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Manufacturing Bliss—Asterisk

asteriskmag.com · 5,314 words · saved by 1 readers

A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique that practitioners claim could upend how we think about the brain — and transform our lives in the process. If the mind is like a car, we are still learning how to tune its gears. Psychedelic substances such as MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD offer one promising path, having reemerged from the shadows of prohibition to find new roles in therapeutic treatment. It turns out that inducing altered states of consciousness, in the right setting, can help people work through depression, anxiety, and addiction, as well as navigate major life transitions such as loss or terminal illness. But what if we could engineer these altered states without any external substances or stimuli? Enter the jhanas, a growing meditation trend that’s made its way into some corners of tech. Practitioners claim they can induce extremely blissful mental states that rival life’s peak experiences, available at any time with enou

Manufacturing Bliss—Asterisk A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique that practitioners claim could upend how we think about the brain — and transform our lives in the process. If the mind is like a car, we are still learning how to tune its gears. Psychedelic substances such as MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD offer one promising path, having reemerged from the shadows of prohibition to find new roles in therapeutic treatment. It turns out that inducing altered states of consciousness, in the right setting, can help people work through depress

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