The Meditation Start-Up That’s Selling Bliss on Demand

Here come the Jhana bros.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/jhana-bliss-helmet-startup/677614/

The first time I heard about the jhanas, they sounded too good to be true. These special mental states are described in the sacred texts of an ancient school of Buddhism. Today, advanced meditators usually access them by concentrating on something: a flame, their breath, the sense of loving kindness. The meditators unclench their minds bit by bit, until they reach a state of near-total absorption. If they direct that focus in just the right way, a sequence of intense experiences ensues, beginning with bliss and ending with full-body peace. The jhana bliss state is not like the little uptick in well-being that comes with mindfulness meditation. It is not like a runner’s high. “This stuff is really powerful,” says Matthew Sacchet, the director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School. An orgasm is said to be tame by comparison. Tears of joy will sometimes stream down a meditator’s face.

The early Theravada Buddhists put no restrictions on the jhanas, but some later traditions taught that they were extraordinarily difficult to attain. Over the past 20 years, a small group of teachers has introduced the jhanas to a new generation of advanced meditators in the West, and a tech-adjacent subculture in the Bay Area has recently taken them up with gusto. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a tech start-up is now trying to make the jhanas accessible to almost anyone, at almost any time. It is called Jhourney, and according to its founders, Stephen Zerfas and Alex Gruver, the combination of artificial intelligence and EEG recordings of the brain will give novice meditators bliss on demand.

I recently joined a video call with Zerfas and Gruver. They were pulled over to the side of the road, on the way to one of the jhana meditation retreats they’ve been leading as they develop their proprietary technology. (Attendees pay up to $3,000, they said.) Zerfas did most of the talking, and communicated almost entirely in founder-speak. He told me that Jhourney’s goal is to teach 100 million people how to enter the jhanas. I asked how he’d arrived at that number. He said that he was pretty sure that the Headspace meditation app had tens of millions of subscribers, but that otherwise he had “pulled it out of thin air.”

For the past year, Zerfas and Gruver have been collecting data by attaching EEG electrodes to experienced jhana teachers while they meditate. They want to use it to train an algorithm that determines whether someone is experiencing a jhana state in real time. They imagine their future teachers presiding over a class of novice meditators who are all wearing EEG headsets.

"Those products are a good idea,” Zerfas told me, “but they aren’t targeting life-changing experiences.” If his product is successful, he said, it would be the “most important intervention in human well-being in a generation.” He sent me a document that explained more. “Imagine if Biden and Putin shed tears of joy and gratitude for 30 minutes every morning,” it read. There would be “all kinds of cascading effects.” The implication seemed to be that Jhourney would help bring about world peace.

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The Taste of Liberation: The Jhanas

https://www.lionsroar.com/the-taste-of-liberation/

The jhanas, says Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, are powerful mental states offering practitioners a window into the experience of enlightenment. Here he explains the benefits of jhana and how even relatively new practitioners can start to enter these states through deep concentration meditation.

The Benefits of Jhana

Some teachers say the jhanas are unnecessary and are rather like playthings for advanced meditators. It may be technically true that some can attain final release from craving, delusion, and suffering without jhanic meditation, but there are many benefits to achieving the jhanas.

First, there is the peace and joy you experience. That feeling is wonderful in itself, and you bring some of it back with you into your daily life. The vast calm of the jhanas begins to pervade your daily existence.

 The jhanas taste like liberation, a total freedom from all the mental and emotional woes that plague us. However, the jhanas are not that total freedom; they are temporary states that eventually end, and when they do, your normal world and the way you relate to it creeps back in. Still, through the jhanas you can be assured experientially that liberation is not just a theory, that it is not something that could maybe happen to other people but never to you. In this way, attaining the jhanas gives you energy and encouragement for your practice.

The First Jhana

Your mind is filled with rapture, bliss, and one-pointedness. “Rapture,” or “joy,” is like the leaping elation you feel when you finally get what you have been after. Joy may be physical, like hair rising all over your body, or it may be momentary flashes or waves that shower you again and again. “Bliss,” or “happiness,” is like the rich, sustained satisfaction you feel when you have it. Happiness is more restrained than joy; it is a gentle state of continuing ecstasy.

The first taste of jhana is usually just a flash, but then you learn to sustain it for longer and longer periods. Eventually you can experience it whenever you meditate. It lasts as long as you have decided that it should last. In the first jhana, “joy,” or “rapture,” predominates.

