Ezra Klein

She said the great lesson of meditation is the mind cannot be controlled.

It's very freeing to people trying.

What was interesting about this is that when people press the button, she would look back at when something popped out, when there was activity in the hippocampus, which is the source of memories and other stuff as well.

But she was watching that as a source of a thought.

And it took four seconds for

between the fMRI showing activity in the hippocampus and the person being aware of that thought.

So what is happening?

Four seconds in the brain time is like an eon.

What is happening for a thought to transit from the unconscious to the conscious?

And why does it take so long?

And she doesn't know.

I'm sorry, I can't pay this off.

But one of the theories called global neuronal workspace theory, which is that there are thoughts competing with one another for access to our conscious awareness.

And they're kind of, you know, this Darwinian process.

And only the most salient ever gets into the workspace and then broadcast to the whole brain.

The problem with this theory is there's a lot of trivial stuff that somehow gets through, at least in my case.

I think there's a lot of traffic going back and forth.

And that's something also that you happen, not just during meditation, but during psychedelic experiences.

There's lots of unconscious material that comes up.

Yeah.