fresh open consideration of what\u2019s there. Is there something to find? Is there one looking, or is there just this openness? Is there just this totality of energy and appearance?<\/span><\/p>\n

    So the crucial instruction, again, and I\u2019m just vomiting a lot of words at you, but this is just to indicate where a person can find this. It\u2019s the first moment of turning to look, right? And-<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Flash, feels like a flash.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> To me.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> And the more you sensitize yourself to the qualities of that flash, you\u2019re not trying to prolong it, you\u2019re not trying to hold onto it. The moment it\u2019s gone, the moment you find yourself lost in thought again or contracted back into the sense of self, well then just look again, right? It\u2019s just, you just look.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And in Dzogchen, there\u2019s this analogy to ringing a bell. You ring the bell just once. You just ring it once and let the natural duration of its tone dissipate, right? It\u2019ll have whatever half-life, whatever duration it has. You don\u2019t just keep hammering the bell to try to prolong the sound, right? You just ring it and just let that ring articulate the space of consciousness. Well, so you look and it lasts for however\u2026 so there\u2019s something to resolve here, I mean, in Dzogchen it\u2019s called resolving the view.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And there\u2019s some stage at which you have to grow confident in it. It\u2019s like, it\u2019s possible. And I think this is why many Dzogchen teachers or the tradition itself guard against just casting all of these pearls before a swine is because some people can even have this experience. They can look for what\u2019s looking. In Douglas Harding\u2019s world, they can look for their head and they can have this curious moment of noticing this openness. There\u2019s nothing to find. They have this feeling of, \u201cOh, I have no head.\u201d For a moment, they have this clear sense that they don\u2019t experience their head from the inside. There\u2019s just the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But because they haven\u2019t done enough practice, because they haven\u2019t put themselves on the path up the mountain for long enough to really\u2026 to have struggled and to have prepared themself for the moment where they can recognize that this is actually the answer to their spiritual questions, because they haven\u2019t posed the spiritual question in earnest, so when they\u2019re given this answer, it doesn\u2019t answer anything. So the liability there is that some people can walk away from even a genuine experience of this thinking, \u201cWell, that\u2019s just some kind of cocktail party trick. There\u2019s just nothing. It doesn\u2019t mean anything. It goes away after a second. What good is it,\u201d right? So that is a liability. And I think Douglas Harding talked about, I think at one point he said, \u201cThe voice of the devil says, so what?\u201d So there are people who have this experience who can say, so what?<\/span><\/p>\n

    And from a Dzogchen point of view, that really is a problem because it\u2019s like, then the door of the Dharma closes for them because they\u2019ve gotten what are ostensibly the most important secret teachings of the most esoteric tradition, and it just seemed like there was no there there, so what?. But if you\u2019re someone who has meditated, if you\u2019re someone who has struggled to understand how is it possible that the ego is an illusion, how does that make any sense, how is this notion of selflessness coherent at all, what could anyone mean by non-duality, right, I mean, if you\u2019ve struggled over that and you\u2019ve sat for hours and hours struggling to notice something worth noticing in your stream of being that could liberate you from your ordinary states of psychological suffering, well then when you glimpse this thing and begin to get used to it, then you can see that it meets actually all the spiritual tests that you would put to it? Then it actually does equalize experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Then in the middle of an acid trip, you can look into this and notice, OK, in some basic sense, this insight into centerless openness equalizes even the full pyrotechnic display of the psychedelic experience with very ordinary experiences, just the experience of having a conversation or driving a car, right? In some basic sense, the beatific vision on acid is not that different from just looking at your hand, the moment you can notice that there\u2019s no one looking, right? So there\u2019s this equalization across experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Anyway, I mean for me, the crucial insight was the necessary instantaneousness of the glimpse. And then that that glimpse is the thing you have to be mindful of. And it\u2019s really easy. Again, once I had this experience and once I was able to practice in this way, then I saw every other spiritual instruction I\u2019d ever been given as somehow fundamentally misleading. And the analogy I\u2019ve given for this is, imagine you are told that the goal of spiritual life is to recognize your own face. You want to see your own face clearly. And now I\u2019m going to give you a way to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

