The neuroscience of meditation

Transcript

00:00:02Next time you should stay with us. I should? Yeah. All I did was ride my motorbike home and ride it back again. Really? Yeah. So that was something for your lunch? Yeah, that was my lunch break. Wow. That was for your motorbike. I take it out and come back just to taste it.

00:00:21Okay. So I hope you feel like your animal is satisfied and that there is no needs that need to be fulfilled, except the need for and craving for the knowledge, scientific knowledge, that we're going to hopefully get, but no expectations.

00:00:44So what we did in the morning was looking at meditation through meditation.

00:00:51So I want to thank you, Anthony, for being with us and sharing your experience. Each time, even though we see each other often, I attended two of your retreats, which is not so many, but still, it's always like a new seat there, always something wise that you can take and actually apply in your everyday life.

00:01:14So did you feel something similar? That's what I felt.

00:01:19A lot of seeds.

00:01:22A lot of seeds.

00:01:23A lot of fruits.

00:01:24One for you, one for us.

00:01:27It was really special.

00:01:29Yeah.

00:01:31So, and now we'll continue with uncovering the truth and reality about meditation.

00:01:39And this afternoon we will devote it to the scientific part of meditation

00:01:49and now Mike Johnson will see that.

00:01:51Because it was so amazing.

00:01:56After only seven day retreat, he came out with mind blowing ideas.

00:02:02What was actually going on during meditation.

00:02:06Not in our mind, because the Buddhism is more about the mind and practical thing.

00:02:13But what was going on in the brain.

00:02:15So yes.

00:02:17Yes, and then after Mike will tell us the theory,

00:02:22we will discuss a little bit my experience

00:02:25in Chong Tong Monastery,

00:02:28and Mike will try to uncover what people,

00:02:33what the teachers were trying to do with me there,

00:02:36because one of the girls thought

00:02:38that it's actually a human experiment,

00:02:40that something is, she's like a genie pig there,

00:02:43but thanks to what Mike wrote and what thoughts he has,

00:02:50it was very clear that it's not the experiment.

00:02:53There is something, there is an order,

00:02:55and this order he will help us to understand.

00:03:04So, thank you for the lovely introduction.

00:03:09So, one frame in all of this is

00:03:13why does it matter?

00:04:26perhaps most relevantly for us,

00:04:43if you follow the recipe,

00:04:46then in a fairly reliable way,

00:04:50great things happen to you.

00:04:53And this is really important.

00:04:56It's an impressive technology.

00:04:57We think of technology as things in

00:05:00We our iPhones or TVs or whatnot, but Buddhism is high tech.

00:05:07And it's a form of technology that has not been equaled yet.

00:05:15And so, Buddha was an amazing innovator in this space.

00:05:22And he made this amazing thing that we call Buddhism, that we call meditation.

00:05:28I mean, he didn't come up with the idea of meditation, but this was kind of in the water supply earlier.

00:05:34But he arguably perfected it.

00:05:39And so, this recipe for having amazing things happen to you if you follow it has been passed down through several traditions.

00:05:50And it's mutated and changed.

00:05:52Maybe some of the realities got knocked off.

00:05:57But at the same time, it's gotten down to us.

00:06:04But it feels like a lot of traditions have sort of forgotten how to cook.

00:06:12That they have this recipe, they have these tips or tricks or mental hats or whatnot.

00:06:21And there's...

00:06:22There's kind of, I would say, confusion about why these things work.

00:06:30And Ivana will be discussing some of the things that her retreat leaders had to do.

00:06:39But it feels...

00:06:43I mean, I don't mind following recipes.

00:06:49But I really want to know how to cook.

00:06:52Because sometimes you want to change the recipe.

00:06:55You want to add some more...

00:06:56You want to make it bigger, smaller, add some more spices, whatever.

00:07:00And this...

00:07:03I would say that the concept of applying neuroscience to meditation is let's really make this technology ours.

00:07:14Let's really figure out how it works.

00:07:20How to improve it.

00:07:21How to change it.

00:07:22How to adapt it to different people's needs.

00:07:25So that's what I think is really at stake here.

00:07:28And I think it's very important.

