The Rich Roll Podcast - Annaka Harris On Consciousness

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

What is consciousness? How does it arise? And why does it exist? We take ‘experience' for granted. But the very existence of consciousness raises profound questions: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? How are we able to think about this? And why should we? Our guide for today's philosophic and scientific exploration of these mysteries is Annaka Harris. An editor and consultant for science writers specializing in neuroscience and physics, Annaka is the author of the children's book I Wonder, a collaborator on the Mindful Games Activity Cards, by Susan Kaiser Greenland, and a volunteer mindfulness teacher for the Inner Kids organization. Annaka's work has appeared in The New York Times and all of her guided meditations and lessons for children are available on the Waking Up app, the digital meditation platform created by her husband Sam Harris — the renown author, public intellectual, blogger, and podcast host. Annaka’s latest book — which recently hit the New York Times bestseller list and provides the focus for today’s conversation — is entitled, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. A must-read for any and all curious about one of the Universe's great mysteries, it's a brief yet mind-bending read that challenges our assumptions about the nature, origin and purpose of consciousness. Equal parts nerdy and fun, this is a deeply profound conversation that tackles the very nature of consciousness itself — and what it means to be a living being having ‘an experience'. We discuss how Annaka became interested in this field and the path undertaken to writing this book. Parsing instinct from scientific fact, we deconstruct our assumptions about consciousness and grapple with its essential nature — what is consciousness exactly? And where does it physically reside? We discuss meditation and artificial intelligence. We dive into plant consciousness. We explore panpsychism (a theory I quite fancy). And we muse about the role of spirituality in scientific inquiry. All told, this tackles the current limits of science and human understanding and leaves us wondering, is it possible to truly understand everything? The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/annakaharris460 (please subscribe!) An intellectual delight from start to finish, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Annaka and I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich

So challenging intuitions is something that I think is incredibly interesting, and it's a very important part of the scientific process, which I think most people know, but they don't really think about or realize. That every time we make a scientific breakthrough or understand reality at a more fundamental level or reach a deeper truth about the nature of reality, that always requires that we challenge our intuitions, at the very least. Sometimes we have to completely let go of intuitions that are actually giving us false information about reality. Basically, everything that matters to us, any ethical question, it has to do with consciousness. If we're talking about an unconscious system, we don't have any ethical obligations towards them. We're not worried about them. We don't have to think about suffering.

All of suffering happens in consciousness. And so the difference is everything. If we brought in some advanced AI that looked like another human being who just came in, was introduced to us, if the scientist who brought this robot in said, don't worry, this robot's not conscious, it's everything that matters in terms of mattering. I mean, if this being starts to suffer in any way, if we think they're having an experience, we want to help it. That's Annika Harris, this week on The Ret Roll Podcast Hey everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening?

My name is Rich Roll, I'm your host, this is my podcast Welcome or welcome back Today, my guest is Annika Harris Annika is an editor and consultant for science writers specializing in neuroscience and physics. She is the author of the children's book, I Wonder. And she's a volunteer mindfulness teacher for the Inner Kids organization. She also happens to be the wife of author, public intellectual, blogger, podcast host Sam Harris. wife of author, public intellectual, blogger, podcast host Sam Harris, and is a contributor to his Waking Up Meditation app, which I highly recommend everybody check out.

And her latest book, a New York Times bestseller, and the focus of today's conversation is entitled Conscious, A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. to the fundamental mystery of the mind. And it is quite the compelling mind-bending read, which really challenges our assumptions about the nature, origin, and purpose of consciousness, one of the great mysteries of the universe. It's a fantastic conversation. It's all coming up in a couple few, but first.

It's all coming up in a couple few, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at

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struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved

ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Annika, so this is a really great conversation. It's deep, it's nerdy, it's profound, at times mind-blowing, but also just really fun. We talked about many things.

Human consciousness, what is it, and where does it physically reside? We discussed how Annika got into the study of consciousness and writing this book about it. We talk about meditation, artificial intelligence, plant consciousness. Yes, this is a thing. Something called panpsychism, which is really a mind blower and why it's a taboo subject in science. We discussed the limits of science and human understanding. In other words, is it even possible to know everything? And many other related topics. I really enjoyed this conversation

and hope you do as well. So this is me and Annika Harris. Annika, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Annika, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. I have to say, before I read your book, I listened to your interview, your appearance on your husband's podcast. Right. And it's so funny because he says, welcome to the podcast, and then you just start giggling. Right.

And then he says, so Annika. You probably remember it better than I do. Tell me about the book. And then you just go, really? Like, that's the question you're gonna ask? And I just immediately felt like, oh, I'm all in on Anika. I was like, you're just like taking the piss out of him. I thought that was fantastic.

Thanks. So- I'm glad you saw it that way. Yeah. And I love the book. Congratulations on it, making the New York Times bestseller list. That's very cool. Thanks. And I'm excited book. Congratulations on it, making the New York Times bestseller list. That's very cool.

Thanks. And I'm excited to talk to you. This is a fascinating subject. Yeah, I think so. A subject, the more that you think about it, the more sort of amazing and wonderful and mystifying it becomes, right? Yeah, yeah. So before we kind of delve into consciousness, why don't we contextualize this a little bit?

Like how did you get interested in this field? I also, I just wanted to ask you though, is this something you were interested in before you read my book or was it, have you been thinking about it since reading it? Well- I asked just because there's kind of the category of people who have just been fascinated with it always

and then everyone seems to become fascinated with it once they learn a little bit. It's impossible to not be fascinated by it once you start to learn a little bit about it. Right. I would say that I have an interest in it that is longstanding, although I don't know that it rose to the level of, you know. Obsession like mine. It's not that. Right. But through my journeys in addiction recovery and then being introduced to meditation and yoga and various spiritual practices, it's certainly become more and more interesting to me.

Yeah, yeah. So actually I became interested in meditation, I think, mostly because of my fascination with consciousness, but they're obviously related. So as I said, it was a lifelong fascination. It's something I've just always been interested in and as I got older, read a lot about. And then for the last almost 15 years, I've been working with scientists who write for the general public. I've been doing mostly editing, but some coaching for TED Talks and things like that. And so I got actually deeper into the neuroscience and I basically have just for my, because of my own interest, been taking

notes all of this time for myself. And a few, maybe like two and a half years ago, I started really formally writing, not really for any purpose except to think through my own thoughts because I was interested. And I felt like the topic is so complex, I needed to do some writing just to sort out for myself where I was with all of it and what I thought could be true. So my book is really the science and philosophy of consciousness. And I tried to make it as accessible as possible, which was really the main goal. which was really the main goal. And I am focused on kind of consciousness, what the most fundamental aspect or consciousness in the most fundamental sense

and why it's so deeply mysterious, why it's so difficult for neuroscientists to study it, why it just always has been perplexing to scientists. So I walk the reader through what I think are some of the most interesting theories and research in consciousness studies, but this is all kind of in the context of challenging our intuitions about what consciousness is. Yeah. It's less about drawing any specific conclusions rather than it is about, It's less about drawing any specific conclusions rather than it is about let's confront what we think it is and deconstruct that a little bit to make us realize that it's so much more complex and vast and confounding. Yeah, and awe-inspiring and, yeah, one of the great mysteries.

