Annaka Harris On Why Consciousness Just Might Be Fundamental To Reality

Annaka Harris is a New York Times bestselling author and creator of the groundbreaking audio documentary series “Lights On.” This conversation explores the profound question of whether consciousness is fundamental to the universe rather than merely an emergent property of complex matter. We discuss the ineffable nature of felt experience, the illusion of self, and how our perceptual limitations restrict our understanding of the world around us. Also, I share a very personal and meaningful experience that changed how I think about the nature of reality. Annaka is an insightful guide whose perspectives may shift your thinking about the substrate of existence. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: iFit: Use the code RICHROLL to get 10% off any purchase of $999+ 👉 nordictrack.com/RICHROLL Squarespace: Use the offer code RichRoll to save 10% off your first purchase 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Calm: Get 40% off a Calm Premium subscription 👉 calm.com/richroll On Running: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll OneSkin: Get 15% off with the code RICHROLL👉 oneskin.co Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:07Annaka Harris?

  When we use the word consciousness, people think of human consciousness, people think of complex thought, but it is just the simple fact of felt experience. Why would this non-conscious universe get configured in such a way that manifests this conscious felt experience from the inside?

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  What is consciousness? Now, maybe you think you know what it is. I mean, we know it's real. It is something. But the more you attempt to precisely define it, or to understand it, or to actually locate it, or arrive upon why we even have it to begin with, the more mysterious and ineffable it all becomes. And this is what's called the hard problem of consciousness. But what if the assumptions we've been making about this fundamental mystery are entirely wrong?

• 1:58Annaka Harris?

  The only way to actually address the hard problem is to put consciousness at the most fundamental level. And so I'm asking this question.

• 2:07Rich Roll?

  Is consciousness fundamental to the universe?

• 2:10Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  Rather than an emergent property of complex matter? This is the question Annaka Harris has been asking. It's a question that just might be the most important one science has on offer and which she went on this journey to answer in her new audio documentary series, Lights On, which is astonishingly good and has forever altered how I think about my own mind, myself, or lack thereof, and most importantly, the very nature of reality itself. And while these ideas may seem completely detached from anything of practical use in our everyday lives, I would suggest, for reasons you will soon discover, nothing could be further from the case.

• 2:54Annaka Harris?

  We know from neuroscience that there is no concrete self in the way we feel there is. Just like the illusion of self can be dropped during meditation, there seem actually to be experiences of a spaceless consciousness. At least every physicist I work with is convinced that space itself is an emergent property, that it's not part of the fundamental story. And that is something that you feel.

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  That's super wild.

• 3:16Annaka Harris?

  You feel that in meditation.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  You know, that's a brain twister, like, you know, bar none.

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  Annaka, it's great to see you. Thank you for making the time today. It's been, amazingly, it's been almost five years since you first came on the show.

• 3:34Annaka Harris?

  Yes, we were just realizing that, yeah.

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  It doesn't seem like it was that long, but my relationship with time, which we'll probably talk about today, has been warped.

• 3:41Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 3:42Rich Roll?

  Partially, probably by age, but also by COVID and the rapidity of the world changing in deranging ways.

• 3:49Annaka Harris?

  Technology and, yeah, all of it, yeah.

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  But in that conversation, we talked about your book, Conscious, and the topic of consciousness at large, which is a conversation we're going to continue today. But much like my relationship with time, both of our respective, I would say, relationships with the nature of consciousness and how we understand it has also evolved. You have changed and shifted your perspective.

• 4:15Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  I have evolved quite a bit in terms of how I interface, you know. In thinking about this subject, and I want to say upfront that your book was really profound for me. And then, subsequent to that, the Waking Up app has like, sent me, over the last couple of years, down this rabbit hole of nondualism and deepened my practice of meditation in really interesting ways, which I'm sure we'll talk about it. But I don't want to assume that anybody watching or listening today, you know, can recall that episode that we did today. So I think we should start with some basics.

• 4:55Annaka Harris?

  Okay.

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  Before we get into your audio documentary series and your evolved thinking on this, by just basically, you know, defining our terms and what you mean when you talk about consciousness.

• 5:09Annaka Harris?

  Consciousness, yeah. It's good that you remembered to start there. That's an important one. So, people use the word consciousness in different ways. And usually, when we use the word consciousness, people think of human consciousness, people think of complex thought, self-awareness, those types of things. But the thing I'm interested in, and the thing that I think is deeply mysterious, is consciousness in a much more basic sense. So I often use the word felt experience. Just the pure fact of felt experience, the fact that some collections of matter in the universe get configured in a way that suddenly, there's something it's like to be that matter from the inside. So if you think of a snail, you know, we don't

• 5:52Annaka Harris?

  know if snails are conscious, but if they are, we can imagine, you know, of course, a snail doesn't have self-awareness, it's not thinking about things, it's, you know, it's nothing like a human being. But it's possible that it feels some sort of pressure as it's moving. You know, the most, you know, very, very basic senses of pressure, of heat, of cold, maybe some kind of amorphous feeling of hunger, so it knows how to go toward food, that type of thing. And then, of course, the more, the more simple a system is, the more simple that type of qualia, the felt experiences are. But so when I use the word consciousness, and when I talk about it being Mysterious, it is just the simple fact of felt experience.

• 6:35Annaka Harris?

  Why would this non-conscious universe made of all these non-conscious materials in some instances get configured in such a way that they manifest this conscious felt experience from the inside? And so we often, it's so intrinsic to who we are. We often think it's not that mysterious. You know, we, we understand that when, you know, I see, I see this table. It's because the light waves are bouncing off of it and hit my retina and get processed by the brain. But we don't think about the fact that it's interesting that that then becomes an experience of seeing brown and yellow and stripe.

• 7:15Annaka Harris?

  If it's not just processing that's going on, there's a felt experience associated with that processing. So we imagine, you know, cameras and computers can do something similar. They can transcribe the, the light waves that, that enter the apparatus and can, you know, all kinds of processing can take place in a computer to do things without those light waves. But we don't imagine that cameras and computers have a felt experience. Don't, they don't see brown, that, you know, the, an experience of brown does not come into existence when it comes to computers and cameras, but for some reason for us it does. And so that's a long answer, but that's, that's what consciousness is.

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  You know, the more that you try to hone in on this definition, the more elusive it becomes. Like, what does that mean to have a felt experience?

• 8:03Annaka Harris?

  In a way, yeah.

• 8:04Rich Roll?

  We can kind of take it at a surface level.

• 8:06Annaka Harris?

  You can only know it if you have it, yeah.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  And dismiss it, but if you really, you know, kind of investigate

• 8:11Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  that it becomes, you know, an incredibly compelling and confusing, you know, sort of morass of inputs of trying to make sense of what that actually means.

• 8:23Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 8:23Rich Roll?

  And there's a profundity at the bottom of that.

• 8:25Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Rich Roll?

  But in order to answer that question, you can't just turn to neuroscience or physics.

• 8:33Rich Roll?

  Or philosophy, you have to look at all of them and then perhaps look where nobody else has looked before.

• 8:39Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, well, that's what we're realizing now. Yeah, I mean, I think we all thought, myself included, in the sciences that that the field of neuroscience would figure this out. It was just kind of a matter of time. And as time goes on, that seems less and less likely. And there's been no progress made in terms of answering what's called the hard problem of consciousness, why any collection of matter, even a brain, would have a felt experience associated with it. And so as time goes on and neuroscience uncovers all of these fascinating things about the brain and how it works, we're no, we're no more closer to understanding why there is felt experience associated with all the things.

• 9:18Rich Roll?

  Right, the hard problem remains hard.

• 9:20Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  And as much as science has attempted to answer this question, it continues to run into walls.

• 9:27Annaka Harris?

  That's right.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  Correct.

• 9:29Annaka Harris?

  So I spent 20 years or more working with neuroscientists as an editor and a ghostwriter and coaching for public talks and that and that sort of thing. I also have just always been fascinated by by this topic. And as I said, I I've felt the same way that other scientists felt that it's, I assumed it consciousness arises out of complexity, that one day we would be able to explain it in the same way that we're able to explain life, even though that seemed, you know, deeply mysterious at some point. And it was actually through the experiments in neuroscience and our and our current growing understanding of how the brain works that I realized we had some false assumptions

• 10:10Annaka Harris?

  that were related to how we were assuming consciousness comes into being. And so it was this, it was a very slow process for me where these questions just kept coming up for me, related to the experience of being a self, which we now know is, at least is not a reality in terms of the level of the brain and the way we experience ourselves to be selves, that there are many illusions that go into this kind of creation of feeling that we're not what we are, that we're not, you know, an ever changing electrical firing of of brain processing, but we feel ourselves to be this concrete thing, this concrete self that, you know, has some basic properties

• 10:52Annaka Harris?

  that have always been with us and will continue to be with us, like a solid entity moving through time, which we now know is not, not the case. So experience of self, experience of conscious will, of willing actions and how that, you know, what's actually happening at the level of the brain. We can talk about some of these examples if it's helpful. Priming processes, the way many different signals come in from the environment and we perceive things. And the signals take different times to get to us, sound, sight, touch. But our brain kind of goes through this process where it delivers us this present moment experience, even though those signals are arriving at different times.

• 11:32Annaka Harris?

