Sam Harris Live 

I love Sam's excellent delivery. What a great storyteller/communicator he is. His command of the english language, wit and humour is remarkable. I have followed him for years and think that this is one of his finest presentations. Knock 'em alive Sam.

For me, this is the most valuable talk Sam Harris has ever given. I will watch this many times. Thank you so much.🌷

A true candle in the darkness of our world.

"The universe loves us as much as it loved the dinosaurs". Cold blooded reality right there.

Sam is amazing! Way more people should be able to watch this

"Do you think that your experience with meditation and selflessness has contributed to your unusual skill at thinking and communicating clearly on your feet?" "Uhhhhhh...." Classic.

" Real genuine love survives the truth " - Sam Harris

Sam Harris is the world’s pre eminent public intellectual. He articulates his positions so well that it is impossible to disagree with him.

Dr. Harris is brilliant! Right up there with Sagan, Einstein, Dawkins, Tyson, Hitchens, Cox, Krauss, Kaku, Shermer, Darwin and Hawking.

extremely valuable talk and Q&A. Ben Stiller keeps surprising me.

Can’t get enough of Sam, interesting as usual.

Excellent talk. Thank you for sharing it! I’ve listened to a lot of Sam, and there were some great new / differently framed insights in here.

This is Sam at his best IMO. Let’s all be humans.

“The I and the Me keep each other company.” Oooo good one. Chills. 37:21

Every sentence is packed with useful information

I used to think I was getting good at meditating because there wasn't any word showing through my head, untill I realised that every noise I focused in on, every feeling, every mental image counted as thought

Religion is tough to compete with. Even though it's wrong, it provides a certainty about the past and the future and removes despair. It appeals to emotion and tribalism which is hard to fight against with reasoning.

"When a chiropractor is telling you about the implications of quantum mechanics, you know you have opened the wrong door in the mansion of understanding." Classic Sam Harris.

when I can achieve moments of no thought, I feel a sense of complete bliss and serenity, but thoughts enter quickly so that feeling doesn't last long.

sam has got to be one of the most reliably great public speakers out there. every talk is amazing.

I use this video to fall asleep. His voice...relaxing. :)

Vipassana is very helpful. Profound talk as always. Thank you Sir.

Sam is so funny XD. My favourite speaker

I’m having to stop half way through his initial talk, just to reflect on all he’s laid out here. What a thrill to hear these truths.

People will be reading Hitchens a century from now. But Mr Harris may change the world more than any thinker of this era.

I'm a fan, in a manner of speaking, of Sam Harris; his You Tube talks & debates and his writing. I watched this and it strikes me very squarely as an American update on the practice of #Zazen, California style. In the early 1970s, I was deeply into "Zen" practice..."sitting" and meditating on "koans". I had a roshi I and I strove mightily to achieve that one pointed focus of the practice...to quell "the chattering monkey of the discursive mind". It works. This seems to be exactly the same thing within a neuroscience presentation. It's what all practices of meditation do and it makes great sense.

Incredible to me that the existence the dinosaurs, and probably our presence here today, depended on just a few hours in the rotation of the Earth. If the asteroid had crashed into the deeper part of the Pacific far from land most of the impact would have been absorbed, the dinos might still be here, but not us. How fate can turn on such a small wheel, and that includes our existence as a species.

Smart, Well Spoken, Funny💜

I'm alive and Sam Harris is alive ,life can't be better

“Consciousness is the one thing in the universe, including the universe, that cannot be an illusion.” All I have to say is WOW.

The concept of self disappears with the selflessness of the service of others to the best of your ability

wow its amazing to me how he mentions to move your hand and notice how you have no idea how its done.....many years ago after many years of thought , I came to this awareness.....looking at my hand and moving it and saying to myself "I have no idea how im doing that....but I will it to happen"

If you think the Hubble is amazing just you wait for the JWST

The parable, "man shot with an arrow" recounted by Buddha is relevant to the degree that it can cure anxiety, depression, concerning oneself with events over which you have no control. Fascinating to witness Sam Harris citing the parable. Wonderful!..

Excellent work Sam. I've experienced 2 strokes ln last 15 months. Learning to think clearly. Keenly interested jn development of mediation skills.

I've always thought Sam Harris was excellent, but this is by far the best I've ever seen him. This is excellent information.

Had a conversation with my cousin who is a devote Christian (catholic) and explained that I don't believe in God simply because I am not convinced. He couldn't get his head around that difference between the two of us. After some time I asked if he considered that the other worshipped deities throughout history were possible and he confidently stated no and was equally confused by me not being convinced. I came to the conclusion that he wasn't distributed that I didn't believe in God but that he was dumbfounded that I didn't believe in his God.