So, yeah, so I kind of, part of me just wanted to spread that, the idea that this is one of the great mysteries and if you haven't discovered it yet you know it's like it's as it's as fun to contemplate as um the idea of black holes or the you know the beginning of the universe or you know all of the things that we that we pretty easily understand are great mysteries and interesting to contemplate from black holes all the way down to particle physics. Right. Yeah. And that this actually fits in with some of the mysteries that pop up there as well. So yeah, so challenging intuitions is something that I think is incredibly interesting and it's a very important part of the scientific process, which I think most people know, And it's a very important part of the scientific process, which I think most people know, but they don't really think about or realize that every time we make a scientific breakthrough or understand reality at a more fundamental level or reach a deeper truth about the nature of reality, that always requires that we challenge our intuitions. At the very least. Sometimes we have to completely

let go of intuitions that are actually giving us false information about reality. So this is true in everything from understanding that the earth is a sphere and not flat, as our senses lead us to believe. And this actually took a lot of science to get enough information to realize that our intuitions were wrong. There were celestial observations that convinced people over a long period of time because it's so counterintuitive, it's actually hard for people to get their minds around. Once the science is hard and fast, there's still an extraordinarily long lag period before people will still adopt it. Yes. And that's true for scientists. It's kind of like the scientists come first, but there's always this period of time

of wrestling with intuitions before the scientists first are kind of able to accept the evidence that has come in that's counter to our intuitions. And then the public obviously comes a little bit later, but that's, you know, the germ theory of diseases is another great example that I like to give that the idea that microscopic things that we can't interact with or sense at all can kill us is just something that took people a long time to see enough evidence for that they could accept it.

Scientists priding themselves on their objective lens are still, you know, held prisoner by our own cognitive biases. It feels so wrong, it can't be right. And then you finally get to a point where you start to shift your intuitions or you learn how to just not trust them in that particular area. In the case of consciousness, though, I feel like after reading this book, we're barely out of the starting gate. Yes. That was one of the main reasons I wrote this book. And really the goal of the book is to shake up our intuitions about consciousness as much as possible. Because I think if we're able to make progress, if we're able to, and the human brain I think is not capable of understanding everything. And so it may just fall into that category. But if we can understand consciousness better, it will require that we really challenge some strong intuitions that we have. And I think we're at that point with regard to consciousness.

I like that you say that the human brain isn't capable of understanding all of these things. I feel like there's a hubritic flair that kind of emanates across the scientific community that we can indeed understand everything. And perhaps that's true at some future point or with the advent of robots. I think it's an aspirational.

It's interesting because most science I know, and typically scientists more than other people I know, are much more willing to say they don't know something or we may never know, or this is deeply mysterious physicists in particular, but scientists in general, I think the messaging that comes out and I would partly fault the media, but I think it's also just a natural circumstance of the messaging. When we learn something new, it's kind of declared as if we know all these things

and everything is knowable. Right. But I don't actually think that's the stance of science. Well, particularly with physicists. I mean, the more you dive deep, it's just bananas. I mean, they're just throwing their hands up all the time. Yeah, it's like, how do you even begin to understand

what these things mean? I've been watching these wonderful videos of this physicist, Nima Arkani Hamed, who's brilliant and hard to understand, but I do my best. But he spends most of his time talking about how space-time is no longer something that we think is fundamental. That there's something that's more fundamental than space-time. Basically, at a fundamental level, there is no space and time. So yeah, I mean, we're never gonna get our minds around that, even if we can believe it.

Well, time is a focus of the book in the later chapters, and I wanna get to that. But let's start with, let's just define our terms here. Like when we're talking about consciousness, like what do we actually mean? So people do use the word many different ways, and it's confusing. The way I'm using the word in the book and what I think most people mean when they're talking about the mystery of consciousness, the consciousness in the most fundamental sense, is the closest word I can get to is experience. And I use Thomas Nagel's description of consciousness from his essay called What It Is Like to Be a Bat, which is a great

essay and I recommend from the 70s. And he says in that essay, an organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism. And that language for a lot of people, they kind of get it right away. I actually, for me, that happened. I knew exactly what he meant, but the language really isn't very precise and it can be confusing. So I usually follow that up with a series of questions, especially for someone who just says, I don't know what that means to say it's like something. And so I'll say, is there something that it's like to be you right now? And I run through this in the book. And of course, whoever I'm asking, we all know we're having an experience, right? We're conscious

and we're having an experience. And then is there something that it's like to be this book on the table? And our intuitive answer is no. And despite what's actually true in the world, the fact that we can imagine a collection of matter in the universe that entails no experience at all, the lights are not on from the inside, right? That's non-conscious material. And then a collection of matter in the universe, like your brain, where there's something that it's like to be that matter. That difference is consciousness, and it's how I'm using the word in the book. Although I do actually prefer experience.

I think it's slightly less confusing. Yeah, and I've been thinking about that definition over the last week, and I can't escape this sense that it's still reductive in the sense that we're looking at experience through our own experience, right? We're defining what experience means only through the lens of what it means

and feels like to be human. And it doesn't leave a lot of space or room for contemplating that experience could take another form that we can't relate to. Well, yes and no. No, I think, but that, so that's where I'm talking at a more fundamental level. So I think, and that's partly what I try to do in the book is strip away everything that

could be human. Like you could, you could radically change an experience, but the fact of any experience at all. And, you know, I get into these more far out theories, but even if you contemplate that, you know, a single cell or bacteria has some minimal level of experience that you and I could never imagine what it would like never imagine what it would be like. If there's any experience, even the most minimal experience you could imagine,

if there's something it's like, then that is consciousness. And that could be completely unlike any human experience. It's just whether it's completely dark and dead, whether the stars, there's no experience there at all. It's a collection of atoms that are doing their thing, but there's nothing that it feels like at all. Or there is.

Or there is, right, in a very binary way. Yeah, well, yes and no. I mean, it's in a binary way once you go from nothing to something. But then, of course, there's this gradation of what's possible in experience once you have experience. But yeah, I think you can say that it's either there or not. Right. The fact that it exists begs the question of the evolutionary advantage of having it at all. Like, what is the reason that we developed this? Yeah. As opposed to, you know, the sort of zombie example that you use in the book. Yeah, no, and I think that's a very interesting question. And that's kind of where

my thinking started. And it's early on in the book that I pose these two questions that I think. So I have two categories of intuitions that I want to challenge. One category is our intuitions about consciousness itself and then intuitions that occur in other areas that are in our lives that strongly influence or inform our intuitions about consciousness. And so I kind of put those into two separate categories and I start with consciousness and I just for, you know, for myself and in my own notes, I just wanted to get at what are the most basic, strongest intuitions we have about consciousness. And so I asked these two questions in the book. One is, is there behavior we can point to from outside a system that we can use as conclusive evidence that consciousness is present in that system, right? Is there something we can witness from the outside,

some physical behavior that we could say, yes, anytime we see behavior A, B, or C, that's absolute evidence of consciousness. And I think our intuitive answer is yes. And it's a very strong yes. And even after dissecting this for 15 years, my answer is still yes. So an example of that would be, I mean, there are so many, but I often use, you know, my daughter. If my daughter's fallen down and she's crying and asking for a Band-Aid, all of that behavior to me absolutely signifies that there's consciousness present, right? She's having an experience of pain. And so I wanted to start there because I thought this is an important exercise in all areas of science, and this is where our strongest intuitions are, but could we be wrong? Is it possible that the behavior that we think is evidence of consciousness is not necessarily evidence of consciousness? And so you can kind of go in the direction of AI and imagine we might in the future create something that seems like a child who was crying if we can come up with behaviors, and for myself, I can't. And I think it's super interesting that we can't. But on the other side of that, we know that consciousness can be present with no behavior at all.

