Psychological Liberation: What if Stress isn't the Problem but Your Thinking is? A Conversation with Dr. Michael Vlerick

In this 'Pulse' interview, Dr. Michael Vlerick explores the profound concepts of happiness, psychological liberation, and the transformative power of ancient wisdom traditions. Discover practical insights on meditation, the nature of emotions, and the future of technology in enhancing human well-being.

Keywords
happiness, psychological liberation, meditation, ancient wisdom, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, technology and AI, personal growth, mental health, spiritual insights

Key Topics
Psychological liberation and its roots in ancient wisdom
The true purpose of meditation and mindfulness practices
Understanding and transforming emotions
The impact of technology and AI on human wellbeing

Sound Bites
"We get used to good things and lose our sense of wonder."
"Humility is key when considering the future of AI."
"Excited to co-host future happiness interviews with Aldo."

Chapters
00:00
Introduction to Psychological Liberation
02:50
Exploring Ancient Wisdoms
05:11
The Essence of Meditation
11:48
Personal Experiences of Liberation
16:07
The Nature of Human Happiness
21:04
Embracing Emotions for Growth
27:40
Understanding Stress and Its Effects
31:21
Other Practices for Personal Liberation
35:21
The Illusion of Self and Awareness
37:28
Historical Perspectives on Personal Liberation
39:22
Cultural Insights on Suffering and Liberation
41:57
The Shift in Western Thought
47:37
Technology, AI, and Personal Liberation
53:09
The Future of Technology and Human Integration
01:04:10
Outro Fixed.mp4

This episode was brought together by AlphaWire: https://alphawire.xyz/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The idea is definitely not like uh suffering right now, doing very hard things that are good for your happiness, good for your psychological liberation, and reaping the future later. I mean, that is precisely the type of mindset you want to leave behind, right? So in that logic, it doesn't really work. And maybe it's even a pitfall. And and that's a craving that's saying, like, oh, my life is not good enough right now. There's no liberation to be had in the future. There's only liberation to be had right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to Pulse by AlphaWire, the podcast where science and education meet cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence. My name is Alder the Pop, and each week I sit down with innovators, thinkers, and doers who are working to change our world for the better. Together we explore their journeys, uncover the lessons they've learned, and take entrepreneurial pulse that drives them on their path to success. What if the person you think you are is actually an illusion? In this episode, I speak with Dr. Michael Vlerick, philosopher of science at Tilburg University and author of the Belgian bestseller Why We Are Not Happier? Michael's work explores the intersection of evolution, psychology, and philosophy. Together, we dive into the idea of psychological liberation and what ancient wisdom traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism can reveal about meditation, the nature of the self, and the patterns of thought that often keep us stuck. Michael and I also discuss how modern technology shapes our attention and well-being and what we can do to cultivate more clarity, resilience and happiness in today's world. Sincerely hope you'll enjoy my interview with Doctor Michael Vlerick. Yes, and we are live with a brand new interview of Pulse. And for this interview, I have an old friend who's coming by, someone that I admire, and someone just before we click the record button, I said he's not only writing about what he likes, he's also living it, he's doing it, he's completely immersed in it. And it's a happiness philosopher, Michael Vlerick, Dr. Michael Vlerick. A very warm welcome to you. Thank you so much, Aldo. So happy to be back. Yeah, it's it's really great. You say back because we've done several interviews, and we've we've even done an entire masterclass, but we've done that not for poles by Alpha Wire, but for Messi and Masterful, which is a podcast that I started a few years back, and we were friends, and I and I knew you deeply care and deeply look into uh very beautiful topics such as happiness and even enlightenment that we're going to talk about uh further down in this interview. And I couldn't wait to talk to you and dive into happiness, which we did an entire masterclass around, because your book was an incredible success in Belgium and I believe even the Netherlands. So, yeah, congrats on that, first of all. Yeah, thank you so much. But no rest for the wicked because you're already on to a completely new book. So let's start there. What is that about?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Alright, yeah, so the new book will be about psychological liberation. That's the way I frame it, and that is the way that many of those wisdom traditions, Buddhism, Taoism in the East, but also Stoicism in the West, actually intended their practice. It wasn't about just feeling slightly better or being slightly better equipped to deal with stress and adversity in life, but it was a more radical message. It was a message that we could be, by and large, liberated from you know our psychological suffering. And for the longest time in the West, and I must confess I thought the same, we thought that, well, this talk about you know total liberation and especially you know spiritual enlightenment, whatever that means, is some kind of religious notion from the ancient East. But when you look at the essence of what these theories say, of what these schools actually have to say, well, there's nothing supernatural, there's nothing religious about it. There are very simple psychological practices, insights and practices that can radically transform the experience of life. And I think we're only scratching the surface here in the West of what is possible, and scientific research is really starting to go there. We've rediscovered, I mean, these traditions here in the West, and we've done lots of research on them, but this is still in its infancy. And so the book is very much about what this is about, what psychological liberation is about, how you can bring it about. Obviously, in your own life, it's a very practical book, but also one catered to people in the West and uh living in our day and age, and where possible backed by scientific research. So that is a project.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Nice. Wow, it's a big project. One of the first things I wonder is you say these are ancient wisdoms, so to some level in our ears and eyes, something that we think we are already aware of or that we've already heard of, yet you say the actual gist or the core of what they actually meant, we've seem to lost our ways with that. Am I correct? Is that kind of what what you see, what you've observed?