  And so all of these things made me realize that the way I had been thinking about consciousness was not quite right. And I slowly realized that these very intuitions then actually are related to the hard problem of consciousness. And, you know, it's interesting, when I first started having these thoughts, it was so taboo that I didn't speak to, I wouldn't, I wouldn't bring this up with my colleagues. My husband Sam said, "Don't say, don't say this, you know, it's the next dinner part, be careful what you say." Because, you know, it seemed like I had to protect my career and if I said these things. And so we've come a long way since then. And now there are conferences devoted to this topic and many neuroscientists and physicists

• 12:17Annaka Harris?

  are actually interested in this possibility. And I, and I consider it to be a possibility. It's not something that I, I believe at this point. I've just, what I've come to believe is that it's just as likely that consciousness is a simple fundamental property of the universe as it is a complex property. And so, yes, and so I'm open to the question. And that's what my documentary focuses on, is asking this question.

• 12:44Rich Roll?

  Is consciousness fundamental to the universe rather than an emergent property of, you know, complex matter?

• 12:54Annaka Harris?

  That's right. And are, you know, have we developed any science so far that would rule that out? Is, you know, I talked to a lot of physicists for this documentary. So a lot of, the question I came in with, you know, maybe we already understand something about the physics of things, about the fundamentals, that will tell us that this doesn't actually make sense. And I was curious if I could find that. And alternately, if I could find that. It was interesting to physicists to think about consciousness this way and what that might mean for any of their theories about quantum mechanics, quantum gravity.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's interesting in the, in the series, you talk to a series of physicists and all different people, and they're all in a different place with this idea. Some are open to it, some are resistant to it.

• 13:37Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  Some are, you know, captured by, you know, the biases that, you know, come with, you know, pursuing a career through the lens of the way they've always done things.

• 13:47Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Rich Roll?

  And nonetheless, like, you asking the question, I feel like was, was sort of welcomed, if, for no other reason that it's a curious thought experiment.

• 13:57Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 13:58Rich Roll?

  But it wasn't like, you know, how dare you ask this question. Like, I feel like there's a receptivity to this question right now. And perhaps that's an evolution, you know, from what we've historically referred to as panpsychism. Like, I remember when you first came on the show and you have a section in your book about panpsychism, and that's really fun to, like, think about, like, the idea that, like, you know, everything has consciousness from, you know, the grains of sand on the beach to, you know, mountains and all the like.

• 14:27Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Rich Roll?

  But it doesn't really capture what you're talking about. Like, panpsychism is sort of like, feels like dorm room bong hit talk, like, you know, plants are conscious and all this.

• 14:37Annaka Harris?

  I think the term panpsychism also kind of fits well with that, that image.

• 14:42Rich Roll?

  A little bit. Like, it's really cool to think about, but I think the fundamental flaw here, and I've had Philip Goff on, you introduced me to Philip Goff, and I've engaged, you know, with him in this conversation.

• 14:52Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  To me, panpsychism still assumes that consciousness is, you know, an emergent property of matter, and it's just that it is localized in every assemblage of matter in some form, right?

• 15:11Annaka Harris?

  Right. I mean, there are different versions of panpsychism, but yeah, that, that basically describes it.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  And basically, what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong here, because I, I think, you know, I have an intuition about this, and maybe this is different from yours, or, or I'm getting, I'm misinterpreting you.

• 15:28Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  Basically, what you're asking or saying is that, rather than...

• 15:34Rich Roll?

  The aggregation of matter or the complex assemblage of matter giving rise to consciousness, in other words, consciousness as an emergent property of matter. Perhaps consciousness, when you say fundamental, it's similar to saying that consciousness is perhaps a or the substrate of the universe from which all matter is emergent. Like, you're flipping the coin completely.

• 15:59Annaka Harris?

  Sort of. I wouldn't say matter is emergent from it.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  I'm taking it a little further, I think.

• 16:03Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, but it's amazing. I mean, one thing I just want to comment on is you're saying something that I can almost agree with, and it's almost my view. It sounds so crazy to me that I really have to say a lot to explain why I think that. Because you're saying that, I'm like, no.

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  Let me just say this, dude. Like, you know, consistent with what we're talking about, there's an infinite version, an infinite number of versions of this conversation that we could have in the multiverse, right?

• 16:30Annaka Harris?

  Yes, and if you take the many-world interpretation, yes.

• 16:33Rich Roll?

  I want to, you know, make sure that we're addressing these questions in a way that they deserve, while also, you know, staying grounded enough so that people are getting something out of what we're talking about.

• 16:46Annaka Harris?

  Okay, let me say two things about what you just said. One is, as far as panpsychism goes, so I started having these thoughts and questions before I came across panpsychism. What I've come to believe is that we don't yet understand consciousness at all. And this is a legitimate question to ask, period. We don't, there, one thing I don't like about panpsychism is it implies that there's some fully-formed set of beliefs for us to subscribe to. And I don't, there is not yet a theory. There's, you know, there are many suggestions, but we really don't know. And so I think part of the reason why scientists have also been receptive to this is because I'm simply asking the question.

• 17:28Annaka Harris?

  I'm simply making the case that we've gotten to the point where we can say, this is a legitimate and important scientific question to be asking: is consciousness more fundamental than the sciences have previously assumed? As far as your description of consciousness being fundamental and what that means about matter, I wouldn't say that matter emerges out of consciousness. And one thing I should also say is that...

• 17:54Annaka Harris?

  In my thinking and in my 11-hour docu-series, you can kind of follow my thinking around this, where the evolution of my thinking changes. And so by the end of the documentary, I get to the place where what I realize is the hard problem of consciousness, which is the thing I'm trying to address. You bump into that wherever you try to place consciousness, no matter how far now. If you put it in electrons, if you put it in... Panpsychism does a little bit of this. The only way to actually address the hard problem is to put consciousness at the very, at the most fundamental level. And so if that's the case, and that's a big if, I don't know. But if this is something that I like to entertain now and to think about,

• 18:37Annaka Harris?

  and to think about how all of these different theories about quantum gravity and all the rest. I talked to Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli about their views. I like to now think of this all through the lens of if consciousness is fundamental, how do we interpret this phenomenon or that phenomenon? And so if consciousness is fundamental, matter, what we perceive to be matter is just other conscious experiences arising in the universe. And so the mathematics, the physics, that's all a description of conscious experiences. And so what, everything actually is at bottom is felt experiences arising and passing away in the universe. And again, they can be very, very simple and incomplete also,

• 19:22Annaka Harris?

  because we can only perceive a very small fraction of what's actually happening.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  All we can actually agree on is that consciousness is real and that we are experiencing consciousness.

• 19:35Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 19:35Rich Roll?

  And as Sam sort of always repeats in his daily meditations, like consciousness is all we have. Like, you know, and the idea that you're over there and I'm here and this is happening and tomorrow... These are all, on some level, like kind of flawed interpretations of a reality that we are not, you know, we don't have the perceptual ability to accurately interpret.

• 20:01Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. Whatever description we have of the reason why we're having the conscious experiences we have. I mean, if we were brains in a vat, we would expect this to be exactly the same, right? And so the only thing we... Can have direct experience of is our conscious experience and we know those are real and those exist in the universe, but what they mean about the external reality, we really don't know.

• 20:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:25Annaka Harris?

  And so in some sense, it really is the only thing we know. And the truth is, everything we know or think we know has to happen within consciousness as well, because, you know, you can make ridiculous statements and you just, you know, put at the end of it, but I was unconscious and it actually makes no sense, you know?

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Annaka Harris?

  I decided to have eggs for breakfast this morning, but I was unconscious when I made that decision. Those things, we absorb information and knowledge and process it always as a conscious experience.

• 20:56Rich Roll?

  It is so incredibly difficult to try to process what you just said in any meaningful way. You know what I mean? Like, I've spent years, I guess, like, the way in really is meditation and, you know, a real, like, sort of confrontation with the illusion of self and the kind of emergence of thought and, you know, perceptual stimuli that allows you to first connect with a deeper reality that is beyond our ability to kind of perceive in our normal, everyday lives.

• 21:35Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not even sure I would call it a deeper reality. I would call it a clearer way of seeing even our own conscious experience. And so we certainly walk around with a lot of illusions and we know the brain is creating illusions like this all the time for us. Change blindness, just in terms of our visual field and, but the, yes, the illusion of being a self in the way that we typically feel ourselves to be when you're able, so there are different ways of kind of seeing through this illusion. Some of them are just intellectual. You can understand how the brain works and realize there's no self in there to find. But you can do it introspectively as well, through meditation or through psychedelics.

• 22:17Annaka Harris?

  Often you have this experience and we now understand also how this is related to the state of the brain. You know, when the default mode network quiets down, it's in that state that we tend to be able to drop that illusion of self. And the experience of it is of seeing things more clearly, is it feels like a Simpler, more basic understanding of the reality. And it happens to be in line with the neuroscience, which is very interesting. And this happened very late for me in my career, actually, where I've been meditating for almost thirty years now. It's a huge part of my life. I never saw any way in which those experiences would overlap with my scientific work.

• 22:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Annaka Harris?

  But what I started to find, and you know, at some point, there were experiments that were done in neuroscience to understand what's happening at the level of the brain when people are meditating. And so that's one, that was kind of the first crossover I experienced. But I never thought that insights that we have in meditation would give us any information about, scientific information about the way the world works. And it seems like there actually, there are some cases where, where that's true. Now, I would never say that if you have an experience about how the world works, that must be true, even if it's in meditation. But there seemed actually to be, just like the illusion of self can be dropped during meditation.

• 23:42Annaka Harris?

