Yuval Noah Harari, Author of "Sapiens," Speaks About His Meditation Practice

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli history professor and author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. His most recent book is 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He teaches in the history department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and says that without regular meditation practice, he would be unable to write his books. Below we transcribe and translate an excerpt from an interview in which he discusses his practice and also mentions the vipassana meditation course, a free course offered worldwide, which he attends annually.

Yuval Noah Harari: I practice meditation to see reality more clearly. To be able to see what is real, what is actually happening here, now. I don't do this as some kind of exercise to connect with some kind of "force" or story. For me, meditation is really the least dogmatic thing I've ever encountered in life. It's something that simply tells you, "observe what is happening here," how this reality actually is, without trying to impose a story onto it, without trying to change this reality.

I remember the first time I went to a course and the teacher's first instruction was, "observe your breath." In and out of your nostrils, and just accept your breath however it is. If it's strong, if it's weak, if it comes from this nostril or that one, it doesn't matter. Just observe reality as it is. And what surprised me was that I couldn't do this for more than 10 seconds. The mind immediately fled to some story, some fantasy, some memory. If I can't observe the reality of my own breath for 10 seconds, how can I expect to observe the reality of the global political system? Of the global economic system?

Interviewer: So that's exactly the question.

Noah: Yes, I try. I try to do both. I've been practicing meditation for 18 years now.

Interviewer: Wow.

Noah: And it's been very helpful.

Interviewer: More than 10 seconds?

Noah: More than 10 seconds. I try.

Interviewer: How much longer?

Noah: Sometimes I manage. This year I went to a 60-day course here in India.

Interviewer: Wow, 60 days?

Noah: 60 days. I wasn't focused for all 60 days, of course. The mind keeps wandering, but I keep trying. And I don't think I could have written any of my books without the help of the focus and discipline and clarity that this kind of meditation brings.

Interviewer: So when you're in deep meditation, I'm dying to ask this question, and we have quite a few Bollywood people here today and they've seen this in movies, does everything start to become codes and algorithms? Like in the Matrix film?

Noah: No, no, no.

Interviewer: You know, when he evolves?

Noah: You have a stomachache, your knee hurts. And then the mind goes to some memory. "Oh, I should have said that, I should have said this." And that's how you get to know yourself. I think many people make a mistake about meditation. They think meditation is a tool to get all kinds of special experiences. As if I were going to an amusement park and this were another kind of amusement park, and I used meditation to have all kinds of special experiences. In fact, I think the most important benefit of meditation is getting to know the most ordinary, natural, everyday patterns of your mind and body. To get to know your anger, your pain, your joy, your boredom. Because these are the things you need to deal with day to day, in life. If meditation is a kind of vacation, as if for 2 days I have these special experiences, but then for most of the year I still need to deal with my anger, my boredom, then it hasn't really helped me.

I think the key to a good life is being able to observe reality as it is. To really understand: what is the truth? About myself? And about the world? Without fleeing into any kind of fantasies, stories, or fiction. And I think if you can observe, to some degree, reality as it is, you won't just be a much better person, but you'll probably also be a much happier and more peaceful person. Because the deep source of so many of our collective and individual problems lies in the fantasies we create and then we confuse with reality, and then we try to impose that fantasy onto reality. And we become extremely angry when it doesn't work. When reality doesn't conform to our favorite fantasy.

Interviewer: But it's also part of the paradox, because what you're saying is "sit quietly and you'll be able to meditate." And we have all this technology constantly calling to us. I mean, everyone here I'm sure would agree with me that if you stay away from your phone for 5 minutes you're like, "Where's my phone? Where's my phone?" We check our phones at least 80 times a day.

Noah: Exactly. Observe that. What is happening with you? When you're away from your phone? What is happening in your body? You'll see many unpleasant sensations in your body at that moment. What is happening in your mind? That's how you get to know yourself. You get to know yourself not by observing some joyful, mystical metaphysical experience. You get to know yourself by observing what happens to you when the phone is away, and once you witness how much misery I am inflicting on myself with my own habits, that can help you change those harmful habits.

Interviewer: One of the things you said before is that suffering is a sign of consciousness; if something suffers then it is real and has consciousness. Is our purpose to suffer?

Noah: No, no, no.

Interviewer: Not to be happy?

Noah: I'm certainly not saying that we are here to suffer. We try, we can free ourselves from suffering. What I've said in some of my writings is that the best test to know whether an entity is real or whether it's a fiction invented by politicians or religious leaders and so on is to ask: "Can this entity suffer?" A nation, for example, is just a human creation, a fictional story created by humans. How do you know? Just ask yourself, "Can a nation suffer?" If you lose a war, does the nation suffer? No, the nation has no mind, no feelings, no sensations. Soldiers who die in a war suffer. Civilians who lose their homes or their loved ones in war, they suffer. Animals can suffer. But a nation cannot suffer. It's just a story we created. So that's the idea of the suffering test, as a test to know whether something is real or not. Similar to, I don't know, if you have a temple and someone destroys the temple. The temple doesn't suffer, only people do. The people who care about that temple, when they hear it was destroyed they have an unpleasant sensation in their bodies. They have very unpleasant emotions in their minds, they suffer. The temple, you know, is just stones, bricks, wood, and so on.

Interviewer: But it represents a certain amount of emotion.

Noah: Yes.

Interviewer: There's a temple in Israel that's connected to everything and here too that's kind of connected to everything so.

Noah: Yes, but we gave the temple that importance. We suffer when the temple is destroyed. We rejoice when the temple is built. It's really about us, not about the temple. And I would also say, to the people of Israel who worry so much about the temple, that the deep purpose of a place like a temple is to bring peace and harmony to the world. To make people... I go to a temple to have peace and harmony. If a temple brings violence and disharmony to the world, it's a temple that doesn't work. What do you need that for?

Interviewer: Thank you.