00:07:31Finally, of course, there are lots of technologies on the horizon.

00:07:39And it's not outside the bounds of reality to think that we can start to use neurotechnology

00:07:50to actually improve meditation as well.

00:07:53But again, we have to know how meditation works to improve it.

00:08:02So before I discuss this, does anyone want to take a crack at how they think the neuroscience of meditation works?

00:08:14Works or interconnects, correlates?

00:08:17I'm not sure.

00:08:18How a neuroscientist...

00:08:20A neuroscientist, in your mind, would explain how meditation works?

00:08:24Or why it makes sense?

00:08:27It's like training certain parts of your brain.

00:08:31Yeah, it's basically like training and causing effects.

00:08:36Well, discovering or exploring or unlocking more potential.

00:08:40Because I don't remember now exactly the number, but we're using like 1% of our abilities, right?

00:08:47And then there is like 99% which is unlocked.

00:08:50So my understanding is that neuroscience explains how meditation can unlock this, well, a part of this other 99%.

00:09:02I would say that the 1%, 99% figure is a little...

00:09:07Yeah.

00:09:09But it is true that we...

00:09:12Perhaps one could phrase it that we spend almost all of our time in a little corner of the possible space of human experience.

00:09:20And meditation unlocks a much wider, wider area.

00:09:26So, yeah.

00:09:27I...

00:09:28So, I've listed some ways that neuroscience tries to explain what's going on in meditation.

00:09:36And I like yours better than any of these.

00:09:39So, yes.

00:09:40Right.

00:09:44Generally speaking, neuroscientists might try to explain what's happening in the brain.

00:09:50I think the term brain urges that it down-regulates the glagata or increases the cical cortex or who knows.

00:10:03The neuroscience of meditation is a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. It's a very important part of the brain. activity in the brain near the surface and then we can kind of see these brain waves put labels on them alpha data gamma delta and finally there's this way of understanding the brain through mirror transmitters well

00:10:49Well, depression is a shortage of serotonin,

00:10:53so you just add some serotonin, and you're good.

00:10:57Or meditation increases endorphins,

00:11:02or decreases something.

00:11:06So I would say that all of these explanations generally

00:11:14hide or obscure more than they actually explain.

00:11:20Put another way, they don't actually let us build anything.

00:11:23They're stories, but they're not predictions.

00:11:28They're correlations that we've observed,

00:11:31but not causal sort of gears to level explanations.

00:11:36So that's to say that there's a lot of bad neuroscience

00:11:40out there about meditation.

00:11:45Feels like this bad part we'll explain tomorrow.

00:11:48No, this session was nice.

00:11:51I'm actually looking forward to hear what's next.

00:11:54Okay.

00:11:55We'll still have time to change the session.

00:11:57Yeah.

00:12:00Or to have fun.

00:12:01Quick update.

00:12:02Thank you, Mike.

00:12:04Team member.

00:12:06Yes, teamwork, right?

00:12:08You're welcome.

00:12:14All that, sir.

00:12:16What a bad viewer, sorry.

00:12:19Sorry.

00:12:22It's too bright for me.

00:12:25So what's the alternative? And I think the alternative is to look at concepts of information and especially self-organization.

00:12:39The brain built itself, evolutionists built it to sort of self-organize along certain principles.

00:12:48And it's absolutely true that the brain is horrifically complicated.

00:12:55And I think in these other stories, the problem is they don't have good ways of cutting through the complexity to something simple.

00:13:09And so I think the path forward is to reverse engineer the core,

00:13:18the core of the brain,

00:13:24And this lets us, if we can do that, then we can understand the how and the why of, okay, how does the brain do what it does?

00:13:45And I think this is going to be enormously productive.

00:14:01And to give the punchline first, I think the brain already has incredibly powerful and elegant algorithms that can be triggered to heal itself, to purify itself, to basically improve itself.

00:14:21And it's not something external that you need to hack.

00:14:25Your brain already has a bunch of cool technology built in.

00:14:29Evolution has done that for us.

00:14:32And then meditation is a clever way, we can call it a hack, to trigger some of this technology that we just have in us by virtue of reading.