  And we know from neuroscience that there is no concrete self in the way we feel there is.

• 23:49Annaka Harris?

  Experiences of, of a spaceless consciousness. Most, most physicists, at least every physicist I, I work with and I know of at this point, is convinced that space itself is an emergent property, that it's not part of the fundamental story. And that is something that you feel, and you feel that in meditation.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  That's, that's like a, that is like way wilder than the idea that consciousness is fundamental to the universe.

• 24:14Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. And, and many physicists at this point think that time is emergent as well. And I, I talked to some of them in, in my documentary series. So I have one chapter devoted to space and time in my documentary series. And what I wanted to do in that chapter first was just understand better what physicists mean when they say. Space is not part of the fundamental story. I wanted to talk to some physicists who believe time is fundamental, and some who believe time is emergent, and try to get a sense of what that would mean, especially in the context of if consciousness is fundamental, what does the universe look like if time is also fundamental? And what does it look like if time is emergent?

• 24:55Rich Roll?

  You know, that's a brain twister, like, you know, bar none, right?

• 24:58Annaka Harris?

  Yes, although, I will say, I just want to interject. Yes, it's a brain twister, and yes, this is how I spent a lot of my time, twisting my brain in these ways. But there are experiences that people have in meditation and on psychedelics that actually make this a little more intuitive. You can have, it's possible to be a conscious human being and have an experience of not having self, not having space, and not having time. I mean, there are countless reports of this type of experience. And so, you know, whether or not that's actually what's happening in the world, it is possible to have an experience where those things are not part of the experience.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  Well, this feels like an opportune moment to share my experience with that. Because I did have an experience recently, and I haven't talked about it publicly.

• 25:43Annaka Harris?

  I was hoping you'd talk about it.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  But I really wanted to share this with you today. You're like the perfect person to help me process this. In the context of my evolving perspective and interest in consciousness, I've also evolved my perspective and receptivity with respect to psychedelic therapies. Like, it's just, it's just obvious at this point that these compounds have tremendous benefits for a lot of people. And as somebody who, you know, has been sober for a long time and is very kind of like steeped and indoctrinated in 12-step, this saved my life, and, you know, there's a, there's a set of principles around this. The idea of, you know, entertaining those therapies

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  just felt like not for me, you know?

• 26:32Annaka Harris?

  No, that's understandable.

• 26:33Rich Roll?

  I certainly see people whose lives have been improved by it, but, you know, the idea that like a light, a mind-altering substance of that potency is, you know, might hold answers to my problems, like, like, just lights up all the, you know?

• 26:47Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Rich Roll?

  Lights my brain up and in a way that scared me a little bit. Sure. But it just became like undeniable after, you know, guest after guest after guest, sharing these experiences that I shifted my perspective and Michael Pollan's work, your work in this area and your husband's work, that I changed my mind and thought, maybe, you know, at some point, this is worth exploring. And a situation arose recently where the opportunity presented itself. And I just thought, well, you know, okay, let's, let's, let's do this. So I underwent a medically supervised MDMA and psilocybin journey. I hate that word. I know. You know, I don't know what else to call it. Experience. Experience.

• 27:33Rich Roll?

  And I went into it very intentionally. And I guess my purpose was really like, I'm trying to like heal some childhood wounds and like make sense of my past and, you know, alleviate some unnecessary suffering, et cetera. So I was very like, I had a very limited kind of like, you know, kind of focus on, on what I wanted to get out of this and what I was hoping to gain. Right? Yeah. Instead, you know, it just absolutely like completely rewrote like everything I think about fundamental reality. Like I had this incredibly expansive experience in which, you know, time and space evaporated, the self completely dissolved. I was gonna ask, yeah.

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  And, and it was, I inhabited this expansive space that I sort of jokingly kind of describe as like inception meets interstellar. You know, like I, I had that experience of sort of being in that four dimensional tesseract. Yeah. And a tactile knowing that like in every moment, every thought or decision leads you onto a different timeline and that time as we experience it is an illusion. And that connection or that, that profound sense of oneness. Yeah. That. Completely changed how I think about everything. It's sort of like, oh, that's cute. You want to like do this, but like, how about this over here?

• 29:00Annaka Harris?

  And I love that you have

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  And it was, it was, you know, I, I think when I, I emailed, you know, Sam and, and you, it was, it was, I described it as the most profound single event experience of my life.

• 29:13Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Rich Roll?

  And it's been a handful of months now, but like, I think about it every day.

• 29:17Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. Well, I, I had a very similar experience and when I had it, it was, I'd have to do the math, but over 30 years ago, and still it's, I mean, it's impacting the work that I'm doing now. Yeah.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  And I guess it's relevant here because it really did connect me with a notion of consciousness.

• 29:38Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Rich Roll?

  That is very different

• 29:40Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  From our intuition.

• 29:42Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Rich Roll?

  And I did walk away from that convinced that, you know, consciousness not, is not only like a much more complex and profound, you know, kind of idea, but that it is fundamental. Like, that's why I was like, perhaps what we think of of matter really is just, you know, emergent from this substrate of consciousness that is this connective to tissue of, of everything.

• 30:07Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  And it felt more real than this reality, I guess is what I would say.

• 30:11Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 30:11Rich Roll?

  But I also, you know, have to check myself and say, just because it felt more real, does that mean that it's more real?

• 30:17Annaka Harris?

  No, and, and the truth is no. And that's why I think we have to like ground this all in science because, um, yes, I'd had all those experiences, um, at a pretty young age. I've also been always interested in the sciences. My career is now embedded in the sciences. I'm a very scientifically minded person. I never thought to make assumptions about the way the universe is structured based on those experiences. One thing that, that we know is true is that those experiences are possible. So, you know, separate from everything else, it's incredibly informative and interesting that a human brain, that the conscious experiences of, of a human brain can be transformed to that degree. And that in and of itself, I think is, is fascinating. The fact that

• 31:03Annaka Harris?

  Some of these experiences happen to actually line up with where science has landed and where science is headed, I think is interesting. And I don't think we need to make more of it than that at this point. I would not assume that because I have those experiences and because science seems to be moving in that direction, you know, those experiences are insights into the true nature of reality. I'm not ready to to make that claim at all, but I think there's something very interesting about the fact that we know the brain creates these illusions for us that are extraordinarily useful for being human beings, for getting through our daily lives, right? But they're not necessarily delivering us an accurate picture of the underlying reality. I mean, even something as simple as seeing a green leaf, right? Like you,

• 31:47Annaka Harris?

  scientists had kind of made this mistake, actually, for a very long time, thinking that the color green is actually out there, right? And we now know this isn't the case. The color green is being created by my brain. There's no green out there in the world. There are light waves that and some of them get absorbed by the leaf and some get bounce off the leaf.

• 32:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's just it's just the wavelength that is not being absorbed.

• 32:11Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 32:12Rich Roll?

  So the leaf itself is not green.

• 32:14Annaka Harris?

  There's no green.

• 32:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as green.

• 32:17Annaka Harris?

  Green is an experience. Well, there is, but it's only in the experience of it, right? That's that's the word we give to that qualia, to that type of experience. And so what I think is interesting and very valid is breaking through those intuitions, whether intellectually or through meditation or through psychedelics, I think does, it makes sense that that would help you see reality a little more clearly, because those things are in place to help us survive. They're not in place to help us see things accurately, or to interpret what we see as being accurate. So, you know, in the same way that we would all gather around without, you know, scientific understanding and say, there is green out there. We all see it. We can

• 32:58Annaka Harris?

  all talk about it. The green, it's out there in the universe. We can understand that that's not really the underlying reality. And so, yes, everything that you're talking about, I actually think is possible. They are windows on to a deeper truth, because

• 33:15Annaka Harris?

  What psychedelics so successfully do is stop your brain from, and actually, you know, this is true of meditation. I find this interesting. And one of the conversations I had with a meditation teacher in this documentary series was about how counter to evolution meditation is as a practice. And the same is true of psychedelics. If you, if you were on that dose of psychedelics in your life, you wouldn't survive very long, right?

• 33:39Rich Roll?

  Right, we, we are-

• 33:40Annaka Harris?

  It's clearly not-

• 33:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we, we are consciousness in localized form and our perceptual abilities are restricted so that we can survive.

• 33:48Annaka Harris?

  Exactly.

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  But if we could see and perceive reality as it actually is, we would just be paralyzed and-

• 33:54Annaka Harris?

  Yes, and, and meditation is a super interesting way to look at that because, you know, you are investigating all of the felt experiences that are coming online for you when, in a survival sense, those experiences are coming online to get you to act. You're hungry, so you go get food. You're tired, you go to sleep. But in meditation, the practice is just to watch all of that unfold. And if you only watch it unfold and don't respond, you know, you'll starve to death. You won't survive.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  In my meditation practice, in this exploration of nondualism, this idea of, you know, confronting the self as an illusion and this practice that you talk about of like not having a head, right? Was it Douglas Harding?

• 34:47Annaka Harris?

  Harding, yes.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Who wrote this book about this?

• 34:50Annaka Harris?

  His book is on having no head.

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like the idea that you think that everything is happening inside your skull is an illusion in and of itself. And to like direct your gaze inward and try to identify exactly where that's happening as a way of evaporating-

• 35:07Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 35:07Rich Roll?

  That sense-

• 35:08Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Was such a difficult, I could not get there. I could not actually, you know, feel what that experience would be like.

• 35:17Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  And the experience that I had, this experience that I had really allowed me to have that experience. Like, it was like, oh, now I completely understand what that is.

