Can consciousness serve as a refuge from suffering? By examining the raw textures of difficult emotions like anger and sadness, Sam Harris explains how we can experience them without suffering, and how digging into awareness reveals a layer of openness below the mental state.
Harris explains how meditation and direct attention can alleviate pain and liberate us from a prison of our emotions.
SAM HARRIS: It's possible to recognize that that in you, which is aware of sadness, is the same thing that's aware of joy. And you can drop back into that condition of awareness and recognize that it has this intrinsic quality of openness and tranquility and freedom from any sort of contraction, right? And so you can be aware of sadness from a point of view that is not merely sad, and you can be aware of fear from a point of view that's not merely afraid. And the ability to drop back into that condition is always available really, if you simply remember to look for it.
- [Interviewer] How can we reframe our mental state into a positive experience?
- I mean, the amazing thing about our circumstances that each one of us is in a position that is in some sense, as free and as profound and as in touch with reality, as any other position in this universe, where you stand, the universe is illuminated as you, as your experience in this moment. And that we call this substratum of experience, consciousness, for lack of a better word. I mean, the fact that it's like something to be you is what we mean by consciousness. And consciousness in the case of every person really is in some basic sense the same. We have different memories, we have different skills. We have different perceptions based on where we are and what is happening. But the experience of being in this world is what is profound, right? I mean, everything else is a passing appearance. There's nothing you can hold onto. This is true in the grossest sense, right? I mean the things in the world are continually changing. The face in the mirror is continually changing as you age, right? I mean there's no way to stop the processes you see and embody moment to moment. We're not surrounded by things so much as we're surrounded by processes and we're part of those processes. But all of this is appearing in this condition we call consciousness. And it is already free of all of the problems we are attempting to solve. Really, I mean, as you continually drop back into it, as you recognize what it's like to be you prior to reacting, to experience, prior to thinking, prior to rehearsing, prior to remembering, that thing that is making you angry or frustrated, there's just this open space in which your experience of the universe is illuminated and you're identical to it. It's not that you are a self on the edge of experience having an experience. There's just experience, right? There's just this openness in which everything is appearing sights and sounds and sensations and thoughts and emotions. I'm not saying there's no real world out there, there almost certainly is, but your experience of it really is a visionary experience. I mean, is this is neurologically so, I mean, what you're experiencing now with your open eyes is something that's happening in your brain as it states. It is a physiologically mediated vision, right? Very much akin to a dream. What this offers is an extraordinarily wide latitude for experiencing wellbeing regardless of what is happening in the world. I mean, it's possible to recognize that that in you, which is aware of sadness, is the same thing that's aware of joy. And you can drop back into that condition of awareness and recognize that it has this intrinsic quality of openness and tranquility, and freedom from any sort of contraction, right? And so you can be aware of sadness from a point of view that is not merely sad, and you can be aware of fear from a point of view that's not merely afraid. And the ability to drop back into that condition is always available really if you simply remember to look for it. And it's always available because it is what you are as a matter of experience in each moment. I'm not making any metaphysical claims about consciousness being prior to the physics of things or separate from the brain I mean, all of that. We can be agnostic or uncertain about all of that because science certainly still is. We don't know how consciousness arises out of the unconscious complexity of the universe. We don't know at what level it arises. One could even argue that we don't know that it does arise ultimately, that maybe it's a fundamental property of matter. I mean, it's that the jury to some degree still out on questions of that kind. But what really can't be debated is that from your point of view as a being in this universe, consciousness is the one thing that can't be an illusion. It's the one thing that you are to which you moment to moment are identical, even if you are wrong about everything, even if you're confused about everything, even if you are psychotic or this is just a dream, or you are in the matrix, or this is all a simulation on some alien supercomputer. I mean, even if our physics isn't real physics, because we're not in touch with the base layer of reality, and your personal history is merely imagined, right? I mean, you could be utterly confused, what you can't doubt is that something seems to be happening. Something seems to be the case. There's an appearance here, whatever its real status, and that seeming is consciousness, and it admits of certain intrinsic properties, which really are a refuge for us. I mean, it is an antidote to the ordinary course of suffering. When you look at the mechanics of your psychological suffering, when you look into the painfulness of pain and the way in which various negative mental states and dark moods, color experience, consciousness is the prior condition to all of that. It's in some basic sense, transcendent of all of that. I mean, you can locate, its quality as the condition of all appearances. And in locating it as such, you are free in some basic sense of these appearances. It's not that you're rejecting experience, you're not moving away from your emotions. You're not becoming a zombie. In fact, the the method of meditation that would allow you to recognize this about consciousness requires that you feel your emotions even more deeply than you tend to, right? Like, so the next time you feel anger, for instance, let yourself become incandescent with anger. I mean, just feel it on the molecular level. Feel it just in every cell of your body that is participating in it. Feel that, right? But notice too that thought is a separate set of appearances, right? I mean that there's the mere physiology of anger, and then there are the thoughts about it. And notice the difference between those two things and let the thoughts arise and pass away, and watch the physiology and see and see what it does. And you'll notice that it too arises and passes away. And the truth is the moment you break the spell of thinking about why you're angry, and you just feel the raw physiology as this display of energy in your mind and body on some basic level anger ceases to be anger. It ceases to have the same kind of psychological import that it had a moment ago or seem to right. It has no more real meaning or imperative than a stomach ache does, right? Or a pain in your elbow, right? I mean, it can be very intense and yet have no real psychological implication. And again, this is not a matter of moving away from it, it's a matter of allowing it to be felt so fully that it evaporates, right? And so it is with any other psychological rejection state or classically negative emotion, there's just something deeper to our being moment to moment than our thoughts and our reactions and our states of contraction. There's this wider condition in which everything is appearing all by itself, and the more you recognize it, the more you are you free of your imagined problems. Again, I'm not saying there's nothing to change in the world. There are many thoughts that are worth thinking and many things that are worth doing, but the question is, is it possible to be free while you're cleaning up all those messes? Is it possible to be happy before the next good thing happens? Before the next goal is realized? And for thousands of years, people have recognized that the answer to those questions is, yes.