Right. So you use the diving bell and the butterfly as an example of that. Have you read that book? I saw the movie. It's so beautifully written. Yeah. Butterfly as an example. Have you read that book? It's so beautifully written. Yeah. Yeah. So that's based on a writer who had something called locked in syndrome where I believe his was due to a stroke, but it can, it can happen variety of ways that damage the brain, like a stroke. And it left

him completely paralyzed, but with a full experience of consciousness, as full as our experience is right now, as full as his experience was before the stroke. He could hear, see, think, write a book, but he had no way. He was completely paralyzed, except for in his case, his left eyelid, there was some mobility left in his left eyelid. And miraculously his caretakers noticed this and they were able to develop a way for him to write through, I don't know the exact details, but yeah, each blink created a certain letter and then he would spell out words and wrote this beautiful book. So that's a case of, even if we can find behavior, there's this other problem in terms of behavior, of even if we can find behavior,

there's this other problem in terms of behavior, which is there can be zero behavior and still be a tremendously detailed experience of consciousness. The philosophical zombie example is super interesting. And I think it's related directly to what we're facing now with the advent of AI and this uncanny valley. Like we see these videos online of robots doing things that look very human and it freaks us out. But to extrapolate that example to its extreme, whether it's a zombie or a robot that is manifesting human behavior in

all of its forms, knows exactly what to say and how to behave and demonstrates an outward manifestation of things like empathy and et cetera, but technically the lights aren't on, the closer, it's like this asymptotic curve, like the closer it approximates human behavior, the question of consciousness almost in and of itself seems to fall away. Like what is the relevance of consciousness almost in and of itself seems to fall away. Like what is the relevance of consciousness? If somebody is mimicking it to such a precise degree,

is it even a thing? Is a consciousness even? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's clearly a thing because it's actually the only thing we can be sure exists. I mean, everything else might not be what we think it is. We could literally be brains in a vat or in some computer-generated alternate virtual reality. But the experience you're having is the experience you're having, right? Like whatever it is, whatever it feels like, that is what consciousness is. And so I think, yeah, so the thing that's

interesting with AI is we will have no way of knowing unless we have a better understanding of consciousness ahead of time. But then I guess my question is really like, does it matter then if it's so... Yeah, no, I know what you mean. And I think it has to matter because it is why anything matters, right? Like if someone, I mean, you can use a lot of examples, but basically everything that matters to us, any ethical question, it has to do with consciousness. If we're talking about an unconscious system, we don't have any ethical obligations towards them. We're not worried about them. We don't have to think about suffering.

Like all of suffering happens in consciousness. And so the difference is everything. If we brought in some advanced AI that looked like another human being who just came in, was introduced to us, if the scientist who brought this robot in said, don't worry, this robot's not conscious, we would have, I mean, it would still be hard for us because our intuition, yeah, absolutely. And it's everything that matters in terms of mattering. I mean, if this being starts to suffer in any way, if we think they're having an experience, we want to help it. It's strange times that we're heading into, you know what I mean? Yes, it is. Operating definition for everybody who's walking around without any kind of more precise familiarity with this is this alignment of consciousness with identity the fundamental illusion of self and the distinction between consciousness and our, I guess, lack of selfhood and also drawing a distinction between consciousness and complex thought. So talk about that a little bit. So yeah, so these kind of fall into this other category of illusions that show up in other areas of life, but I think strongly inform our

ideas about what consciousness is. And so the self and conscious will, which is not exactly free will, and I can talk a little bit about distinguishing between the two, but for me, the important piece is the idea, the feeling that we have conscious will and the feeling of being a self, a self being kind of a self-contained individual entity that, I mean, our intuition is actually, it's strange when you say it because you realize there's something false about the intuition just in describing it, right? But what I feel myself to be, even though I've worked with a lot of neuroscientists, I understand that everything I'm experiencing is due to all of this processing in my brain. There's some sense

that there's a me that's this kind of distinct me that is in some way separate from brain processing that can make these decisions, you know, even if my brain is, you know, pushing me in one direction and, you know, telling me I should go get a coffee right now because I'm feeling tired or thirsty or whatever. And then I decide, oh, you know, now is not the right time to get a coffee. So there's somehow there's this sense that I, there's the me that can choose to follow my instincts or not. And that is the thing that is making all of the choices. And so the self and conscious will are really part of the same illusion. And it's the sense that there's a separate self that has this will. And so there's a lot of neuroscience now disproving,

I mean, showing that these are truly illusions. And many people have had the experience of breaking through these illusions in meditation through use of psychedelics. And we now know actually the kind of network in the brain called the default mode network is responsible for creating this sense of self. And so when that is quieted through meditation or psychedelics or by other means, people talk about having the same kind of experience of realizing that that way they usually experience themselves is a kind of illusion. Right, that consciousness exists outside of the self. Our sense of, our illusory sense of who we are. Yeah, well, and then also just in terms of how the brain processes things and how many things are happening before it rises to the level of our awareness.

So that often, if not always, I mean, there's a lot of research suggesting that this is basically always the case, that every time we feel like we've made this free decision, you know, we were contemplating two different choices and we decide to go with option A, that that has already taken place in terms of processing before we are aware of it. And there are other systems that we know much more about actually that are just like this.

And binding is one of them that I talk about in the book. Yeah, so binding is the way for people to really grok what this is all about in the sense that we receive these inputs from the outside world at differing speeds. Like we see something before we hear it. There is this delay mechanism wherein our brain assembles all of these inputs in some kind of Final Cut Pro program and then presents it to us in a cohesive whole, but that's not the way,

yeah, that's not the way it actually happens. And that the kind of behavioral reactions that we manifest in response to those occur prior to our conscious awareness of having done so. Yeah. Which is kind of a bummer. Depends on how you think about it. I think it's kind of magical. Yeah, you can, I mean, I can see it. You know what I mean? I mean, it's also realizing that our experience of will, our conscious will, isn't what it feels like. Either can be a bummer, but I think there's another way to look at it.

I mean, we want to believe that we're sentient beings that are in control of our actions and reactions, and truly we are not. It's a very controversial point, actually, because people get very emotional about it. And I thought long and hard before I included it in the book actually, dismantling conscious will. Well, your husband has written extensively about this idea. Yeah. So it's not new to anyone who's coming to you via him. That's true.

Yeah. Yeah. But still. But still, yeah. I had this guy, Dr. Jud Brewer in here two days ago. Okay, the name sounds familiar. He's done a lot of work on the default mode network, doing fMRIs on people's brains

after mindfulness and meditation practices. And we talked a lot about the dissolution of the self. He's studying psychedelics as well? A little bit, but he's more in the mindfulness space. And it was super interesting to see that relationship of sort of toning down or turning off the default mode network and the dissolution of our sense of identity or self, allowing pure consciousness to enter and kind of the impact of that experience. Yeah. So yeah, I actually would be curious to know how many people

experience that as positive versus negative, but there's definitely, there's a positive way to experience that and it can be extremely positive. Part of the healing is actually realizing that the sense of a separate self is an illusion. And there's kind of a connectedness with everyone and everything that comes about when you're quiet, that default mode network. Yeah, I think the experience, if you've had it, is universally positive because it provides a sense of connectivity to the world. Right. But I think intellectually, it's hard to grapple with. And very hard to grapple with. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's completely counterintuitive. And I think that's part of the reason why this process is probably going to take a long time. Like the process, even just of the neuroscience we now have and know to be true, it's taking forever, even for some of the neuroscientists who are doing the work to really be able to accept the implications because it is just deeply, it's not the way we're wired to think about things. It's not the way we're wired to experience things. But again, it's the reason why I think it's such an important thing to be doing right now with consciousness,

because I think it is the only path to deeper understanding and to better understanding. Right. We have this idea that our consciousness, there's a locus for our consciousness and it resides in our head, behind our eyes. Yeah. And that's fundamentally the makeup of who we are. And a way of looking at that or defying our intuition about that is to,

you've talked a lot about this on other shows, but on a neuroscience level, understanding that neuroscientists have not been able to find that, it's not like, oh, it resides right here in this part of the brain. We see it flaring up when we activate it. And also this practice of, from that book about the, pretending you don't have a head or like what it's like

to not have a head. On having no head. Yeah, on having no head. To understand that consciousness can't be located in any geographical precise location. Yeah. I think that consciousness can in some sense. The self can't. I mean, there is no self.