• 35:27Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  And in the aftermath of that experience, I've chosen to like really invest in my meditation to like anchor that.

• 35:35Annaka Harris?

  Cultivate, yeah.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  And I've been able to like stay in that space.

• 35:39Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Rich Roll?

  But- In the experience itself, when I was starting to understand that and feel that, my intuition was that consciousness is this fundamental thing. And it is, it's this field like you talk about, but it can only be experienced in some material form. And like, our, our human form is a, is a way of like extruding consciousness into this like entity that allows the experience to occur.

• 36:12Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  But you could like extract yourself from that extruded being and be in pure consciousness. And again, like that's, this is just a, you know, like my brain being, you know, completely exploded by.

• 36:25Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Rich Roll?

  You know, this substance, but that was what it felt like.

• 36:28Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. I wouldn't describe it in quite that way, but I know, I know exactly what you're talking about. And I think there are different ways of interpreting that experience. It's also extraordinarily difficult to talk about in language.

• 36:43Rich Roll?

  It's impossible.

• 36:44Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. And I, and I talk about this a lot in, in my documentary series in different episodes, um, different chapters. Um, originally they were called episodes and then now they're chapters.

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  Is there a printed form of this also that you're doing? Or is this meant to be purely audio?

• 36:59Annaka Harris?

  It is purely audio for now. My hope is that we will do a printed version of it at some point. And I think that will be useful, especially for academics. Um, but no, the idea was to create a documentary, to have an immersive experience of following me on this four-year journey of, you know, the moment I finished my book to, from all the questions that I was left with after that, and then interviewing and having conversations with all these different scientists. And then, I mean, you follow, you follow my whole path. So I write a couple of articles in that period of time. I give a talk at a conference and you basically just follow me, um, through that period of time where the evolution of my thinking kind of lands me squarely in, if consciousness

• 37:41Annaka Harris?

  goes deeper in nature than the sciences have previously assumed, it probably goes all the way down. And then also, what does that mean? What does that mean for the future of science? What does that mean for our current theories of physics? So one thing I talk a lot about it in my documentary series is the fact that We are very limited in our communication by the experiences we share. So if you imagine trying to explain the color green to someone who was born blind, it is impossible. You're never going to get there because they don't have the shared experience. And so, again, this is why we think we have evidence only of consciousness in other systems that are like us, because we can't talk to each other, we can't communicate

• 38:24Annaka Harris?

  anything unless we're using a shared set of felt experiences to communicate. And so our language has developed around those shared experiences. So things that human beings don't typically experience, we don't have language for it. And so our language is completely embedded in space and time and self and all these other things. And so it is almost impossible to use language to describe the types of experiences you're talking about, and for good reason. One of the chapters, I interview a participant in a study where they gave participants the experience of magnetic north. So many fish and birds have this perception already because it helps them navigate the world.

• 39:07Annaka Harris?

  Human beings obviously don't, but they created this belt that delivered electro-tactile signals that were related to the earth's magnetic field. And eventually, the brain learns to interpret these signals in a way that you're not feeling the sensation around the belt anymore, you actually develop a new sense. And actually, these types of things were developed originally for blind and deaf people as a way for them to be able to see and hear. And those studies are incredibly interesting. David Eagleman has been involved, he's a neuroscientist, involved a lot of those studies, and I talk about them in one of the chapters of the documentary. But so that's called sensory substitution, when they're turning

• 39:50Annaka Harris?

  light waves into sensory signals so that blind people can navigate the world. You know, we call it through vision. We don't know exactly what experience they're having. But the brain, over the course of six to eight weeks, the brain learns to interpret these signals so well that people using...

• 40:08Annaka Harris?

  These devices who are completely blind can shoot hoops, can walk through mazes, can navigate the world the way we do using vision. So these participants were given this belt that gave them an experience of magnetic north. And I think there were only eight people in the study. But these eight people then had this new sense. It's called sensory addition instead of sensory substitution. And it was so interesting to me to talk to one of the participants for many reasons, but one was that it was so impossible for him to describe to me because there is no language for it. And he felt this incredible kinship with the other participants in the study because they were the only people in the world who could talk about this feeling.

• 40:52Annaka Harris?

  They're the only eight people who have this qualia. So we're very limited.

• 40:58Rich Roll?

  There's two things here, though. There's the limitations of language to describe these experiences that only so few of us have had, that we don't have the vocabulary for it. But then there's the sort of, I don't know if it's extrasensory or just the cultivation or development of new ways of sensing and perceiving our world around us.

• 41:25Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  Is that extrasensory perception? It's more like

• 41:28Annaka Harris?

  I'm not sure what you mean.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  like bird migratory patterns or things like that. Like, how do those things relate to this idea of consciousness as this kind of fabric?

• 41:39Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. So I think, I mean, when I imagine that consciousness is fundamental, when I ask questions about how the universe works, if that's the case, the idea is that for some reason, consciousness has a structure, right? There's a clear structure to the universe. We do have the laws of physics. We do experience the things we experience. And the question is, if consciousness is fundamental, why does it have a structure? And I find that question fascinating, and I think about it all the time. But the idea is that every shape

• 42:13Annaka Harris?

  That takes form in the universe, every structure. And actually, Sarah Walker is a fascinating scientist who has a theory about life called Assembly Theory, and she talks about structures in time. So that we would understand, there are certain phenomena we would understand a lot better if we could see the structure as it unfolds in time, rather than the way we experience things, which is one moment at a time. We're kind of stuck, we're always kind of stuck in the present moment and can't see. And so the idea is that every conscious experience that arises in the universe is based on the structure of consciousness at that point. And, you know, I'm going to use spacetime now, even though that's probably not fundamental

• 42:54Annaka Harris?

  either, but, you know, to speak our language, whatever structure is, exists in this, you know, area of spacetime, will give rise to these types of experiences. And so the experiences are related to the structure. And all of the structures, as you said, it is all one thing. And the truth is, you know, most scientific advancements have led to this point anyway. You know, we now know we're made of stardust, you know, ever there, it's the, the universe is made of the same ingredients, and it is essentially all one thing. If consciousness is fundamental, everything that exists is a felt experience, the thing it is.

• 43:35Rich Roll?

  Well, it's woven out of that fabric itself.

• 43:37Annaka Harris?

  The thing we're perceiving, the thing we're describing. But there is a clear structure to it. So this, whatever the structure is, is what determines the felt experience in that particular structure.

• 43:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:49Annaka Harris?

  And so...

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  It's so, so, we can intellectualize all of this, right? Like, we know that, you know, separateness is an illusion. And we can look at microrisal networks or tree, you know, forests and the way they communicate with each other. There's all these examples in nature to disabuse us of our innate intuition around, you know, being... Individuated, I guess.

• 44:14Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 44:15Rich Roll?

  Similarly, like, we live in a three-dimensional world. You talk about, like, you know, you get into this whole thing about interdimensionality, and we think we understand what it would be like to be two-dimensional because we can draw on a piece of paper, etc. But do we really? Like, we don't really, right?

• 44:30Annaka Harris?

  No, we don't, because paper is not two-dimensional.

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  And we know-

• 44:34Annaka Harris?

  We can't even conceive of something that's two-dimensional because, you know, you get to paper, and then you go thinner, and eventually, the depth disappears. And for us, that's nothing. We cannot conceive of something-

• 44:43Rich Roll?

  We have no ability to conceptualize that.

• 44:46Annaka Harris?

  Anything that's not three-dimensional.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  And similarly, we know for a fact that a fourth dimension exists.

• 44:53Annaka Harris?

  And probably many more.

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  And we can, like, draw geometric, you know, kind of representations of that, but-

• 44:57Annaka Harris?

  Although this makes a lot more sense. If space is not fundamental, those things make a lot more sense. And I get into that in the documentary series as well.

• 45:02Rich Roll?

  So this is, this is, well, there's two things here. I want you to explain that more fully.

• 45:06Annaka Harris?

  Okay.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  But at base level, what you're getting at is this idea that if indeed consciousness is fundamental-

• 45:17Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 45:17Rich Roll?

  Some of these, you know, quagmires that have, that have, you know, basically hamstrung physics, quantum physics, all the like, like, all these problems out there that scientists have been unable to resolve.

• 45:32Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  Does consciousness being foundational help resolve those questions?

• 45:39Annaka Harris?

  I would say it doesn't necessarily help resolve them, but it helps us understand what they're telling us about the nature of the universe, much better, actually. And I have an article that's coming out soon, making this argument. Physicists who are working on interpretations of quantum mechanics and new theories of quantum gravity, what's coming out of a lot of those theories is something called relationalism, that there's no outside picture of the universe from which to stand, that it is all different views of itself. Lee Smolin is a physicist who's working on a theory right now called the causal theory of views, which kind of explains what it is, right? It's about the laws-

• 46:22Annaka Harris?

  Of physics as we know them and causality and how ultimately everything is a perspective on something else. Carlo Rovelli also has a theory of quantum gravity that is has a similar punchline, which is a relationalist punchline, that everything is in relationship to something else and it kind of comes into being based on its relationships to other things. And there is no outside view of things. What's interesting to me and what my new article is about is that, you know, leaving the physics aside, if I just come at this from an experiential perspective,

• 47:05Annaka Harris?

  from a neuroscientific perspective, if I imagine what the universe is and how it works, if consciousness is fundamental, you end up with a very similar picture. It's a relationalist view. It is the sense in which everything I'm perceiving is not only a representation of other conscious experiences that arise in the universe, but they're clearly shaping the conscious experiences that are rising here. Right? So I'm looking over at you. The fact of your whatever conscious experiences are happening where you are, that's creating a vision for me of hair and a face and, you know, all the things that I'm seeing, that is part of my conscious experience.

