Looking to make your search bar cast This is SAM harris, just a no to say that if your hearing this, you are not currently honour subscriber feet, and all will be here in the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe? sam harris work, there you'll find or private our says. We need to add to your favorite pot catcher, along with other subscriber, only count we don't run ads on the past and therefore its made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you What we're doing here, please consider becoming one Welcome to the essential sam harris, this is making sense of death.

The goal of the series is to organise, compile an juxtaposed conversations, did by sam Harris into specific areas of interest, This is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of sam's perspectives and arguments. The various explorations and approaches to the topic, the relevant agreements and disagreements and the push backs and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced. The purpose of these compilations is not to provide a complete picture of any issue but to entice you to go down, For into these subjects along the way, we'll point you to the full episodes with each featured guest at the conclusion will offer some reading Listening and watching suggestions which range from fun and light to densely academic one, to keep in mind for the series say has long argued for a unity of knowledge, where the barriers between fields of study are viewed as large.

unhelpful artifacts of unnecessarily partition thought the pursuit. wisdom and reason in one area of study naturally bleeds into an greatly affects others. You'll hear plenty of cross over into other topics as these dives into the archives unfold and your things. About a particular topic, may shift as he realizes contingent relationships with others. In this topic, you'll hear the news. troll overlap with theories of belief and unbelief consciousness, and free well so get ready. Let's make sense of death. let's start with an image inspired by one of the guys, still here and this compilation. Picture, a large hourglass that sits in your living room, perhaps on your shell for mantle,

more that's always on the periphery available to focus on. If you choose, but most of the time it just lingers in the background rhythm of your environment When you decide to look at the thing you see, You have a clear view of the bottom ball, where the green falling. You see a mound of sand which has been forming for as long as you can remember, culminating there's plenty of room in the bulb, or perhaps it's good That, for you would think, at both of those might provide clues as to how long this whole process might last. But then you try to look at the top. Bald which holds the remaining sand grains yet to fall, but the top is shrouded by an opaque curtain which hangs just above the narrow channel don't know how many greens remain, but yet more he continued to fall.

our glass is something like the human condition and awareness of death. The impossibility of seeing the full picture a paralyzing. The strange situation which constantly teeth between anxiety, denial, stoicism gratitude an urgency with another that this hour glass exists somewhere on the periphery this compilation will adjust that our glass to a place of sense focus making it available for earnest contemplation there's something salmon says can and should be done in an honest and intimate way, and that be, mindful of deaths ever present seat at the table of our experience, actually indirect service of bringing us back to life, ourselves, selves and each other

You will hear this same inside arrived at through many different paths. In these conversations, as this ten points, series nears as conclusion with the final two episodes, its the time to remind ourselves of its overall purpose, the modern, Human condition is one which is subject to an onslaught seemingly novel technological hurdles, leslie morphing, geo, political configurations and up to the sector. Information updates. It can feel like a dog Seeing bombardment where the straw just to stay current and in contact with today's problems is the entire battle, the act of review, sitting, thoughts, observations, conversations and considerations from years ago is out of fashion and late. Lee, seems to take extra concerted efforts. Some topics in conversations haven't eternally relevant and evergreen quality to them.

Some observations, even the one, with logical mistakes which have been exposed by the benefit of hindsight, take on an important light upon recitation. perhaps no other topic fits the descriptor of ever green as much as the one featured in the compilation there. we'll be three themes: braided together throughout the conversations you're about to hear life, death and dying these three threads are fundamentally intertwined yet distinct. The death threats, has an infinite and homogenous quality to it. The way which death has experienced, which is too not experienced, the very Absence of experience is something like the surprisingly controversial philosophical notion of nothing without diverting our path too much at the start will note that a deep

contemplation on the nature of nothingness is bewildering and costs. Only borders on mistakenly giving a something. This quality to. Nothing nothing may be impossible to conceive it may even cancel itself out when speaking about death. This mistake is often made when death is imagined or feared, as something like, darkness and silence forever, and knowledge rising, nothing to death is like say, The EU will experience death in the same manner in which you experienced paris, France, an eleventh, thirteen em in the year twelve ninety two, which is to say that you didn't and before you existed, the idea. Paris, France, in that year, carried no meaning no imitation and would there or be unimaginable.

