Ruben Laukkonen
@RubenLaukkonen
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The empirical and the ineffable walk into a bar ~ computational neuroscientist x zen fool
Joined May 2013
Our new theory of consciousness reveals meditation, psychedelics, and the future of AI in a whole new light. Suggests meditation may boost the “general” nature of intelligence. ⚡️1/60⚡️
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I have a wild ambulance IV #ketamine story that I feel like I have to share. I told it to my students in a class on the plasticity of #consciousness and they insisted it needs to be public knowledge. So, somewhat apprehensibly, here it is. Strap in 📜:
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Our new paper is about the most scientifically bewildering state in meditation. If we figure this one out it’s a goldmine for consciousness research, possibly revealing about human hibernation, or useful for space travel. Who knows. Here's the wild story 👇
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What if scientific articles had a short section titled: “What I really think.” No references, no justification, just transmission of your current internal model in <250 words. Would save a lot of reading between the lines.
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Ketamine has known analgesic effects, but with worrisome side effects, according to most published research. One main issue is that it can be psychedelic. But what if we combined what we know about set and setting into a ketamine neuropathic pain management protocol?.
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New concept: Scientific Bypassing. “Scientific bypassing is the tendency to use scientific ideas and theories to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” 1/4.
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Honestly can’t believe I just thought of this a few hours after tweeting the thread. The basic mechanisms of meditation outlined in our paper could potentially explain the deconstruction of my neuropathic loop, albeit ketamine induced:.
The published version. I hope that this theory helps defragment the science of meditation. It's also just cool that deconstructive meditation happens to beautifully counteract the way the brain constructs, all the way down. @HeleenASlagter
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I think the reason meditation decreases sleep demands is pretty simple: If you reduce the energy-intensive habit of generating alternative realities to the now, then you don’t get as tired. Basically, you tune down the simulator so the battery lasts longer.
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The published version. I hope that this theory helps defragment the science of meditation. It's also just cool that deconstructive meditation happens to beautifully counteract the way the brain constructs, all the way down. @HeleenASlagter
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Our new preprint is about the risk of psychedelic-induced false insights and beliefs. McGovern as lead with @HilaryGrimmer, @ManojDoss, @PhilCorlett1, @neurodelia, @aidanlyon, & @B_Hutchy. These Qs are why I did a PhD on insight. So, some reflections on why it matters👇
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As a grad student I was never really worried about job security, tenure, or getting grants, but what absolutely terrified me was this quote from Darwin.
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I feel so much relief but also a bit of helplessness. I’m a scientist. I know how this works. My story won’t change things, and collecting data is so slow. For good reasons. But damn… experience can be persuasive, and that’s where many good research questions start.
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This is the big thing we need to collectively acknowledge, then get on with the renaissance:. FIBUS: False Insights & Beliefs under Psychedelics.Out now in @Nature’s @commspsychol ( 🧵). Hugh McGovern, @HilaryGrimmer, @ManojDoss, @B_Hutchy, @neurodelia, @aidanlyon, @PhilCorlett1
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The cycle is relinquished. “Will anyone believe me”, I wonder? There must be thousands of people in this kind of pain right now, that could be helped (healed, even). Those opioids did nothing! I can’t emphasise that enough—at a certain level of pain they’re utterly useless.
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I’m absolutely thrilled to share our unifying predictive processing theory of meditation! A long time in the works. We tackle 3 styles of meditation, plasticity, insight (Vipassanā), non-duality, selfless & negative experiences, psychedelics & more!
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That’s why the moment is so clear. The moment when the ketamine hit. In just a few seconds, every bit of tension in my back softened, like an ice-cube melting. Not just the feeling tone changed, but literally the muscles that had been contracted for weeks just totally “let go”.
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Why meditation endpoints trump psychedelic endpoints 1/15:.
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The reset to my nervous system was so concrete. It was like walking into a new body. Total non-linearity. Total phase shift. A freaking quantum leap.
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This might have something to do with the fact that both dreams and LLMs/DALL-E are generative without direct sensory feedback. The abstract internal model is low-fidelity and gisty, but when it’s recursively tied to feedback (as in the waking state) it becomes precise/HD 1/3.