• 47:47Annaka Harris?

  And that's been influenced by the conscious experiences over there. And so there is kind of this, I don't know, interesting picture of a morphing series of conscious experiences that arise and pass away in the universe, all of which affect one another and all of which are related to each other. That sounds crazy. I know.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  I know. I'm just trying to understand it.

• 48:13Annaka Harris?

  I can, I actually have, I don't know if you want it, but I brought a quote from Carlo Rovelli, who I'm sure I did not convince in my conversation with him that consciousness is fundamental. So he's not on this train at all. But when you read the conclusion of the theory he's working on, he's a very well respected, very brilliant scientist. He, the way he describes.

• 48:36Annaka Harris?

  What the universe is at a fundamental level is the same way we would describe the universe if consciousness is fundamental. And I find that really interesting. And that doesn't convince me that it's the case, but I think it's useful for physicists who are working on these theories to think about this because it does give us, instead of it being kind of an amorphous, almost like platonic idea of like, the ultimate thing is the equation. What, how can, how can an equation be the fundamental, you know, the, anyone who's a proponent of the many worlds interpretation, they've, you know, they, they have to kind of get to the point where they believe that it is this equation that is

• 49:19Annaka Harris?

  fundamental. And so if you're interested in a deeper understanding, and if you want to say, okay, but what, what does that equation represent? What is that about? If it's about felt experience, if it's actually describing felt experience from, from another perspective, describing the, the structure of, of felt experience, that is actually something we can absorb. And it does kind of give it ground to stand on. In the same way, actually, I talk a little bit about this in, in the series. There's some physicists and mathematicians like Max Tegmark. He's, he's one example of, of a well-known physicist who, who really

• 50:01Annaka Harris?

  believes that the structures that come out of the math, like a 10 dimensional object called a decorat, these are things that come out of the math. They, they exist in, in a mathematical sense. His belief is that if it comes out of the math, it actually exists in reality. It's not just an idea. It's not just a hypothetical. If the math says it exists, it actually does exist in the universe, which doesn't actually mean anything, I think. But if consciousness is fundamental, a decorat is the structure of a certain type of conscious experience. And that is something that makes a little bit more sense. And I think possibly

• 50:43Annaka Harris?

  will actually help move some of these theories forward.

• 50:47Rich Roll?

  What can the average person kind of interpret from the fact that there are Multiple dimensions beyond our ability to perceive and how that impacts like how we think about consciousness.

• 50:57Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, well, I mean, you know, if if consciousness is not fundamental and we're just talking about a non-conscious universe, that is something that I don't think any human being will ever be able to understand. I mean, we can understand it mathematically. But the idea of a two dimensional object or a hundred dimensional object, that is just not part of our imagination. We can't quite go there. If we realize that space is not fundamental, which is actually just a conclusion that I think physicists are drawing now, our experience of space is representing something kind of at a deeper level. And actually, I can go back to the color example as an analogy. So we don't

• 51:41Annaka Harris?

  experience the full spectrum of light, but we can understand that there are these other light waves that we don't perceive. And so, and they're light waves, they're not, it's not that red is out there in the world and green is out there in the world. There's, we understand kind of the mechanics of how that works and that we don't perceive. There are all these other light waves that we're not perceiving. If space is not fundamental and it's something else that we are perceiving about the structure of reality, there could be other dimensions, like there are other light waves that we just don't perceive. And they wouldn't need to be in a new direction in the way we think of space because it's not about space, it's about something else. In the same way, the color is not about color,

• 52:25Annaka Harris?

  it's about something else. And so I think there's something very interesting about the fact that space is not fundamental and what that means for the human brain and what it is we're perceiving that gives us, it's giving us a map, right? In the same way that color gives us a map. It's giving us a map of the world that's accurate in a way that we can use, but it's giving us the sense that space is out there in the same way that color is out there. And space is probably not out there. So imagining another dimension of space is probably the wrong way to think about it because it's not about space.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  What is it about then?

• 53:03Annaka Harris?

  And so, well, then, we don't, you know, we don't know. But then we go back to if consciousness is fundamental, it's just a much more complex experience that we can't imagine. But it's, but ultimately, it's just about experience. So there's, you know, there's an experience that includes 10 dimensions of space, whatever space is at the fundamental level.

• 53:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, what I take away from that and how I ground that into lived experience is simply to say, we are very limited in what we're capable of understanding, perceiving, seeing. And we walk around with these convictions based upon our intuitions.

• 53:41Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Rich Roll?

  But our bandwidth is so incredibly limited.

• 53:44Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Rich Roll?

  And within that, I can kind of connect with an inner humility, like that allows me to hold ideas a little bit.

• 53:51Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Rich Roll?

  Less tight.

• 53:53Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  And make space for awe and wonder and like, you know, just, just comfort with not knowing. You know what I mean?

• 54:01Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 54:01Rich Roll?

  Like, there's so much, like, the deeper you go into it, the crazier it gets, right? And so it's like, clearly, we have no fucking idea what's happening.

• 54:08Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 54:09Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  And we're all caught up in like our, you know, our social media feeds and whatever. And it's like, this whole thing is so much crazier than you could possibly imagine.

• 54:21Annaka Harris?

  Yes, that's probably true.

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  And within that, like, you have a choice. You can say, well, you know, it's all meaningless, or it all can be reduced to a math equation or something like that. Or you can choose to say, like, that is so cool. Like, like, we just don't know.

• 54:36Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 54:37Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  And, and just like, live your life and like, do what, you know, everybody who preceded us tells us to do, which is to like, you know, love more and like, be present and like, you know, make sure that you're taking care of the important things.

• 54:52Annaka Harris?

  Well, and there's a beauty.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  And smart people like yourself are looking at all these things. Maybe one day we'll resolve them. But I think it's important to, like, we think that we're capable of understanding everything and that our brains are like the ultimate, like, you know, Like, we have evolved, you know, to the furthest point possible to conceptualize and understand everything. And we're just, we're just like, we're like, at the very beginning stages of that process. Like, we just don't have enough lobes and all of it to like-

• 55:18Annaka Harris?

  Humanity's in its infancy. We've barely been here.

• 55:20Rich Roll?

  We can't get it, and we're not going to get it. And even when science says there's a desirant or whatever, it's like, well, what are we supposed to do with that? Like, we're not wired to understand that.

• 55:30Annaka Harris?

  Think about it, because it's fascinating.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's cool to think about.

• 55:33Annaka Harris?

  No, but you have-

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  It's fascinating.

• 55:34Annaka Harris?

  You have to surrender to not knowing. And there's a beauty in surrendering to the not knowing, for sure.

• 55:39Rich Roll?

  Yes, that's my point.

• 55:39Annaka Harris?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:41Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, I have a children's book on the subject.

• 55:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:44Annaka Harris?

  The original title was "I Don't Know."

• 55:46Rich Roll?

  How did this become such an obsession for you? I mean, really, it's an obsession.

• 55:50Annaka Harris?

  I'll answer that, but I want to say one other thing.

• 55:51Rich Roll?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 55:52Annaka Harris?

  Because there's an important piece here that I learned in this process from a physicist, which is so interesting. It was Jan Levin, actually, who I was talking to. She studies black holes, and she's a fascinating woman, and also an artist and writes beautifully. And I highly recommend all her books. She, we were talking about this, different dimensions and not being able to perceive them. We were having this very conversation, and I said something again about, but we can't, we can't picture a four dimension, we can't, you know, like, doesn't it drive you crazy that you can't? And she said, well, I don't know. And she just, she said, what about love? She's like, what, how many dimensions does love have? And I realized, there actually are a lot of conscious experiences we have

• 56:33Annaka Harris?

  that we don't need to fit into this, this external space. And so, they don't actually have, we don't know how many dimension, we wouldn't talk about them as having dimensions. And amazingly, I mean, this was really eye-opening to me, because I hadn't really thought about that. I kind of assumed we did fit every single conscious experience we have into three dimensions, but we don't. I think the ones that we think about as being more amorphous, and the ones that always actually fascinate me in meditation, when I'm meditating and I get hungry, and I think- What is hunger? How do I even know I'm hungry? Like, I can't find the feeling. It's, it's, and so I actually think we already know about a lot of felt experiences that don't necessarily have a spatial dimension to them.

• 57:18Annaka Harris?

  And I think that's important to, to recognize.

• 57:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So.

• 57:23Annaka Harris?

  Okay.

• 57:23Rich Roll?

  Space is not fundamental to the universe. We're not sure if consciousness is. You think it just might be. But this idea of love, like, like, what if love is the foundational, you know, fabric of everything from which everything else emerges? You know what I mean? Like, that, that is sort of interstellar, right? This is sort of the Christopher Nolan thing. You know what I mean? And every, you know, great kind of enlightened being, you know, just basically says it's all about love, right? And so, love is a weird word because we have so many attachments and associations with what we think it means. But if you just think of it as a certain kind of energy.

• 58:04Annaka Harris?

  Sure.

• 58:05Rich Roll?

  Is that a, you know, an emergent property of consciousness? Does it exist outside of it? Is it, is it foundational to consciousness itself? Like, these are the.

• 58:15Annaka Harris?

