What Are The Jhanas And How Can They Change Your Life? (Jhourney Founder, Stephen Zerfas)

EvolutionFM

Today’s guest is Stephen Zerfas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Jhourney.

Five years ago Stephen found himself crying tears of joy after stumbling into a prolonged state of ecstatic bliss on a meditation retreat.

Up until this point, most of the retreat was migraine-inducing so he wasn’t sure how he had landed in this profound place. After the retreat, he was interested in how to recreate this experience whenever he wanted. Through many months of personal experimentation and research, he realized that these states are available to all humans on demand. In fact, you don’t even need to be a long-time meditator!

In this conversation, we discuss the Jhanas and how Jhourney is going about making them more accessible. Interesting ideas include:

• An overview of the Jhanas and why we should care

• How meditation as far as what has been brought to the West is still largely unexplored

• The history of why these experiences went from very popular to obscurity and are now emerging yet again

• The different schools of insight including dry vs. wet insight

• His learnings collecting the largest scientific dataset on Jhana meditators in the world

• How technology can enhance this age-old tradition

• Arguments against pursuing the Jhanas and his response

• How access to the Jhanas has the potential to change the world

For full show notes: https://blog.scottbritton.me/s/evolutionfm-podcast