Recently I’ve found myself in a period of self-discovery, trying to figure out new paths for myself, checking new interests and exploring new areas.
I happened to arrive at the first Israeli Consciousness Hacking Meetup, which took place at our local Google Campus in Tel Aviv. I arrived somewhat skeptical due to the ambiguous title of the event, but as a spiritual and innovative person I decided to give it a go and try.
Lucking enough, being there opened my eyes to a fascinating new world, which deals exactly with the questions I find most interesting in life.
So what is it all about?
Let’s start with a short description of the topic, for those of us who never bumped into the title before.
Hacking Consciousness is a pragmatic approach for creating tools and techniques for exploring and altering our conscious experience. The brain, mind, and ultimately our underlying sense of purpose and wellbeing are the ultimate hacking frontier. Our efforts are more often than not focused on changing our external world to suit some needs or desires. What if we flipped that, and focused on transforming our own subjective experience?
It’s not a new idea — humans have been hacking consciousness for millennia with tools like meditation, breathing, dance, music, ceremonies and so on. All of these are forms of ‘technology’ evolved over thousands of years by ‘scientists’ relentlessly studying the fundamental nature of direct experience. Why? Because human suffering can be eradicated from the inside out. Its this crowd, not a yogi in a cave, that has the skills and motivation to create modern tools that fundamentally transform our reality.
Who’s leading the field?
One of the leading figures in the field is Mikey Siegel. He is a prominent mind in the research of well being and consciousness through technology. He has engineering background from MIT, worked at NASA, and went on to found the Consciousness Hacking community. Mikey started creating meetups and conferences in San Francisco, where the community is currently the largest in the world. Check out the YouTube channel and the community’s Facebook Group.
Another leading figure focused mainly on new media and philosophy is Jason Silva, who runs the YouTube channel Shots Of Awe.
The main conference focusing on transformative technologies is Trans Tech, which takes place annually in Palo Alto. The conference attracts leading mind of various disciplines, having to do with the research of well being the creation of transformative technologies. Check out the conference’s Facebook Group too!
Along these guys you can find university courses in leading institutions, including Harvard and Stanford for example.
Innovating through technology
The existing Apps and technologies available on the market can show us several directions the industry is going to:
Biofluent — A company founded by Mikey Siegel, aimed at integrating body, mind a technology through biofeedback and experiments.
The OS Fund by Bryan Johnson — A VC investing in transformative technologies.
Headspace — One of the most popular meditation apps
Muse — A device to help you meditate
Entangled — An app trying to measure our level of consciousness
Where are we headed?
Since momentum is currently building up and traction is accelerating, it is yet not possible to predict what solutions the future will bring. Collaboration of professional of different disciplines is necessary to create meaningful new techniques and technologies to the field. One of the challenges is also branding the field correctly, eliminating the New-age, Hippie stigma that alienates many people who consider themselves as “grounded”.
Looking at the business core of the industry and market, it is crystal clear that a huge potential market is eagerly waiting for new ways to improve well-being, happiness and overall satisfaction, all of which could be achieved with the help of technology, innovation and the dedication of passionate people.
The Israeli Hacking Consciousness group is the 23rd group worldwide, and I’m sure that forming our community here, along with all the people worldwide, will create many new ways to improve the quality of our life.