  I don't think I'm qualified to answer this question.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  I don't know. Like, you're the one asking the big questions. You know what I mean?

• 58:20Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, I just, I mean, I, I have no idea. Love is a very human experience and I don't know that it has meaning outside of our human experience. I don't know. I like the idea.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  Consciousness is a hard problem. But also, like, a problem that requires, as I said earlier, like, you can't think about it or try to unlock it without, like, casting your gaze across all these disciplines. You know? Quantum physics and the double slit problem and, you know.

• 59:00Annaka Harris?

  Well, if you're willing to consider.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  You know, like string theory. And then you have, you know, the, a library of philosophy to turn to. And, you know, what's going on inside our brains in terms of neurons? Like, you have to look at all of those things and then figure out how to synthesize them to see what makes sense and what doesn't.

• 59:19Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. Well, and I think, I mean, to your other point of surrendering to the not knowing, which I think is important, I also think we gain more and more knowledge, and there's something very exciting about that. We clearly understand things better now than we did 500 years ago. And I think humanity is truly in its infancy. So we have a very, very long way to go and a lot to learn and discover along the way, which I think is exciting. I can't say I think we'll ever understand all of it. But I think curiosity, love and curiosity are both really important experiences and feelings to cultivate, just in terms of human well-being. And so I think following these questions is not only important scientifically,

• 1:00:04Annaka Harris?

  but I actually think they're things that feed us emotionally.

• 1:00:15Rich Roll?

  We do have this deeper intuition that there is something special about consciousness that is ineffable and undefinable, right? But we also have this intuition that we can solve these mysteries through scientific advances, and that, you know, our human minds, if we direct them properly, will be able to make sense of something that seems like it doesn't make sense, because that is the history of progress of the human race, right? And so our intuition is that, well, just as we figured out that the Earth wasn't flat, we will be able to solve this. But the underlying premise that you're challenging is at the

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  core of this, perhaps, false intuition, which is that consciousness is an emergent property of matter. And as the aggregation of matter becomes more complex, so does this emergent property of consciousness. And so that consciousness is rooted

• 1:01:16Rich Roll?

  In matter itself, in other words, like it is a property of the physical world. Is that a fair estimation?

• 1:01:24Annaka Harris?

  Yes, I mean, I think that's what the sciences have assumed. I would actually, I mean, there's some of what you said that I still assume, but I think there's a good chance that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe and doesn't arise out of complexity. But even there, I would say it's still tied to the physical, what we call the physical. It doesn't push it into any metaphysical place where there's matter in the physical world and then consciousness. I think it is all part of one thing. It's all part of the same thing. It's different ways of experiencing or describing the same phenomena.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  And part of that is rooted in just our observation of nature, right? As, you know, as organisms become more complex, we project this notion that they have higher levels of consciousness as you kind of go up the scale.

• 1:02:14Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, so this connects to one thing that you said that I think is worth going back to, which is that consciousness seems kind of special and ineffable. And the way that it is different from everything else we can talk about, everything else we study, everything else we experience, is the fact that it can only be known from the inside. It can only be known from the experience itself. And there's nothing else like that that we can talk about, especially as far as the sciences are concerned. That's all about measuring and behavior and things that are external. It's not about the internal. You know, neuroscience and psychology cross over into relating to the internal, but we

• 1:02:59Annaka Harris?

  can't ever get direct evidence of any conscious experience apart from our own conscious experiences. And so this relates to where we expect to find it in nature and other places in the universe. And so, so far, we've had to go on this assumption that where we can communicate, you know, you and I are very similar beings, right? And so, we are experience of seeing and hearing and tasting and all these things we Share these felt experiences and we've developed this language so that we have enough communication between us that we can, you know, I can never know for sure whether you're conscious, right? I can't get in your conscious experience, but we can talk enough about our shared conscious

• 1:03:41Annaka Harris?

  experiences to feel pretty confident that you're experiencing something similar to what I am. And so we've done this, you know, down cats and dogs and mice and, you know, we have enough in common with them, even though we're not able to communicate directly, that we can assume that there is a conscious experience there. And then the less a system is like us, the less we have anything to go on. But we've made this assumption, which I now refer to as the strong assumption, that only, you know, complex systems, namely, systems that have brains, the most complex thing we know of in the universe, only those things are conscious because they're the only things we can communicate with, the only way we can get any type of evidence that

• 1:04:26Annaka Harris?

  there's consciousness present. But I think that that's likely a mistake and that consciousness may actually not be something that requires complexity, that comes out of complex processing at all. It could be a much more, you know, fundamental aspect of the universe. And this is just, you know, our complex experience of being human beings with brains lends itself to this very complex felt experience. But there could be experiences, you know, even in non-living systems that are, you know, much less complex, much more basic, probably without memory, just, you know, experience coming in and out of the universe. But there's no reason to believe,

• 1:05:05Annaka Harris?

  I have come to the point in my research and my thinking and my writing, that I think it's as likely, we're on the same kind of footing, assuming that consciousness arises out of complexity, as we would be if we assumed consciousness was something very fundamental and basic. And I think we don't have any more evidence for assuming one over the other.

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  When we first talked, you were kind of very skeptical but open to this idea of panpsychism. I think maybe you said like, maybe it's 50/50, like this idea of what kind, and like now, what is it? Is it like 70/30, 80/20?

• 1:05:45Annaka Harris?

  I'm trying to think of the number I say in my documentary, because I know I answer this in the documentary, but I'm not sure. But it's got to be around. Seventy, seventy percent weight on the side of consciousness being fundamental. I think it's more, it's more, definitely more likely than not. And that's just based on, you know, the intellectual logic of why we have assumed that it arises out of complexity and all the reasons, you know, that I think we actually don't have the evidence we think we have for that. And then, as I kind of discovered through this process of creating this documentary, that in some ways it helps us understand certain things better.

• 1:06:29Annaka Harris?

  I also just think it makes more sense as a starting assumption because of the hard problem. Because if it's not fundamental, we encounter the hard problem wherever we try to insert consciousness. Because it truly is a different property than any property we can talk about externally in behavior and something that can be perceived. It truly is the thing that can only be known from the inside. And if the non-conscious universe creates things, you know, whatever they are, brains or, you know, something simpler, where there's no felt experience, there's zero, the lights are out.

• 1:07:09Annaka Harris?

  And then they start moving in a certain way or start firing electricity in a certain way or cells start interacting in a certain way. And it's no longer just about the external behavior, but the lights come on from the inside, which is why it's the title of my documentary. That is something that cannot be explained. And it's strange, it's interesting, I've been thinking about this so long. I now actually see that as a dualist perspective, which no scientist would claim to be a dualist, right? I think if you want to be a materialist, you can't have consciousness emerge at a certain level because then a new property is coming into existence that's not a physical property. Because if you say, the system is exactly the same,

• 1:07:54Annaka Harris?

  but now there's an experience of green or now there's an experience of pressure or whatever the felt experience is, that's like, that's in addition to the, to the physical properties. And that, to me, just doesn't square with my scientific way of thinking, my materialist way of thinking. And so I think that's why I've, I've landed on seventy percent after.

• 1:08:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the closer you investigate that, the more it falls apart.

• 1:08:18Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Annaka Harris?

  That's right.

• 1:08:20Rich Roll?

  So this raises another kind of interesting question, because we're in this era of the rapid advancement of AI and all these new technologies. And what you're suggesting, to me, sounds like we need a different way of thinking about the advancement of these artificial intelligences. Because the traditional notion is, they will continue to mature and become more and more complex. And at some point, the question becomes like, are they conscious?

• 1:08:50Annaka Harris?

  I'm conscious.

• 1:08:51Rich Roll?

  Or will they become conscious? Does consciousness emerge from that?

• 1:08:53Annaka Harris?

  Right.

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  And what you're suggesting is, that's the wrong way to think about this.

• 1:08:57Annaka Harris?

  Yes. Yeah, I get asked about AI a lot, and I feel like I don't have that many interesting things to say about it. And part of the reason is because I'm interested in this question about whether consciousness is fundamental. If it is fundamental, I'm as interested in the conscious experiences arising in this area of spacetime that to me is just, I'm experiencing as a table, right?

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Annaka Harris?

  Or plant life, you know, plant life, which is, you know, obviously more complex than whatever's happening in this table. Like, I'm so interested in all of the systems that exist, that have always existed and that we know about. What does that mean about the conscious experiences that exist there? So AI is not in its own unique, interesting category, as far as, you know, my interest in consciousness. But one thing that I think is interesting, that I think we will need to think about, is the fact that if consciousness is fundamental, it means that everything is felt experience at bottom. It seems to be that the structure of the thing determines the types of felt experiences

• 1:10:07Annaka Harris?

  that arise in it. AI is built very differently from human beings. It's made out of different matter. And so if consciousness is fundamental, I would expect the experiences arising in those systems to be vastly different from the experiences that arise in human brains. And so, I mean, one thing that I find kind of disturbing and interesting is, we may end up creating systems that behave externally very similarly to us, but that don't actually have the same internal experiences. And I mean, either way, we're headed toward a very weird world where we don't have intuitions

• 1:10:48Annaka Harris?

  that tell us what it means to be this other system, if it means anything at all to be this other system, and how to relate to it. It's like you and I can relate to each other because we're more or less feeling the same things. If consciousness is fundamental, and even if it's not, but especially if it's fundamental, AI is not going to be generating the same types or representing the same types of experiences that human beings have. And so I don't know what we do in a world where a system says, "I'm hungry," or "I'm feeling sad," and the internal experience is nothing like what we are calling sad.