00:15:51And it's this idea that first of all the brain's core job, if the brain has one job to do, it's to minimize surprise.

00:16:05Because if you can predict what's going to happen, then you can sort of behave in an intelligent manner.

00:16:37And so there's this process that there are two things, two actors in this play, you could say.

00:16:48And the first actor is bottom-ups in the sense data.

00:16:52Just the raw information that we get from our senses.

00:17:00And then we have these stories about what this data means.

00:17:06And we need the stories because just the raw data can get very overwhelming and confusing very fast.

00:17:16And basically,

00:17:18if we can, if our stories, if our predictions can predict the sense data coming in,

00:17:25we ignore the sense data.

00:17:27So right now I'm getting information from a lot of nerves all over my body.

00:17:33I mean, you're all sitting down, you're not, but you're getting just this flood of information from your thighs

00:17:45and from your skin that's covered with clothes and from every part of your body, really.

00:17:53And you just ignore it because you're successfully predicting it.

00:17:59It's not surprising that you're getting data from your thigh that you're sitting down.

00:18:04It's not surprising that you're getting a little bit of the sense of weight from your hair or something.

00:18:15So your consciousness basically only pays attention to surprising things.

00:18:24So if you get bit by a snake, that's surprising.

00:18:28If there's pressure on your feet when you're standing up, not surprising.

00:18:33So this is a very basic organizational principle about how the brain works.

00:18:40And

00:18:43there's something about this story that is very interesting.

00:18:47That the data coming in drives brain activity.

00:18:55It makes the brain more active.

00:18:57And then the stories, if you have a story that can predict what sense data that you're getting,

00:19:06that basically tunes activity in the brain down.

00:19:10So

00:19:11it's kind of this war that, or battle,

00:19:16between the bottom-up stuff that is adding energy to the brain

00:19:20and the top-down predictions that are sort of, they act, I guess, I would call them energy sinks.

00:19:27But basically they just kind of soak up the energy.

00:19:32And one thing that I would also mention is that modern life tends to

00:19:39reward us for focusing on our brain.

00:19:41Our top-down stories.

00:19:42For thinking.

00:19:44Not feeling.

00:19:46So we were just talking about this before the talk.

00:19:53That this system can basically get out of balance.

00:19:57And we can come to live

00:20:00in our stories and basically ignore our sense data.

00:20:05And that's kind of too bad because the stories are just hallucinations and sense data is what's real.

00:20:12So we can kind of get disconnected.

00:20:18The story that I'm going to tell about this, about meditation, is that meditation is basically a tool to shift the balance in this battle between bottom-up stuff and top-down stuff.

00:20:35And it does that by sort of turning off the stories.

00:20:39And sort of by focusing effortfully on the stories.

00:20:44And we can get a little tension on our sense data.

00:20:46We feed that and we get more energy into the brain.

00:20:52So it's kind of...

00:20:55Meditation is a way to cause the brain to enter a higher energy state.

00:21:06And this is...

00:21:07It feels odd to say, but meditation takes a lot of effort.

00:21:14There is this sort of build-up of something.

00:21:18And I would say that's this...

00:21:21This is the mechanism by which the build-up happens.

00:21:28So, first story, predictive coding.

00:21:32The brain tries to minimize surprise.

00:21:35There's predictive models that try and figure out the future.

00:21:39And there's bottom-up sense data, what actually exists.

00:21:44And meditation, by focusing on the bottom-up sense data,

00:21:49it allows energy to build up.

00:21:53Because the stories soak up the energy.

00:21:57And so if we turn off the stories, more energy can be created.

00:22:03Maybe someone...

00:22:04Should we stop and if someone has a question of clarification,

00:22:08for example, what is bottom-up stories and...

00:22:11Because I think that might not be clear.

00:22:14Yeah, yeah.

00:22:16So do you mean real energy?

00:22:18I mean, so more blood goes to our brain?

00:22:22What do you mean by energy?

00:22:23Right, right.

00:22:24So this is not literal energy in the form of heat,

00:22:29but energy in the form of more neural activity.

00:22:36So waves of inhibition and expectation, I would say.

00:22:40Which is neurons are more active.

