Hey readers,

My favorite new book of the year so far is Spirit Tech by Wesley Wildman and Kate Stockly, two researchers at Boston University. It’s about cutting-edge technologies, like brain stimulation and neurofeedback-guided meditation, that aim to produce “enlightened” states of consciousness.

The researchers started out quite skeptical of these technologies. But they grew fascinated as they started exploring big questions: Can we really use tech to provoke experiences that will make people lastingly more compassionate and altruistic? If we democratize spiritual insights so they become accessible faster to lots more people — not just those of us who can afford to spend decades meditating in a cave somewhere — can that help our species evolve?

Before digging into these questions, let me give you a highlight reel of some of the technologies.

Brain stimulation is perhaps the tech with the most radical potential.

Neuroscientists have figured out what the human brain looks like when it's in the midst of specific “enlightened” states like selflessness, and they're now figuring out how to technologically stimulate the brain into those states — for example, by beaming ultrasound pulses at certain areas of the brain. They’ve found that applying ultrasound to the basal ganglia, say, leads to a quieting of the ego (a less self-focused state of mind).

Shinzen Young, a monk who’s been meditating for 50 years, tried brain stimulation and said it accelerated and deepened his ability to enter a state of equanimity and selflessness. In fact, he said it triggered one of the most significant meditations he's ever had. Twelve other advanced meditators later reported similar effects.

There’s still a lot more research to be done on brain stimulation tech before it’ll hit the market. But there’s another tech people can try at home right now: neurofeedback-guided meditation headsets, like Muse. Their aim is to help you get into a calm, meditative state, not by “zapping” your brain with pulses, but by reading your brain waves and then giving you auditory feedback — little dings and chimes — that nudge your brain into producing different waves.

You’d start by placing a thin headband, outfitted with EEG sensors, on your forehead. Let’s say the sensors read your brain waves and find that you’re producing a lot of high beta waves, which are associated with stress.

The headset may try to nudge you toward producing theta waves, which are associated with relaxation, instead. It’s connected to a smartphone app that’ll release sounds that are intrinsically pleasing to the human brain. Whenever you approach a theta wave, it’ll make those sounds, conditioning your brain to make more of those waves.

Some users swear neurofeedback has shortened their meditation learning curve. Limited scientific research indicates that it can modestly improve attention and subjective wellbeing. But larger studies are needed, and it’s important to note that neurofeedback tech can, at most, help people get to an “entry-level” state of concentration — researchers do not claim to have figured out how to lead people into more advanced meditative states yet.

And then there’s psychedelics, which are undergoing a renaissance these days as their therapeutic potential for treating conditions like depression becomes increasingly recognized. Scientists have been busy creating synthetic versions of psychedelics, such as pharmahuasca (synthetic ayahuasca), so the chemical components can be precisely predicted and indeed customized. And they’ve found that psychedelics can produce mystical experiences that lead to lasting changes in tolerance and compassion.

Which raises the question: If they’re potentially an important tool for helping our species progress, are we in some sense obligated to make them widely accessible? Some say yes, arguing that access to these technologies and substances is a human right. But there are risks, too.

The perils of offering “instant enlightenment” to everyone

It’s natural and healthy to be skeptical about whether new technologies can do what they promise. And some of the tech that comes on the market promising instant enlightenment will surely be snake oil, so we’d do well to look for solid research backing any product before we adopt it.

But there’s a less obvious risk that we need to bear in mind. Instead of only asking “What if the tech doesn’t work as advertised?” we also need to ask, “What if it does?”

On the one hand, that would be exciting. In 2005, the Dalai Lama was asked what he thinks about the possibility of tech leading to spiritual and ethical awakenings. He said: “If it was possible to become free of negative emotions by a riskless implementation of an electrode — without impairing intelligence and the critical mind — I would be the first patient.”

But most of us do not have the Dalai Lama’s training. If the goal of developing spirit tech is to make epiphanies available to everyone, then we have to worry about whether everyone is psychologically ready for them.

I worry that they’re not — that if a total novice is suddenly thrust into a deeper meditative state than they’ve ever imagined, or an intense spiritual epiphany, that could really destabilize them. This happens sometimes even on traditional meditation retreats.

Add new tech into the mix, and present spiritual experience à la carte devoid of context or community, and the effects could be seriously jarring.

Some spirit tech entrepreneurs are thinking about how to guard against this risk. But according to Wildman and Stockly’s book, others, facing “pressure within Silicon Valley to find ‘an enlightenment button,’” are looking to profit without thinking critically about the guardrails that protect against risk in traditional religious life, like the presence of experienced mentors.

When psychedelics are used to treat medical conditions like depression, patients aren’t just given the drug and told to go on their way. They ingest it in the context of a therapeutic relationship.

Similarly, I think we’re going to need a cadre of trained people who can guide us through the process of implementing some of these new technologies.

The big question of whether these technologies can actually help humanity progress might depend on another one: Are we building the right containers for people to be able to experience them wisely?

—Sigal Samuel, @SigalSamuel