    You\u2019re going to walk up to a very still lake, and you\u2019re going to see your face in the water. But the instruction I give you is to look deeply into the water, right? Now, we all know that if you\u2019re going to see your face on the surface of the water, you got to look at the surface, right? And if your plane of focus is wrong, if you\u2019re told about all the fish and the rocks and the algae, right, that are fascinating, and you look deep into the water, you\u2019re looking right through the image of your face without seeing it, and you literally can\u2019t see it? If you\u2019re looking at the fish at the bottom, you cannot see your face.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And another analogy would be to be using a window as a mirror. You have a choice. You can look at your reflection on the surface of the window, or you can look through it into the house or out of the house at the rest of the world. If your plane of focus is wrong, you will not see it. And if your plane of focus is right, it takes no time to see it. There is no preliminary needed. You don\u2019t have to build up any momentum and the sense that you have to build momentum, the sense that there\u2019s a difference between all of the ethereal stuff you experience on retreat when you have a ton of concentration and your ordinary consciousness that is more fish at the bottom of the lake. That\u2019s more of the illusion that you\u2019re being taken in by dualistically.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And so I do view much of the instruction I got as a yogi for years by some of the best meditation teachers around as having been inadvertently but nonetheless fundamentally misleading on this point. I mean, there was something right on the surface to be seen and seen that that gives you the basis for a very different style of practice. And crucially, it\u2019s a style of practice that wherein there is no more logic of hope and fear or goal orientation to be moved by because you\u2019re not trying to get anywhere because the moment you look, you recognize there\u2019s no one on this journey. There\u2019s no other place to get to. There\u2019s just consciousness and its contents, and those two are indivisible, right? There\u2019s just this condition of appearances to which we\u2019re identical.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And so that\u2019s yeah, I mean, that was a very long-winded answer to your question, but I hope something was useful in there.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Very useful. And it\u2019s interesting, this notion of practicing in a headless way. I had heard an instruction from someone who\u2019s featured on the Waking Up app\u2014who\u2019s also a teacher we feature heavily at Sounds True\u2014Adyashanti, where he said, \u201cMeditate from the neck down.\u201d And this was something I heard when I was on retreat with him. And I practiced that way for a long time. And it wasn\u2019t so much about the visual experience of being headless, but of the somatic sense, and just that even tuned me into what you\u2019re saying about this headless path.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But OK, Sam, I have one more thing I want to ask you about, if it\u2019s OK?<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Go for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> And this is because it\u2019s important to me, which has to do with how consciousness without a center expresses itself ethically. And in your view, does it do so in a natural, spontaneous way without us having to go through and figure out our logical approach to wanting to create wellbeing for other people? Is there just this, I might call it quality of benevolence that is inherently emergent from consciousness, or do you not see it that way? Do we need to really figure out the implications of this action for this number of people in this social context, et cetera?<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Well, I think practically speaking, we do. I mean, whether or not the ultimate realization and stabilization of all of this gives you a perfectly ethically integrated mind and worldview, I mean I think I don\u2019t see why you would be a jerk if in a moment to moment way the illusoriness of the self was just always obvious. I think there\u2019s definitely something about emptiness and insight into selflessness that undercuts egocentricity by definition, but it doesn\u2019t give you knowledge of the world by definition. And knowledge really does have significant ethical implications. It doesn\u2019t tell you that you\u2019d be a bad parent not to put a seatbelt on your kid if you don\u2019t know what a seatbelt is, right? I mean, it is like if you-<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Sure\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> So it\u2019s just there are things we learn and that get enshrined in culture, and all of these changes accumulate. And I think all of these things really do represent moral progress and all of this progress is important.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And when you just look at what is going to be true of most of us as practitioners, most of us are still, no matter how much we practice, most of us are going to spend each day lost in the dreamscape of thought. And we\u2019re going to be thinking without clearly noticing that we\u2019re thinking. And in that respect, it matters what we think. Our attitudes matter, our beliefs matter, our opinions matter. How seriously we take all that matters. So I think there is something to work out at the conceptual level for most of us, even for the longest time. And certainly when you see all these great gurus who have behaved terribly with their students over the years, there\u2019s abundant evidence that culture and imperfect realization can be an engine of bad behavior given the right context, right? I mean, you take some of these Eastern teachers\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Sure\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Whether they\u2019re Hindu or Buddhist, I mean they come from systems, if not whole cultures that are effectively theocracies, right, and they have these hierarchical notions of power, and they\u2019ve got attitudes toward women that none of which really survive contact well with our current ethics.