“The Buddha Pill” with Miguel Farias - States of Consciousness - Part 3/4: (podcast)

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Episode 3: States of Consciousness

Across meditation traditions, Farias explains, self-transformation is often understood as a movement through different states of consciousness. Some practices begin with breath, attention, or repeated prayer. Others describe more unusual forms of awareness, knowledge, or emotion.

For Farias, these traditions raise questions that modern psychology still struggles to answer

“Psychologists still struggle to agree on exactly what consciousness is,” he says. “And we are certainly lacking accurate maps for understanding those that experience the unusual or altered states of consciousness that meditation traditions have sometimes described in great detail.”

The episode features contributions from:

• David B. Yaden, Associate Professor and the Roland Griffiths Professor of Psychedelic Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research
• Gavin Flood, Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion in the Theology and Religion Faculty at the University of Oxford and academic director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. 
• David Leech, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Bristol
• C. Pierce Salguero, scholar of Asian history, religions, and health humanities at Penn State Abington
• Georgios T. Halkias, Glorious Sun Professor in Buddhist Studies and Director of the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong

These guests consider how spiritual traditions have described unusual states of consciousness — and what science can, and cannot yet, measure.

Yaden, who studies altered states scientifically, reflects on a powerful spontaneous experience that shaped his research. He later turned to psychedelics as a research tool, not primarily to study their therapeutic value, but because they can help induce altered states of consciousness in experimental settings.

Flood describes how Hindu and tantric traditions map inner experience onto wider accounts of reality.“All the traditions I have studied map invisible worlds and offer maps to those worlds and make claims about them,” he says. In some texts, he explains, “psychology, your individual experience, maps on to cosmology, the structure of the universe.”

The episode also turns toward a theme that will become central in the final installment of the series: the heart. Leech describes religious traditions in which the heart is not understood only as the seat of emotion, but also as a site of thought, action, and knowledge. “The heart knows,” he says. “The heart has knowledge.”

Salguero adds that meditation traditions have not only described elevated or desirable states. They have also recognized difficult experiences that can arise through practice, making context and guidance important.

In the next and final episode of the series, The Buddha Pill looks at transformation, compassion, and heart-centered meditation.

Continue The Buddha Pill podcast series:

• Episode 1: Introducing “The Buddha Pill” with Miguel Farias - Part 1/4: What Is Meditation? (podcast)
• Episode 2: Varieties of Meditation - “The Buddha Pill” with Miguel Farias - Part 2/4:  (podcast)