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because then we're just basically relying on our own incorrect intuitions about what these things are.

• 1:11:31Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Rich Roll?

  And when an intelligence that is artificial is at such an advanced stage, such that it's impossible to tell the difference between how they're behaving and how a human is behaving, it leads to the assumption that they're having an interior experience that mimics our own, when in fact, it could be something completely different.

• 1:11:52Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:11:52Rich Roll?

  And that, you know, there's a lot of questions that emerge from that, of course. Like, you know, at some level, like, does it make a difference? To them, it does. But I think what I get out of that is that our relationship with consciousness is restricted to our own experience, and we have no capacity to conjure the experience of consciousness in any other form, right?

• 1:12:20Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Rich Roll?

  And so we have no way of trying to understand or know what that would be like.

• 1:12:25Annaka Harris?

  Yes. Although this is, and this is kind of very limited, the amount of time I've spent thinking about this, but this is the final chapter of my documentary is kind of devoted to this category, what I refer to as experiential science. And so I wonder, this is all, you know, big question marks, but I wonder if this assumption that consciousness is fundamental, if science, if, you know, a significant amount of the sciences move forward with this assumption, what I imagine the future to look like is involving a lot of things like the sensory addition work we spoke about. So... A few things to say about this. One is if we could experience other systems like,

• 1:13:08Annaka Harris?

  I mean, we get our intuitions from, you know, Newton got his intuitions and his insights from feeling the physical law, feeling the physics at work, right? We feel them, we experience them, and those give us intuition. Some of them are false, but some of them help us understand the phenomena better. So if we could experience magnetic north, just being able to have it in the form of an intuition rather than intellectual knowledge, could we better understand? David Eagleman talks about, you know, plugging humans into systems that they that they work with. So like, could the astronauts in the International Space Station, could we, you know, design a vest or a belt or something where they could feel

• 1:13:53Annaka Harris?

  the system so that it was intuitive rather than, you know, keeping track of all the numbers? Could they kind of know when something's out of balance because they feel, oh, you know, we need more heat over here? We need, where they could have a feel for the International Space Station, or a pilot of its airplane. And so there is a way in which we could get new intuitions for physical forces that we don't normally perceive, and that could advance science. So there's kind of that avenue. There's also the avenue that I've been thinking a lot about, actually, you know, when Einstein had his breakthrough about gravity not being

• 1:14:33Annaka Harris?

  a force, but being kind of the structure of spacetime, that came to him as an insight, as an intuition, before he was able to to write it out in language and mathematics. So it actually took over a decade for him to express that intuition to other scientists because he had to turn the experience that that feeling he had of, wait a second, maybe gravity isn't a force like like magnetic force.

• 1:15:02Annaka Harris?

  There is, you know, time is part of space in such a way that there's the fabric of reality is spacetime, and when massive objects distort it, it changes the paths of other objects, right? So that was an intuition. And I've thought about this, if he could have shared that intuition with a scientist rather than taking a decade to get it all out in the form of mathematics and language and communication in that way, if we could directly share intuitions, I mean, one, that would just advance science so quickly, who knows what, you know, where that would lead. But I think there's something very interesting about the idea that we could experience something

• 1:15:43Annaka Harris?

  and have knowledge of something in an experiential form that, you know, the future of neuroscience might lead to. There might be some way in which we're able to capture memories and intuitions in a way that they can be shared directly rather than having to be shared indirectly through language. I also think it might help us better understand how deep in nature consciousness runs. You know, again, this is, you know, who knows? Who knows what the future holds? But, you know, as a thought experiment, so the idea that we can communicate as much as we can convinces me that you are conscious. I can't ever have direct evidence of that, I don't know for sure.

• 1:16:25Annaka Harris?

  I don't know for sure that my cat is conscious, but there's enough in my intuitions and my communication that enables me to make that assumption, that these other, certain other systems are conscious. I wonder if it's possible that at some point in the future, we could sense systems like mycorrhizal networks, or trees, or plants, or other systems that are, that are different enough from us that we have no way of knowing or communicating with them, but that maybe there's a direct experiential link that would give us ways to then experimentally test these questions, you know? Maybe there's something it's like to be a flower blooming, or, you know, whatever, whatever

• 1:17:04Annaka Harris?

  the phenomenon might be, the idea that there could be a way to experience it in a conscious way, in an intuitive way, might actually give us more information that directs our assumptions in the same way that we're already doing that with systems that are similar to us.

• 1:17:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, what I'm, what I'm hearing you say is... Is really a reminder to scientists to, you know, remember what science is all about, right?

• 1:17:39Annaka Harris?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:17:39Rich Roll?

  Like, science is asking questions.

• 1:17:41Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  There's science and then there's the institutionalization of science and all of its rules, et cetera, that perhaps has, you know, kind of put a stranglehold on asking the crazier questions.

• 1:17:55Annaka Harris?

  No, I think they're important. And I think the crazy questions always get answered.

• 1:17:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, you are very much in the scientific method.

• 1:18:00Annaka Harris?

  I believe it's really the only thing we have.

• 1:18:03Rich Roll?

  But what I'm saying is, and I know you agree with me, is that science has to make space for these deeper, more profound questions. This is what science was designed to, you know, kind of explore, right?

• 1:18:15Annaka Harris?

  Yep.

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  And you talk about this in the documentary, like, the philosophers have to have a place in the discussion around science and the questions that we're asking. And these sort of, these disciplines have been kind of, you know, separated. And perhaps we need to find a way for them to be more integrated, because...

• 1:18:33Annaka Harris?

  I think we're more productive when they're integrated.

• 1:18:35Rich Roll?

  Because we have, like, there's intuitions that lead us astray, but the deeper intuitions, the intuition that Einstein had, that Newton had, or whatever, these, like, these tugs on the soul where we know something is true or there might be truth to a certain idea, we just can't shake it.

• 1:18:51Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Rather than dismiss that, how do we find a way to give voice to that and explore it? And, you know, what you're proposing in these questions that you're asking, I mean, they are the most profound questions, you know, of what it means to, you know, be a human and what the universe is and all of that. And like, any resolution or any progress in answering those questions fundamentally changes how we think about our lives and the nature of reality itself and what the universe is. Like, these are the deepest questions to ask. It's, I mean...

• 1:19:25Rich Roll?

  I'm tiptoeing towards your obsession into this, but like, it's also like an invitation to madness, right? Like, you can just twist yourself up into knots with all of these

• 1:19:34Annaka Harris?

  I guess.

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  Questions.

• 1:19:36Annaka Harris?

  I guess. I don't know. I mean, people have said that to me before. I don't know. I feel like it's the antidote to madness. But I know, I understand that perspective. I think, I think even the things we already know and understand, I just, I just view our experience and the world and the universe and everything in it as so mysterious and interesting and strange that I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't see, I just want to go deeper into it. And then I guess, I'm trying to get some sanity. Like, I'm trying to understand better, right? I do like sitting in the not knowing, and that's where I spend a lot of my time. But I think, I guess, you know, maybe it's more obvious to me and to

• 1:20:20Annaka Harris?

  people like me, how bizarre the world already is, that paying more attention to it and trying to understand it better, doesn't make things more mysterious to me, it makes things...

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  But it's beautiful to hold on to that. Like, we walk around with these blinders on, and we think we, you know, are making sense of everything. Do you know who the comedian Pete Holmes is? He is like a really-

• 1:20:46Annaka Harris?

  Oh, I think I have seen him.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  He has a great joke. But he's like, like somebody's, I can't even remember the setup, and I'll butcher this, but, you know, basically, he's like, "I'm sorry." Like, we're on this rock, you know, like, you know, careening through space, however fast we are, and like, into this vast, you know, emptiness, and like, you know, it's just like, it's, it's so much crazier-

• 1:21:06Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  -than you can possibly imagine. And we just walk around thinking everything's normal.

• 1:21:10Annaka Harris?

  Right.

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  And like, we get it.

• 1:21:12Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Rich Roll?

  And we don't get anything.

• 1:21:14Annaka Harris?

  Walking around feeling like everything is normal makes me, makes me uncomfortable. Makes me less comfortable than facing the mysteries. Yeah.

• 1:21:21Rich Roll?

  Science fiction, you know, sometimes does a good job in helping us kind of ground ourselves in these ideas. And I think one of the best science fiction films that I've seen, that tiptoes into your terrain, is Arrival. Did you see that movie Arrival?

• 1:21:40Annaka Harris?

  I probably have.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  If you haven't seen it, we can't talk about it.

• 1:21:42Annaka Harris?

  No, I probably have. Tell me a little bit. I'm so bad with names and titles.

• 1:21:45Rich Roll?

  It's basically this like circular story in which, you know, these, this ship arrives and the humans start to interface with this alien form.

• 1:21:53Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  That they, that has a whole different language.

• 1:21:56Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:21:57Rich Roll?

  And it takes a long time for them to realize, like their circular kind of way of, of using communication in written form.

• 1:22:03Annaka Harris?

  Yep.

• 1:22:04Rich Roll?

  Has everything to do with a completely different, like, relationship with time.

• 1:22:09Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Right, because we think time is linear. It's certainly not. We know that for a fact, and yet we can't escape our, you know, like experiencing it.

• 1:22:17Annaka Harris?

  Except for meditation and psychedelics.

• 1:22:18Rich Roll?