This is the same realisation which underpins the classic observation from the ancient greek philosopher, epicure us when he wrote death, is nothing to us. when we are death has not come and when death has come, we are not so of the three ideas braided together in this compilation, death does but actually leave us much to say about it on its own, but the way in which its ever present, stitching and the fabric of our existence informs the other two ideas: dying, and life is the sole from which many important and illuminating ideas, unfurl, Let's now hear from sam himself from the introduction, Two episode, one o four with frank, asked. A sexy episode entitled the lessons of death. This will be our

first clip to lay out how, being mindful of day, paints a shade of absurdity over many of our daily interactions. None actions and flights from life, while today's topic as a topic, we all think about while doing our best, not to think about it. The topic is death and how we think about death changes depending on whether we are thinking about dine ourselves or about losing the people we love, but whichever side of the coin we take here death is really an ever present reality for us, and it is so whether were thinking about it or not. Always announcing itself. In the background on the news in this, stories we hear about the lives of others. In our case,

turns about our own health in the attention we pay when crossing the street. If you observe yourself so you'll see that you spend a fair amount of energy each day, trying not to die and has long been noted by philosophers in contempt of those in power, death makes a mockery of almost everything else. We spend our lives doing just take a moment to reflect on how you ve spent your day. So far, the kinds of things had captured your ten the things that ve been genuinely worried about. Think of them. asked argument you had with your spouse, the last hour, you spent on social media overlap, days have been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find a new fund for my podcast,

this is literally absorbed hours of my time. If you had stopped at any point in the last forty eight hours and asked me what I'm up to what really concerns me. What deep problem! I'm attempting to solve this! lucian, which seems most likely to bring order to the chaos and my corner the universe, the honest answer would have been I'm looking for a font now I must say that everything we do have to be profound in every moment. I sometimes you just have to find a font, but Contemplating the brevity of life bring some per se if too, how we use. Our attention is not so much what we pay attention to is the quality of attention it, how we feel, while do if you need to spend the next hour, looking for a font, you might as well enjoy it

truth is, none of us know how much time we have in this life and taking that fact to heart. brings a kind of moral and emotional clarity and energy to the present, or at least it can. And it can bring a resolve to not suffer over stupid things, something like road rage. This is probably the quintessential example of misspent. End if you're behind the wheel of your car and somebody does something erratic or the product is driving more slowly than you want, and you find yourself getting angry, I would submit to you that that kind of thing is impossible. If you're being mindful of the shortness of life,. If you are aware that you are going to die and the other person is going to die and that your boy you're going to lose everyone, you love.

and you dont know when you ve got this moment of life. This beautiful moment this moment where you're conscious This is bright. Words is not deemed by morphine in the hospital on your last day among the living and the sun is out or it's raining. Both our beautiful and your spouse is alive I've and your children are alive and your driving and you're, not in some Failed state were civilians are being rounded up and murdered by the thousands of years, thus running an errand and that person in front of you who you will never meet, whose hopes and sorrows you know nothing about but which, if you could know them You would recognise, or impressively similar to your own is just driving slow. This is your life,

The only one you ve got an you, never get this moment back again and you don't know how many more moments you have, no matter, how many times you do something there, come a day when you do it. For the last time you had a thousand chances to tell the people closer to that. You love them in a way that they feel it and in a way that you feel it and you ve missed most of them. And you don't know how many more you're going to get you ve got. This next interact and with another human being to make them world a marginally better place. You got this one not opportunity. fall in love with existence, so

why not relax and enjoy your life really relax. Even in the midst of struggle. even while doing hard work. Even under uncertainty, We're in a game right now and you can see the clock. So you don't know how much time you have left, and yet you are free to make the game is interesting as possible. You can even changed the rules you can discuss. New games that no one has thought of. Yet you can make games that you to be impossible suddenly possible and get other to play them with you, but whatever you do, however, seemingly ordinary. You can feel the preciousness of life. and an awareness of death is the doorway into that.