No, I'm confused. Go ahead. So there are different ways of looking at it. And as I say in my book that I'm kind of 50-50 on this at this point, but we basically assume that consciousness is created by, at the very least, a brain and a central nervous system. So we can kind of look at it from that perspective. There are all these other theories that I carefully talk about in my book, which I completely rejected myself for many years and didn't even think they merited my reading much about them. If you're talking about panpsychism. Talking about panpsychism. We're going to get to that trust

me well we've already gotten to it so i need to give a little disclaimer before for it's we start really talking about it but panpsychism is this category of theories that um posits that fund that that consciousness could be a fundamental feature of the universe down to the level of atoms, even possibly originating out of some sort of field, the fluctuations of which give matter this intrinsic property of experience. So there are all these physical properties of matter, and then there's actually an intrinsic property of all matter, so that there's some level of experience wherever there is matter present. So you can kind of answer this question of where consciousness is in space-time from either angle, from if we just assume consciousness exists only in brains. we know that that is, I mean, there's no like pinpoint location, right? But the brain itself is creating a certain experience that it does not exist in your chalkboard, right? Your chalkboard is not participating in the experience of my brain. As far as we know.

As far as we know. So there's some sense in which you can talk about a physical location in a brain-based view of consciousness. But even if you go down some panpsychic rabbit hole, it's still, at least for the theories that make sense to me, the way that I... And there are theories that don't make sense to me within panpsychism. I mean, I definitely, And there are theories that don't make sense to me within panpsychism. I mean, I definitely, when I consider those views, and so as I was saying, I rejected it categorically for a long time. It just sounded completely crazy to me and went against everything that I understood about the brain.

And the more I fixated on this subject and the more I read and the more I thought about it, the more open I actually became. My own thoughts actually started leading me there, like what if? And then I realized there was this category of theories called panpsychism or some, you know, basically a panpsychic view, whether or not they consider, they call it that by the name, which I've said many times, a terrible name. We need a new name. But it's so taboo for scientists to consider something like this. And a few have actually done it publicly, which I think is incredible. Most of them, there are many more of them than I realized because they won't admit it publicly because it's such a career ender. So I do truly believe it's a legitimate category of theories that we should be open to. And now I forgot your question. I was answering some other

question. It doesn't matter. We're all in on panpsychism now. Oh, consciousness, the physical location of consciousness. So within panpsychism, still, each area of matter would entail whatever experience makes sense for that area of matter, even under panpsychism. So I think there's a sense in which consciousness, no matter how you look at it, is tied to matter. Right. That consciousness can be redefined and perhaps it's not exactly what we think it is. And it's a fundamental aspect of all matter going down to, you know, the atom all the way up to the human being and beyond. And I have to say that that like, that activates my new age proclivities. It's like, I wanna believe that that's true so badly. The beyond part?

Yeah, I just think it's cool. It's like, wow, think about that. Like, wouldn't that be amazing that everything we thought about consciousness, it's so much more complicated and vast to be about asking questions that no one's willing to ask and exploring them as open-mindedly as possible. Yes, I agree.

And I think it's kind of the right time to start making noises about this because there are a variety of reasons, but I can see why it's gotten such a bad rap and I can see the ways in which science gets threatened and also the ways in which certain theories get co-opted by some ridiculous, you know, pseudoscientific new age idea. And then those scientists kind of get implicated in this pseudoscience. They have

to be careful. Yeah, I get it. But it's a legitimate category of theories and it's incredibly interesting. And given that we've made no progress on what's called the hard problem of consciousness, the fact that it's still so deeply mysterious and that it doesn't seem that more understanding of brain processes will give us more information about this fundamental nature of consciousness, what it actually is. I mean, this is where I started. These are the moments in science where we have to start challenging intuitions and be open to maybe we've been thinking about it all wrong. The kind of way in here seems to me to be by challenging this emergent, you know, the emergent phenomenon of consciousness. This idea that, yes, we understand as human beings that we are conscious and that perhaps animals are. and that perhaps animals are.

But as you slide down the scale, at what point is something that is technically alive, that is cellular, not conscious? And from a binary perspective, is it a switch that gets flicked? At what point does a fetus become conscious? There has to be some demarcation line, right? And the more you look and dive into that, you realize like, oh, it's a gradation kind of thing. But does semi-consciousness become consciousness? And then

if so, what is semi-consciousness? It all falls apart. Yeah. No, I mean, in some sense, it kind of has to be binary. If there's a spectrum, either all of reality is the spectrum or you drop off the spectrum at the end of the spectrum. So at that point, it's binary. Right. And that's just this eternal mystery that we don't seem anywhere close to having any idea how to solve. And so I do think kind of flipping the question is incredibly interesting,

especially since so much of the science is actually very intuition challenging already. And we can kind of start there and just see. I mean, my book is all about asking questions. I think it's interesting, even if what we're asking is wrong and there's a clear, and what our intuitions are telling us is right, there's no reason not to say, let's just totally break this open. Yeah. Yeah. So if you were to define consciousness at the molecular level, what would that definition be? I think the definition is always the same, even though it's hard to have a definition, but I think it's always the same as long as you're talking about consciousness in its most fundamental sense.

So experience is the best word I can come up with. But if there is any experience at all, if there's something that it's like to be that matter, to be that collection of atoms, then there is consciousness present there. If it's completely dead and lights are out and there's absolutely no experience being had, then it's not. But you need a very broad definition of experience. Experience not in the sense of what we would qualify as experience. Maybe, but so this is the problem

with a lot of these words. I think experience is the cleanest word. I think awareness brings in other things that aren't necessarily conscious. Experience, we usually think of it as something more complex because we're complex creatures having a very complex experience. And so it's kind of the problem with all talking about consciousness in general is we are these incredibly complex systems. The brain is the most complex thing we know of in the universe, right? And our experience is being that. So we assume that

consciousness is complex because we associate it with our own experience and don't know how or if we can apply it to other things. But I think there are ways that we can imagine. There are little thought experiments. And there's in the beginning of one of my chapters, one of the chapters in my book, I do a little bit of like a guided visualization to try to get someone to imagine, even, you know, from the perspective of a baby. I don't use a baby in this sense, but at least that brings it to the human level. What experience is like when you start stripping away all of our inputs, like without sight, without hearing, without, you know, if you're just talking about super minimal, I think there's some way in which we can imagine,

you know, a worm, say, which many people think worms aren't conscious, but you can imagine there's something that it's like to be a worm. There's some level of consciousness there. It would be so incredibly minimal, right? Like whatever the feeling is, it would be probably not even in the sense of a localized self. It might be like pressure or heat or, and so I think we can imagine experience being very, very minimal. And my guess is that if it does go as far down as worms or even deeper, it just gets more and more minimal. Right. Along those lines, I want to talk about the consciousness in the plant kingdom. Oh, yeah.

Because there's some super interesting stuff. It's so interesting. Especially like the Douglas fir example that you use. Right. So I didn't know a lot of this before I wrote my book. I did all of this research, most of the research for the book. And what's interesting is I brought in plant behavior kind of to prove the opposite point. I didn't bring in plant behavior because I think plants are conscious. Um, although this point kind of makes you question

whether they are, but I brought it in because I was addressing this issue of, are there behaviors we can point to that, that are evidence, absolute evidence of consciousness. Um there are so many plant behaviors that are so much more similar than I realized, and I think than most people realize, down to the mechanism. So it's kind of like behavior that you would describe in similar terms to the way we describe human behavior, but they're also similar genes, similar processes of cell changes resulting in electrical signals in much the same way that our brains do. And of course, they're very different. But they're similar enough that I use it because we assume plants are not conscious. And so you can kind of play this trick on yourself by saying, okay, if plants do these things that when humans do them, we say that that's evidence of consciousness,

but we assume plants are not conscious. They're doing all of this without consciousness. Why maybe we don't need consciousness for these behaviors in humans. And this was just part of the intuition challenging that I was doing. But yeah, so you spoke about the tree behavior, the Douglas fir and the birch. This is the work of Susan Simard. I don't know if you've seen her Ted talk.

It's so worth watching. She did work in the Canadian National Forest. And I actually think she grew some of her own trees in her own lab setting to study the communications that happen underground in what are called mycorrhizal networks. These are fungal networks under the ground. So there are root systems, but there are also systems of fungus that help trees communicate to each other, share carbon with each other. They share defense signals. There is this incredibly elaborate system of communication happening underground. Some of which, and I use this in my book because it mimics human behavior to some extent, where the trees that have dropped seedlings, she refers to them as the mother trees, are able to recognize through these networks which trees that have grown in the forest are their own kin.