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And I think it would be wrong to say, and I\u2019ve said this many times, that every time I bring a teacher onto Waking Up, I tend to ask them a question about ethics and how they view the indiscretions of various teachers. So this is something that if someone\u2019s interested in this, basically every teacher I\u2019ve interviewed over at Waking Up and there\u2019s now been scores of them, I\u2019ve gotten their opinion on this topic, but my opinion is that it really does matter to have worked out in advance what you think the important ethical guardrails are for a well-lived life. And so to decide in advance that lying is a bad thing and that you don\u2019t want to do it unless in an emergency, right, that is some, maybe a stop on the continuum of violence, the Nazis show up at your door and you have Anne Frank in the attic, well, yeah, then you can lie and tell them she\u2019s not there, or you can also shoot them, right? I mean, there are things you can do because you\u2019re in extremis that you wouldn\u2019t normally do.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But generally speaking, if you\u2019ve worked out in advance that lying just needlessly destroys people\u2019s lives and contaminates relationships and ruins reputations, et cetera, and you\u2019re not going to do it, right, even when it\u2019s tempting, even when it might be thought of as a white lie by most people, if you\u2019ve done all of that work in advance, you are a very different person in all your moments of distraction and even perhaps in your moments of empty cognizance than you are if you hadn\u2019t done any of that and you\u2019re just making it up on the fly and just noticing how tempting it is or not to lie in a certain situation, and you haven\u2019t figured out that you\u2019re really wise to have a policy around lying, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

    And obviously, many of these gurus who came from the East who were by no means frauds, I mean, these are people who had real meditative insights and they really were certain kinds of spiritual athletes and they could produce insights and others, many of these guys and some gals clearly had no clear ethical commitment to honesty. And so they would lie in various circumstances. They\u2019d lie to cover up the fact that they\u2019re sleeping with some of their students or they\u2019d lie to cover up the fact that they misappropriated funds. And the lying is, when you see how lying works as a gateway to all other kinds of misbehavior, whether it\u2019s business fraud or infidelity in one\u2019s relationships or whatever it is, I mean it\u2019s, the moment you close the door to that, you have simplified your life radically, ethically.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So yeah, I think as much as I would like to say that it certainly would be nice if there was a really tight coupling between meditative insight and ethical probity, I just don\u2019t see it. I don\u2019t see it in myself. I certainly don\u2019t see it in the lives of some of these great masters who-<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> You don\u2019t see it in yourself that the more time that you spend in, I\u2019ll just say \u201cconsciousness,\u201d to use that word, that it purifies you in a certain sense and that if you find yourself lying or acting unethically, it\u2019s hard, things are gunked up when it comes to using that instantaneous breakthrough method, it\u2019s not quite as available? You haven\u2019t found that?<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Well, no. I mean, it cuts both ways. So for instance, so I arrived at my views about lying before I had any significant practice in the Dharma. So I think you can independently understand how disruptive lying is to your personal life and to our public lives and decide that you want to not do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But from the side of meditative insight, yes, you can notice that the impulse to lie invariably it\u2019s coming from this contraction into self, right? Because when you look at what a lie is, it\u2019s almost diagnostic of being taken in by the illusion of self. Because here you and I are talking, and if I\u2019m tempted to lie to you, it\u2019s based on the fact that there\u2019s something that I know that I don\u2019t want you to know. I want to misrepresent my beliefs about the world so as to change your beliefs in a desired way. And it\u2019s very self and other, right? It\u2019s just intrinsically self and other, and it\u2019s based on some paranoia about not wanting certain things about me to be known, say, or I\u2019m trying to manipulate you to gain something in the future, it\u2019s just, it is a\u2026 The impulse to lie is almost by definition of this born of this contraction into self.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So let\u2019s say now I\u2019m a non-dual mindfulness yogi and I can notice this, I have no policy about lying, I\u2019ve just been given non-dual mindfulness as a practice, but I haven\u2019t really considered lying as an ethical problem, and now I\u2019m just wandering through life, bouncing around in various relationships and noticing occasionally the impulse to lie, but I notice all kinds of other impulses, I\u2019m noticing the fact that I want another scoop of chocolate ice cream, I want to watch television, there\u2019s all kinds of things I want. And now I don\u2019t want you to know something about me, or I want you to think something that isn\u2019t true and I see that impulse arise. And yes, it would be possible to be mindful of that early enough so as to short circuit it, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