They have been in the world well now, listen in on SAM's conversation with asked a second here They stay on the theme of being mindful of the reality of death as to enrich our lives. Frank us to second cofounded, the zen hospice project in nineteen, eighty seven, which integrated It mindfulness practices into end of life care he offered. book entitled the five invitations discovery what death can teach us about living fully, which is where confine deeper contemplation of the ideas they owe here introduced in this clip this comes from the same episode as the previous clip episode. One, for the lessons of death, one of them the things that people are most confused about most surprised by what what what what is

waiting there to be discovered by someone who really hasn't thought much about death and has Dita avoided thinking about it frankly and what is the value of of learning those lessons sooner rather than later, greek I said you know, I mean I dont know what happens after we die sam. I dont know and find out rang I think that without a reminder of death, we tend to take her life for granted and we become lost in these endless pursuits of soft gratification. You know But as I was mentioning, we keep a close at hand, you know our fingertips, I think. It reminds us not all alonso tightly and I think we can the ourselves in ideas a little less seriously and I let go a little more easily. And then, when I find it windows, a reflection on death. We come down here, and we're on the boat together, and I think this help

to be kinder gentler to one another. Actually the habits of life, they have a powerful momentum right there, propellers toward you, know right until the moment of death, and so the obvious question arises, what habits do I want to create? Not whether or not they give me a better after life, but here in this life you know my thoughts were not harmless. My thoughts take shape Johnson. You know, you know the old story: they develop into habits and heartening to character so an conscious relationship with my thoughts leads me to reactivity and damned, and I want to live a life, that's more responsible and more, I want to say clean as the best racquet I would describe it. Air living with an awareness of death is obviously a an ancient spiritual practice. Myths, an admonition that one should

this dates back is as far as socrates and the buddha and several books in in the old testament like ecclesiasticism, and I think that all three of those are are more or less contemporaneous with one another, but it go. It must go back further than that, and so, as it is no accident, that monks and and renunciate in contemporary lives do this very day really they focus on death and they live their lives. They seek to live their lives as though could end at any moment and there and they are trying to prioritize those things. That will be the things that make sense in one's last hour of life again. This is often framed by a kind of other worldly belief, but certainly not always and our member stephen Levine, who you just mentioned at one point, decided to live a year consciously doing this consciously living a year as he would want to live a year if it were going to be his last year, and this is struck me as an enemy,

in thing to do, but of course he had more than it one more year to live. In fact, I think he had at least twenty at that point it he died a couple years ago, and it is a bit of a paradox here: because there are many things, many good things in life, not merely superficial things, that we can only engaged we can only seek with a real energy. Based on the assumption that we will live a fairly long time and evidence as something like the decision. have a child or to span five or more years on on your next project and in most cases it is a safe assumption that we have at least an average span of time in which to do these things. How do you square that with this, this imperative that we not take life for granted and that we use the clarifying wisdom of impermanence in each moment insofar as were, able yeah I mean, I think that one of the things it one of the ways we can shift the conversation.

even the one that you and I are having is it it isn't all about preparing for my death. It isn't all about this moment at which I stop breathing more about how do I live my life on an ongoing basis? You know I had a heart attack, years ago, and one of the things I did after the heart attack, as I did, reading about other people that had heart attacks and one of the people I met up on was maslow. Maslow suffered a near fatal heart attack at one point in his life an end after which he wrote this beautiful thing. He said the confrontation with death and the reply from the reprieve from it makes everything looks so precious so sick. so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it to embrace it Let myself be overwhelmed by it.

said, my river has never looked so beautiful death in its ever present possibility makes love, passionate, love more possible. That's beautiful him, not just about preparing for his final moment rally but really looking at seeing? How does it what happens if these, if we stop separating life and death and we start pulling them apart, you know we saw them as one thing so for me, one things that that does not help me really see the beauty of life. I mean. Do you not think about the terrible sums that cover the hillsides. If Japan every spring work this place I teach in northern idaho. Where are these blue flax flowers that last for a single day? How come they're so much more beautiful than plastic flowers mean, isn't it their brevity? Isn't it the fact that they will end that is their beauty. So I think that's true with our human lives as well. It's not like get ready

death is coming? You know, don't screw it up, it's more like! Oh, how do I appreciate this so for me being with dying is a lot has built in built up in me a tremendous sense of gratitude and appreciation for the fact that I'm alive And so it isn't just about you know, trying cram protest, rush this final text, where we think we're gonna pass here. I don't know what happens after we die. I don't know. to find out how it is spent what I do know- and this is interesting sam is Everybody'S- got a story about what happens after they die in my experience is that that story shape the way in which they die and in some ways even the way in which they live their life. We can talk about that the nuts I remember being with at present, the california atheist association, who came to send hospice to die. I was really proud that he can there that he didn't feel animals can apportioning downward him that we will get it right. how come into some kind of belief system