00:22:44They're firing a little bit.

00:22:45They're firing faster.

00:22:50Just...

00:22:52I know that our brain tries always to save energy.

00:22:57To just behave somehow, to save it.

00:23:03Is it...

00:23:05Makes sense?

00:23:06Or just that energy that you mentioned,

00:23:14Right, right.

00:23:15I mean, I would say meditation takes calories.

00:23:18It's not a low-cost process.

00:23:22Yeah.

00:23:23Okay.

00:23:23I think I will be able to explain,

00:23:26because I have kind of a different understanding

00:23:29of the similar predictive coding system,

00:23:32which might help you as well with your understanding.

00:23:36So from what I have read,

00:23:38which is basically a different model of the same predictive coding,

00:23:44the sensitive data which comes in,

00:23:46in whatever form, through neurons to the brain,

00:23:50has, let's say, 100%.

00:23:52And 95% of that, our brain has predicted.

00:23:57So it's not surprising for the brain.

00:24:00So it's only 5%, which is kind of surprising for the brain,

00:24:04and that's what he puts forward to our conscious.

00:24:08And that's what we are processing

00:24:10as our actual understanding of the brain.

00:24:14So in reality, that's 5%, right?

00:24:16So let's say if Ilya stands up now,

00:24:20that would be a sudden thing, right?

00:24:22So the brain will actually...

00:24:24React on that.

00:24:25...react on it and push it.

00:24:28Even though all this time,

00:24:30the brain also saw that everybody else is sitting.

00:24:32But it doesn't give me that information.

00:24:34So basically, what the top-down stories are

00:24:41is basically us,

00:24:44using this 5% and exaggerating it

00:24:47into these big stories and explanations and so on, right?

00:24:51And when Mike is saying that meditation kind of refocuses your mind

00:24:58into

00:25:00neuroscience of meditation is the process of creating the stories out of 5% of the 95% of the data that is coming in.

00:25:05That's what takes the energy away from creating the stories out of 5% into trying to focus on the 95%.

00:25:16However, from what I understand, from what I have read, at all times the brain activity is actually the same.

00:25:24At all times the brain consumes 25% of your energy.

00:25:28Even when you are sleeping, even when you are relaxing, even when you are working on something and composing I don't know what, right?

00:25:35It all takes the same energy. It's just normally it's all focused on creating the story, but now through meditation it's just focused on understanding the reality a little bit better.

00:25:46So it's a bit of a balance. So where it goes?

00:25:48Or even refocusing, yeah.

00:25:50Yeah, the thing is, the problem is that these stories usually are not real.

00:25:54They are not positive.

00:25:55So this is negative stories because surprise is usually something that brain doesn't like.

00:26:00There is something I haven't predicted.

00:26:03So that's why predictive coding and meditation as a tool helps to calm down and tell you, okay, this is not such a big surprise.

00:26:13This is not so bad for you, even though it's different from what you used to receive from external data.

00:26:21And I would say that that's kind of how it works.

00:26:24Meditation works by sort of getting ahead of sense data before it has to be a part of our stories.

00:26:33That if I feel a twinge in my leg, my leg is not going to fall off.

00:26:37I can just say, okay brain, don't worry, everything is fine.

00:26:41You don't need to be working this into some sort of big story where I have cancer or something.

00:26:59It always uses a lot of energy.

00:27:04And perhaps the best way to frame this then is where the energy goes.

00:28:23So, it's the exact same equations that you use to figure out what frequencies resonate in a guitar if you plug a certain string.

00:29:10you should see higher harmonic peaks,

00:29:14higher sort of...

00:29:18a lot of energy concentrated in the brain's natural resonant components

00:29:31So, the first story basically concluded that meditation adds energy to the brain.

00:29:39And this story about connectome harmonics

00:29:44tells the story of where this energy goes.

00:29:49That if you just have more background energy,

00:29:54it should naturally gather in the

00:30:07What's going on there?

00:30:09Why is it hard?

00:30:30It's like if your brain is a bell, it's mud splatters on the bell.

00:30:36And so the hard part of meditation is sort of trying to scrape off the mud from the bell

00:31:28This tells the story about what happens to the energy.