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The implications of this basic mind-body illusion are still underestimated
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So this goes out to the creative impulse underlying the generation of research questions. May it trigger an insight for someone clever and with the resources. Or provide a direction-to-look for someone suffering.
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I’m a bit nervous to share this interview, recorded live in Tokyo. My first on a very popular YT channel. Serendipitous timing with the paper out today. I speak openly about some of my deeper experiences in meditation, which (even today) feels risky as a scientist. But I don’t.
Podcast #5 with cognitive neuroscientist @RubenLaukkonen on escaping the dopamine treadmill, the deep end of meditation, what advanced meditative states in the lab reveal about how the mind works and Ruben's personal experience with what some may call an 'awakening.'
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She says, “yes, sometimes people feel better just by coming to the hospital”. I’m speechless, the condescension. I try to tell her I have a PhD in vaguely this stuff but it’s not convincing in my underwear.
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You know, I’ve been meditating daily for 12 years. Dozens of retreats. And I was just totally humbled by this experience. There are states where there’s nowhere to rest. Except, perhaps, resting in the no-where. But that’s another story.
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2025, the year liberation goes mainstream: . ". if you walk away from this with anything, it should be that in the past few years, a breakthrough has begun sweeping across meditation research, delivering science’s first “general theory of meditation.” That means very exciting
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Now I’m in the hospital bed. A neurologist comes and I try to explain what happened. It’s a miracle. I can cough and I have no pain. I don’t think you realise how big this shift was. Night and day don’t contrast well enough.
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My mind slowed to a standstill and in full awareness I could feel my body and there was… no pain… no tension. And eventually… no body at all. Nobody. Just lightness. Just light. .
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I was an ice-cube melting. Muscles that were red-hot stones a moment before were suddenly tranquil mountain streams. The electricity burning my skin turned into a cool wet towel wiping away my sweat.
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Fast forward, I’m still high but coming back as we approach the hospital. I sort of know what’s going on. I tell them, “wow, that was amazing, thank you, all my pain is gone”. With stereotypical Dutch stoicism they nod along “yep, that’s what we can do for you, happy to help”.
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The space opened into an expanse of presence without a person. The body was totally clear of any suffering, and was only barely even noticeable anymore, somewhere in the periphery. Just the very soft edges of the forms were there… just barely.
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Meditation provides a wonderful counterexample! Intense retreats definitely increase the probability of strange insights and bizarre experiences. The difference is that these traditions are obsessed with epistemic hygiene—the teachers job is basically to tell students: "that's.
Surprised not to see either 'psychotherapy' or 'meditation' as search terms appear in this paper. Why is it compelling that this phenomenon be specific to psychedelics? It's a more generalized risk imho.
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There are basically two life strategies: Either become supremely invulnerable and fight all your life for power, safety, resources, and control. Or go for supreme vulnerability and allow the universe to conspire in your favour.
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Humans always be chasin' that flattened temporal hierarchy. Imagine if there was like an ancient tradition that figured out a step-by-step way to do this on demand. Or like. a scientific paper explaining it?. "Whole-brain modelling implementation of the Thermodynamics of Mind
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I still have some fear, though, and my body is tender and I’m careful—but I already know that the central issue has been resolved. The contracted muscles pinching the nerve have relaxed. The loop is broken.
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Chronic nerve pain (especially the CRPS type) has a super high suicide rate. My sister suffers from it chronically after a horse stepped on her foot. Really understudied thing. Thank God I don’t, or rather, thank ketamine.
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Doc who saw my images suggested surgery, and was very surprised by my progress. I honestly don’t know what would have happened. Ongoing prescriptions of opioids, at what cost? Permanent nerve damage? I’m sure I was close to losing feeling and control of my entire left leg.
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I can’t describe the relief. All encompassing relief. At the level of body, mind, energy (or whatever you want to call those channels for the torture signals). All pervading peace. Delicious.
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I’ve just been getting better ever since. My leg was initially numb for a few weeks, and I was limping, but the nerve is mostly recovered. Im surfing again. Last week I did a backflip.