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yeah, to a certain extent. I mean, it's kind of double, you know, where when uh the West kind of discovered many of these traditions. I mean, let's say that started in the 60s, 70s of uh of the last century, many of uh Americans, Europeans went actually to India, to other places, and uh discovered many of these traditions. I mean, the 19th-century European wouldn't have any clue about what these traditions were about and so forth. So, that is thanks to globalization, we got into contact with many of these ancient schools of thought. And originally it was people were very much drawn to those traditions for their, I mean, radical nature, I would say. But then when mindfulness uh meditation became more mainstream and became an object of study as well as scientific investigation, we've kind of uh limited ourselves to uh some of the more, I would say, superficial effects that uh mindfulness and meditation can bring about. Again, you know, it's been widely studied and used, uh, and again to great success for stress reduction, for dealing with adversity and these types of things. And I don't want to be blasé about it, that has a lot of value and has done a lot of good. And so uh we should be very grateful for that. But I think it also actually kind of hit the main message or the main point of these practices, which is not just to feel slightly better in your life and deal slightly better with all of the issues in your life, but to radically transform the experience of your life. That is what it was originally about. That is also what I believe the potential of these practices truly is, and I think we're kind of waking up to that potential now, and so it's uh it's a fascinating time to be alive and then to be able to discover all of this.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Can you give me an example? So, like like let's take meditation, for instance. So there's the fast food version of meditation, which gives you maybe a temporary peace of mind, but you say if you do it properly, there's way more to it. There's a way bigger impact that could help you radically transform your life for the better. So, can you put words to what that would be?

