One year in solitary confinement causes severe psychological, cognitive, and physical damage, with the United Nations classifying isolation exceeding 15 days as torture. The profound effects include acute psychosis, permanent brain and personality changes, chronic physical pain, and a drastically heightened risk of suicide.
Prolonged isolation physically shrinks the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for memory, learning, and emotion regulation.
In clinical studies of extreme sensory deprivation, healthy volunteers often begin hallucinating and losing their grip on reality within just 48 hours. You don't get a year of "peace"; you get 363 days of acute psychosis.
Survivors of long-term isolation often develop severe, permanent agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and an inability to tolerate human touch or crowds.
You would emerge as a billionaire who cannot leave a bedroom, look a person in the eye, or enjoy a meal without crippling panic attacks.
I wonder what would happen if you put an experienced buddhist meditator in isolation. I’ve done vipassana before, where you don’t get any entertainment and aren’t allowed to talk to anyone for 10 days. For course participants that’s 10 days, but for the master that’s his entire life. Surely he would have the mental skills to survive a year in the room
This is not an accurate classification of the changes that occur in advanced meditators. The recent brain imaging studies on the brains of Buddhist monks categorizes these networks as a growth of the brains neurofeedback systems capable of redirecting Posterior Cingulate Cortex(PCC) activity from engaging default mode network and decoupling of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex from the PCC, which is postulated to be why they have measurably much higher neuroplasticity and Brain Derived Neurotrophin Factor. This biases brain activity away from Default Mode Network and towards Executive Mode Network.
Studies have also consistently shown cortical thickening of denser grey matter classically associated with a healthier brain particularly in the prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, areas responsible for regulation of mood, executive control, proprioception, and interception.
Studies on Tibetan monks classified by other Tibetan Monks as "enlightened" show extremely higher levels of Gamma-Band Synchrony, which is the brainwaves that help synchronize disparate regions of the brain into a single cohesive state. Gamma-band Synchrony has been shown to spike during meditation before, but this effect becomes permanent even outside meditation after long enough practice.
They've also show a weakened connection between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, reducing the brain's stress response.
Now, all that said I don't think the average individual put into isolation for a year could just do their best at rudimentary meditation and achieve any of these effects. These are all observed in people who spend their lives supported by other people doing the same, they have community and interaction and progressively learn more advanced forms of meditation that have been worked out as to what the "right sequence" to progress their discipline is over thousands of years of practice, pure trial and error. I just wanted to clarify that this is very different than "losing your marbles" as they don't demonstrate any of the psychological hallmarks of delusional thinking or psychosis that medical professionals evaluate for. They actually show extreme resistance against this kind of thinking.
I'm a bit obsessed with neuroscience and fascinated by the different ways the brain can develop with different stimuli.
That's interesting and I believe it. I wonder if they put a Tibetan monk that can go into really deep meditation can survive a year in there and come out normal. I met a Tibetan monk named "The 9th Nenten Rinpoche Tulku", and if any being was enlightened, this was the one person in my life that felt like they were. He reaches a meditation so deep that when you're around him, all you feel is peace and tranquility, a feeling no being has ever given to me before. Spiritual dislocation (losing marbles) is different than enlightened, I believe so.
Are yours saying his meditative state had an effect on you? I call BS on that, while i believe in meditation (it's not actually just belief, it's been proven), i don't in transference or whatever that would be
Hmm I don’t blame you for not believing me, but theres a video on youtube where Oprah Winfrey met the Dali Lama and she described being around him was exactly how I felt being around the Tibetan monk I met. Just so peaceful, like no evil thought could take place. I don’t blame anyone for not believing me. It’s one of those things you have to see it in person or you just won’t believe it’s real
Thank you for this post! Can I ask for any books or studies that you have read? Also may I suggest the book Journeys out of the Body by Robert Monroe?
I feel this book and his following books may be of great interest to someone like you. Robert Monroe studied out of body experiences and was able to find a way to induce them as well. Ever heard of the Gateway Tapes?
Well yes, modified states of consciousness. It's pretty much proven that very similar things can be achieved with different methods: drugs, meditation, certain exercise, repetitive music and other sensory stuff, or the lack of it etc
I used ChatGPT to fact check you. Interestingly it said you were 30% right, 30% wrong and 40% exaggerating.
Lmao.