The Second Jhana

In the second jhana you drop even the subtle thought of the breath. The subtle thoughts of goodwill also drop away. Your mind is now totally free of any verbal or conceptual thoughts, even that of the breath. All that remains is a subtle reflection of thought and sensation that is more like a memory or an after-image.

The Third Jhana

It is hard to imagine that you could ever get bored with joy, but something like that takes place. Rapture is akin to excitement. It is coarse compared with the more subtle happiness and one-pointedness. Your mind turns toward bliss and one-pointedness in a way that is more delicate, refined, and stable.

In the third jhana, the more subtle “bliss,” or “happiness,” intensifies. It fills you and floods every cell of your body. Confidence rises. Mindfulness and concentration strengthen. The external world may be gone but body feeling is still present and it is wonderful. The body is very still. The breath is very gentle.

The Fourth Jhana

In the fourth jhana you go deeper still. You turn away from all mental states that would counter total stillness, even happiness. The turning away happens by itself; no effort is required. Equanimity and one-pointedness get even stronger. Feelings of pain went away at the first jhana. In the fourth jhana, feelings of bodily pleasure go away, too. There is not a single thought. You feel sensation that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. You rest in one-pointedness and equanimity.

The Fifth Jhana: The Base of Infinite Space

Everything that happens in the mind can be thought of as existing “somewhere,” as if in a mental space. You turn your attention away from the characteristics of whatever is in the mind and toward the “space” it occupies. This infinite space is your object of contemplation.

The Sixth Jhana: The Base of Infinite Awareness

Awareness of infinite space requires infinite awareness. You turn your attention toward that immeasurable alertness. The thought of infinite space drops away and what is left is infinite awareness without an object. You dwell in boundless consciousness, pure awareness of awareness.

The Seventh Jhana: The Base of No-thing-ness

The infinite awareness of the previous jhana has no object. It is empty, vacant, and void. You turn your awareness toward this emptiness. The seventh jhana is pure focus upon no-thing-ness. Your awareness dwells on the absence of any object.

The Eighth Jhana: The Base of Neither-perception-nor-nonperception

Perception of no-thing-ness is still perception. Your mind gets bored even with that and swings away from any perception at all. Total absence of perception is sublime.

Even though your concentration in the first jhana is not very deep, you enjoy the freedom from all the hustles and bustles of worldly life. You attain the first jhana with the beautiful pleasant feeling that arises from having restrained hindrances and practicing metta. Your joy and happiness arise from being separated from all your physical worldly activities and from the hindrances that arise from those things. Now you can take a deep breath and relax. You can sit down quietly and enjoy the solitude and peace.

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In the first link and news articke is mentioned this place:

https://meditation.mgh.harvard.edu/brief.pdf

The Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Toward a Comprehensive Science of Meditative Development

Meditation, Transformation, and Well-being

Meditation has the potential to facilitate deep psychological transformation. Throughout history, many contemplative, philosophical, religious and spiritual traditions have included meditative approaches to lessen psychological suffering toward “awakening,” “enlightenment,” “salvation,” or other endpoints.

Meditation is now more medically and scientifically mainstream than ever before. Recent advances in scientific methods including in the fields of brain mapping and computation, coupled with internet technologies that have enabled unprecedented communication and networking among meditators, have set the stage for new possibilities for meditation research. Given the potential for meditation to improve mental health and general well-being, now is the time to advance the study of meditation through deeper scientific study of meditative practices. In this context, Dr. Matthew D. Sacchet, PhD and the Meditation Research Program are ideally positioned to advance the science of meditation.

The Meditation Research Program at Mass General and Harvard Medical School

In May 2022, the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry launched the Meditation Research Program and appointed Dr. Sacchet as its inaugural director. Mass General has always been at the forefront of biomedical and translational research, including the study of meditation in clinical and non-clinical contexts. The Meditation Research Program is in keeping with that tradition.

The Meditation Research Program uses a multidisciplinary approach to advance scientific understanding of meditation. The Program’s research studies include the integration of:

• Affective and cognitive neuroscience

• Applied phenomenology

• Clinical psychology and psychiatry

• Computer science and related computational disciplines

• Contemplative and religious studies

• Neuroimaging and electrophysiology

• Psychometrics and psychological assessment

• Psychosomatic medicine

This research will contribute to the mainstreaming of advanced meditation in modern society and to informing the development of meditation training and clinical interventions (including technologyassisted) that are more effective, efficient, and targeted. By advancing meditation research the Program has enormous potential to improve individual well-being and the collective health of society.