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The Nested Observer Window Model Explained.

Essentia Foundation | October 8, 2025



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 ā€œkite of consciousnessā€ 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 ā€œwonderingā€
01:03:25 – Be open-minded, but not so open that your brain falls out
01:06:56 – Everyday ā€œahaā€ 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’ ā€œHide and Seekā€ universe

Interviews with Schooler on Closer to Truth: https://closertotruth.com/contributor/jonathan-schooler/

Copyright Ā© 2025 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.

Written by Essentia Foundation

Comments

This post currently has 38 comments.

  1. @FaiRYTaiLS_ai

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    are you familiar with the Seth Material channeled by Jane Roberts in the 70's?

    these ideas are quite similar to Seth's ideas on consciousness units and gestalt consciousness

  2. @WE_US_OUR

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Seeing the correlation between synchronicity and happiness, have you looked into a correlation between unhappiness and feeling conspired against? I would expect maybe a correlation in those statistics. Ultimately, I wouldn't expect that these statistics would be found in areas of laminar flow, but rather in the Eddie's. For instance, separate your study participants into socioeconomic subgroups, have them fill out the correlation survey, I think you may find that there is more correlation between these subgroups than by an overall pattern comparing the data randomly. Also synchronicity isn't how someone of faith would describe it, nor is conspired against necessarily an apt antonym to synchronicity between socioeconomic classes. But you get what I mean. Tough one to tackle.

  3. @Reienroute

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    This confident belief in free will as self evident is so frustrating. Say there isn't free will but imagine still experiencing every single micro-compulsion that goes into decision making. You experience the process of your brain working towards the desired goal, you feel that desire, you feel being compelled by it, you feel the effort your brain is willing to put into the process as metered by the prioritizing function of said desire, etc… Well isn't that just how we already experience things? There is absolutely nothing within the experience of decision making that could possible tell us that those decisions are at any point uncouoled from compulsions. If you take an action that you normally wouldn't, specifically for the sake of proving to yourself that you're making a free decision, all you've really proven is that your brain has a greater desire to prove the existence of free will in that moment than whatever normal behavior you've diverted from. Think I'm wrong? Then off yourself. What we are willing to do even in spite of ourselves are merely reflectiins of preexisting desires, and of course being lead by those desires is going to feel like free will because our brains exert energy in its rationalization process. Whatever you believe is you practicing free will could be entirely crippled by a case of severe anhedonia. Agency is just the ghost of desire.

  4. @WE_US_OUR

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    51:00ish would seem to hold some relevance to zeitgeist. Metaphysically speaking I would just suggest that it seems finely tuned to necessity, now whether that's a physical response or something deeper is truly individually interpretative. What's not interpretative is the sorts of successful and unsuccessful responses to the physical pressure. I remain without serious opinion on the subject other than cooperation, open and free communication are essential. Continuing to find ways to bring communities back together in the best ways we can imagine, are all vital to the things we are hoping to accomplish.

  5. @WE_US_OUR

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Ontologically speaking I am drawn to two things, the blackhole paradox and aperiodic tiling. If the universe is born from or of a blackhole, no information it ever creates is unrecoverable, it is in its own history. Considering a torus universe a block universe, doesn't preclude it from an aperiodic tiling of the plane, which gives me value in my uniqueness, and also excitement for the many forms it can take. Particularly in periods where it is understood and able to appreciate and treat itself as well as we all hope it can.

  6. @joeparascandalo6989

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    An obvious illustration of subjective versus objective time is to do with sleep and dreaming. A dream may experience hours if not days passages of subjective time experience constituted in just a few moments of objective sleep time.
    Too, the concept of free will expressed in the subjective dream experience would be lucidity; becoming conscious to the subjective state of a dream, but objectively transacting to your will to experience.

  7. @greenbillugaming2781

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    every god created thing is conscious in this universe, sun moon,air, sky, mountains and rocks all of them are conscious.
    Its clearly mentioned in quran and talk about them as if they are conscious beings and obey the will of Allah.
    It is also mentioned in Quran that there are some rocks that when they hear the words of Quran they start weeping ( water coming out of stones, waterfalls???? , there have been many instances where water seems to seep from rocks)

  8. @crunch8484

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Consciousness is like a pair of mirrors facing and reflecting each other.. or to more accurate, a series of slightly reflective, slightly transparent lcd screens, reflecting each other, but also those behind them, and those behind them, along with images on those screens.

  9. @klove8620

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    I know why psy tests decline. Re testing repeatedly inputs the conciousness of doubt and thus every overly tested psy involved hypothesis will decline with each test of its merit. Ergo, dont test the lord your god because that doubt hinders his ability to help. What's god? Well that's another question all together

  10. @Shackledo

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    psychadelics should be lowkey available to everybody who understand, seek and want them as they want to heal or expand their mind, there is no in between

  11. @NewcastleOracle

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Mind wandering is when you’re in between realms. You have an opportunity to day dream, as well as receive downloads and packets of information and revelations.

    As you’re listening to this podcast as your mind wanders you’ll begin to receive between the lines.

    For example as I am listening and my mind wandered l was reminded of the cloning plans and the consciousness that’s been put inside clones and how they are guided and controlled. As well as one of our ex vice presidents who is part of the program.

  12. @shapetwist

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Thanks for this talk, the IFS mention hit me having developed some sense of communication (maybe interaction is a better description) with "parts", which led me to investigate consciousness more deeply, which led to your channel – so interesting lol.

  13. @themanyone

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    I got tired of stepping on nails around construction sites. It just took too long for the nerve signal to make it all the way to my brain. So I spent a minute stepping on a sharp object and lifting up my legs. Trained legs lift themselves when they detect a sharp object. So they actually control the hip joint and surprise me.

  14. @trampflips101

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    On the topic of subjective time and "frame rate", Inner Cosmos did an experiment about how time seems to slow down in dangerous settings like a car crash. They found it's actually just more fine grained memories being formed, but during the actual event your perception of time is the same as always.

    Extra detail: for the experiment they had a watch that would flash a randomly chosen number on the screen at a rate so fast that you just can't see it, then they would drop people facing backwards from a crane and into a net, and whilst falling they had to try to determine the number. It's not the same as being in a real dangerous event because they knew they would be caught by the net, but they didn't know when they would drop.

  15. @aware2action

    October 8, 2025 at 10:16 pm

    Visualization is nothing but a pre-cursor to tuning in. There was a reported case of a brain tumor getting eradicated, through focused visualization playing a video game, shooting lasers at flying space rock, for a duration of few months. We can learn a lot from the parallels of LLM GPT evolution, say for example observing a reasoning LLM, which really does not reason, but instead mimics the reasoning without any comprehension, though it feels otherwisešŸ¤”. Discussion on subjective and objective time, brings memories of Itzak Bentov's work "Stalking the Wild Pendulum" in the 1970's ā¤šŸ‘

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