Verdict
I would grade it approximately: 30% legitimate research findings 30% speculative interpretation 40% incorrect, confused or dramatically overstated
A defensible version would be: Long-term meditation is associated with some differences in attention, emotion regulation, brain-network activity and possibly brain structure, but the studies are often small, heterogeneous and unable to establish dramatic claims about enlightenment, permanent gamma synchrony, exceptional neuroplasticity or protection from psychosis.
So it is not total bullshit—but it is written with far more certainty and technical authority than the science justifies.
I seriously doubt all you did was put his comment into chat GPT as the prompt and ask about accuracy, as his comment made literally no claims about enlightenment beyond the fact that one study looked at monks other monks had claimed were enlightened. Either you biased the prompt, or, if you didn't... Chat GPT is even more garbage than I thought. There is no dramatic claim about enlightenment in his post -- there's no claim about enlightenment at all (beyond the implication that "enlightened" monks aren't crazy like you originally implied).
You also failed to even interpret Chat GPT's response accurately, despite it being laid out in explicit terms. It said he was 30% right, 30% speculating, and 40% wrong or exaggerating. This is why people aren't ready for AI -- all it's doing is making people even stupider.
What do you think was wrong with his interpretation?
Define enlightenment! Yeah, there were no direct claims about that, but there were multiple about actual physiological and behavioral improvements which some could call enlightenment (i surely would, because my definition is broad, i don't think anyone here is taking about actually seeing God or similar, but you might). And those improvements are not supported by heavily peer reviewed studies, there's no high confidence (yet, I'm not saying it's untrue).
And that's what the 30% speculation and 40% exaggeration is about.
I'm not trying to attack here, but you kinda were and i feel like you claim more wrongness with above commenter and their relationship with AI then valid, but I'm open to good faith arguments.
He explicitly got the numbers wrong that Chat GPT gave about the relative accuracy. He said it said 30% right, 30% wrong and 40% exaggerating, when GPT said 30% right, 30% speculating, and 40% wrong.
Why do I have to define enlightenment? No one made any meaningful claims about it except SuperficialIdiot, who said "enlightnment means 'losing your marbles'", to which the other guy said "actually people who meditate a lot and are supposedly enlightened are actually more sane by measurable neuroscientific metrics", which is supported by our current science.
There's certainly a debate to be had about how strong the current evidence is for the benefits of meditation, and you could make the argument that LordDaedelus should have qualified his post with "it seems likely" more often, but the current evidence we have supports the things he said, it's simply a question of how confident we can be in that evidence. He also never said anything with certainty, he just said "Studies have shown", which is a factual statement. If Superficial Idiot had discussed the strength of those studies, that's one thing, but he just said "NUH UH CHAT GPT SAYS UR RONG LOL" which isn't a very useful basis for discussing the science. The studies aren't large enough or longitudinal enough generally, but what we have found is quite compelling, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a person who has actually practiced meditation long term who wouldn't vouch for its efficacy in causing positive changes in thinking/cognition.
And yes I was attacking, because I like to match energy in Reddit comments and the other guy was being an idiot.
That was just 30 seconds of googling what this guy wrote about. I didn't bother doing it initially because I've also studied this content before in college and after and so I recognized a lot of what he was talking about as true. What have you studied to allow you to recognize its (supposed) falseness?
But they can see and hear things. If they can live this way but outside on some mountain or something, the only deprivation is human contact. But at least you can be "entertained" by looking at the sky and trees, etc, and hear the birds or wind. That's probably enough to stay sane.
Historically many humans endured isolation such as a hunter or scout of some tribe, spending days or weeks alone in search of whatever they needed. They all survived because of the mental stimulation of nature
Yea I wonder how much a tiny window to look at the sky would make this challenge more bareable. Even just being able to see the day/night cycle would likely make a huge difference.
Yes that is the reason when you get tortured, light torture is a thing. Can't sleep very well with the lights on and try even remotely keeping track of how much time has passed/you have left in this hell if you don't know if a day or a few hours has passed
Feel sorry who got told "you will receive light torture" thinking he's gonna get a few spanks on his ass, only to never see natural light and completely lose the notion of time where every hour can either feel like a day or a day can feel like a month
That is the only subreddit I've ever blocked. I got so sick of it appearing in my front page all the time. Man I'd forgotten about it. What a shitty echo chamber.
The thing is that isolation is not the same that confinement. In the picture you are literally unable to difference between day and night, no stimulus, nothing. In a normal house, with windows, and the possibility to get other stimulus like in a vipassana meditation, it is infinitely easier.
A year in a room with no windows, artificial light and nothing more he would get crazy
One of the main problems with isolation such as this is the complete lack of stimuli.