SPEAKER_02 7:57

That's a great way to go about this. Well, so when we think about meditation, and maybe when we practice meditation, uh a lot of that meditation will be like, okay, come back to your breath, leave all your rumination behind, do it in an easy, non-judgmental way and and in a calming way. And again, that has a lot of benefit and that has been studied extensively. But the main point of meditation was not to calm the mind originally, that was a welcome side effect. The main point was to come to certain insights that would transform again the experience of your life. Not so much your life, perhaps, like from the outer look of it, not much is really changing, but it's a different way of experiencing life. And so maybe, yeah, I can go straight into that. Like do I continue? What were what were those insights, right? So uh, and and there's a number of different insights that have been emphasized in different traditions. One is a very important central part of you know Buddhist teaching, especially Theravada Buddhism, practiced in what today is Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, uh, so forth, Myanmar. And the focus there is that you should meditate in order to get more and more acquainted, get more and more familiar with what they call the impermanence or the extremely fleeting nature of all your objects of perception, of everything that enters into your conscious awareness. What do I mean by that? Well, thoughts, feelings, sensory impressions, and that's the only thing that is on the menu, that's the only thing we experience throughout our lives. So our lives are actually an ever-changing cocktail of these few elements thoughts, sensations, images, sounds, tastes, and smells, right? Nothing else. And those are incredibly fleeting. I mean, they constantly change, they're constantly and start again, and start again. That is that impermanent nature. And so when you truly realize that, it uh seem it comes to seem as totally absurd that you would be very hung up on certain aspects of that experience not being exactly like you want, like maybe a disturbing thought or a disturbing feeling. They're so incredibly fleeting, it seems almost absurd to actually take issue with some of these elements of experience. So that is one. But then you can go a step further, and that is again that within this space of conscious awareness, and many of the meditation techniques, I wouldn't really call them techniques because you're not actually doing something, but many of these meditation methods are objectless meditation methods. So you're not focusing on the breath or the body or sound or a mantra, something you keep saying in your head, but you're focusing on the space of awareness in which everything manifests. Again, thoughts, feelings, sensory impressions, and so forth. And so not only do you notice how fleeting all of these appearances are, but you also notice that the space of awareness in which they manifest is completely unaffected by these objects of experiences. So whatever enters your perception, whatever enters your conscious awareness, does not have the potential to harm or compromise it in any way. And the idea there is that we should start living as that space of awareness in which everything is completely allowed to manifest and to leave and again be replaced by other objects of consciousness. And therefore, we lose this very strong tendency to constantly try to fight off certain aspects and try to hang on to certain aspects. That is one of those key teachings in Buddhism. That I mean, those two mental afflictions, as they call it, of craving, craving, and then also pushing away, not wanting this, wanting more of that, and so forth, that we can start to relax that. And if that happens, we also see that as just an appearance in consciousness which is equally fleeting and is on its way out the moment it enters. And so, again, this is truly realizing this, and that is a crucial part of these practices, not just understanding this on an intellectual level, but truly seeing this again and again starts to shift your relationship to your thoughts, your feelings, and to the experience of your life. And that was very much the original point of these practices.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Beautifully described. Now, the big question: do you feel personally liberated yourself?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

I still have a way to go, but uh I really can say that it has transformed the experience of my life. Not that I was unhappy by any means before, but I think, like so many of us, I did struggle with a hyper focus on everything that didn't really go exactly as I hoped or as I planned, and so forth, and I kind of kept obsessing about that. Um, that's our very infamous negativity bias, right? And and the mind wandering that constantly wanders towards everything that didn't go as planned in the past, and maybe that will not go as we hope in the future, and we're very creative in all of that, and so through these practices, you come out of that, you know, what I call the dark film of the wandering mind, you come out of that much quicker. And not only does that kind of liberate you from prolonged stands of you know uh painful or or at least you know unpleasant psychological states, but more importantly, and I think this is the major upside, it opens you for the magic and the wonder and the beauty of everyday life. And so, in that sense, it definitely already has paid off, uh, I would say, more than I ever hoped when I started these practices.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I have two lines of thought. I'm gonna share the first one. The the what you say about you know, being already so happy with what's here. I always wonder why in literature or in stories that we tell or in movies that we watch, we always need to add some level of magic to things. Right? Something needs to fly that can fly, or something needs to be uh extraterrestrial, or we kind of always want to add elements. Whereas if you just look at the mere mechanism of our world as is, it is such a beautiful thing. And you could argue that's really where the magic already is. And I'm not saying that to uh to be overly kumbaya happy, but I I kind of wonder is like, what is it in us human beings that we always want to add something to the story to make it more shiny, more glittery? Why are we not already in a state of happiness whereby we see, like, my goodness, you know, go outside and be enchanted by already everything that is there? So um, I don't know if that's a state of liberation, but I have often wondered why we always need to add something to something that to me is already perfect.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yeah, that's such a good point. And uh I would say the one of the main deplorable features of the human mind uh, in addition to its focus on everything that goes wrong and could go wrong, is its tendency to get used to good things in life. Yeah, hedonic adaptation. We've talked about it before on the podcast. Uh we get used to improved circumstances, so we have these big dreams, and and I mean, if we're incredibly lucky, we attain those dreams. And beforehand, we think, well, if I'm gonna reach this, if this is gonna become my reality, I'm going to be blissfully happy for the rest of my life, or at least, you know, I'm gonna be remarkably happy, more happy than I am now. I need this for my happiness, and then when we reach it, we get used to it. And it's the same with beauty and with wonder, right? When we're just the young kids, I mean, everything is wonderful. We look outside and so forth, and research also shows this. Children have much more of a sense of wonder, but then I mean, you get used to that, you get used to our environment, however, pretty and beautiful and wonderful it is, and you look for more extreme experiences that will trigger that, but then you get used to those experiences, and you have to look further and further and further. So, a big part of these practices as well is to actually, you know, deal with that craving, let go of that craving, and that brings back the wonder in the very simple everyday things, you know, just a normal bird flying in the sky is an absolutely wonderful thing. But the fact that you see them every day, well, uh just makes you blind for all the wonder that's just around the corner.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah. And then the other line of thought that I had was kind of you personally. So you said you're on your way, you're not completely in the state where you want to be, but you're you you've taken loads of steps, and I know for a fact that you have. Because I, if one thing, I think you're extremely disciplined in understanding something like meditation, right? You've done what was it, five days meditation in the dark in a complete isolated room. Uh, you've done meditation camps, very immersive, where you can speak or you know, uh kind of all these things. So you're really not you're not someone who who's light touch with this. You really take a deep dive. Maybe you could just share with our listeners the things that you've done to find out whether meditation was gonna bring you on this path of personal liberation. Thanks, Aldo.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

