I’m the founder of Jhourney, a neurotech company attempting to map the neural correlates of the jhanas and use tools like neurofeedback to help make them more accessible.
Scott's questions get at the curiously highly-pleasurable-but-non-addictive nature of the jhanas. A few excerpts from my response:
[Experience suggests] they're not addictive. It’s not as if you wirehead yourself into some wildly different equilibrium, you just never go reaching for them the same way you start automatically reaching for your phone if you’ve been spending lots of time on Twitter. My colleague and neuroscientist Kati Devaney informs me that you can predict the addictiveness of a drug by the first derivative of its dopamine spike. Drugs that see more gradual rates of change of dopamine don’t see such addictive responses. This implies that despite their extreme pleasure, the neurological mechanisms of jhanas don’t have a high dopaminergic rate of change.
But for those concerned about wireheading like a heroin addict, perhaps even greater reassurance is that the idea of *living life* with the jhanas seems much more fulfilling than just doing the jhanas all day. By having access to the jhanas, in the form of either bliss, happiness, contentment, or deep peace (i.e. the first four jhanas), I’m able to “splash” them into everyday life. Walking in the woods with my partner? How about a little J2? Coming home after a long day? How about a little J3? Rob Burbea talks a lot about mastery of the jhanas being a process of learning to delight and play and weave together the jhanas with one another and in everyday life. Every now and then I meet someone who talks about the jhanas like “been there, done that” and I think, “Holy shit is this person missing out.” And since it takes a little practice, they’ve lost the ability to get back to the jhanas and need to relearn.
...
My favorite way of explaining the jhanas is “they may be the opposite of a panic attack.” Most everyone is familiar with an anxiety “loop” – one anxious thought begets another. By the time you’ve been at it for a few minutes, you start seeing physiological effects: your heart rate and breathing change, maybe your hands get sweaty. It turns out a little personal experimenting is enough to learn to create that same positive feedback loop with a positive kernel… and the results are better than anything you imagined.
...
Kati (my neuroscientist colleague) observed to me that people seem to go through phases with the jhanas:
- Pre-jhana: lack of awareness and then either rejection or fascination
- Phase 1: Fascinated and trying to learn
- Phase 2: Learn them, fascinated, and think they are absolutely life-changing
- Phase 3: Gradual forgetting how big of a deal they were and possible loss of interest
- Phase 4: Cycle periodically back through Phases 2 and 3
I think even Nick would admit he was fascinated for a while – I think he spent over an hour a day for a year in the jhanas. So did I.
I’m the founder of Jhourney, a neurotech company attempting to map the neural correlates of the jhanas and use tools like neurofeedback to help make them more accessible.
I started drafting a comment in response to Scott's post and it ended up a bit long so I posted it here: https://www.jhourney.io/blog/scott-alexander-nick-cammarata-jhana
Scott's questions get at the curiously highly-pleasurable-but-non-addictive nature of the jhanas. A few excerpts from my response:
[Experience suggests] they're not addictive. It’s not as if you wirehead yourself into some wildly different equilibrium, you just never go reaching for them the same way you start automatically reaching for your phone if you’ve been spending lots of time on Twitter. My colleague and neuroscientist Kati Devaney informs me that you can predict the addictiveness of a drug by the first derivative of its dopamine spike. Drugs that see more gradual rates of change of dopamine don’t see such addictive responses. This implies that despite their extreme pleasure, the neurological mechanisms of jhanas don’t have a high dopaminergic rate of change.
But for those concerned about wireheading like a heroin addict, perhaps even greater reassurance is that the idea of *living life* with the jhanas seems much more fulfilling than just doing the jhanas all day. By having access to the jhanas, in the form of either bliss, happiness, contentment, or deep peace (i.e. the first four jhanas), I’m able to “splash” them into everyday life. Walking in the woods with my partner? How about a little J2? Coming home after a long day? How about a little J3? Rob Burbea talks a lot about mastery of the jhanas being a process of learning to delight and play and weave together the jhanas with one another and in everyday life. Every now and then I meet someone who talks about the jhanas like “been there, done that” and I think, “Holy shit is this person missing out.” And since it takes a little practice, they’ve lost the ability to get back to the jhanas and need to relearn.
...
My favorite way of explaining the jhanas is “they may be the opposite of a panic attack.” Most everyone is familiar with an anxiety “loop” – one anxious thought begets another. By the time you’ve been at it for a few minutes, you start seeing physiological effects: your heart rate and breathing change, maybe your hands get sweaty. It turns out a little personal experimenting is enough to learn to create that same positive feedback loop with a positive kernel… and the results are better than anything you imagined.
...
Kati (my neuroscientist colleague) observed to me that people seem to go through phases with the jhanas:
- Pre-jhana: lack of awareness and then either rejection or fascination
- Phase 1: Fascinated and trying to learn
- Phase 2: Learn them, fascinated, and think they are absolutely life-changing
- Phase 3: Gradual forgetting how big of a deal they were and possible loss of interest
- Phase 4: Cycle periodically back through Phases 2 and 3
I think even Nick would admit he was fascinated for a while – I think he spent over an hour a day for a year in the jhanas. So did I.