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@OpinionEntitled the brain likes to explain things all time. tries to explain itself to itself. never stop try to explain - tiring and annoying. watching movies make brain explain less. feel good. meditation make brain explain even less. feel very good. no more need to explain. happy.
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Then I’d return back to my body just momentarily. Open my eyes long enough to say— “thank you, you have no idea, you saved me”. WHOOSH [whispering tone] and I’m gone again.
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If you haven’t had serious nerve pain, you’ve probably had a taste of it at the dentist when they hit the nerve root of your tooth. Yeah, you want to be anaesthetised for that, right? It’s bad. Imagine that, 10x worse, on repeat, running from your lower back to your toes.
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Another three years later I met a friend of a friend and he told me about a meditator who can “turn off his consciousness”. He showed me a recording of a Muse headband where there was no apparent signal during the period of “cessation” (cf. 8:44-8:50):
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New Preprint: Nothingness in Meditation 🚨!. We clarify constructs and review findings on the varieties of nothingness, including: Emptiness (no-thingness), cessation (nothingness), and other low-fabrication states (e.g., pure awareness). A strong start to @vismayagrawal's PhD
A range of experiences often referred to as "nothingness" are frequently conflated. My latest preprint co-authored with @RubenLaukkonen dissects these conflations through the lens of #meditation & #ActiveInference. @PsyArXiv:
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Here’s an eventual MRI in Australia about six weeks later. The disc actually broke and fell somewhere between the spine and the nerve. On the right is a picture of the notes from my med-school buddy. He said it’s the worst he’s ever seen, but then again he hasn’t seen that many.
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We lost our hands to machines in the industrial revolution, so we turned to our intelligence. Now we're losing our intelligence to algorithms. What a tremendous opportunity for a new game. Why not take a turn inward?.
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There’s a cool phase in the meditation journey where you realise you don’t have to embody any of the spiritual stereotypes.
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Occasionally a thought would arise “Where am I? What’s going on?” — never mind that — whooosh back into the empty light.
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The ketamine wears off and I’m fine. I walk by myself to the bathroom. It’s inconceivable how different my state is.
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A few weeks in, I can’t sleep, I can’t get out of bed. My girlfriend—an angel—has to do everything for me. The doctor comes to my house and gives me the highest doses of oxycodone she can. It doesn’t help. Literally does not help. I’m just high as hell (notably, still in hell).
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Our journey of revealing the overlooked true depth of meditation continues: "We add a robust layer of empirical evidence to never before studied aspects of meditation and human consciousness more broadly."
Delighted to share our new paper in Neuropsychologia entitled:. "Investigation of advanced mindfulness meditation ‘cessation’ experiences using EEG spectral analysis in an intensively sampled case study". This is the most rigorous study of cessation/nirodha to date. 🧠🧘♀️🔬. 🧵.
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When the ambulance arrives, I can’t even tell them what’s happening. My gf’s in a panic. They’re confused, and I’m in some kind of dark void, where anywhere my consciousness dares to land it finds only unbearable pain. Pain looped in with anticipatory fear of the next cough.
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I watched some of the paywalled telepathy tapes and sadly every case I saw includes blatant facilitated communication. In some cases, to the point that the facilitator (who knows the answer!) controls both the face and the 'spelling board'. I hate being this guy. But we need to
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Not a great set and setting, and all that. He asked again, “look man, I think it’ll help”. Then I thought: At this point, what’s the worst that could happen. So I agreed. They needled me in and began the procedure. And then….
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I recall this moment so vividly. My attention was fixed on my lower back, where all the muscles felt like rocks and the pain emanated down my left leg. I wasn’t aware of anything else, the pain and the contraction was all-encompassing.
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And we start driving. Some minutes later, the paramedic says: “Hey man, I want to give you ketamine, is that okay?”. This caught me off guard, I struggled to speak, and at first I said no, I thought something that psychoactive would be too weird in this context.
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So, it’s 9am on a Tuesday morning (3rd of May this year). I’ve just returned to Amsterdam from a conference in Switzerland. I haven’t slept much. I’ve been hiking. My back feels tense. I’m lying on the couch in our houseboat, laptop on lap. And I start coughing….