I want to start by saying that disciplined, yes, at least having a certain kind of focus and working on it, there's some of that, but you need to love it and you need to find, I mean, the positives in it, and that's why you you are motivated to stay on that path. I think the idea is definitely not like uh suffering right now, doing very hard things that are good for your happiness, good for your psychological liberation, and reaping the future later. I mean, that is precisely the type of mindset you want to leave behind, right? So, in that logic, it doesn't really work, and and maybe it's even a pitfall, and then and that would sometimes be a pitfall of mine, right? So I start with this big motivation, I want to do it, I mean, seriously, and then you dive into it, but that's a craving that's saying, like, oh, my life is not good enough right now. There's no liberation to be had in the future, there's only liberation to be had right now. So, in every single moment, there's a possibility, and that's what really what I'm writing the book about. Like, what have you what can you do? You know, which insights, and we've covered some of them, which practices will help you with that. What do you do when you're in the grip of a negative or difficult or an unwanted emotional reaction, and so forth. But once you have this in place, deliberation is always right now, right here. It's never doing hard things for being liberated in the future. That's actually an important misconception that we often have. And it that also brings us to the idea of what actually are we talking about? What is psychological liberation? Or again, with this very loaded term uh spiritual enlightenment. And quite often people have a sense that yeah, that must mean something like eternal bliss, right? Uh being blissful ever after. And I think that's most probably impossible to achieve. But I also think that even if it would be possible, I'm not sure it would be desirable. Would you take a pill right now that would only give you this one emotion, like this I mean, blissful joy for the rest of your life? And no, it can sound alluring, but wouldn't you feel that you're missing out on, I mean, major parts of what makes the human life so valuable? I want to experience more emotions than you know, bliss and joy. I want to experience nostalgia, perhaps, and even sadness when the moment calls for it, but not the type of sadness that completely overwhelms you and that you have no way of dealing with, but the kind of sadness that shows you that you really care and that something happened that you really care about and so forth. So I think we should, and and this more generally, I mean, we we've come to uh a pretty narrow definition or conceptualization of happiness in the West, and we started to confound it with uh a very important emotion and a very important part of a happy life, meaning joy. And joy again is very important, and there should be lots of joy in your life, and I wish it to everyone, but I also wish you to experience other things than only joy, and then so it's not so much the issue as well of psychological liberation is not to experience only what you could say are quote unquote positive emotions, it's the fact that you can experience all emotions, but the experience of those emotions is completely transformed because you're no longer fighting them, you're completely welcoming the emotion, you see it as part of the human experience, you welcome all of it, and you see the beauty in each and every emotion, and so that is what it is about, I think.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

