Rewiring your Reality: A 4 Week Course with Shamil Chandaria on the Neuroscience of Meditation, Awakening and Human Flourishing

This four-week course will guide you into a meditation practice aimed at cultivating both deep spiritual insight and a flourishing human life.

Blending intellect and direct experience, the course introduces the latest neuroscience on how our minds construct reality — and how this understanding can be used to systematically reshape your brain’s predictive processes, reduce suffering, and open towards multidimensional human flourishing.

Shamil Chandaria, PhD, is a meditation researcher and thought leader in consciousness studies with academic ties to Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial College London.

He offers a revolutionary synthesis of scientific and contemplative disciplines — from computational neuroscience and predictive processing to the nondual traditions of Buddhism, Vedanta, and Kashmiri Shaivism. You can explore his framework in the recent paper A Beautiful Loop or through podcast appearances with Sam Harris and FitMind.

• If you are curious about meditation, this will catapult you into a deep understanding of the practice, how to start and where it leads.
• If you are an experienced meditator this will reinspire and reinvigorate you, whilst providing a comprehensive map to navigate the path.

With 38 years of practice and collaborations with leading researchers in Bayesian brain theory, perception, AI, and psychedelics, Shamil brings a rare integration of depth, clarity, and rigour. He is sought out by institutions including the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and Google DeepMind — so it is a great privilege to host his first public presentation in London.

Discover a science-informed framework for awakening — one that supports both deep spiritual insight and vibrant human flourishing in the world.

There are limited places in this world-first four-week course so please book early to avoid disappointment. 
 

Course Structure

You can see Shamil discuss the course here

Week 1:  Constructing our reality: the Bayesian Brain

• How the mind constructs the self and the experienced world.
• Hierarchical predictive processing and active inference.
• Attention, awareness and consciousness.
• The human existential predicament and the phenomenal self model.

Week 2: Deconstructing Self and World: Awakening

• Psychotechnologies for awakening.
• How to deconstruct our reality through meditation and then awaken to the nature of mind.
• Becoming the master of our internal reality model: emptiness, no-self/true self, non-duality and the radical reduction in suffering.

Week 3: Liberation and Reconstruction

• An ecology of practices for purification and liberation.
• Priors, emotions, mood, habits, memory reconsolidation and the energy body.
• Bayesian dependent co-arising of our reality.
• Liberation as freedom from the bondage of unconscious programming.
• Reconstructing yourself through the artful development of top level priors.

Week 4: Human Flourishing and Deeper Awakenings

• Soulmaking and the hero’s journey.
• Aristotle, virtues and the good life.
• Human flourishing as a virtuous cycle in the causal network of factors of well-being.
• Metaphysics and the ultimate nature of reality.
• Levels of awakening.
• The perennial philosophy, many paths, many end points and the one elephant.
• You're never fully baked: life as a work of art in constant development.

Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Date and Time

Four consecutive Thursdays:
10th, 17th, 24th and 31st of July

7pm to 9.30pm
 

About Shamil Chandaria

Dr Shamil Chandaria is a senior research fellow at the centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford. He is also a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, London University, where he focuses on philosophical issues in neuroscience and well-being;  a research fellow at Imperial College in the neuroscience of psychedelics; and a bye-fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.  

He has multi-disciplinary research interests spanning computational neuroscience, machine learning & artificial intelligence, and the philosophy and science of human well-being. He is currently working on computational theories of consciousness and meditation.   Shamil has been a meditator for 38 years and has contemplative training in early Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shivaism.

“weaves together the latest ideas emerging in computational neuroscience active inference, predictive processing, and the free energy principle into a compelling narrative of how our minds construct reality and indeed our ‘selves'.”

The Venue

The Meditatio Centre is a vibrant and welcoming place and a true oasis in the hub bub of a busy city. It is open to people from all walks of life, from any religious, spiritual or secular tradition. It has regular meditation sessions and teaching on the practice and hosts an annual programme of  events to explore the deeper dimensions of life.  They host events that look at the contemplative aspects of  modern living: science, the arts, business, the environment, interfaith and the mystical core of Christianity. Workshops enliven the space –  yoga, movement, poetry, dance – local artists are also invited to exhibit their work.

REFUNDS: Please note that we do not arrange refunds or exchanges. We welcome swapping or reselling your tickets with people you know.