Then it could go the way he needed. It go tell my job to convince him of something. Otherwise it's my job to find out what his vision and how does he need to go through this act? I want to ask you about that, because it has struck me more and more, that secularists an atheist are really lacking resources to guide them both when they get second and need to think about their own deaths or or confront the deaths of those close to them. It just the fact that there isn't a strong, familiar secular, commission around how to perform a funeral right and who do you call when great, when someone close to your dies or how atheistic you are. Many people are left, calling their rabbi or their priest or just asking them to dumb it down, because the only people who know how to

perform funerals and the only the only language around these moments in life is just explicitly framed by by religion in ITALY, in Eden b, I mean you, I didn't hundreds of memorials for people are through the aids epidemic. You know most of them had no. You know that some of them, had an early religious training. We can talk about how that influences the way in which we die by the way, but you know so. We had come the things we have to draw up a ritual. How do you know how it is with ritual ritual? Has this. way of bringing forward? The truth is already there in the room and away true ritual different than ceremony evokes something fundamental in us, we could say it might draw on an ancient wisdom or some. We know each in practice, but really it's about, and we avoid the truth. It's right here right now. That's often what what characterize the lot of the

the moral services that idea, but one of the things that I saw with people, whether they were had religious training or not one other thing that really mattered. Most of them was relationship what's their relationship with themselves, with the people that they cared about in their lives. You know with reality, however, we might defined and so one of the tickets, and if you will were one of the pass in for people who even had sworn Religion years ago was some sense of interdependence. We might call it or connection with a better way to set that was there. That was very little. I can t hundreds of stories with you about people who had no religious training well but loved their time in nature, and so we would work with that. You know we'd work with that experience as a way of helping them ease into the mystery of what happens in dying. I mean

look dying, is we know? At least this much we noted dying is much more than a medically that you know, and so the preferred the deal. What occurs in a dying process is too big to feed into any model. Weather The medical model or religious model too big. It shakes us loose all of our day, all the waste to find herself all the ideas we ve carried over all these years, their industry the way by illness or the gracefully given up, but they all go then, who are we? Then? I think these are questions that people wrestle with and time at them ass to come closer to the end of their lives. Of course, if they have some religious or spiritual training, it influences that that exploration, but they know it doesn't If he comes up for people anyway, even those people who think dying as a dial tone that they know where there's nothing that happens. Even then, there there

action on their relationships and how they conducted those relationships is really important, In this really big question at the end of people's lives is usually something that, like you know, is there life after death, but it's something more like am I loved and did I love. You heard asta to mentioned the americans psychologist Abraham mass low and his encounter with the medical diagnosis which brought him psychologically closer to his own death or next clip There's an author and psychologists who wrote specific We about mass low and we'll flesh out the story completely. likely heard of mass lows hierarchy of needs. This was his attack. to model a sort of ordered checklist of universal human needs which are tension on one another, it's been put, clearly presented as a pyramid with the low and more urgent needs at the bottom and the high more transcendent needs at the top. Only reachable

if the foundations below them are met. Mass never actually drew this hierarchy as a pyramid, and it's difficult to tell if you would ever endorse the specific presentation, but regardless the idea, clearly resonate with the public and persist today at the beach. So this hierarchy or physiological need such as food, water and shelter once these bay sick needs are met. Indonesia was then seek safety and security, followed by love and belonging esteem and, ultimately, Self actual evasion that last piece self actual innovation. One is the one which really peaches interest of the next guessed? The guest is scott, very kaufman. He wrote a book entitled transcend which was his effort to understand what maso may have meant by self actual asean and how it might be

