Sam Harris has started a new religion. #NotSatire

you have to really put yourself in the
desperate frame of mind of someone who pays a hundred and twenty dollars and then sits there and listens to a guided meditation from Sam Harris twice a day every day with their eyes closed and their legs crossed what are Sam Harris's credentials in Buddhism how did Sam Harris become a guru who's qualified to lead group meditation or if you got invitation what are Sam Harris's motivations what is the enlightenment he's pushed you the way to what are the results you're supposed to expect from this man there's so many obvious outrageous questions that these people are not asking because they're desperate for help they're desperate for hope they're desperate for reassurance they yearn for the veneer of something sacred and profound to come into their lives and another thing that I'm now doing in the course I've begun interviewing other meditation teachers and trying to get to the bottom of what they teach and why they teach it these will be deep dives into the minutiae of consciousness and what can be cleaned about it from first-person methods whether they be contemplative or psychedelic or philosophical or otherwise from the get-go you see that most of the apps features are not available if you don't subscribe to a paid monthly subscription I greatly disagree with monetizing meditation like this it should really be more of a symbolic donation type of thing monetizing techniques that have been around for thousands of years seems like something that mr. Harris would be against nevertheless the app is very well and beautifully designed way too expensive this reviewer comments I might consider it for a couple of pounds a month or buy it outright for about thirty pounds which would still be very generous compared with most digital media at the current price it feels like people are being taken advantage of being sold old a glittery shiny coat of paint over the top of what should be universal and or free knowledge well how how much does it cut ah yes a hundred and twenty dollars per year but the first five meditations are free over price this reviewer says stop paying a lot each month and you lose access to anything you've already listened to which is for the most part ten minutes of recorded silence the lessons are fine and probably healthy but the monetization sucks it's designed for someone that plans to listen to everything in a month or two and never wants to hear it again what started off as a really good app is now becoming exceedingly repetitive and irritating I love the content don't get me wrong but it's becoming so repetitive that I'm able to predict what he's going to say next because I've heard it several times before and I can't meditate well to something I've heard before and if I hear the meta one again I'm going to scream and as always with matters of faith those who think they truly get it those who think they truly understand those who think they're truly happy they are the most deceived they are the most pitiable of all quote I have been using this daily sometimes twice daily for the last three weeks overall the experience has been life-changing and the relative importance of Sam Maris is waking up gross all the time possibly because look guys if you just replace the word meditation with prayer if you're talking about people praying multiple times a day guided prayer with Sam Harris would you be willing then to recognize that this is a religion why is it that when he uses the word meditation to promote and frankly sell what he's doing everyone's able to rubber-stamp this as if it's some kind of legitimate science coming out of the mouth of a soup oddly legitimate advocate for atheism and secularism in the Western world like you to consider what is real in this moment that is what actually exists so the sense of what is there for us in each moment is bound up with this sense of space now we can get closer to the truth by importing time into our thinking about things we can think in terms of processes rather than things we can turn nouns into verbs you as a person are not really a thing you're a process you're a stream of actions and experiences and your moment to moment engagement with the world of things and ideas changes you you acquire new skills and opinions and desires and concerns you're not precisely who you were yesterday and you don't exactly know who you'll be tomorrow everything you experience is made of moments in time but the real significance of time is not what happens on the calendar or on the clock but in our minds the true source of profundity is attention that is the cash value of time the real pleasure isn't in the object it's in your mind it's a matter of what it feels like to give this thing your attention if on the other hand you're recognizing the nature of consciousness it also doesn't matter where you are or what time it is because the moment is profound it's in this middle place where you're distracted with the objects and people and places that matter to you what it really does seem to matter what you have and where you are your attention is bound up with what you're seeing and hearing and thinking in a way that play is upon your preferences there was a point I'd heard white supremacists make in defense of their own immigration stance right which is to say they well they want no immigration they want to live in a white ethno state and then when right-thinking people attack this as a symptom of pure evil the white supremacists might say well what about Japan right Japan has the same policy the Japanese want to keep Japan for the Japanese they don't want any pink-skinned barbarians living among them right why isn't that a racist policy now that's actually an interesting point so this is something I brought up with Jared just to talk about Japan because it's interesting right it's oh yeah well what about Japan why aren't we viewing this policy as shocking evidence of a racist worldview or something if not racism something take that point from Hitler himself if it's interesting the source simply doesn't matter anyway this seems to be the kind of thing that can make people think that the mask is slipping right or that I am dog whistling in some way to extremists in the moment you notice you've been lost in thought simply observe the thought itself whether it's images or language notice how it disappears and immediately come back to the sensations of breathing and as you do this you can open your awareness to all sensation there's nothing magical about the breath simply let your awareness be the space in which each sensation arises take a moment to feel the sensations of your face and head perhaps it feels like your awareness is behind your face or in your head