Attaining A Jhana Live: How Anyone Can Achieve Super Wellbeing

We recorded someone guide himself into a Jhana live on our podcast. And he narrated the whole process from start to finish.

Jhanas are meditative bliss states and they traditionally require thousands of hours of practice. But Stephen Zerfas and his team at Jhourney are changing that—creating retreats where most participants hit a Jhana in their first week.

Dan Shipper went to one of their retreats earlier this year, and it was by far the best he’s been to. So we had Stephen on AI & I to show us how he gets into a Jhana and what the future of super wellbeing might look like.

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Timestamps:

Introduction: 00:00:56

A primer on Jhana meditation: 00:01:18

Zerfas guides himself into a Jhana: 00:05:47

Why Jhana is about resting into what already exists: 00:36:04

Approaching meditation with play and curiosity: 00:39:30

The potential pitfalls of Jhana meditation: 00:45:04

How to hack your personality through memory reconsolidation: 00:48:21

Why Jhana won't let you numb yourself to real problems: 00:53:10

How Jhana meditation has changed Zerfas: 00:55:36

How Jhourney is using AI to make Jhanas more accessible: 01:09:41

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Stephen Zerfas: Stephen Zerfas
• Jhourney: https://www.jhourney.io/
• The Donella Meadows book Zerfas refers to: Thinking in Systems: A Primer

What is AI & I?

Learn how the smartest people in the world are using AI to think, create, and relate. Each week I interview founders, filmmakers, writers, investors, and others about how they use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Midjourney in their work and in their lives. We screen-share through their historical chats and then experiment with AI live on the show. Join us to discover how AI is changing how we think about our world—and ourselves.

For more essays, interviews, and experiments at the forefront of AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought?sort=newest.