And they send them more carbon and they send them defense signals that they're not sending to other trees. And there's a sense in which they're protecting their children. They are literally protecting their kids. It's unbelievable. They make more room for their roots. And you can see how this could all happen without consciousness, right? Like it's all trippy, but you could still say, okay, that's so interesting. All that happens was all this communication and cells talking to each other. And that could all just be happening in the dark, right? That could be happening in the same way that we imagine our computer processing systems

are happening in the dark. processing systems are happening in the dark. And if that's true, why do we think all of these things that we're doing require consciousness? And so I think that's an interesting starting point, but it does also make you wonder if trees are conscious. I mean, what comes up for me when I think about that is the beautiful symbiosis of these ecologies, right? Like we're caught up in our sense of self where we separate ourselves from others. I mean, you talk about stardust and yeah, we can go, yeah, we're all stardust.

But when you really think about that, we don't, yeah. And when you think about the limitations of free will and the fact that we're just truly reacting to our environments and there is no impermeable barrier between ourselves and the world and the sun and all of these things that we're reacting constantly to our environment and that we are very much in that same place of responding to our environment

and adapting trees and forests and all of these sorts of things are instructive because they show us that the integration is so undeniable when you drill down on it. Yeah, I know. So I've been using plants more recently. I've been getting into more hairy discussions about free will. And you can use plant behavior to talk about this as well, because you wouldn't, you don't think the plants are making this decision like, okay, now, now I'm going to give more carbon to you over there. And they are, as you said, there's this complex way in which

they are connected and responding. And we don't, in plant behavior, we don't mistake that response, however complex and interesting it is, for free will. And I think you can map that onto human beings as well, that there's a sense in which it's all a system from the brain to our bodies to the air we're breathing to the sound waves that I'm speaking that are bouncing off you. I mean, there, there's this connection that we don't see, but that is, is there. Not only do we not see it where our brains are rigged to convince us that it's something very different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to do with that though. I know.

I can tell you this. As somebody who's been vegan, like plant-based for a very long time, like in the Twitterverse, like the plant consciousness argument comes up a lot. Oh, interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've seen someone for the first time use it for the reverse argument, which I'd never heard before, which was they're so complex and they seem like, you know, the sense that he'd spent, it was, what was it? Was this a podcast that you did? Yeah. I think I listened to it.

He's the guy who went to the Amazon. Yes. And he was immersed in that biosphere and it gave him such an appreciation. Corey Allen. Yes. Uh-huh. That there was some sense of like, how am I, how is this type of consciousness any more important than that type of consciousness?

And I don't follow that path. And I think there are reasons to think that suffering, there's definitely a range of suffering. And even if plants are conscious, and I mean, even if everything's conscious, I think you can definitely make a good argument for some things being able to suffer a lot more than other things. Well, what was interesting about that is that he said he was a longtime vegetarian, and then he had that experience in the Amazonian rainforest, and then he began eating meat after that because he saw himself as just part of this greater whole.

But I couldn't help but thinking, yeah, but eating all those animals is actually contributing to the destruction of this thing that you fell in love with. Right. So, I was like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There are ways to see it differently for sure. But it does, I think all of that shaking up our intuition specifically about self and free will and just about consciousness in general, get us to see things very differently. And I think, I mean, for me, it brings me a lot of joy. And it was really

the first reason I decided to turn my notes into something that I was writing for the public was really just to share this feeling of awe that I get in contemplating all of this. And I think it can do that. I think it can be kind of a spiritual, a source of a spiritual experience. And that's another word we can use about a hundred different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, for me as someone who's not religious

and I feel like I'm a fairly spiritual person, a lot of it comes from contemplating things like this. And kind of surrendering to it. How does that work with your famous atheist husband? I think he's a very spiritual person too. I think he is too. He and I don't like, he used the word. I think he is.

I really do. Yeah. I mean, neither of us like the word for obvious reasons, but he actually used it. I'm forgetting now which book I should know. But he used it in one of his books and he gives, oh, in Waking Up, he uses the word spiritual and he talks about why he thinks it's a necessary word and it shouldn't mean all the things that people have used it for. And there's actually a new, sorry, it's not that new, but Thomas Metzinger is a philosopher

who's wonderful. And he wrote something about spirituality. I don't know how long ago, but not that long ago. And I actually posted an excerpt of it on my website because it's so beautiful and brilliant and is kind of an argument for taking the word back to mean something very different from what it generally means in pop culture now. His essay is called Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty, or maybe the other way around, Intellectual Honesty and Spirituality. But he equates spirituality with a kind of a scientific mindset of seeking truth. And yeah, so his article has made me think a lot about spirituality and what I mean by spirituality when I say it. And in the same way that I think of myself that way, I absolutely think of Sam that way. And yeah, for me, it's more of a kind of staring into the unknown while seeking truth and feeling this intimate connection

to the rest of the universe. And so, you know, that can be done through meditation. I mean, it can be done in a variety of ways, but. Right. I mean, I think, well, first of all, you know, a guy who stops out of college because he has an experience and goes on a 10-year journey that takes him to ashrams and all these... I mean, this guy's a seeker. You can call it spiritual or whatever, but he's on a journey for greater, deeper understanding. And I don't see science and spirituality as incompatible at all. In fact, your book is testament to that. The more you drill down on these crazy ideas, the more room you provide for

awe and wonder at just how mysterious and amazing all of this is. Yeah. No, that's what I think. That's why, yeah, no, that's why I call it, I hesitantly call it a source of spirituality for me. Yeah. So another intuition that you confront and debunk about consciousness or what we think about when we think about ourselves has to do with, you explore it through like these split brain experiments. Right. these split brain experiments and toxoplasma that allows you to realize like that, hey, we're not so much in control or that consciousness isn't exactly this unified entity. Yeah. So yeah, this is some of the research I use

to help people break through or see the sense of self and conscious will as illusions. So the split brain research, I think, does this incredibly well. And this, do you want me to explain? So this is research that was first done by the neuroscientists, Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry. And they were doing research on patients who'd had a surgery to essentially split the brain in two. This sounds like a horrific procedure, but it actually helped a lot of people with epilepsy

because an epileptic seizure is essentially an electrical storm that can spread. The most devastating, most dangerous ones spread throughout the brain. And so they discovered that if they cut the brain through the corpus callosum and essentially split it into separate halves, it would prevent the electrical storm from spreading to the entire brain. And many patients got incredible relief from this. And for the most part, you couldn't tell. They seemed normal and healthy after the fact. Through this research, they discovered that there was a sense in which the person, the split, the two split sides of the brain were kind of like separate people in terms of their consciousness and in terms of their,

of their consciousness and in terms of their will as well. And so essentially the patients end up like conjoined twins almost where they have like separate minds, but they're sharing this body. So one of the famous experiments is of a split brain patient. So the way the brain works is our visual field, the right side of the visual field gets projected on to the left hemisphere. The left visual field is projected onto the right hemisphere. The same is true for a lot of things like our hands, the sense perceptions from our hands go to the opposite hemisphere. And so they were able to kind of separately question and communicate with each side of the brain. So they would flash a word. I think in my book, I use the one where they flash the word key and they flash that to the left visual field, which would only go to the right side of the brain because that's where it goes. And normally

that would be shared across the corpus callosum, but this has been split. So it only gets received by the right hemisphere. So the right hemisphere has seen the word key, the left hemisphere hasn't seen anything. And when you ask the person, also the speaking center of the brain, language communication is not always, but usually in the left hemisphere. In this patient, it was in the left hemisphere. So the experimenter asks the person, what word did you just see? And they say, I didn't see anything. And that's because the speaking part of the brain is the left hemisphere. Then they'll say, there'll be a bunch of objects on the table, rocks and coins and things for them to choose from. Then they'll say, reach out and pick up the object of the word you just saw. And the person with their left hand, because it's controlled by

