Losing the self: what meditation, psychedelics and brain scans reveal about ego
Sam Harris, Michael Pollan and neuroscientist Andrew Newberg all describe spiritual experience as a loosening of the ordinary sense of self, whether through meditation, psychedelics or prayer. Seeing the pattern helps readers understand why such different practices produce similar feelings of awe and connection.
Which self does Sam Harris call an illusion? Show answer
The feeling of a subject inside experience, a center of awareness riding in the body like a passenger. He does not deny that people are real.
Where does Harris say the feeling of self comes from? Show answer
From thinking without knowing you are thinking. A thought arises uninspected and seems to become you.
How does Harris say we lose the self without noticing? Show answer
Whenever attention is absorbed in its object, as in flow during sport, sex or creative work, just as vision is suppressed during eye movements unnoticed.
What are the two stages Harris describes in meditation? Show answer
First, noticing thought as thought, so emotions stop feeding themselves. Second, recognizing there is no one doing the noticing.
What does the missing tourist story illustrate? Show answer
A woman joined a search party looking for herself. In meditation, likewise, the seeker is the thing being sought, so the problem evaporates.
What ordinary moment does Pollan say hints at consciousness without a self? Show answer
Waking up, in the instant before you have worked out who and where you are.
What did Dacher Keltner's stick-figure study show? Show answer
After an awe experience such as river rafting, people drew themselves at about a third of the size, a positive shrinking of the sense of self.
What caution does Pollan give about psychedelics and the ego? Show answer
It doesn't always work: there are cases of ego dissolution and cases of ego inflation, and the dissolution doesn't last.
What does the parietal lobe do, and what happens to it in deep practice? Show answer
It builds a spatial sense of where you end and the world begins. Its activity drops in deep meditation or prayer, and people feel oneness.
What five elements did Newberg's survey find in spiritual experiences? Show answer
Unity, intensity, clarity, surrender and transformation. About 90 to 95% of people said the experience changed them for the better.
How does Harris distinguish emptiness from oneness? Show answer
Oneness or merging can be a bigger somethingness. Emptiness is having no center at all, and it is available in ordinary moments.
What can a brain scan not show, according to Newberg? Show answer
What someone is actually experiencing, or any pattern that marks enlightenment. He relies on people describing it in their own words.