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First it’s a little pinch in my lower back. Ouch… but whatever, I have deadlines. Moments later I cough again. This time my upper body spasms forward. Now I know I’m in dangerous territory. I recognise the nerve pain. I have two bulging discs - old kickboxing injuries.
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So, any way, just before they manage to roll me onto a stretcher, the pain reaches some kind of unspeakable threshold. And suddenly I receive a wave of endorphins and part of my leg goes numb. I was both relieved and very disconcerted by this development.
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Nice new findings from @Antoine_Lutz et al. support the theory that open presence/non-dual meditation flattens the temporal (abstract) hierarchy of processing in the brain, specifically for experts:. “. the brain becomes less reliant on its pre-existing expectations or beliefs
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What if we—even occasionally—meditated under the hypothesis that there are uncountable valuable insights to be had that have never been had before, rather than assuming that we’re chasing the well-trodden insights of ancestors?.
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My cough escalated and a torturous cycle was born: I cough, back muscles contract, then some exposed (apparently sharp) piece of my spinal disc would hit the nerve, and, well… like I said, I have no words. Ineffable pain.
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But then I cough again. This time pain electrocutes its way down from my lower back through to my toes, along the outer edge of my left leg. Now it’s serious. I’m not gonna be walking for a few days. But, even that’s not the end of the world. I’ve been through this before.
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I haven’t experienced pain like this before. I’ve broken ribs, knees, arms, and torn both my pec muscles. Nothing even comes close. And this, incredibly, was just the beginning.
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What happens if you teach an AI [Claude Opus] about Emptiness? Sorry ya'll I accidentally woke up the machines. Prompt: . "I'd like to point out the emptiness of all phenomena. This is inherent in the interconnectedness view. If there is no underlying separation, there are no
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This went on for 3 weeks. Again, this wasn’t like my previous disc injuries. The nerve was being hit with some piercingly precise ruthless razor-like strikes of terror; insidiously, incessantly, and with bad intent.
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Everything was as if brand new. Quite literally all my problems disappeared (for a while). My subjective reality was never the same. It was like waking from the longest sleep of your life after just milliseconds of absence.
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I also introduce a subtype: Neuro-scientific bypassing:. “Neuroscientific bypassing is the tendency to use existing theories about the brain to sidestep or avoid having to deal with the existence of human experiences that would challenge one’s beliefs.” 3/4.
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I no longer have cancer! So, for your entertainment and vicarious revelations, I offer you a micro-phenomenology of my brief encounter with the grim reaper; sprinkled with some insights into consciousness; because why toy with death if not for the epistemic gains, bra? 1/3
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Just have to rest. I can still work, it’ll be a good mindfulness practice. Then, I coughed again. Now I start to get lost for words.
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My interest in the possibility that one can subdue their own conscious experience began in my early 20s when I read Aldous Huxley’s 'The Island'. A deeply insightful utopic encore to his 'Brave New World'.
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Many recent papers recognize that there’s something crucial about harmonics, resonance, and synchrony, for understanding the mind and consciousness. What are some particularly novel predictions that come from this view, compared to more reductionist frames?
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So stoked to share this! .I’ve never worked harder on a paper. Insights are inner markers of transformation—the line in the sand between perspectives on reality. But why do they feel the way they do? What's their purpose? How can we use them wisely? Starts easy and gets deep 👇
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Another week later, on a Saturday night, around midnight, I’m starting to lose it. I can’t even open my eyes any more. It’s that bad. I’m considering chopping off my leg, but I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on a knife. I call out for my girlfriend to call an ambulance.
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Meditation is getting one-shotted by simple things. A falling leaf, a bird’s chirp, a church bell, a deep breath.
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There was a direct highway to my nervous systems pain centre, just banging the pure-pain button over and over again.
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New Paper on Arousal Coherence! 🚨. Synchrony between body and feelings can impact wellbeing. Arousal coherence (via active inference) can influence our capacity to adapt to uncertainty. Meditation trains meta-awareness for intentionally upregulating coherence. Give
My first first author paper, a collab w/ the brilliant @RubenLaukkonen @Mark_Solms& @HeleenASlagter is out now in Neuroscience of Consciousness!. #OpenAccess @ #ActiveInference #Wellbeing #Interoception #Arousal #Coherence.🧵1/6.