00:31:33That, okay, you have all this energy kind of doing its thing in the brain and it'll

00:31:39naturally make its way into the brain's natural resonant moments if you do it right, if you

00:31:48sort of successfully enter a force state.

00:31:51And successfully build up this natural resonance.

00:32:23So, this tends to increase harmony in the brain.

00:32:35So, just, I would like to read this article about, just, this other soil article.

00:32:42So, but, which experiments they did, I mean, maybe main experiments that proved that, you

00:32:51know, this hypothesis and just what they measured and in which situation.

00:32:59Just maybe in brief.

00:33:01Yeah.

00:33:02Sure.

00:33:03So, this paradigm came out just over two years ago, in 2016.

00:33:11And so far it's been used to study the effects of various psychedelics on the brain.

00:33:17They, so I have to say, I believe, studied the effects of psychedelics.

00:33:24I had some interesting results, like more energy in the harmonics in general,

00:34:30So what is the main difference with just what you mentioned in the first slide

00:34:38when it was how it was old methods, like alpha, beta, gamma, waves, yeah?

00:34:45And it's also waves.

00:34:47But it's not.

00:34:49It's some other wave.

00:34:49Right, right.

00:34:50It's a good question.

00:34:52So the old way, the sort of measuring brain waves with

00:35:00EEG just gives a slice of the wave itself.

00:35:06You can see, okay, there's a lot of neurons firing in this electrode, and then there are fewer neurons firing in this specific electrode.

00:35:18This adds another dimension to the analysis in that you can not only measure the waves, but you can measure the medium in which the wave is resonating.

00:35:33And if you can do that, then you can calculate the natural harmonics of the system, which lets you do all sorts of cool stuff.

00:37:27I think so.

00:37:33I guess this is a static picture, but you can just imagine waves traveling in the brain.

00:37:40The blue is lower than average activity and the red is higher than average activity.

00:37:49And I can show you guys a video of this, which definitely looks better in motion.

00:38:03So, guys, this is where the magic happens.

00:38:13Can you explain what is annealing before...

00:38:15What is...

00:38:16Yeah, he will go...

00:38:17He will...

00:38:18He will...

00:38:30Let's Mike explain and if you still have questions then we'll explain in Russian.

00:38:37So there's this, if you're a blacksmith and you're working on metal, maybe somebody brings

00:39:55to restore the natural form, or rather the

00:39:59order of crystals, the structure of the molecules of crystals of a certain metal, It is heated to the melting temperature until it accepts the previous structure of the molecule. The same thing happens during meditation with the brain. Now she will tell us about it.

00:40:32So, the core insight that I would share is that brains work like this too. And brains can sort of... So, when a metal is bent a lot, it's stresses build up in the material. That's called cold working.

00:40:54And if a metal is cold worked too much, then it becomes very hard and brittle.

00:41:02And so, I think brains... that happens to brains too. And we can talk about it in terms of stress.

00:41:11But I think this is a more precise way to... or perhaps more generative way to talk about that.

00:41:22Emotionally intense experiences act as kind of a turning up the heat of the brain.

00:41:30And then the brain can sort of self-organize into new, fresh, healthy equilibrium or balances.

00:41:42So, this is studied in the context of neuroscience under entropic disintegration.

00:41:50Robin Carhart-Harris has a paper in the Entropic Brain about this.

00:41:54And basically, adding energy to the system makes existing patterns, existing attractors, break down.

00:42:04And then the system finds new patterns that make more sense, that are more sustainable, that release the pressure that's sort of built up into the system.

00:42:15And then as the system cools down, as the brain leaves a high energy state, then these new patterns sort of crystallize.

00:42:26And these new patterns become more durable, more permanent.

00:42:35And emotionally intense experiences, like what could cause this high energy state and stuff.

00:42:43And I think you see this in...

00:42:45For example, the birth of a child, or a really bad breakup, or really good sex, or your running day, or even crying.

00:42:57So, the...

00:43:01I guess I'll slide in here.

00:43:07This is a very healthy thing to have happen to your brain.

00:43:12Obviously, you want good things to happen.

00:43:15To push you into these states.

