Essentia Foundation
What if you are a pixel in a higher-level consciousness navigating through extra dimensions of time? Meet the ‘Nested Observer Window Model’ of Jonathan Schooler, PhD, who is Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara, Director of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential, and Acting Director of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. In this video, Hans Busstra interviewed Schooler on his Nested Observer Window Model and how we need to extend physics to account for consciousness.
Key papers related to the interview:
Riddle J., Schooler J.W., 2024. “Hierarchical consciousness: the Nested Observer Windows model. Neuroscience of Consciousness.” https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/publications/2676
Schooler J.W., Riddle J., 2024. “Three dimensions of time: An approach for reconciling the discrepancy between experienced time and modern physics. Possibility Studies and Society.” https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/publications/2856
Jonathan Schooler’s META Lab: https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/
Our previous video with Schooler: https://youtu.be/2Bnktj5_o6M?t=7331&si=4HfCxc8mW4B86zFF
Schooler’s presentation at The Science of Consciousness Conference in Barcelona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=237hBe2Op7c
Part I: Mind wandering and meta awareness
00:00:00 – Intro
00:02:58 – Jonathan on his work at the META Lab
00:04:31 – What is the function of mind wandering?
00:08:39 – The mind is not a single consciousness
00:11:01 – On conscious kidneys and tongues
00:14:07 – How the field of consciousness studies has dramatically shifte
00:16:46 – How mind wandering became a research topic
Part II: On extending physics with extra dimensions of subjective time
00:17:59 – What led Jonathan into physics
00:24:37 – How physicists seem to step over certain questions
00:26:29 – On humbling new physics
00:28:46 – Extending the Einsteinian picture of the block universe
00:31:25 – Introducing a dimension of subjective time
00:33:17 – Why extra dimensions of time may be needed for free will
00:36:29 – Why we are not moving through time, but time is moving through us
Part III: The Nested Observer Window Model
00:37:36 – The Nested Observer Window model
00:40:58 – The metaphysics of the “kite of consciousness” metaphor
00:43:56 – How lower levels of consciousness build up
00:46:33 – Resonance between different levels of consciousness
00:48:43 – Can we switch between higher and lower levels of consciousness?
Part IV: The meaning of it all
00:51:28 – Psychedelic experiences and Jonathan’s work
00:56:16 – Spotlight vs. open awareness and childlike wonder
01:01:09 – On mind “wondering”
01:03:25 – Be open-minded, but not so open that your brain falls out
01:06:56 – Everyday “aha” moments
01:07:39 – How synchronicities fit in
01:10:21 – Finding the flow in life
01:13:35 – The difficulty of verifying parapsychology
01:17:22 – The Telepathy Tapes
01:20:44 – On entertaining without endorsing
01:22:16 – On Alan Watts’ “Hide and Seek” universe
Interviews with Schooler on Closer to Truth: https://closertotruth.com/contributor/jonathan-schooler/
Copyright © 2025 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.
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39:33 is a great description of how key frames in video or samples in audio can be seen ‘perpendicular’ in a sense in an editing software
I'm actually modeling these layers now and it's fundamentally relative to everything that I've tested it with so far.
It's all relative
That shape on the thumbnail looks like consciousness as choice rule. If that it's conscious
so, what i'm hearing is…. corporations are in fact people. as much as we hate to admit it. corporations have their own consciousness.
Everything is conscious, from atoms to galaxies. A stone is conscious but its sleeping very very deep.
As far as mind wandering, if you can maintain focus on multiple levels of consciousness at a time, you can be aware of the immediate "now" as well as fully aware in subconscious levels…
Meditation can help with mastering this
Exactly!! Layers upon layers
Internal dialogue is the mind's way, or reason's way, of measuring our perception of reality.
"Internal dialogue acts as an advanced cognitive filter that interprets and measures your perception of reality.
Rather than simply observing the world objectively, your brain prioritizes, evaluates, and responds to situations based on the internal narratives and meanings you construct."
–Source: AI Overview
100%. This has been my lived experience for five decades.
so this is what Papa John has been up to since departing Papa John's!
This is what Jacobo Grinberg was saying with his Syntergic theory back in the 80s and 90s
1.Legoat
2.mj
This was so good! All the things.
Fractal Universe ✅️
Subjective Time ✅️
Free Will ✅️
Psychedelics ✅️
IFS ✅️
Openness & The Big 5 ✅️
Meditation & Mindfulness ✅️
It's absolutely brilliant! Thank you for raising these topics, these angles.
A coincidence????? No, it’s a synchronicity!!!!!!!! The more you notice them, the more they appear
What a beautiful conversation. Thank you for sharing the thoughts and theories.
Nope. The only consciousness here is me. The rest of you are simulacra.
Hello, you are describing my G-d
Great conversation. I love the openness approach. The conversation towards the end seems resonate with process philosophy/Alred North Whitehead’s theory. On synchronicity…I have found personally that it much harder to collect that honey in my life in this time of online interaction and algorithms. The latter takes the magic out of following and foraging.
The first step , whole path and grand finale is the observation of contrasts. Make of that what you Will. Great talk. Enjoying your channel .
100% everything has consciousness snd there are dif levels. Plants have consciousness and so do all the dif organisms of our body. Humans hzve evolved due to the consciousness we constantly feed and grow while simultaneously eating and growing from!
Synchronicities can be unsettling. But force contemplation.
At just 5:38 into this 87-min talk .. OF COURSE the mind "wanders" … for good reason. If a person is READING something important, such a task is typically "use"-dominated by the Left Brain. But the RIGHT brain will still function, OUGHT to still function, and this could lead to decreasing one's attention to the concurrent left-brain function. I trust that this matter will be mentioned in Jonathan Schooler, PhD's presentation.
Mind wandering reminds me of the random "thrashing" movement of babies do that allows them to learn to coordinate motions of the body.
No offense but you guys shouldn't talk about problems with physics when you don't understand it. The description of block universe is just completely confused. The idea isn't that all points in time are "simultaneous", it's that they're equally concrete.
Time is God's curse in action. Time is death at work. Your reality is in total decay. The moment you were born, you began the process of death.
Mr Schooler is a brilliant speaker! Fascinating.
Is the tongue the swirling whirlpool charted in the finger print?
Where's the sense;
in that?
11:03
"Entertaining without endorsing" is directly analogous to the prototype phase of Design Thinking, as any prototype is first metaphysical, before it 'earns the right' to be made physical by the creative mind within which it emerged.
This is a critical component of the process of creating novelty.