Annaka Harris

And I would say for most people who meditate long enough, they do drop away.

And there's actually an explanation at the level of the brain as well.

The default mode network is circuitry in the brain that neuroscientists don't completely understand, but know is largely responsible for this feeling of being a self.

And when that circuit gets quieted down, which it does in meditation and also does with the use of psychedelic drugs, and there are other ways to quiet down the default mode network, people have this experience of losing this illusion of being a self.

They no longer feel that they're a self in the way that they usually do.

I may have said something misleading because I was connecting too many dots.

I got excited when memory came up because I love talking about time.

So I'm working on an audio documentary about consciousness, and it picks up where my book left off.

So all of the questions that were still lingering for me and research that I still wanted to do, I just started conducting.

So I've done about 30 interviews so far, and it's not totally clear what the end result will be.

I'm

currently collaborating with ted and i'm having a lot of fun creating a pilot with them um and so we'll we'll see where it goes but the idea is that it's a narrated um documentary it's like a series a series it'll be a 10 part series it's an unclear oh you already know the number of parts

Sorry, in my mind, it's a 10-part series, Amanda, being 8 or 11 or 12.

I don't know why.

About 10.

So at the end of my book, I kind of get to the place where I've convinced myself, at least, that this question about whether consciousness is fundamental is a legitimate one.

And then I just start spending a lot of time thinking about what that would mean, if it's even possible to study scientifically.

So I mostly talk to physicists, actually, because I really think ultimately this is a question for physics.

If consciousness is fundamental, I think it needs to be strongly informed by neuroscience.

But if it's part of the fabric of reality, it is a question for a physicist.