The visual clarity of this video is so amazing. May be it's the lightning. At 01:28:47, the details on Sam's faces are so sharp. The lightning isn't perfectly illuminating the face (as they do in advertisements), yet it is done in a way that looks very interesting.

00:00-25:00 Amazing, talk about redefining spirituality as it always should have been, before the ego came in and polluted it with its agendas and made what we today call "religion"

2:10:05 I'd love having mini TED conference every Sunday in every city, too! I would visit those regularly unlike all those religious buildings.

I love Sam Harris...What a legend

One of Harris' best talks. In contrast to his earlier work, which was mostly pointing out the numerous negative aspects of religion, this one acknowledges the positive aspects of religion and points out that they need not be linked to historical religious traditions, and seeks to break them off into 'spirituality' as he (re-) defines it.

I tend to feel that answers to long sought questions aor solutions to problems actually decorate those issues as even more profound as well as our lives.

_...it's our minds [rather than the circumstances themselves] that will define the character of our experience."_

After a humid, 19 mile hike in 90°F temps, I sat in a cool mountain creek. I call that experience a "spiritual" one. My friends understand the intended irony in my usage, but I'm careful to avoid using that word around believers, just to make sure they don't get the wrong idea about me.

love this.

If all of you are Sam Harris fans and don't have the Waking Up app yet you should definitely give it a try

Sam Harris.......... THE BEST !!!!

A Course In Miracles The Book

Consciousness is the ultimate VR experience

Great talk!

" To say consciousness may only seem to exist, is to admit its existence in full; if things seem anyway at all, that is consciousness." SH

Insightful.

Me: great! I can start working. RU-vid: challenge accepted! Here’s Sam Harris 🤣 2 hours later - I’m going back to work with a huge smile on my face.

1:22:07 I fully agree that inventing a new term (such as "omega point") to replace "spirituality" to avoid listener from potentially mixing it with religious experiences would be bad. The explanation Harris gives here is superb.

At around 22:00 he mentions that consciousness can’t mapped in the brain essentially and says there’s nowhere that it all comes together. There literally is though its called the Parieaqueductal Gray. The PAG is literally where consciousness originates. Read Mark Solms’ works on this subject he’s a neuroscientist who has dedicated all of his studies to this exact question. As a matter of fact, Sam mentions Nagel’s “What it’s like…” philosophy and that’s literally exactly what Mark Solms believes in as well. He’s a neuroscientist and psychoanalyst who’s basically bridging the gap between the brain and the mind. Incredible stuff I highly recommend him to anyone. Edit to say that I am so happy that Sam is talking about this. Reductionism in neuroscience is not doing justice to what it’s like to be a human being. Diagnosing depression with a fucking brain scan instead of talking to the person. It’s insane to me and I’m so glad Sam is talking about this.

What ever this mindfulness thing is I can’t do it, and I think I have that thought over and over when I meditate, but I’m not sure. I’ve been at it for 10 years

great introduction to vipasana

I believe that ‘god’ is nothing more than conscience. (which explains a lot when people say their “god” told them this that or the other) When you and I die, our/my god/conscience dies with me. No ifs and or buts.

Date and venue?

What piques my interest is at the very end when imagining a secular canon to us guide us through life with meaningful rituals that rival those of religions. Why not create a wiki where the 20% of us the “spiritual not religious” folk co-create a library of ceremonies, traditions, philosophy and other guides that rivals every aspect of the actual benefits of religions. I want to borrow from Hindus and have a day when we can throw colorful dyes all over each other’s white clothes, in this case maybe simply to celebrate the joy and importance of play. I’d make it an official holiday; Play Day. So I ask this crowd, what would you like to add to the SNR canon? Would you maybe be willing to write up a ritual if the was a wiki? I’ve been thinking of this for years, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one. So let’s start with some ideas: New holidays. Play Day, Gratitude Day and many other “wisdom days” “Virtue Days” like Truth Day where we have rituals reminding us of the benefits of honesty and it’s sub-virtues such as integrity, and Courage Day that reinforces discipline and authenticity and other aspects of courage. Death Day, not like Day of the Dead honoring ancestors (which would also be a great one to add) but when we have a ritual that begins in the morning with a birth ritual and ends with a death ritual, reminding us of the brevity of life. I would imagine that almost everyday would have some kind of ritual noticing of the annual cycles such the fines of planting and harvest, or even daily such as banging a gong just as the sun touches the horizon to wake us up to noticing. Add your ideas to the canon calendar or Book of ______? The Book of Now The Book of Sam (Just a joke. We’d have to crucify him twice and then wait 100 years to get any traction.) The Secular Canon The Natural Bible What would you like to add? Rites of passages, a funeral ceremony, a ceremonial wedding dance, or the story of Genesis: “In the beginning there was…potential” and go on to metaphorically trace the Big Bang Add your ideas in the comments and maybe contribute to the nascent wiki.