So it's about knowing yourself as well, like you know you're gonna get maybe a tad angry if this happens, but you won't take it as seriously, or it's it's kind of like okay, here's Michael who's upset because this happened, and but you can let go of it easier because you see the emotion pass as you see Michael in a happy state.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Yeah, exactly. And knowing yourself can can definitely help. Like these are my hangups, this is a trigger for me, because you know when those triggers are gonna come. You're kind of prepared. You're you go in there armed with okay, this is going to be a challenging moment for me, and this is going to be an incredible opportunity for me, because that is uh another thing I definitely wanted to say here is that, well, if you start walking this path of psychological liberation, well, all of the challenging times in life, all of the difficult emotions that you experience are your gates to liberation. Without those, there's nothing you can do for liberation. These are your training moments. This is your opportunity to react differently, to allow the emotion. And this is what is going to make such a difference, right? So the only training material you have is when you don't feel 100%. Now, uh that being said, actually, when you say I'm feeling bad, or when you had when you think you have uh, let's say, a punishing emotion of some sort, what actually is the problem here? And I'm asking it's a good exercise to do, and this was one of the key insights I've come to and and which has made such a tremendous difference in my life, and that is like, okay, but let's just maybe think about it. Like when you experience sadness or frustration or stress, like why is that a punishing experience? And now most people I think will be tempted to say, well, because the sensations, the feeling is just unpleasant, right? You feel bad, that's also the way we frame it. But if you go to that feeling, if you just isolate the physical sensations of that emotional reaction, what will you notice? Tension, vibration, heat, that kind of stuff, right? Is that in itself so unpleasant? And maybe you say, Yes, I want to feel, I mean, relaxed, not tensed, and and and of course, I see what you mean. But then again, so often we're gonna chase experiences like maybe you know, we jump out of an airplane uh with a parachute, or I mean we do some other stuff that is going to create that feeling, and we're gonna consider that as an incredibly positive experience. I mean, the body doesn't know the difference between what you could call like fear reactions, anger reactions, and just incredible excitement. It's actually physiologically speaking incredibly similar. You know, you have the sympathetic nervous system that is being activated, blood pressure rises, and so on a sensational level, you've got heat, you've got vibrations, you've got all of that stuff going on. And then we're asking, is this pleasant or is this unpleasant? Well, in some circumstances, we think this is hugely pleasant. This is a high point of our day, week, maybe life, and in other circumstances we think it's awful. It's one of the low points of our days, weeks, life, perhaps. Right? So physiologically and purely on the level of sensation, there's actually almost no difference. Now, what is the difference then? Well, what we think about the situation, what we think about what caused the emotion, and therefore the way we interpret those emotional sensations. So if they're caused by things we do not like, we think it's an awful emotion, and we think it's fear, we think it's anger, or we say it's fear, we say it's anger, we say it's frustration, and so forth. And when it's caused by something surprising, something very nice, we've got exactly that same physical reaction almost with similar sensations, and we think it's wonderful excitement and it's something to be absolutely chased. And so therein, in truly realizing this, lies a great potential for psychological liberation. Because what you can do is whenever you're in the grip of you know a very difficult emotion, something you dislike to experience, well, what you should do is go out of your thinking because your thinking is just going to make it worse and worse and worse, and you're gonna be caught up in this kind of vicious circle in which the emotional reaction is going to actually produce more alarming thoughts about whatever is happening or whatever you're thinking about, which is gonna increase and lengthen that emotional reaction and so forth. And so you're caught in that negative loop. What you do is you bring your attention out of your thinking and into those sensations. Already you're stopping to feed that emotional reaction, and so that is greatly beneficial. But there's also all of these very liberating insights to be had then. First of all, there's nothing wrong with these sensations, they're very temporary, they're fleeting. Of course, I don't want to be under tension the whole time, but you know, I'm riding this emotional wave, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm alive, I'm happy that I'm alive, and so forth. Also, in that space of awareness, you can see that the space of awareness is unaffected, and these sensations are just manifesting within that space without leaving any kind of trace. And again, they're so fleeting. So all of these incredibly liberating insights can be had, and this is very much the practice. I would say meditation will prepare you for all of this, but the true practice of psychological liberation is throughout your daily life, whenever things don't turn out the way you'd hoped, or whenever for some reason there is uh a difficult, unwanted emotion. What I'm not advocating here by any means is that you just sit there like a Buddha when you know everything goes to shit around you, and you don't do anything except seeing that the emotional pain or the emotional discomfort is illusory. No, what I'm saying is first, I mean, when you're in the grips of a very strong, difficult emotion, allow it to pass. Do, I mean, what you need to do for it to pass. What we said, go out of thinking into the sensations, ride the emotional wave, and then from a state of clarity, you will see that you'll be much better suited to deal with whatever problem is requiring your attention in the world. So it's by no means saying that you shouldn't undertake any action or prevent bad things from happening, and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

I was about to say that that there are sensations that we know are good for you, and there are sensations that we know actually, if you if you OD on those, then they could induce stress or could could lead to detrimental effects for your health, right? So they're both impulses, and I agree with you that if you let it pass it it it it might go away, but that's really the objective for it to go away. You don't want to embrace again an overdose of stress sensation or anger sensation because it will affect your health, it will affect your longevity. Or would you say that that's a myth?

