https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=KDX8zNR22yM
There’s a continuum between the kinds of cognitive machinery that’s at work in something like insight problem solving, like when we have an aha moment. And then that machinery is taken up and extended into something like what people call the flow experience. We can talk about each one of these in more detail as we go along. And then in turn, that the machinery, the flow experience is extended and accepted up into mystical experiences. And then that machinery is in turn can sometimes have an impact on people in which they seek to transform the structure of their identity, the structure of their lives. And that’s a transformative experience. And then when that in turn is making available a set of practices and skills and virtues that allows people to address the perennial problems that beset human beings, problems of self deception and self destructive behavior, then we’re arguing at least that that’s at least a good operational definition of what it is to have achieved enlightenment. And so in a sense, right, what you’re seeing is the same machinery being recursively accepted and expanded and complexified. And so there’s a continuum. And what that means is we can take some of the mystique that has been typically associated with things like enlightenment or even with mystical experiences or awakening experiences. And by putting it on a continuum with this machinery that’s more readily understood and studied within cognitive psychology and cognitive science, we can bring a deeper understanding, which of course affords both better science. But we also are going to emphasize in the book how that deeper understanding affords enhancing people’s ability to practice a well basically a course of the cultivation of wisdom and enlightenment.