Where and when is this?

Theoretical thinking is meditation. It helps to study the evidence beforehand. None thinking is sleep. It helps to rewire the mind. That's how we grow wise. Mature.

Analytic Idealism has replaced my religious upbringing quite handily.

Is this new? When is this from?

I wrote this today in Richard Dawkins' The Poetry of Reality video comment section and I believe it applies to the first part of which Sam speaks. Interesting, because I found myself looking for labels to cling to only realizing much later that this was my main problem. - *"This is why I have such a hard time believing in labels, especially when it comes to religion. I struggle with the label Atheist because, even though I do not believe in a Supernatural, all-knowing God, to me that does not make me an Atheist. The only thing I am, and it is not a label but a fact, is a human being. That's it. Just because I have thoughts and opinions on certain things shouldn't necessarily categorize me as one thing or another. We're so quick to slap labels on everything that when we do they immediately become controversial. I'm just a human being, making my way through life as best I can with the tools I'm given and I govern myself by respect, dignity, compassion and discernment (as in making rational choices through logical thought). There are always influences and biases, however if a person employs a healthy means in discovery they will have an easier time differentiating between what is fact and what is not. The person who allows themselves to rely on influence and bias will have a much more difficult time because they are unwilling to put the work in on their own. Labels to me are silos, once you're in you're in."*

Wonder what Sam's thoughts are of David Bohm.

The clapping strangely sounded like "free Barrabbas".

this must have been pre covid?? Bad Boy Clips....can you please tell us when and where this was recorded??

Some of us are watching this and consciously thinking about Ben Stiller.

What he is saying makes sense. When I believed in a god, I thought we were creatures of duality. That was incorrect. I’m open to changing my mind about the self. I also object to the term spiritual tho even if I said crazy things coming down from acid trips during my 20’s.

When was this?

Ignorance and religion, it's a match made in heaven. =)

What about Descartes' "I think, therefore I am"..?

Is this from 2014?

Bill Wilson would agree

There are two types of intellectuals. Those who learn and those who unlearn. Only one of them makes progress. And it's not the one who learns.

Four of our 5 senses are in the head.Touch runs in auto-pilot but For purposeful action, the most important senses are our eyes and our ears. Maybe that’s why we consider ourselves in between our eyes and ears.

Billie Eillish, Adele and Sam Harris. Strange channel but I like.

I would bet Steve Harris would make a great friend

6:20 6:26 6:28 ❤🎉 Stoked 😂 99 Rollers Deep man 8:24 Stay Safe Stay Free 🎉

The question about meditating effecting the quality of Sams thining and quickness thinking on his feet I have also wondered about Yuval Noah Harari. I believe he has made claims that his meditation allows him to do things he otherwise would not have been able to do.

What about substituting the word connection for spirituality?

Thanks for apologizing more than once for how your big brain will confuse us in the first two minutes. Your reassurance you would help us catch up at least a little within the next two hours gave me courage.

10:26

Try not to think.................ummmm.............my ex wife and a few girlfriends appear to have mastered this. When I ask them "What are you thinking" they answer "nothing"

I think enlightening people is better than preaching or indoctrinating, whether it is atheism or religion.

Sam Harris! Our consciousness is the idle mode or the standby mode of the brain. On the analogy of the cell phone. This insight is quite helpful to me. In dealing with my delusions. I concede that this analogy is not a scientific explanation. Lakshminarayanan Bengaluru, India.

This is silly, but it occurs to me, that I like that SH chooses to wear a suit, in this time when most speakers would be in a tshirt, or at best in 'business casual'

@1:59:35

The first guy asking question makes me not want to read whatever this man produces. Get to the point, the polar ice caps are melting at an astonishing rate!

1:53:01 angelic voice

35:00

If you only heard the audience, you might think this was a comedy skit

This guy can really be a comedian

22:12 i like to think the increase in the chest section for US Americans is from firearms training, where you're taught that the chest is a person's "center of mass" (and the slightly brighter mouth is from eating all the time)

35:50

what a title

1:46:08 No one is their own author, but they are an editor.

1:00:41 Spirituality in all its forms, including even `secular spirituality`, has within itself the proclivity to tend to believe in something other than what is. Certainly, the reality that we know is probably a very small part of the forces at play in the universal reality, but the fact is that the proclivity to believe that we are more than what is does not really help anyone in any way to approach the unknown with reasonableness. Instead, it pushes us away from reasonableness... towards the oblivion of illusions.