SPEAKER_02 27:52

No, definitely. I mean, chronic stress affects your health, is detrimental, uh so is uh is something we should do everything to avoid. But um paradoxically, by trying to push it away, you're going to lengthen it. So the only way is to fully embrace the sensation. There's nothing wrong with these sensations, as I pointed out, and to fully embrace that is what is going to have the stress reaction be over in a pretty short time. But crucially, if you do this, uh you say, like, okay, so I shouldn't think, I should stay with these sensations, and then it's going to be over soon. As long as you think I'm doing this for it to be over soon, you're actually reacting, you're actually not fully allowing these sensations to unfold and you're lengthening it. So you shouldn't fool yourself. You should say, Well, this is wonderful, and there's nothing wrong with stress. The only thing that is wrong is chronic stress. And this is something I think that maybe we've also already covered, but there's a very important mismatch here. You know, what is a stress response? Well, we share it with many other animal species, definitely with all mammals, we have a very similar stress response. And it that is very much a life-saving response. Whenever there's an acute danger somewhere and you have to run from a predator, you want a huge stress reaction that you know skyrockets your heart rate, your blood pressure, that pumps all of the blood to your muscles, and you're able to sprint or fight or do whatever you need to save your life. This is incredibly adaptive, obviously, incredibly useful, and uh and we should be happy that we have it for that. But obviously, in our modern context in which there's not so many chasing predators anymore, but a lot of very annoying deadlines and so forth, that stress reaction is often triggered in totally wrong ways. It's constantly triggered at a very low level, but at a chronic level, and that is so detrimental for our health because, well, first of all, it uh will suppress our immune system, because that is what a stress reaction does, you know, it just puts all of the energy into fighting or fleeing and so forth. Uh, second, it stops you know digestive processes and so forth, and so it's linked to a whole host of very negative effects on our physical health. Now, the only reason we have prolonged stress reactions is because we keep feeding stress reactions with more confirming thinking. So that is the only reason. You know, studies uh have shown that uh a stress reaction should last no longer than 90 seconds, even if it's a huge stress reaction. That is a time our bodies need to absorb all of the cortisol, adrenaline, and so forth and come back to a state of rest. And that's also what you see when you look on National Geographics. Let's say there's a gazelle somewhere being chased by a lion. Um, let's say the lion doesn't catch the gazelle, the gazelle survives. What happens? Well, the gazelle is home free, let's say, uh out of danger, and before you know it, just in complete ease is starting to graze again. That is how a normal stress reaction is supposed to work. The problem is we have this thinking machine. So we're stressed about something. Oh, I have to finish this work, and oh, it's already so late, and and now we keep we keep feeding it, and we keep feeding it, and we keep feeding it with our mind, with thinking, with thinking, with thinking. And that is what produces chronic stress, and that is a problem. Stress is not a problem, chronic stress is a problem, and the only reason we have chronic stress is because of our thinking, and so having that ability to come out of that ruminating thinking and into our sensory experience, into those sensations is uh I think a very important skill to have.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah. I have uh questions about history, and then I have questions about the future. I'm first gonna go to history because you said these are ancient wisdoms, and I wanted to know because we've been speaking about meditation, but have you seen any other practices that could have these strong effects of personal liberation? Like yoga, for instance, or is there anything else where we are aware of but actually are you know are doing the fast food version of and therefore we we don't get the optimal effects from it?

