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This is the 10% Happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, everybody. How we doing? I love all of our episodes, of course, but I am, I have to say,

unusually excited about this one. We're doing something we haven't done in a while, in fact.

We're diving into the deep end of advanced meditation. As you know, I'm a huge fan of what I'll call everyday mindfulness. I think there are profound benefits to be had from just meditating a little

bit daily-ish. But honestly, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Just as scientists are exploring the many mysteries of outer space, there is a vastness of inner space that contemplatives have been exploring for millennia and which science is only now really beginning to probe.

I love thinking about the fact that various meditative traditions over many, many centuries have created these elaborate maps of the mind, of the path to enlightenment, and researchers are now endeavoring to see whether those maps might be true.

Today I'm talking to a young researcher from Harvard Medical School who's been studying the brains of advanced meditators. We talk about what he's learning about, rarefied states of meditation, what those states do to the brain, what relevance

all of this might have for the rest of us, how we might get a taste of these states ourselves,

and whether technology might ultimately help some of us jump the line and advance more quickly.

We also talk about some of the psychological risks of deep end meditation.

Dr. Matthew D. Sackett, Ph.D. is an associate professor and the director of the Meditation

Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, otherwise known as Mass General.

Since 2012, he's authored more than 115 publications, presented more than 150 times

at international, national, regional, and local conferences and speaker series, and has been cited

more than 7,500 times.

Impressive dude.

Matthew Sackett, coming up right after this.

Hey, before we get started, I want to make sure that you know about all the good things we've got going on at Dan Harris.com.

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