00:43:17Into these more changeable, high energy states.

00:43:22That's a lot more healthy if you're pushed into this by good things happening versus bad things.

00:43:31But this process, this raising the energy level of the brain, and then letting the brain sort of self-organize around...

00:43:45New patterns.

00:43:48I would argue that it's the basic mechanism by which the brain heals itself and updates what's important.

00:43:58So...

00:44:01I would say that to bring all this back home, so to speak...

00:44:09Meditation is a very clever technology to basically...

00:44:15Trigger these states at will.

00:44:19And that's not to say that you can sit down and in 15 minutes you can trigger one of these states.

00:44:28And kneel yourself.

00:44:29Right.

00:44:31But after a 21-day retreat, this is what's happening.

00:44:38I think.

00:44:40You're basically building up this...

00:44:45This Heath-Brander.

00:44:49And I think the...

00:44:52So, a lot of things can push the brain into a higher state.

00:44:55They can push us into this very emotional state.

00:45:01But there's always tends to be some object of focus. I mean if you're in a hierarchy state because it's your wedding day, then that's going to be your focus. And if you're in this hierarchy state because of a breakup, that's going to be your focus. If you're in this hierarchy state because you just had a child, that's going to be your focus.

00:45:29Meditation is different because it doesn't have a focus. And I believe that allows the scope of this annealing process to be larger, to be more general.

00:45:42And specifically, this energy should flow into the brain's natural harmonics, its natural resonances, or eigenvalues is the fancy word for it.

00:45:56And so, one way of thinking about this is by entering into meditation, the brain is basically retuning itself toward more harmony, toward more resonance.

00:46:12And then as it cools, it saves some of these new patterns.

00:46:16And it changes the default activity profile of your brain. It shifts it more toward harmony.

00:46:30Questions? Yeah?

00:46:34So, from what I understand, you're talking about changes in the brain after meditation.

00:46:46And this is not connected to any external event, and it's your self-driven kind of activity, right?

00:46:55To me, this is not equivalent of an intense event, right?

00:47:01Which does it in a matter of maybe minutes or hours, right? Or a day.

00:47:07It's rather more to do with neuroplasticity, which is a very long process, which takes a much longer time than a normal process.

00:47:16So, I think that's why I put the 21-day retreat.

00:47:18And where I put the 21-day retreat, it's more under intensive event.

00:47:23Because as it is, it's unlike your regular life.

00:47:27And things were completely different.

00:47:30And that's why it might happen after that intensive event.

00:47:35As well as if you spend 21 days in any other challenge, right?

00:47:41You can maybe go for, I don't know, a TV radio.

00:47:46And your life shows for 21 days.

00:47:48And it might bring the same unhealing in the way, right?

00:47:52I do understand what you're saying in terms of it's much more healthy with this meditation.

00:47:58And it drives the brain into the harmony system.

00:48:03But I just think that the 21-day retreat is more of an intensive event rather than because of that the brain changed.

00:48:12Right.

00:48:13Well, one frame.

00:48:16One of the things that I think is really important to this is it's not necessarily the time involved.

00:48:21But it's the intensity.

00:48:24And also the time the system spends above some critical threshold.

00:48:30I mean, you can make it.

00:48:34You can wave a fork in the sun all day long.

00:48:37But it's not going to melt.

00:48:38It's not going to get above the recrystallization temperature.

00:48:42And it's only once it.

00:48:46It breaks that threshold and stays there for a while that it can sort of self-organize.

00:48:52Right.

00:48:53And so in a 21-day.

00:48:55And you can't cause this meditation you can do to yourself every day.

00:49:00Exactly.

00:49:01It's not like a fork in the sun.

00:49:02This crazy experiment.

00:49:05You can't break up every day or make a wedding every day.

00:49:10Right.

00:49:11Yeah.

00:49:14And I'll get to this in a couple slides.

00:49:18But one could think of the different cases of meditation.

00:49:25If you meditate 20 minutes a day what's that doing?

00:49:30Is that doing a dealing?

00:49:32Probably not.

00:49:34At the same time it's letting you basically clean the mud off the belt.

