Manufacturing Bliss

The basic technique was finding a “meditation object” — something or someone that sparked a pleasant sensation — then trying to intensify and heighten that sensation. But we were told to experiment, because certain techniques were likely to work better for some than others. This, too, was a marked departure from the typical dogma of meditation retr... See more

Tpot — sometimes used interchangeably with “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 ... See more

For some reason, the notion of others being happy seems to trigger a “tall poppy” syndrome among the unhappy, as if there were only so much happiness to go around. Even Zerfas, when he tried to explain his early experiences to friends, found that they were “either skeptical or concerned,” which made him not want to talk about it. I, too, avoided te... See more

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 th... See more

If panic attacks are real, and people can be coached to not experience them, why is it so controversial to assert that people can learn to induce the opposite of a panic attack? Furthermore, why isn’t there a secular word for such a concept?

Andrés Gómez Emilsson, classifies the jhanas as an “exotic state,” by which he means an unusual or extreme subjective experience whose properties might help us to reverse engineer consciousness. Just as black holes and plasma help us understand how matter works, jhanas or psychedelics could do the same for consciousness.

I felt like a scientist, traipsing off to my cabin each morning to lie on my spare bed for 45-60-minute “sits,” walk around the grounds, then record my observations in a notebook, until it was time for dinner. In the evenings, we logged our experiences using presupplied Chromebooks. I had a daily “interview,” a one-on-one conversation with a Jhourn... See more

Jhanas are a technique for invoking altered states of consciousness through sustained concentration, which can then relax our brains to perceive the world more clearly — it could really be that simple.

I later realized that was a mistake. The power of the jhanas was not that they offered a temporary escape from our otherwise pallid lives — as we typically think of pleasurable vices — but that, with repeated practice, they somehow elevated my everyday life to be more jhana-like.