but the feelings of your face and your head are in awareness in this moment they're appearing in the same place where you're thinking your thoughts are not in your head your awareness or consciousness is not in your head in fact what you're calling the world is appearing in the same space what you see is appearing in the same space were thoughts and emotions and sensations and sounds are arising in each moment close your eyes again and stare into the darkness behind your eyelids everything you can notice is simply a perturbation of consciousness happy thoughts make us happy sad thoughts make us sad but there's actually an illusion here that we're not seeing the consciousness that is aware of happiness and the consciousness which is aware of sadness is not actually ever taking the form of those moods meditation is simply a means to continually drop back into this state of mirror witnessing of everything that arises once again you can open your eyes and notice any apparent change does it feel like your experience just got bigger in some way the place you see with open eyes is the same place where you are thinking and feeling it's very easy to debunk the pseudo spiritual arguments presented by Sam Harris if you just take the time to write them out clearly bullet point by bullet point and present them as a flow chart rather than sitting with your eyes closed in a reverential attitude of passively receiving them while meditating very rapidly the seemingly profound equivocations between slightly exotic sounding words that he presents are reduced to laughable pointless plea and astok dead ended reasoning something that can't even be called philosophy but ultimately it's pointless for me to sit down and do this with you I want to end this video by asking you in all seriousness if you know someone who's under the influence of sam harris if you know someone who's paying a hundred and twenty dollars a year to be a member of his cult reach out to them now and try to talk through with them just what nonsense the says maybe take the time to say hey if we take this so-called meditation he's presenting here on the true meaning of the self or the true meaning of consciousness and if we write it out in plain English and make it into a flowchart can we maybe challenge this assumption you have that this is someone who shared with you profound and esoteric wisdom can we maybe challenge the aura of the sacred and the holy that this so-called secular scientist has somehow appropriated through himself the warning signs with Sam Harris are very clear and he's done us all a favor by sharing the podium with cult leaders who do not pretend to be secular who do not pretend to be atheist who do not pretend to be scientists as he does if you just look up the names of some of the people he's invited on his show to discuss meditation or even people who've presented guided meditations through his app through his podcast and so on with him for him and so on you will soon find that many of these names are people who have credentials from various schools of Buddhism Hinduism for the most part they're white Western English speaking people whose ideas about Buddhism and Hinduism are five steps removed from any primary source they never actually learned the ancient languages than ever stated tention scriptures but nevertheless they are overtly dogmatic religious leaders and if you listen to what they have to say they are teaching precisely the same doctrine as sam harris very often using precisely the same imagery the same similes the same reasoning I just loaded up Locke Kelly first name Locke last name Kelly one of these guys Sam Harris shares the stage with and it sounds like sam Harris has ripped off some of that guy's Act I think it could just be they both read the same self-help book so they're both working with the same sources but you know specific images oh ma in the storm you are the storm you think you and your mind are two different things but really you are the storm exactly the same imagery exactly the same so-called reasoning or guided meditation this is not the only example you have to really put yourself in the desperate frame of mind of someone who pays a hundred and twenty dollars and then sits there and listens to a guided meditation from sam harris twice a day every day with their eyes closed and their legs crossed sam harris in the year 2020 is no longer a secular atheist leader he is the leader of his own dogmatic religious cult meditation movement what are sam Harris's credentials in buddhism how did sam harris become a guru who's qualified to lead group meditation or if you got invitation what are sam harris motivations what is the enlightenment he's pushed you the way to what are the results you're supposed to expect from this man there's so many obvious outrageous questions that these people are not asking because they're desperate for help they're desperate for hope they're desperate for reassurance they yearn for the veneer of something sacred and profound to come into their lives think for a moment about the beginnings of Scientology there was a time when people thought Scientology and Dianetics legitimately had something to do with science and psychology remember that the beginnings of the cult of sam harris likewise have a merger of this guy seemingly having a legitimate university diploma in the science of the mind and him having seemingly legitimate peer-reviewed publications and books with impressive sounding titles when you look into those actual publications if you read his article there's a book it all falls apart under inspection pretty quickly but nevertheless we have a situation you're very much like the transition to Scientology and diane made from pseudoscience to outright cult if you don't know what the harm ends in people becoming true believers in the doctrine of Sam Harris if you don't know what the danger is take a look back at the first few years of the history of Scientology and ask yourself the people who got involved at that stage did they have any idea where this was gonna go in the next five years and now let's think about our own lifetimes with Sam Harris when you think back five years ago and 10 years ago did you have any idea Sam Harris was gonna take it this far did you have any idea he was gonna be selling this app with guided meditation and presenting himself ostensibly and actually as a spiritual guru in this way and then where do you think he's gonna go next what do you think happens in the next five years and I'm not asking how that might be bad or harmful for sam Harris I'm asking how that might be dangerous destructive for people who are desperate enough and needy enough to reach out for and cling to the kind of peculiar guidance this man is now offering you