00:49:43it's letting you fix the hurdles to residence that you're kind of stuck with.

00:49:52And it's a very effortful process, it's a very unpleasant process sometimes, and it's also necessary.

00:50:00But yeah, it's also, you know, 20 minutes a day that's waving the fork in the sun. An hour every day, two hours every day, then you're good. A 21-day retreat, then now you're good.

00:50:18The important thing is maybe not the annealing. Yeah, annealing process by itself is of huge importance.

00:50:26At the same time, the big importance is what you anneal. What is going to happen during the annealing process?

00:50:34Are you going to anneal something positive and healthy for your future life?

00:50:41Or you're going to anneal something that actually will make you feel unconfident and unsafe for the rest of your life?

00:50:51So that's why that matters, I think.

00:50:56So you mean that our brain updates what's important and he can update what is important and what is not?

00:51:03Yes, yes, definitely.

00:51:06And for example, I think PTSD is a form of annealing.

00:51:11Annealing gone wrong.

00:51:13A post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:51:16The brain gets pushed into a high-energy state and then it's in the presence of trauma.

00:51:23And you basically crystallize those patterns.

00:51:29So how do you fix that?

00:51:32Well, you might have to re-anneal, so to speak.

00:51:37And likewise, I mean, something like ayahuasca could.

00:51:46So if we take like drug experience as well, ayahuasca or LSD, is it like a shortcut to the annealing process?

00:51:56I would say so.

00:51:57It's going to not be quite as pure in that it sort of, I mean, different substances work in different ways.

00:52:10One could say that they, some add energy to the brain, some disable the brain's energy sinks that kind of soak up extra energy.

00:52:21And just based on the details of how each substance works, it will produce slightly different things.

00:52:28I think meditation is going to be the healthiest, safest.

00:52:37It's not that I think the drugs eat away.

00:52:41It's the similar effect.

00:52:42But it seems that the.

00:52:43Yes.

00:52:44Yeah.

00:52:46It's, isn't it rather a short change?

00:52:50And then you're back to your patterns?

00:52:53It depends on the.

00:52:55On the drug?

00:52:56Yeah.

00:52:58We can, we can talk about this.

00:53:00And then you can't control what you get into, right?

00:53:03Like what you anneal it into.

00:53:04Yes, yes.

00:53:05With the drugs.

00:53:06Yeah, yeah.

00:53:07There's, there's this phenomenon with certain.

00:53:11Psychological drugs called imprinting.

00:53:14Where the stuff that you're thinking about during the trip very terribly sticks with you.

00:53:23Potentially for years afterwards.

00:53:25And I've had stories from some people I know that this is not.

00:53:32Not going to go away.

00:53:33Yeah, this is not necessarily a positive thing.

00:53:35So it's.

00:53:37Kind of intriguing.

00:53:39When you find yourself.

00:53:41In a high energy brain state.

00:53:43It's very important to take good care of yourself.

00:53:48To be especially kind to your future self.

00:54:25So the part of D is better than the part of A?

00:54:30I mean this is a material science thing.

00:54:33But in the brain.

00:54:37The build up of stress.

00:54:41It causes a lot of suffering.

00:54:43And the brain becomes less plastic.

00:54:47Less ductile.

00:54:48There's less sort of elasticity.

00:54:52Or just a default background neuro-elasticity.

00:54:57It kind of beats into the reserve

00:55:00of flexibility of the brain.

00:55:02So if you can sort of turn up the heat parameter and let this sort itself out, self-organize

00:55:11around new patterns, new attractors, then it'll be, it's basically a way to heal the

00:56:18And predictive coding describes the mechanism Buddhism uses to build up what I would call

00:56:27neutral energy, semantically neutral energy.

00:56:39Tools to ring the bell and also to scrape the mud off the bell, too.

00:57:44And then the three things, the four things given a sequence of noting, but then the

00:57:49continuously

00:57:58Until it's spinning so quickly. Yeah, you're getting into a high energy state and then maybe some!

00:59:17so it's easier to go back into the

00:59:19Yes

00:59:20And I'll get to that part too

00:59:30Where existing patterns break down and then self-organization?

00:59:36based on the minimization of