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm I'm not very well versed in yoga and the yogic traditions, but uh that I think is a very clear case in which you know uh the original intent of the practices is uh absolutely divorced from what it is being used for and the type of context in which it's being used today, right? Today it's about you know wellness and and uh I would say uh flexibility, physical flexibility and so forth, and uh uh but also there's a meditative component to it being more present and all of that. So it's it's it's very much linked. Uh but I think originally, again, the goal went much, much further. But that being said, in different traditions, there are different practices and insights, and many will somehow or loosely be related to meditation, but there's one other that's very important in uh Vedantic traditions, like Hindu traditions, I guess, uh in which uh people would do self-inquiry. Now, um, self-inquiry very much aimed at dispelling that one core illusion. We haven't talked about it so far, but it's kind of related to what I've been saying before. That one core illusion that we're a separate individual, vulnerable self in the world. And so seeing through that illusion of the self, right? That doesn't mean that, you know, it's an illusion that there's an organism here with a brain that produces conscious experiences and so forth. It's just that we have that illusion that somehow we're a mental entity or a mental subject, you know, living behind our eyes, actually commanding the body, producing our thoughts and so forth, taking decisions. Now, from neuroscience, we know that that is a myth, right? And this is probably for another time, but towards discussions of free will, autonomy, and so forth. But thoughts happen automatically, just as you know, your stomach produces automatically all of your digestion fluids and whatnot. Well, uh, thoughts are brain excretion, right? That's what brains do, and there's no autonomous control of that. There's not uh conscious subject at the center of the brain or the mind that steers all of that, right? So thoughts come on their own accord, sensations happen. So all of life is actually happening. There's this movie, you're not in charge of it. Uh, if anything, you're the spectator, you're that space of awareness that just you know uh spectates or or that absorbs this you know movie of consciousness. And so when you say that that is often trued as kind of threatening uh to the Western ear, like whoa, don't I have any kind of control and so forth? This is all just happening, uh, does seem like a good thing. But this was uh seen in different traditions, in in those Vedantic traditions, but also in in Buddhism and other traditions as you know the key insight to have in order for you to reach psychological liberation, the key insight for psychological liberation. And there's a number of reasons. The the first and and perhaps most important one is that if you see life as this, you know, as just you know happening and it's all kind of out of your control, you start to have a very different kind of relationship to whatever is happening, more of the wondrous spectator than the actor that needs to constantly fend off you know threatening situations and keep hanging on to whatever is good and so forth. So you lose that drive to kind of control life and uh so forth, and and so that can be wonderfully liberating. Uh, and that is uh what many of those traditions were after. And we can talk more about this because I feel I haven't really done justice in that short time to actually the insight and what it leads to. But one of the ways to get there was uh you you can kind of view that through meditation exercises. I think a good exercise, for instance, is uh by just closing your eyes and then uh thinking about uh trying to predict the first thought that will come to mind, and you will quickly realize have absolutely zero idea when the first thought is going to going to arise and what it is going to be. Thoughts just happen, right? And then you can say, well, but I can decide to think about this or that, right? But I mean that thought to decide that that decision to think about this is also a thought that was just happening, and so forth. So you can start seeing this kind of illusion of the self. But another way in those traditions is to ask, like, who or what am I? And then you think, well, and we're talking about things in our uh subjective conscious experience, of course. Well, I'm definitely not, you know, the sensory experiences, I'm not the tree I'm seeing, I'm not this, that. So what am I the thoughts? But no, these thoughts are happening, so and and then to gradually you know go deeper and deeper and and actually see, no, well, if anything, I'm I'm just this you know, space of awareness, and all of my personality, all of uh my personal history, all of that are also just thoughts appearing in that space of awareness, and so that is where you actually transform again a bit the idea of what this life is actually, what conscious life is about, and that can have a profound uh impact on on the way you experience that conscious experience.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Thank you. There's always so much to unravel when you you kind of speak, and I can't I can't go back to every kind of thing, but but I always I try to make mental notes and to make sure that I get back to you on this. But I just want to give it back to to your métier, your profession as a philosopher, right? What you're doing now, and how through the ages going from meditation and that personal enquiry as as two techniques, how in consecutive centuries people have interpreted it, and specifically in the philosophical school, is there anything that you can find back where it was either embraced or where it was rejected? You know, looking at it from your profession, maybe from an historical philosophical perspective. Have you found anything that gelled well with that, or maybe the complete opposite, that it collided? You mean with these insights I was just talking about, or uh, we we you opened on saying there are certain things that can lead to personal liberation if we are if we really execute properly on them. Problem is that we've kind of forgotten you know what they're for, and we've kind of given ourselves the light version of it, therefore we don't get the same effects. But there's a reason that it has come to this. So I'm trying to find what we kind of used as a replacement of that, or why through centuries we thought, okay, it isn't that important because we have something else. Often there is an alternative, or there's there's something that we found that we said, well, that also does the trick. I'm just trying to see if that was the case, or whether we just forgot and and said, Well, this is you know, this is this is it.