their right hemisphere who saw the word key, will reach out and pick up a key. And this is just replicated over and over again with the same results. So, and there are different ways that they can ask various questions. There was a child, I'm forgetting the name they used for him, I think they kept his name anonymous, but they used a name, but he was famous, for having the ability actually to speak with both hemispheres. And so they were able to get a lot of information from him, but they would ask him questions and he would have different answers depending on which hemisphere they projected the question to. So he wanted to be two, you know, one side wanted to be, I forget now, but you know, one side wanted to be a draftsman when he grew up and the other side

wanted to be something else. And there are bizarre cases of someone, one half of their brain being an atheist and the other one being a Christian. So the whole range is possible, but it really is like you end up with conjoined twins rather than a single unified brain. And so what do you make of this? Like, how does this inform how you think about consciousness? So there are a couple of ways. And actually, the interpreter is something that comes up here that I didn't mention, which is super interesting, which is the language side of the brain. I think it was Michael Gazzaniga and another scientist kind of came up with this term, the interpreter, for this experience that they noticed or phenomenon

they noticed again and again in these patients where they would give a command to the patient to get up and walk to the end of the room. And so the patient would do this. Sorry, the details are always so confusing. I know, it's hard to, I know the example here. So it's to the right, they tell the right hemisphere, get up and walk, and they'll get up and walk to the back of the room. Then they ask the person, so the speaking left hemisphere is going to answer, why did you just get up? And the left hemisphere is not aware of that command. So the left hemisphere doesn't actually have information about why his body got up and started walking. And in most cases, it will come up with an instantaneous response that kind of makes sense that it doesn't seem that it's a lie.

It doesn't seem like the person fabricated this. It's a function of the brain to kind of have an answer. And he'll say, oh, I got thirsty. I was standing up to get a glass of water. And this is a little bit of an insight into conscious will. The idea that, and many neuroscientists think there's something like this. There's kind of an interpreter effect happening all the time, or a lot of the time, where we have this unconscious brain processing.

It kind of rises to the level of consciousness. And we think we know the reason and we may not be right about that reason. Right, we're sort of post hoc coming up with rationalizations for behaviors that are already underway. Yeah. Right, you used an example also of you being startled

from a noise in the middle of the night before you were, like your body moved before you heard the thing. Yeah, yeah, and that was more kind of an interruption of the binding process, which I think is, and there are these disorders that interrupt binding so that people don't actually experience the sights and the sounds of things in the same moment,

happening at the same moment. How does that manifest in an individual? Like if they're not binding properly, it's this mishmash of everything coming in at different times. Yeah. Yeah. There's a category of disorders called agnosia, which is the inability of the brain to process sensory information together. So there's a whole range, I mean, there's strange things that can happen. I just discovered. There's something called finger agnosia, which is the inability to differentiate between your different fingers. But basically, everything we experience is the brain is doing all of this for us, right? Like,

once you start to pull these things apart, and the split brain research does the same thing, it's like everything that we kind of take for granted and think, this is the way things are, you manipulate the brain a little bit and you realize. It just breaks down. Like if you split somebody's brain and one side's an atheist and one side's a Christian, what does that say about how we think about who we are? What is the self?

Right, yeah. Or is there no such thing? Right. You know? Yeah. That gets back to the bummer part. I guess. I always see two paths there.

Like there's a fork in the road. You can go the bummer path, but you can also go the kind of like surrendering to this bizarre universe we're in and just letting it be something different than you thought it was. Yeah. I mean, at all, I feel like whatever we discover, it's all kind of magical. I noticed, I'm sure you noticed this having kids, they ask you to explain everything and they don't understand anything. And you realize every answer is crazy, right? Yeah, exactly. You're just, you're answering it and you're like, why am I saying? Yeah, exactly. Something about the sky is blue.

And when we breathe, are we breathing the sky? And, you know, she's just trying to understand the universe. Yeah. Extending the mycorrhizal example is this toxoplasma example that you use, which just also further enhances the mystery of all of this when you realize like that your neurology can be hijacked by these microscopic entities that then take over and control your behavior. Yeah, all the parasite research is so interesting.

And I knew a little bit about it before I started writing the book as a book, but I did a lot more reading and it just gets creepier and creepier. But parasites control the behavior of their hosts and they do it with neurochemicals because, or not, not always, but, but often they're either mimicking the neurochemicals of the creature it's invading, or they're just disrupting some system sochemicals of the creature it's invading, or they're just disrupting some system so that they get the creature to do what it needs it to do for its own needs. So yeah, toxoplasma, that's an interesting one. That's one a lot of people

know about in cats, where it needs to reproduce in the intestines of a cat. And so in order to, but then part of its life cycle happens outside of the cat, but it needs to eventually make its way back to a cat. And so rats that are infected with this parasite who normally have a natural fear of cats, this parasite alters their brain chemistry in such a way that they actually become less fearful in general, but they are less fearful of cats. They can be drawn to cats. They're drawn to the smell of cat urine. They suddenly become- They just run headlong into the cat. They do in some cases, yeah. And that's just this parasite needing to get back.

But my point about all of that is there's some sense in which we're already in that circumstance, right? Like we are, our conscious experience is really at the mercy of whatever processing we are a part of. There's some interesting science happening right now in the microbiome where they're discovering this nexus between the quality of your gut flora and the foods that you crave. And that again, you think like, well, my body's telling me I need this. It's like, no, actually this thing inside of you, that's what it feeds on.

Well, and your body is hardly your body. I mean, I forget the numbers, but it's some ridiculous percentage rate. Yeah. All right, well forget the numbers, but it's some ridiculous percentage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, the ultimate kind of wrench in this whole thing that just takes it off a cliff is time. So let's talk about time. Okay. I feel like I'm not qualified to talk about time. Although I will say I keep recommending his book because I think it's so beautifully done. Carlo Rovelli's new book on time called The Order of Time. I think one of the reasons I love it, but it's just, it's a great book on an accessible way to kind of understand where the science is at at this point. But he does this,

he ends the book on consciousness and he kind of talks about how the two are interrelated. And I love that because I end my book on time. And there is some sense in which, you know, whether at the level of physics they're interrelated, you know, we don't know. But our conscious experience certainly couldn't exist without time. There's something, it is, it's in many ways all about time. So explain that. Okay. Like how does that work? Right.

So I think many people have this experience in meditation. And a lot of the kids that I teach communicate this experience quite often. That it starts to make them wonder what the present moment is. So our experience is just forever in what we feel is the present moment, right? It's this experience of what's now. When you start to pay closer and closer attention to that, it's hard to even understand what we mean by now and in what sense time is moving. And it's interesting that we use the word moving. It's like we talk about time in spatial sense.

Right. And yeah, so I think it's interesting even just how much, I talk about this in the last chapter, how much time do we need for a conscious moment, right? And this may be different for humans than for other animals. Is it common flickering intervals or is it a continuum? Right. And it gets into, you then explore these two kind of countervailing theories

of presentism versus eternalism and how we think about time. Yes, yeah. And I think I could be wrong, but I think Carlo Rovelli actually says neither of them are right. Although he basically says there is no such thing as time as we experience it and we think of it to be.