I too, our own psychological journeys. Kaufman picks up on the which ought to second made about a heart attack which maslovs suffered in nineteen sixty seven and how this reminder of his own mortality, significantly impact at his work and in some ways, through our wrench and his entire theory of the hierarchy of needs and may have crumbled the orderly you're mad model. This conversation was hoarded, while uncertainties around mortality and the covert pandemic occupied the world's attention, which provided an interesting backdrop for thinking about death and transcendence. This is from episode to oh, nine entitled a good life. You know there's a twist ending to my book and its

not all about the peak experiences. What maso realized towards the end of his life is that really life is about the plateau, experience europe and that's not a phrase. That's used up Then, when people talk about masl, they may talk about peak experiences, but his great insight. Perhaps his greatest insight was the just past couple of years of his life when he was facing his own mortality and he was confused because, according to his hierarchy,

it's motto if he goes down to the bottom of the hierarchy, all of a sudden and has these concerns about about safety. Well, that should blocks of accusation and block feelings of transcendence, but he wrote in his in his personal diaries. How can it be that this experience is giving me a greater appreciation of my life and am feeling these trends and experiences more than I ever have in my entire life and- and it took me facing this mortality to get there? That was confusing to him. That was a paradise where paradox called him, a kind of threw out of whack his whole hierarchy innocence, and when my book I tried to reconcile that paradox. That's one of the most fundamental paradoxes. I try to record

I'll, because there's one would return psychology showing that when you face mortality salience on a daily basis like you live and impoverish, neighborhoods or you live in any eu note, you grow up with love, discord or chaos in your environment. You dont experience, love trends. These kinds of transcendent peak spares you're you're. You are focused on most immediate. Concerns you tend to daniel nettle and other of ocean psychologists have shown you focus on on meeting you focus on a food acquisition static, mainly focused on the things that you you need for survival and reproduction, but it seems like if you you can transcend living in that constant state of of chaos and you face mortality, then there's a group of people in the psychological would ensure that report their fear of death is gone. They.

For really new new found sense of meaning in life, new projects they want won't take on new creative aspects and the way I reconcile this is so much of that literature on mortality salience doesn't take. It doesn't look at individual differences, in deprivation of needs. So I think there is a great value in an transcending your your need for your basic needs, so transcending your incessant need for esteem self esteem, transcending europe's need for connection with only the people that you feel connection too

as opposed to a connection to all of humanity. You can transcend, and then this is a big one, because obviously some people don't have a choice in the matter. If they're born in certain neighborhoods or environments, where there's a lot of violence and chaos in their environment, it's better. It's easier said than done to just transcendent, but if you can transcend it, so these basic needs are not you're, not preoccupied with them any more. The research I've seen shows that that mortality salience under that state of consciousness actually gives you the heightened most heightened states of transcendence Person could possibly have so. This was a big sort of products of his trying to reconcile with these two doing literatures. You know, on the one hand, mortality sans leading to a more momentary concerns of survival in reproduction and then saw there what are termed posits ecology showing that mortality selling can lead to greater meaning

Post traumatic growth- I guess almost everything we're talking about is susceptible to this tool. In almost, as is almost the pre trans distinction that can wilburn made. I have not found a lot of use for, can wilburn my thinking about these things, but rather we could go there if you're a student of his, but a famous legal this pre trans fallacy, which is the they pre rational, can sound not likely trans rational, and this is the sort of contextual isaac. Freud's dismissal of mystical experience as the oceanic annex feelin as this is the return to childhood, returned, the infancy. This is the pre rational, mind while away in its own energies and can Wilbur quite usefully pointed out that it can sound like that, but the transcendence of separation that one can experience.

after one has they full tool. Kit of rationality on board is not the same thing as a return to infancy. It's the trans, rational, so it's the hence they pre trance housing but yeah met. Many of these points like when you think about this synthesis more near the hall of the the boat, the feeling of a self efficacy that you can do things well and that you can master various challenges- and you know you're, is the antithesis of the the learned helplessness that coincides with the kind of depression you want that by. If you keep going in that healthy direction, yoke also recognise that you, basically control anything. Ultimately, I can't you it's a mystery to whether or not a minute get to the end of the sentence in grammatically complete form right. When I make a mistake, I didn't control that would do a successfully at and control that you know this is I

on some one eye witness to this performance, and so it is with all of life, anything can happen at any moment, we're hanging out over the precipice every moment. Images as a matter of physical health, when are you gonna have us, broke her heart attack, who the hell knows right. This is just a probability distribution over each moment that you have to Learn to live with and yeah it's this panel, mac has taught many of us that history can swallow up society. With nothing more than a a micro born of aid these are cough in autumn. Whence notice and were still trying to dig out from the implications of all this, with the understanding that it could have been too times worse and and may yet be ten times worse, the next time around. So it's the sense that we really can control anything.