  Only in that way. Yes, true. This is true.

• 1:22:21Annaka Harris?

  We have one window.

• 1:22:22Rich Roll?

  But that movie gives you kind of a, it gives you kind of an experience.

• 1:22:25Annaka Harris?

  I agree.

• 1:22:26Rich Roll?

  Of what that would be like in a, in a, in a way that's very tactile and I thought extremely effective.

• 1:22:31Annaka Harris?

  Very well done. I agree, yes.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  That perhaps gives you a glimpse into some of these ideas that you're talking about.

• 1:22:36Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. And I hope there are more films like this to come.

• 1:22:39Rich Roll?

  I think there will be.

• 1:22:40Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, like that one, yeah.

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  I guess the, you know, kind of where I want to land this is with some sense-making around like what the average person is supposed to take from your exploration, that they can then translate into, you know, a better lived experience. Like, how do we, like, it's so hard to grasp these ideas, but there are truths within this that can improve the quality of our lives.

• 1:23:05Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. I think about this in a couple of ways. One is more just my, my homework assignment for the next generation, which is I want the next generation of scientists to be interested and inspired by these ideas and get excited about the next paradigm shift, because I think the next paradigm shift will include really rattling and shaking up our intuitions. And I think it's an exercise that is useful for people to start doing at a young age, and especially those who are science-minded, who might go into the sciences. I think, my hope is that, you know, this reaches some of those scientists of the future. I think, you know, for our everyday experience, one thing that all of this work, you know,

• 1:23:48Annaka Harris?

  all these arrows kind of point in the same direction, including, I think, most of where science has led us, which is... That it truly is one thing, that the universe is one thing, that we don't, we're not in the universe, we are part of the universe. And I think there's something on many levels that's useful psychologically for being aware of that and to keep being pointed back to that fact. Because one of the false intuitions we have is that we are these separate things and that we are these selves that are even, I mean, the interesting thing about the idea of a self is that it seems to be separate from, from the material world altogether, separate from my brains, that, you know, I, I often will say, we say, my brain, my body, you know,

• 1:24:31Annaka Harris?

  as if the me is somewhere else. And to recognize that these are all processes in nature, that we're processes in nature, that we are nature, that we're embedded in a world that we're in constant communication with. I have been recently conjuring up for myself, but also just talking about this idea that if all of the forces that we already know about, all of the things that we know about that exist, the, the sound waves that are coming out of my mouth and bouncing off your eardrum, the air we breathe, the, the water that I need to continually consume, I mean, it's, it's amazing, it's such a simple fact, but if I stop drinking water, like, this system will shut down, right?

• 1:25:14Annaka Harris?

  There is so much interaction that if we could see all these things, if we could see the sound waves, you know, penetrating through the air between us and changing the chemistry of your brain, and we would be much more aware of this fact. It's, it's a fact that we are just kind of intertwined and we're all part of this bigger thing. And, and being part of something bigger is, I think, an intrinsically spiritual and positive experience that, that's very conducive to wellbeing. And I think it's important for us to constantly be reminded of the fact that we're, we're not these separate selves, you know, living in the world, that we're We're a part of whatever this thing is. This is like this, the universe is unfolding

• 1:25:56Annaka Harris?

  in whatever way it's unfolding and we're just, we're just part of that unfolding.

• 1:26:00Rich Roll?

  There seems to be a Darwinian imperative to cultivating a deeper sense of that. Like, this idea of the self ultimately pits us against each other and gives rise to the systems that now lead to wars and the destruction of the planet and all of that. And had we developed that ability to really grok the oneness of everything, maybe the planet would be very different.

• 1:26:30Annaka Harris?

  Yeah. Actually, can I say one more thing about that? That reminds me of something else that I touch on sometimes, that I talk about in the documentary. This idea, the way that memory plays a role in the experience of self, I think is very interesting. I've been thinking a lot about that, in the way that my three-year-old self, I have memories of being three. They're very limited, but it gives me this sense of there being some kind of concrete self that traveled from that period of time to this period of time. Whereas, it's really a memory of another conscious experience that is able to arise in this time and place. And that, the truth is, that conscious experience

• 1:27:14Annaka Harris?

  that arose at that point in time is as different from the conscious experiences that are arising now here where I am, than the ones you're having over there. And there's some sense in which, I shouldn't be happier for my five-year-old self who experienced something wonderful, than something wonderful happening to you. That the sense of self that we have, I think, gives us a false idea of...

• 1:27:44Annaka Harris?

  Where compassion should naturally arise. And so I think, and I think that's one of the reasons why in meditation, compassion usually becomes something that's much more accessible to us. Because this dropping of self and other goes away. And there's no difference between something happening to you and something happening to me. It's just another conscious experience arising in the universe, something that we're all a part of.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  And obviously, memory serves us well in terms of survival. There's reasons, you know, positive reasons why we have memory. But if we didn't have any memory at all, we would still have consciousness, but it would look and feel very different.

• 1:28:20Annaka Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Annaka Harris?

  And I think that sense of separateness would really fall away.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  How are your peers and the scientific community at large, people who think about consciousness, receiving this? I mean, the documentary, When We're Talking, is not out yet, but I'm sure you've published a paper on this. You have this article in Nautilus Magazine. Like, you're out in the world, like, posing this question.

• 1:28:42Annaka Harris?

  They all listen, like you have, yeah.

• 1:28:45Annaka Harris?

  Surprisingly well. I'm always surprised. I was surprised with my book also. Actually, when I wrote my book before it was published, I gave it to a lot of scientists. The scientists, I thought, would be the most critical of it. And I think because it's done in the spirit of scientific investigation, I think that gives me a pass, or it's becoming less taboo.

• 1:29:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Annaka Harris?

  But no, even the scientists who disagree with my ultimate conclusion seem to be very supportive of having this conversation, supportive of the endeavor, the questions, the exploring. Because I also, you know, because for me, the question about consciousness is related to so many scientific fields. I had the opportunity to cover, you know, plant behavior and physics and neuroscience and all of these different areas. And so, no, I've been, I'm lucky and surprised. I would say that I've been, people have been very, very supportive.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  Well, because I'm not a scientist, I can say what you can't, which is that I want it to be true. And I can just choose to believe that it is true because I like my, I like thinking about life and pursuing life as if it were true, even if perhaps someday we'll re-

• 1:30:05Annaka Harris?

  That consciousness is fundamental?

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 1:30:07Annaka Harris?

  You know, it's interesting, I don't necessarily find it-

• 1:30:11Annaka Harris?

  Better or worse, and actually, when I first started truly believing this might be the way the universe is structured, I found it very disconcerting, actually, and that was part of the reason why I thought I was doing a good job as a scientist, because I didn't like the outcome, actually.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Why not?

• 1:30:27Annaka Harris?

  Because if consciousness is fundamental and pervasive, my guess is the level of suffering in the universe is much more vast than we realize, and that I find hard to digest.

• 1:30:39Rich Roll?

  How, explain that, I'm not sure I understand.

• 1:30:41Annaka Harris?

  Hmm, well, assuming that, you know, suffering is, is the type, you know, the various forms of suffering, but that arise out of either, and the goal of kind of fighting entropy, I mean, we're kind of, human beings are kind of these entropy fighting machines, all the things that we suffer from are because it takes energy to keep the system going, right? So we inevitably enter into competition, and hunger, and injury, and death, and all the things that, that cause suffering, the things that, you know, obviously, we, we want less of, those of us who care about conscious experiences in the world, and so I imagine, and I could be wrong about this, but I imagine that, you know, especially

• 1:31:25Annaka Harris?

  in all the life forms that we see around us, that there would be, if they're all, if they all entail a conscious experience, that there would be a lot more suffering.

• 1:31:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but, but maybe you're anthropomorphizing too much.

• 1:31:37Annaka Harris?

  Maybe.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  That is an interesting thought. See, I look at it like, basically, like, if everything is consciousness, or conscious, you know, it's like, then, and we could, we could, we could move towards really embracing that and understanding it, that could be a seismic shift in how we, we just think about life and other people in the planet.

• 1:31:55Annaka Harris?

  I am hopeful that that's true, I am hopeful that if it's true, and if we're able to absorb that fact, it will actually lead to less suffering, at least in human beings.

• 1:32:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think that's a good place to end it. You did, you did an amazing job on this documentary, I mean, it's like 10 hours long, like, it's so, very comprehensive, as I said, I'm still working my way through it, but, it is, and you cannot listen to this, like, at any speed, you might even have to, like, slow it down to point eight, because I keep rewinding, I'm like, wait, let me make sure I understand what you're saying.

• 1:32:26Annaka Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Rich Roll?

  But I think that you have Such a great way of talking about these incredibly challenging and difficult ideas because you have this welcome energy, like it's an encouraging, it's like, I'm going to test you, like, these ideas are hard, but like, I believe, I trust you and I believe that you can understand. And it's like, it's this comforting hand, like, walk with me and we're going to like, ask these questions and explore. And if you're paying attention, like, you really can get it.

• 1:32:55Annaka Harris?

  That's great to hear. That was my intention.

• 1:32:57Rich Roll?

  I think you, I think you nailed it. Yeah. So it's exciting. Anyway, thank you for the work that you do. I think it's really important and it was great to talk to you.

• 1:33:06Annaka Harris?

  Yeah, always great to talk to you.

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 1:33:09Annaka Harris?

  Peace.

• 1:33:20Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiello. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistant Inspired by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management.

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.