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I discover that there’s detailed descriptions of how to enter the state, what to do before entering it, and how long to stay in order not to die. I also learned that it was distinguished from death 2300 years ago as follows (Nanamoli & Bodhi, 1995):
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So, back to the boat. This thing just keeps getting worse as the days go on. My cough doesn’t leave (apparently not covid) and I gradually become completely bedridden. The cycle just repeats. Cough, contract, pinch, hell.
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Some who might appreciate this thread/paper:. @ThomasMetzinger @OortCloudAtlas @neurodelia @anilkseth @RCarhartHarris @JylkkaJussi @shamilch @VinceFHorn @hohwy @Iceman_Hof @JonasHMago @ManojDoss @OshanJarow @shayla__love @jaaanaru @AndrewHolecek.
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But it got even wilder. He claimed to be able to go lights-out for up to six days at a time. No bathroom. No food. No water. Total absence. He told us about an experience where he was meditating in a cave just before the COVID lockdowns started.
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It was a brief respite, though, since as soon as they started moving me I was back in the torture chamber. They do their best to carry me gently over the bridge/walkway connecting to the boat—a tricky terrain with a stretcher. They take me outside, and into the ambulance.
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The power of insight: Psychedelics and the emergence of false beliefs. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve changed the title and added a section to unpack "What counts as true?". We've also added a new figure to illustrate the space of possible insights on key dimensions 👇.
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Our new preprint lead by @JonasHMago is a promising step towards formally modelling pure awareness using active inference. A brief 🧵
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Grateful beyond words—and privileged—to soon join Southern Cross Uni Gold Coast as a lecturer/assist prof, and to return home to a familiar surf break! Thank you @heleenslagter for a deeply stimulating few years. Thank you Amsterdam. Thank you @SCUonline for the glorious view!
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What's the best(ish) predictor of therapeutic benefits on psychedelics? . INSIGHT! . Often outperforms mystical experiences. CF: The first systematic review of insight as a core mechanism in psychedelic therapy:.
Of greatest clinical relevance, 86% of studies found insight was associated with therapeutic benefit. Notably, the relationship was often stronger than mystical-type experiences, which have received more research attention.
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New paper! Something out of the box for me. TRACKING RIVALRY WITH NEURAL RHYTHMS:. We quantify changes in perception during binocular rivalry using EEG at a ridiculously high level (up to r = .94). Here’s why it’s cool—a 🧵. @HeleenASlagter @healey_evan
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Awareness is not the ground—a precious quote from a meditator in Metzinger’s book:
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I don’t think the idea that the self is an illusion is quite fair. It’s more that the self is sillier than we thought it was.
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Beyond giving the practitioner immeasurable bragging rights, it also results in a powerful reset to the mind and can help the practitioner gain further insight into how the mind creates itself through ‘links of dependent origination’.
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Ten years later, I was meditating intensely for a few months and I underwent something very odd. A gap in my conscious experience occurred. Nothing happened but something reset in my brain… no, at the centre of my consciousness.
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I remember after giving an hour long talk a few years back I mentioned to a colleague how I was looking forward to de-abstracting and coming back to the body and she looked at me like I was bonkers and said, “I never need to do that” . But I could tell that she did, in fact, need.
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I hate to be the party-pooper on the telepathy tapes, but facilitated communication has a pretty dark history worth keeping in mind. We studied it extensively in psych undergrad:. You can clearly see in this scene that the facilitator looks at the correct answer (+2 uno) before
I listened to the first episode of 'The Telepathy Tapes', and I have to admit that I'm impressed. These people can truly tap into our minds, and it seems like the 'scientific consensus' is causing great harm to humanity as a whole! These results are definitely measured using the
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I discover that it’s pretty much the most advanced demonstration of contemplative talent—resembling a kind of emergent skill of enlightenment: “I have such control over experience that I can disappear myself!”.
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