it is an illusion, and yet at one level has not to nullify the difference between feeling self efficacy in the midst of one's various projects and feeling, like one can't do anything worth doing those still enormous difference of I've resolve that paradox, but it's, I think, as the degree of focus Second, the wide angle worthy the microscopic focus each can be useful by turns, and the microscopic focus reveals that control oh, is his imaginary, though the white angle is theirs. Orderly behavior and getting what one wants out of life and all the failures to do that, and those are different at the heart of a lot of what you're saying you sing a lot of really good stuff at the heart of a lot of it is the fear of uncertainty. This is this. Is it cuts through it? All? You can live your life

with a fear of uncertainty and the and the greater and in sort of a winner, your way, the greater the fear, the more we go into this state psychologists have identified psychological entropy where we at the ultimate extreme. We we just can't cope and we get depression. We feel helpless, as you mentioned, or you can live in. A constant state of exploration and exploration, means that you are actively exploring the unknown it. The unknown, excites you, the the unknown, entices you, the more you can master and challenge the unknown. The happier you are in your life, so I think that works.

constantly to be human is tippy, constantly pulled in one way or another, and a big fan of of not acting as only ones above any one else in some that they reach some highest states that there are no longer human to me to become fully human is recognising that you haven't these tendencies within you, and you have to constantly choose the expiration option and and work on how to manage the uncertainty that two navigable in your lives, new, you're, right, you're, so right in the sense that this moment puts a lot of things, a context for people. You know it's funny to it, not funny it's its tragic, but you hear people talking about as though it just honour them. For the first time in their lives

that there's a certainty in their lives. You know this, for some people may be. This is the first time they ve. They really thought about that. You know, but if you could remind them of all the many other things tat they ve had throughout their lives before this moment that were incredibly uncertain and could have led to a lot of danger and people still made decisions and people still did turn things kind of like because it's on the news you know we're all so focused on this being the great uncertainty when we could create a news. around with forty million other forms of certainty that you have during the course of tat. You know, I bet you didn't know about. This- could happen to you today too. You know, so I think it's the heart of a lot of what you're saying is weaving a life of. Are you really going to live that life with a spirit of exploration and openness,

to new experiences and curiosity for the unknown, or are you committed to to fearing it and and having that illusion of control? Because, obviously you know and and Allen once wrote so beautifully about this? We only certainty is that there's uncertainty. In that clip, you heard some echoes of sam's arguments relating to the illusory nature of free will. We have compilations dedicated to both free will and consciousness, which are both natural partners for the subject of death, for what is death other than a place where consciousness ceases to carry its own mystery At this intersection of the exploration of consciousness and the awareness of death we're going to enter use, Roland griffiths Griffiths has been spearheading psychedelic research at johns hopkins university school of medicine, most of his recent

is focused on the use of cell aside and and its effects on spirituality and wellbeing. He often speaks about the profoundly transformative effects of targeted. Limited use of sir Simon, and, among those I have taken it there near universal subjective observations that it produced experiences that we're not only beautiful and meaningful, but also true sam shares, griffiths interest in this area of study and in particular, interested in how it relates to anxieties about dying and the suffering associated with it In twenty twenty one, Griffiths posted a video. who is website in which you providing a regular update on his research programme after a few minutes of outlining the importance of the programme generally Griffith shifted to more personal announcement

in my remaining minutes. I'd like to conclude by sharing some very personal observations appear on this topic: spirituality, Ten months ago I went in for routine screening the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe that sam Harris network once you do, you'll get access to one full length episode of the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber only content, including bonus episodes and amy as and the conversations I've been having. The waking up at the makings has podcast his ad free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at sam harris dot, org the.