Sean Webb believes he’s cracked the happiness code with neuroscience and consciousness research.

photo by: Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:06] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. As you all know by now, we cover a lot of different topics on Skeptiko, but it seems like we always return to the question of consciousness, and what’s up with that little voice inside your head and why does it seem to always be conspiring to make you unhappy? Well, that’s exactly the question of today’s guest Sean Webb has sought to answer.

As a young smart successful rising star, Sean had achieved everything that should have made him happy, so when he faced the fact that he wasn’t, he decided to find out why. This eventually led to Zen meditation, a deep dive into neuroscience and a spiritual breakthrough that rapidly transformed him from a gun collecting, money driven materialist to a consciousness expert and a spiritual seeker who believes he may have cracked the code to happiness. Sounds good, right?

Well, hold on a minute, because while preparing for this interview, and in true Skeptiko inquiry to perpetuate doubt fashion, I also found some points of disagreement between Sean and I with regard to consciousness. So, what you’re about to hear is an interview with a guy who’s done some truly amazing research and personal transformation work with regard to consciousness and spirituality, but what you might also hear is a good old-fashioned kind of friendly debate among seekers on the path.

This is going to be fun. You rarely find people that are this intelligent and at the same time open, willing to hash things out. Sean, it’s really exciting to have you here on Skeptiko and thanks so much for joining me.

 

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Sean Webb: [00:02:18] Thanks for having me Alex, it’s a real pleasure. I’ve heard your voice and number of times, from past episodes that I’ve heard that have all been interesting and I was just like, “Wow! Alex reached out, I’ve got to go.”  

Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:30] Fantastic. Well, you are the author of the red book and the blue book, as you like to call it, Mind Hacking Happiness Volume I, Mind Hacking Happiness Volume II: Increasing Happiness and Finding Non-Dual Enlightenment. So if the titles and the graphics look light and funny wait until you get to that subtitle, Fighting Non-Dual Enlightenment.

Sean Webb: [00:02:59] Yeah, I wish I could have thought of something a little more creative for the titles of these books but unfortunately these two books started out as one book and I just kind of had the goal of saying, hey, let’s just lay it all out there, soup to nuts, from a seeker who starts it, you know, step one of wanting to understand their mind. Well, let’s talk about all of the stuff that their mind does that blocks them from discovering the deeper truth within, so that they can understand then understand it and mess with that process, break that process and then get around that process to be able to find their deeper truth within.

So the red book winds up being the first half of this huge book that was, here’s how your mind works and here’s ho...