    But because there\u2019s so much you\u2019re not going to catch with your mindfulness for the longest time, even as an advanced practitioner of mindfulness, a lot of lying and a lot of chocolate ice cream, many things you might regret is going to get through. Whereas, if you just had a filter in advance, if you just knew, wait a minute, I\u2019m allergic to chocolate ice cream, I can\u2019t eat dairy, I\u2019m never eating chocolate ice cream again, this just gives me a stomach ache, if you decided that in advance, well then there\u2019s no war at the grocery store that you have to keep winning and maybe losing again and again and again for the rest of your life. And so it is with lying, if you\u2019ve decided in advance that you don\u2019t lie, it\u2019s just not\u2026 if the temptation comes up, you have a real bulwark against it and it\u2019s not vulnerable to the vagaries of your imperfect mindfulness.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And I would say also that it does cut both ways in that you could also be the kind of person who has various ethical lapses, you harm people with your lives, say, or your philandering, and it\u2019s on the other side that your insight into emptiness kicks in. I mean, your regret over having harmed people is also just a story you\u2019re telling yourself in this moment. It\u2019s just a thought, you can let go of that. Why not just rapaciously gratify all of your desires and manipulate everybody and be a proper\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Does that work? Does that work? That wouldn\u2019t work for me. It wouldn\u2019t work for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Well, I mean it works because it is true to say it is just a thought. Now, I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s not a thought\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> I know, but there\u2019s like, it hurts. It hurts. And there\u2019s a\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah. But so does\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s, I can feel\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> But there are many other thoughts that hurt. There might\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Yeah, sure.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> I mean, it\u2019s like the loss of a loved one\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> You think about how much you miss that person. At a certain point, you\u2019re able to break the spell and notice that there\u2019s space around all of this, space around any thought and any\u2026 the kindling of the negative emotion. I mean, and some of these emotions are bittersweet. I\u2019m not saying all sadness is negative. I mean, you\u2019d want to feel, it\u2019s like, do you really want to be totally without sadness when someone you love dies? Is that your aspiration? Do you just want to feel like today is as good as any other day, that your spouse dies and 15 minutes later you\u2019re just as happy as you\u2019ve ever been? That\u2019s not the goal I think, of anyone\u2019s spiritual practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But yeah, I mean it\u2019s true that, yeah, I mean I think that ultimately I think this is healthy, provided you\u2019re actually a good person with a real ethical framework. I don\u2019t think you want to be continually lacerated by your regrets or your sense of shame for having done something awful. I mean, you want to be able\u2026 To be able forgive yourself, much less anyone else in the world, you have to be able to let go of the past. So I mean, if you bring to mind something you\u2019ve done in the past that you recognize to have been deeply unskillful, that you just feel like you can\u2019t believe what an asshole you were or just how lacking in compassion you were, and you know that if you had a video of that moment in your life and you could replay it, it would just be appalling to see that you were that person.<\/span><\/p>\n

    All of us have moments like that in our lives. I mean not all of us are murderers, obviously, but all of us have moments that we really regret and are right to regret in the sense that we wouldn\u2019t want to be that person in the future. We want to have learned from that moment of bad parenting or just jealousy\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Sure\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> In a relationship or something. We want to learn from that and never do that again. And so that\u2019s the utility of psychological regret and the psychological pain associated with it in my view, is that it\u2019s a learning signal. You want to learn that lesson, but having learned it, you really do want to be able to move on. You want to be able to forgive yourself. You want to be able to have compassion for yourself, and you want to be able to cut through to the genuine emptiness that precedes all of that, wherein there\u2019s really no place for anything to land, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

