Summary: A meditation trend called the jhanas is gaining popularity in tech circles in the Bay Area. The jhanas offer different states of consciousness that can bring feelings of euphoria, joy, and contentment. Practicing the jhanas may provide insights into how our brains work and improve our well-being.
“postrationalism” — is a loose subculture, notorious for its love of introspection, that grew out of the tech-adjacent rationalist movement. Where rationalists emphasize the use of logic to govern their decision-making, tpot believes that “vibes” and feelings are unaccounted for by pure logic and advocate taking them more seriously. (View Highlight)
It turns out that inducing altered states of consciousness, in the right setting, can help people work through depression, anxiety, and addiction, as well as navigate major life transitions such as loss or terminal illness. (View Highlight)
But what if we could engineer these altered states without any external substances or stimuli? Enter the jhanas, a growing meditation trend that’s made its way into some corners of tech. Practitioners claim they can induce extremely blissful mental states that rival life’s peak experiences, available at any time with enough concentration. (View Highlight)
By revealing the mind’s potential to transform our subjective experience, they point toward a radically expanded notion of what happiness can be — and where it comes from. (View Highlight)
Modern practitioners tend to focus their practice on the first four jhanas, or the “form jhanas,” which roughly progress from euphoria (first jhana, or J1) to joy (J2) to contentment (J3) to peacefulness or equanimity (J4). While the higher jhanas (J5 through J8), sometimes called the “deep” or “formless” jhanas, are more dissociative, the first four (J1 through J4) bring about palpably positive sensations, which have a clearer instrumental purpose. (View Highlight)
Stephen Zerfas, cofounder of Jhourney, a company that aims to help more people experience jhanas, describes them as “the opposite of a panic attack.” Instead of an escalating anxiety loop, jhanas are an escalating pleasure loop, the intensity of which is comparable — depending on whom you ask — to an orgasm, an MDMA-induced cuddle puddle, or the thrill of new love. (View Highlight)