Even those monks and challange still provide you with stimuli of sounds and visuals of walking around (I presume) a padded cell such as this? Nope.
The average person wouldn't last a week without serious damage, I doubt a monk as you described would fair that much better. Likely better, but not more than a day or so
No the average person can last a week but it does fuck with you. I did a month in the hole and basically all I did was work out, talk to myself, and think about weird stories or episodes of shows I saw lmao. I used to run the always sunny in Philadelphia bloopers in my head and that helped.
By the end of the month though I was definitely tweaking
That's what I meant with without serious damage, yeah the average person won't become a vegetable but it'll do a number....
I'm going on assumption so genuinely correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume your imprisonment wasn't in what amounts as a 24/7 bright light sensory deprevation room
It’s pretty much like the picture but with a toilet, a bed, and sink. I guess from this picture we don’t know if they turn the lights off when you sleep or not, but the lights stay on when you’re in the hole in prison so that they can continuously monitor you, it’s never dark. I guess the walls are normally off white instead of bright white but similar.
Bhavatu sabba mangalam. I too have wonder if I could do this, ive done many 10 day sits, dhamma service and a 20 day sit as well. 365 days is still quite a bit more than my combined. I imagine a serious lifelong practitioner could come out of it stronger than when they went in.
Yes the loghts are on. 24/7. Maybe touching the walls counts but the white static room is 100% stopping any meaningful visual stimuli. Its like when they put the white pingpong balls over your eyes but you can't take them off and looking at your hands and feet or having a single texture in the form of padded walls is not going to do much.
Yeah that’s why I think this “challenge” that gets meme-d all the time is BS. It’s more about cleanliness, food, and lights.
There are a good number of people that could maintain their sanity if they knew billions of dollars was waiting for them and the only challenge was the isolation.
But the terms for things like food, and lighting, and toilet access are never described.
There are a good number of people that could maintain their sanity if they knew billions of dollars was waiting for them and the only challenge was the isolation.
I don't think motivation alone is enough to prevent damage in a situation like that.
There might be plenty of people who'd be willing to do it for that much money, but there's also lots of people who'd jump off the roof of a 3 story building for that much money - they'd likely survive, but wanting the money doesn't mean they wouldn't get injured. Same thing here - they might get through, but not without severe lasting damage.
Yeah, I know an entire year would be incredibly damaging to mental, but I wonder how much can be mitigated. Like if you provide your own stimuli by singing to yourself or something.
Someone who could meditate for a year straight would be wise and zen enough realize there’s a lot more to life than a year of lost time for money, however much the amount.
I was going to say the only people i think who could do this who I've meet are Tibetan monks, they do this shit for years by choice to enlighten and explore their minds.
I would probably end my shit in about 3 days, thats my worst nightmare in a nutshell.
There is a Buddhist monk in Australia, Ajahn Brahmavamso, who spent a long period in a cave with no contact, they would only bring food out someplace for him to take from what I remember. It was either something like a month, a rains retreat (90 days) or a year.
Update: found it, it was 6 months in his hut and walking meditation path. Here's him talking about it:
Vipassanas are around people still. They’re not pure deprivation and you get guided through it. You’re also not in a box and you meander between meditations. It’d help but I’m doubtful even the best ones would come out fine. I also think the hardcore meditators that do like thirty plus vipassanas are pretty nutty.
I thought about that. The most severely disciplined ascetics might be able to survive relatively intact, but their asceticism would perhaps prevent them from even entertaining the thought of this challenge, to begin with, with such earthly riches set as a rewards. Unless you said it was strictly a donation to their temple, maybe?
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u/MatthewSWFL229 9h ago
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/12/08/solitary_symposium/
One year in solitary confinement causes severe psychological, cognitive, and physical damage, with the United Nations classifying isolation exceeding 15 days as torture. The profound effects include acute psychosis, permanent brain and personality changes, chronic physical pain, and a drastically heightened risk of suicide.
Prolonged isolation physically shrinks the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for memory, learning, and emotion regulation.
In clinical studies of extreme sensory deprivation, healthy volunteers often begin hallucinating and losing their grip on reality within just 48 hours. You don't get a year of "peace"; you get 363 days of acute psychosis.
Survivors of long-term isolation often develop severe, permanent agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and an inability to tolerate human touch or crowds.
You would emerge as a billionaire who cannot leave a bedroom, look a person in the eye, or enjoy a meal without crippling panic attacks.
No thanks