    I mean, it\u2019s just, we\u2019re all going to die. It\u2019s all going to be over, right? It\u2019s like, there\u2019s no reason to be thinking about the thing that happened four years ago that you deeply regret. You have to let go of it, and to be a better person in this moment you have to let go of it, and you deserve to be that free and better person in this moment, whatever happened in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

    So I\u2019m just saying that, yeah, it\u2019s conceivable to me that you could have someone like Ch\u00f6gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was a brilliant teacher, I never studied with him, but he was a\u2026 judging from the books and the occasional tapes I\u2019ve seen, he was a legitimately brilliant teacher, and I have no doubt he understood absolutely everything I\u2019ve said in this conversation experientially very deeply and perhaps much more deeply than I\u2019ve understood it, right? I mean, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s hard to compare, but I have no reason to think he was a fraud. But he acted like a total madman ethically in various moments. And he was an alcoholic and he was a mess. And his students should be embarrassed by a lot of that and shouldn\u2019t cover for it. And they should be honest about the implications of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And one of the implications is insight into emptiness at that level isn\u2019t good enough to solve every problem we want to solve in life. I mean, it isn\u2019t good enough, it doesn\u2019t give you enough wisdom to form a human organization wherein people are reliably getting their interests served and being made happy. No, it\u2019s a form to an organization where you have a successor who has AIDS, who\u2019s sleeping with dozens of other students. And because the main guru knows nothing about biology, he thinks there\u2019s no way he\u2019s going to pass that AIDS along to his\u2026 he is not going to pass the HIV virus along to his students, right? Because no one in the group knows enough about that. It\u2019s the \u201880s and everybody\u2019s dumb, and they\u2019ve got magical beliefs and he gives some innocent person AIDS, right? That\u2019s embarrassing at a minimum. And there\u2019s no one who\u2019s in that lineage who should be hesitating to acknowledge the dysfunction of all of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And in my view, simply being able to liberate thoughts to just break your identification with thought isn\u2019t enough because it doesn\u2019t teach you about how the world works. It doesn\u2019t teach you about virology, right? If you don\u2019t know the mechanics of AIDS transmission before you recognize emptiness, you\u2019re not going to know it after you recognize emptiness, right? It\u2019s an additional piece of knowledge that you either have or you don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And I think we want the best of both worlds. We want both individually and collectively, we want the ability to use knowledge to improve human life in all the ways that it can be improved and to cure diseases, to build economic systems that are not vulnerable to collapse, that don\u2019t have perverse incentives that cause good people to behave like psychopaths. We want to improve our world, and there\u2019s a lot that we have to know, and much of which we don\u2019t yet know about how to do that. And spiritual insight into emptiness is just one piece. But it is true that I think it is personally and perhaps collectively, I mean it might be the most important piece. Personally it is definitely the most important piece that I know about, but there\u2019s more to do. It\u2019s a more complicated game to play than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Sam, I have so enjoyed talking with you. Honestly, both preparing for this conversation and reading your book <\/span>Waking Up<\/span><\/i> and several articles, and watching other podcasts with you, and then having this conversation, several times I had the experience\u2014I\u2019ll just describe what it feels like\u2014of something like getting bigger. I don\u2019t know, Oprah calls it her \u201caha moments.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s exactly an aha moment, but it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, now I see this thing that I didn\u2019t previously see,\u201d and it really matters and is actually a true delight and enriching.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Nice. Nice.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> So I just want to thank you so much and also recommend to our Sounds True friends, to check out the Waking Up app and the <\/span>Making Sense<\/span><\/i> podcast and your books, and to thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah, thank you. Great to meet you.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> Thanks for your boldness and bravery, and I hope we have more chances to interact in the months, years ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    SH:<\/b> Yeah, until next time.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    TS:<\/b> And if you\u2019d like to watch <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> on video and participate in the aftershow\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"class_list":["post-21706","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nCutting Through To Consciousness Without A Center - Transcript<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read the full transcript from this Sounds True conversation with Cutting Through To Consciousness Without A Center. 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