That it just, it completely falls apart. There's no present moment in the universe that is consistent throughout the universe, right? There's things at the quantum level, there's no past and present even, like things go in both directions and you can't tell one from the other. What was your question? I don't know. I'm confusing myself. So we consciously, we experience time in a presentism context, like it's flowing in a narrative, linear way. Right. But the science suggests that it's really, it probably is more of an eternalism kind of thing, that all of these things are happening simultaneously in multi-dimensions in a way that we can't even really fully understand. Yes, yeah. Well, and I think whether or not eternalism is the right way to describe it, like the block universe I think is a controversial concept,

the idea that it's a static thing, that every point in time exists always. But presentism doesn't seem accurate either. But presentism doesn't seem accurate either. I mean, it's clearly not accurate, but it's interesting that that's the way we experience the world. And there's something about our experience that kind of lights up these different, when we call them moments, and we're only experiencing them one at a time. the moments and we're only experiencing them one at a time. So why explore time though? Like what is the relationship between how we're trying to understand time and how we are trying to think about consciousness? I mean, for me, the reason I brought it up in the book mostly is just because I think

it's incredibly interesting that our experience of the present moment is something we can't even quite get our minds around our own experience of what it is. Actually, Donald Hoffman is doing this work. I don't know if you're aware of him. He's very interesting. He has a book coming out in August called The Case Against Reality. And he is a very, he's doing this with this very rigorous science. And I think some scientists are questioning what he's doing,

but I think it's very interesting. And he's certainly grounded in science, but his question is, should we, are we thinking about it backwards? So is it so hard to understand consciousness because we're thinking we're living in this non-conscious universe that somehow gives rise to consciousness? That that's not the right way to think about it. Is it possible that consciousness is fundamental and gives rise to the physical world?

Oh, wow. And so, you know, even he will say, I might be wrong, but we should explore this. Yeah, that's super interesting. And so those are the types of places that these intersections happen between the mysteries we're coming up against in quantum mechanics and what we don't know about consciousness. In your research for doing the book, what really out there ideas did you come across that didn't make the cut? You know what I mean? what really out there ideas did you come across that didn't make the cut? You know what I mean? Like you went out on a limb to include, you know, this parapsychism.

Panpsychism. Panpsychism, sorry. Parapsychism is even worse. You're coming up with a worse term. Yeah, I know that would be worse. And I know in your podcast with Sam, he's like, you know, he's saying like, he was trying to talk you out of this, but I would imagine you came across some other stuff too. You're like, that's just a little too out there. legitimate questions within panpsychism to make all kinds of claims like the universe is, I mean,

there's something called the combination problem in panpsychism, which I talk a little bit about in the book because I actually don't see it as a problem. I think it's partly because we're confused about being selves and that illusion that's misleading us there. But within this, the combination problem is essentially the philosophical problem. If panpsychism is true, how is it that these smaller points of consciousness in the atoms of my body and the cells come together to create this other form of consciousness? And I actually, I don't think about it that way. When I contemplate panpsychism, that's not the way I think about it. But so then the natural next

question is, is there some kind of human, you know, larger human consciousness or consciousness of the universe? There was an article recently, I think, titled, Is the Universe Conscious? So I think, again, confusing consciousness with complex thought. I think it's really a misunderstanding of the implications of panpsychism that lead people to what look to me like slightly religious beliefs that for many people gets them out of the feeling that they're bummed. What we're coming across and they want to believe that there's... It's not comforting to me. It's interesting. But I get why it would be comforting. But yeah, no, the idea that there's some plan, there's some path, there's this higher consciousness. We can let go of God, but now we're going to use this other thing as a placement for

God. But the idea that human brains that aren't connected would have some bigger mind that, I mean, you know, those are the types of theories that- With a plan for every single person, right? Yeah. But that aside, it's undeniable that there is an organizing principle on some level going on here that I don't know that we'll ever fully be able to comprehend, but is certainly true nonetheless. Right. Yeah. What that is, I don't know. Whatever's true is true. Yeah, right.

Well, you're somebody who has been a meditator for a long time. And I know your entry point to that started with migraines, right? Which is something that my wife deals with and has dealt with. She was just recently, the last two days, like down and out and just

tried everything. It's been a real challenge for her. Yeah, it's awful. But that's originally, if I'm not mistaken, what kind of brought you into that world? Yes. When I was, yeah, I was about eight years old when I first started getting migraines. And there was a moment at which I was experiencing a particularly bad one where, I'm sure this happens to your wife too, it's the strangest thing where you're in so much pain. And it's actually, a migraine is kind of hard to even pinpoint where the pain is. But any tiny little movement, like just taking a big breath or adjusting myself would be like this crash to my head.

And so I had to stay incredibly still. And I guess because I was so focused on like all these little micro movements and just, you know, I think when you're in that much pain, and I know other people have had this experience, just the slightest adjustment in one way or the other can make a huge difference. So it can bring you just a little bit of relief. It feels like a lot in that circumstance in the same way that the movement that makes it more painful does. So I was aware of that. And I think as I was staying really still, I was able to notice that just the psychological state I was in that I had gotten myself into, or maybe that's not a fair way to describe it, but I realized that I was kind of like fighting the pain. It's hard to describe, but with my psychological stance, right? Like my way of

kind of looking at the pain or being with the pain was with a lot of resistance and like wanting it to go away, although that's not the right way to describe. It wasn't with words. With willfulness. Yeah. I mean, it almost felt like a movement, right? And so I just decided in that moment, I don't know why, but I just decided to stop doing that and to just get curious about what I was experiencing and to kind of get closer to that, to just really let it be there and really kind of almost like facing your fear. Like, let's just get into this. Like, what, what is this? And I, that was kind of the first moment for me of noticing that curiosity could be helpful and kind of be an antidote to different types of pain, which is, I think, part of a realization that comes through meditation also, but more specifically just not resisting something

and kind of having a stance of being curious and letting things be. Even when you're in terrible pain, it creates just the slightest bit of relief. And that was a powerful insight for me that I then, when I was able to, or when it occurred to me, I was able to apply to other areas of my life, not just physical pain, but psychological pain too, to just getting curious about

what is this thing that I'm resisting made it a little more tolerable. Yeah, that's interesting. That's something that Jud Brewer was talking about the other day here, like using, like his work is really in cravings and addiction and using mindfulness techniques. It's a kind of pain.

And the idea of like letting go of your willful impulse to try to combat this and releasing your self-judgment and all the emotions that swirl around it and just being curious, like being present with it, being curious about what it is. And when you approach it from that perspective, it's almost like it dissolves the solid. Yeah. No, I think that I hadn't thought about it in that context, but it must be a great tool because it kind of, it gets you to see thoughts retreat, the thing that I now welcome, because I think it's so interesting, is the desire to move. Right. Like, it's very hard to pinpoint what that feeling is.

Like, you know, I know a touch to the hand, I can kind of know what that feeling is pretty clearly. But wanting to move is very hard to find in. Yeah, it's not localized in any particular place. Yeah, and so any kind of like craving or wanting when you take a closer look at it, I think becomes a kind of, you realize it's a kind of energy. Yeah, and then it starts to break down. Yeah. When you look at it from that perspective. Talk to me about the work that you do with kids in meditation.

So, yeah, so I've been teaching meditation to children for close to 15 years, I think. I've stopped counting, but I think it's about 15 years. Ever since I discovered Susan Kaiser Greenland's work, which I think is truly brilliant. Susan Kaiser Greenland's work, which I think is truly brilliant. And unlike any of the other work that has been done with children, although there's a lot of great stuff out there now, she created a secular program for children in schools based on the Vipassana teachings, but truly turned it into a completely secular program. And I had just finished a meditation retreat where I kept thinking about how beneficial it would have been for me to learn to meditate as a child and how I was kind of naturally inclined.

As I think a lot of, I noticed this in my classes, so I think it's like any other ability or talent where most people can learn it, but some people are like truly gifted at it and can learn it much more easily. And I think actually in general, I think children can learn to meditate more easily than adults. But then there are the ones who really take to it pretty quickly and just fall into it right away. And then they can the ones who really take to it pretty quickly and just fall into it right away. And then they can get, derive all of this benefit from it when they're young. So I came out of that retreat, mostly wondering why we don't teach this to children

and thinking about it in the context of physical education that, you know, like we consider this to be mandatory. Like we have to keep our bodies healthy. And this is such an incredibly powerful tool for keeping our minds healthy. How different things would be. Let's wait until everybody accumulates all sorts of baggage and trauma. And can barely learn how to meditate.

