Building a Science of Consciousness

Join us for an in-depth discussion that bridges computational and implementation perspectives on the mind, grounding the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) from first principles for those already somewhat familiar with the philosophy of mind. Filmed after a QRI meetup in Berlin, this conversation between QRI collaborator Libor Burian and Andrés Gómez Emilsson provides an overview of our research and...

Normally in meditation we are focused on what IS in experience, but to be able to notice the absence of phenomena is key as well! Where there once were qualia, now there aren’t - what does that reveal to us about their nature? Roger Thisdell guides a meditation starting with a taste session on the major ingredients which make up our experience. Then after paying attention to these components, we d...

In this guided meditation, our invited facilitator, Wystan, leads participants through meticulous body scanning techniques designed to cultivate an acute consciousness of the immediate present. Transitioning seamlessly from body scanning to methods of introspection, and further incorporating the nuanced technique of finger-following to “spread out the vision”, Wystan imparts a spectrum of methodol...

Metta is a Pali word that can be translated as benevolence, friendliness, or good will. It is a key state of mind for meditative practice; it has the capacity to heal, invigorate, and center the mind. The majority of guided Metta meditations emphasize the ways in which you can trigger this state of mind with semantic content and imagery. For example imagining a loved one, a pet, or even a beautifu...

In this guided meditation, we delve into the phenomenology of various conceptions of personal identity. Specifically, we observe the experiential nuances of believing that we are individual souls (Closed Individualism), that we are a single universal consciousness (Open Individualism), that we represent ephemeral moments of experience (Empty Individualism), and that we encompass all these identiti...

There are many spiritual and yogic practices that utilize “elemental” objects of meditation. For example, the guided meditation by Michael Taft called “Five Elements Meditation” (link below) centers the mind around mental formations evocative of earth, water, fire, air, and space. Alas, it is natural to be skeptical of the value of these practices on the basis that science has shown that the unive...

It is often said that one of the most important meditative skills that one can cultivate is the practice of letting go . This means letting go of attachments, of cravings, of a sense of identity, and the need for things to be anything other than what they are. However, in practice doing this is more difficult than it sounds; we have a habit of holding tight to much more than we require for optimal...

This meditation explores the phenomenology of absorption into Platonic objects. We delve into what it feels like to imagine, embody, and generate the sense of knowing of classic geometric and mathematical constructs. One of the main takeaways from this meditation is that we can attune to the difference between (1) how we render a particular instance of a Platonic object and (2) the sense of knowin...

Expansion and contraction are the subtlest distinguishing features of experience. This meditation on expansion and contraction, given by Roger Thisdell, is a guide for finding and synchronizing to the oscillatory nature of experience at different levels, and then realising the co-dependence on one another in order to exist. Where there is expansion there is contraction and vice versa. By having su...

In this meditation, Roger Thisdell guides us in a meditation of somatic scanning up and down the body using concurrent waves of awareness that pass through one another. We are trying to balance both the sense of grounding, stability with the sense of wakeful, levity. By the end of the meditation, the goal is to isolate and metacognize the sense of ‘becoming’ within experience, and notice that this...

Paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1233119/full The boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in det...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will take you through QRI's recent work, focusing on two key aspects: The Thermodynamics of Consciousness: This part of the meditation will explore how energy flows from various sources such as sensory stimulation, valence, attention, surprise, and the background noise signature. This energy is directed towards the bound field of consciousness, which is then shape...

Without making any ontological, philosophical, or metaphysical assertions or assumptions, we acknowledge that the experience of the divine and the concept of "God" can have a significant impact on the human soul. Therefore, exploring this phenomenon is crucial for obtaining a comprehensive and direct understanding of consciousness. In this guided meditation, Andrés will lead you through an explora...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will lead you through a series of exercises that illustrate harmonic resonance in the energy body. Subsequently, excess energy will be channeled into high-valence tactile sensations (resembling Piti), which can serve as a potential foundational practice for the 1st Jhana. The meditation primarily focuses on the inner and outer "feel" channels of the (see, hear, fe...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will lead you through a diverse array of potential high-valence states of consciousness, often referred to as phenomenal "heaven worlds."The concept of "meditation calisthenics" draws inspiration from calisthenics exercises, which involve minimal equipment and target all muscle groups in the body. In the context of meditation, "meditation calisthenics" means engag...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will assist you in exploring how attention constructs local binding connections between phenomenal features, and how the flow of attention and awareness can be likened to the graph algorithm called PageRank. Topics covered in the meditation include: Reviewing the nature of attention: what you pay attention to becomes stronger, gets locally bound, and connects to w...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will walk you through various methods to modulate the "energy parameter" of experience, which serves as a fundamental component of the Neural Annealing framework in the nervous system. The Neural Annealing approach explores how appropriately defined energy impacts internal representations, aids in solving constraint satisfaction problems, and has the potential to...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will lead you through a transformative journey that includes the following elements: A factorization of experience into three main channels with their corresponding inner and outer versions: "see," "hear," and "feel." Utilizing your energy body as an antenna capable of perceiving both shapes and frequencies of internal representations, exploring the duality betwee...

In this guided meditation, Andrés will take you on a journey to explore the different ways of believing in various ontologies. Without making any definitive claims about the nature of reality, you will delve into the phenomenology of ontology. This involves exploring what it feels like to inhabit a phenomenal world where the fundamental building blocks of reality are perceived in distinct ways. On...

This is a guided meditation provided by Andrés in order to enrich one's conception of the nature of "attention". Attention is typically thought of as a fuzzy "spotlight" that redirects cognitive resources to a region of one's experience. But this is just one of many varieties of attention. In fact, many changes to one's state of consciousness have very little to do with changes to perceptual featu...

In this episode, QRI's research director, Andres Gomez Emilsson, describes his experience with a 2-week Jhanas meditation retreat. He talks about what it means to experience higher dimensions, his personal background with meditation, the retreat protocol, and commentary on the lectures given by Rob Burbea. He also shares how QRI's paradigms are relevant in this context, new insights, and additiona...

In this episode, we explore the similarities between the brain and a musical instrument. We illustrate how the brain tissue is represented by metal and how brain activity can be mimicked by sound. We also demonstrate how substances such as psychedelics and dissociatives can be used to alter brain activity. This model is based on the fact that both sound and neuronal firing are examples of oscillat...

In this episode, we explore the hard problem of consciousness. What is it, and why is it so hard to solve? We'll also discuss the work of the Qualia Research Institute, and what they're doing to try to quantify and map the qualia landscape. We discuss how consciousness is the only thing we can ever experience, yet it is mostly ignored by science. We also explore how the study of consciousness is s...

In this episode, we explore the idea of emergent simplicity - the idea that adding just one extra component to a complex system can cause it to "tip" into a drastically simpler state. We use the example of adding carbon dioxide to the Earth, which would cause the Earth to become a much simpler system where neither life nor liquid water would exist. We also use the example of adding 5-methoxy-N,N-d...

In this episode, we discuss with the ontology of reality with Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute, Daniel Ingram from the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC), and Frank Yang (body-builder turned meditator). This conversation was very fruitful, given that Daniel and Frank are advanced and accomplished meditators with a vast experience base that informs their under...