What is pure awareness like?

There’s an old parable about an elephant and a blind person.

Wanting to know what an elephant is like, each of them touches a different part of the elephant and describes it. None of their descriptions is the same because none of their experiences is the same.

Mystical experience is like that too. For millennia, contemplatives have warned against putting it into words, since words can never fully capture it. I thought that was the end of the story.

Then I read the book The Elephant and the Blind, written by the philosopher Thomas Metzinger and published last year. In it, Metzinger aggregates thousands of firsthand reports of a certain type of meditative experience — pure awareness — and ranks the adjectives people use to describe it.

I’ve been super inspired by this book since reading it a year ago. So I wanted to share its key insights: the top 5 words people use to describe pure awareness. If they affect you like they affected me, then they shouldn’t point to some special, rarefied state.

They should point back here.

I really enjoyed making this video (also available on YouTube) and I’m feeling inspired to make more like it. Let me know what it sparks in you, and what you’d be excited to hear about next!

🫵
Rey

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