And it's completely closed off to the idea. Yeah, the openness, the open-mindedness of children seems to be perfectly you know, perfectly suited for, because they're not like, they want to be in that place of awe and wonder and exploration. Right. And they still, they're in that place all the time. It's like my daughter asking if she's breathing the sky and like why her breath isn't blue. It's all mysterious. And there's no idea that it should be one way versus another way.

And so much of that is an obstacle to learning how to meditate when you don't know what a self is or what free will is. You're just very open to the next experience. How many of the kids that you teach end up adopting a consistent practice? Oh, I wish I knew. That's a great question. How does that work? It's all practice? Oh, I wish I knew. That's a great question. How does that work? It's all over the place, I'm sure. I've heard from many parents, I get these wonderful emails and sometimes photo. I actually got this text a couple of years ago from a mom

who said we couldn't find, I'll use a different name, Rebecca. We couldn't find Rebecca. We were visiting my parents. We couldn't find Rebecca. We were looking all over the place. And then I found her and she showed me the picture and she's sitting meditating under a tree in the backyard. It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. And the most wonderful thing about it is that what I was hoping was true is true, that she clearly was deriving so much benefit from it. This is something she wanted to do on her own. She just decided to go do it in a moment that she felt like she wanted to or needed to or whatever. How does it work with your own kids?

Much harder. Tell me about it. Yeah. Yeah, I keep thinking I need someone else to record all of my guided meditations for my kids. They don't want to hear it from you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so all of my meditations and lessons are now on the Waking Up app.

And I have a long page, and it's maybe slightly intimidating because there's so much text. But I put everything in there that I think is actually really important to know before you teach kids how to meditate. And one of the points I make there is that it's really important to not force kids, to not, really to not put pressure on them at all to do it or to learn it. And that I think the best thing that parents can do is model it for their children, which is true of so many things. And my kids, especially my older daughter, she's 10, is definitely interested. And I got very lucky, actually, they invited me to teach a meditation class at her elementary school. So I taught her class kindergarten first for three years through second grade.

And, you know, that's not advice I can give to other parents. It's, you know, it just kind of stops there. But what's interesting is I think children really learn meditation better in the context of a group or a school or like a learning setting. context of a group or a school or like a learning setting. And I think at home, you really just have to offer it and talk to them about it so they know it's something that's available and show them how it helps you. And I actually think it's important to do it in front of them. I think they become interested without telling them they have to do it, just actually sit down and set a timer. And the parents I know who meditate, who have kids who meditate, that is how it's happened. Yeah. I mean, it's like any good behavior that you want to instill in your kid. If you create restrictions and mandatory rules around it, that's a recipe for disaster.

Yeah. I mean, it can go both ways, but meditation is definitely that way because it's totally an internal experience. So you can't, you know, you can tell them to say thank you to someone when they've given them something, but meditating, you can't control. It's like, you can't force someone to go to sleep, right? Like that's just not something. Is there an optimal or appropriate age to introduce this? My favorite age to teach is 9 and 10. And I still generally think that's the best. If there's one time that you're going to introduce it to children, I think that's the time. Partly because it stays with them.

I think when they learn around fourth grade, those memories stay. It stays with them. I think when they learn around fourth grade, those memories stay. Stays with them. Yeah. And they're also at this really beautiful stage of still being kids, but they're starting to think like adults. And you can have basically every conversation you would have with an adult about meditation with a child that age. And so I think the learning is just very deep. And I think they learn as well as younger children. But I am always proven wrong when I think a group of children are too young, and I'm invited to try to teach them. Now the youngest I've taught is four and a half, and they absolutely learned. And it's different. Each age is different. And I would say not every child in that class

was meditating for sure, maybe four or five of them got it. And a couple had some really interesting experiences. So I think they can learn as young as four. I think it depends on the context, it depends on how they're learning. Speak about that and just the epiphany that one young child had about what the present moment is. Like that in and of itself, if nothing else.

Yeah, no, that's so often the epiphany and I love it. It's so interesting to hear them talk about it. But yeah, this was a little boy. I think he's five or was five at the time. And yeah, I mean, he barely had the language to describe what he was talking about. But it was similar to what the girl in second grade who I mentioned in my book. It's a similar realization, and he talked about it in terms of it going fast. He said it just keeps going.

I don't even remember exactly what he said, but it was something about it moving fast, which was one of the first realizations I had when I really got and was able to concentrate for long enough to kind of stay moment to moment for a significant period of time, there's something kind of energizing about it because it's a good way to describe it. It's moving fast. We should be teaching this in schools. We should be teaching it in schools. And more and more schools are. We need to institutionalize this. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. I think we might be headed there yeah yeah i was not optimistic

about that just five ten years ago um and now i actually think we're headed there so i now have the opposite concern which is it's happening too fast and i don't want programs that aren't vetted and legit. Yes. Yeah. All right, we're gonna, we gotta land this plane, but perhaps leave us with, all right, so we've challenged all our intuitions about consciousness. Like, where does this leave us? Like, I finished the book and I'm like, okay, like, I don't know, now I'm like, I'm, I learned a lot.

You have to spend the rest of your life in awe. I'm like, I learned a lot, but I'm confused. You're asking questions, right? So what do we do with these threads that we're pulling on in terms of how they can inform how we live our life day to day? Yeah. I'm not sure I have the greatest answer for that. I guess I'm not expecting you to. Yeah. No, luckily we now have this actually, that shows that being in a state of awe is actually very good for us. And there's, I mean, we kind of can feel that. We know that it feels good. But it increases our well-being to think about these things and to contemplate mysteries and the bigger questions. And so, I think if anything, there's that.

There's that, you know, if you enjoy wondering about these things, keep doing it. And if you think you know what's going on, think again, right? I love the book. It's great. The subtitle is A Brief Guide

to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. It is brief. It's a small book, but don't be confused. This is a very dense, but you gotta take your time. You're not gonna rifle through this. You could read it in a short period of time, but the concepts themselves are very deep and they're asking you to think deeply about them,

which is great. So congratulations. I loved it. Thank you. Yeah. Good. How do you feel? You feel all right?

Yeah. Good. We did it. Yeah, we did it. I loved it. Thank you. Yeah. Good. How do you feel? You feel all right? Yeah. Good. We did it. Yeah, we did it. Thanks so much. If you want to connect with Annika, where are the best ways for people to learn more about you? Probably my website is the best. It's just annikaharris.com, but it's A-N-N-A-K-A-Harris.com.

And are you doing any public events or speaking or any of that kind of stuff? Very little. Very little. Yeah, nothing to announce now, although I do announce everything that's coming up on social media. All right, good. And if you have children and you're interested in exploring meditation with them, the Waking Up app, you can find all of Annika's programs there. Yes, and some of my guided meditations are on my website also. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. of my guided meditations are on my website also. Cool, thank you.

Yeah, thanks. Peace, plants. I thought that was great. Did you learn something? How cool is Annika? I really enjoyed that. I hope you did as well. Please do me a favor,

check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com and let Annika know how this one landed for you. You can share your thoughts with her directly on Twitter at Anika Harris or on Instagram at Anika Harris Projects. And don't forget to pick up a copy of her new book, Conscious, A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind. Like I said in the podcast, it is a brief book, but it's also quite dense. in the podcast. It is a brief book, but it's also quite dense. And I would say that weeks and weeks after reading it, I still find myself grappling with its profound ideas. If you would like to support our work here on the podcast, there are a couple of simple ways to do that. Just tell your

friends about your favorite episode. Share the show on your favorite social media app. Take a screen grab, share it on Instagram or Twitter, tag me, and I'll reshare it sometimes. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube and Google Podcasts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can also always support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis for additional audio engineering. And Margo Lubin as well for videoing and editing the podcast for YouTube.

Jessica Miranda for graphics. DK for advertiser relationships. And Allie Rogers for portraits. And in closing, and Ali Rogers for Portraits. And in closing, theme music as always by Anna Lemma. Appreciate the love you guys. I will see you back here next week with another great conversation with Humble the Poet. It's a good one.

You're not gonna wanna miss it. Until then, peace, plant. Namaste. Thank you.