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Yeah, no, very, very nice question. First of all, what's really fascinating is that some of these truths or insights we've talked about, and these practices and the and the project of psychological liberation we see actually was developed in in different cultural contexts, relatively independent from one another, both in Asia, you know, between the Vedantic traditions, but then Taoism in China, Buddhism that started in India, and so forth. Well, we find that they zone in on pretty similar things. And there was some influence, yes, but not so much, and they have different ways of approaching it and so forth. But then you also find it uh to a great extent in, for instance, what the Stoics write about in ancient Greece, and so completely independent of one another, they come to these very similar conclusions of you know what actually produces suffering and then how we can free ourselves from that suffering and so forth, and so similar ideas of what this whole project is about. There are important differences, but there are more similarities than differences. So that's very interesting. So I think that has always been whenever people had the time to kind of stop and and actually ponder what this life is about. So whenever they were out of the direct struggle of everyday existence, we find that these are the types of questions that we start asking ourselves. We first of all we start asking ourselves, okay, what is the world? And then and so uh philosophy was born, sciences were born out of that, obviously, but also what is this life? What is this all about, and what is this experience of life, and and why is there suffering and what can we do about it? So obviously, we we have a huge vested interest in in answering these questions and thinking about these questions, and so uh that has always been around. And uh interestingly, again, you know, through introspection and through reflection, we we came to pretty similar answers and to also pretty similar you know insights and practices that would put us on the path of liberation. Now, when you talk about the West and the more recent Western history, like say the Middle Ages upwards, well, I think uh what had a major influence is Christianity and its religion and uh and the whole uh frame of mind shifted there. It wasn't about you know liberating yourself now, and and obviously we should also talk about reincarnation and so forth, uh, believed in uh the East and so forth. So uh they were actually thinking that the point was liberation and that you had you needed many lifetimes often to come to a point of liberation. And when you were liberated, then finally you would have to be reincarnated. So we often forget that uh in the West here and and in New Age circles, we kind of like the idea of reincarnation. It gives us a more you know tangible sense of what an eternal life would look like, uh, but actually it was a punishment, let's say, quote unquote, in the East. You know, you wanted to liberate yourself from being reincarnated, but, anyways, uh, so in the West, what what really you know influenced our worldview and also the way we saw this whole experience uh uh of or this whole existence was in this kind of framework in which there would be an ever after, uh, and hopefully an ever after in heaven. And so the whole point of this earthly existence was to was to lead a life that was incredibly virtuous and that would earn you, you know, that uh huge uh that eternal afterlife uh ever after. I think uh when secularization started to happen, there was kind of a crisis. Uh a crisis in the sense like, okay, well, uh so it's not about that, uh, so it's about this life, right? And and so it's about to make the best out of this life, and so those questions came back with a force, like, okay, but there's so much suffering, and life is so hard, and what can I do about it? But that being said, and that that's the last thing I wanted to say, it's never that simple. And interestingly, in uh the Western tradition, throughout the Middle Ages, in that religious kind of framework, there were these pockets of what you could call mysticism and mystics, and they were actually often treated as almost atheists and so forth, and so they were they were being persecuted because uh they didn't uphold you know the dogmatic beliefs of Christianity or Catholicism or what have you not. But interestingly, those mystics uh and they framed these things with reference to God and so forth, so they saw themselves as deeply religious. But when you read what actually they are saying, people like Thomas Merton, uh Meister Eckhart and so forth, it is very much about finding the God in yourself, and the God was that open space of awareness that is perfectly fine, perfectly happy, and so actually went to very much the same type of practices, meditative practices, and the same types of insights as these ancient Eastern insights, with the same type of result as well psychological liberation. So I think it's uh something that has always fascinated humans, and we Stumbled upon this possibility to radically transform the experience of our lives in very different contexts in very different time areas. And it's it's uh it's always there, it's always been there. But I think now for the first time, in that globalized context, can we truly, truly bring all of those traditions together, uh study them also uh scientifically, and actually therefore benefit from that inherited wisdom and of many different contexts, and I think that's uh that provides us with a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

And funnily enough, in history, the period that we call enlightenment is actually also about access to science and to all these ideas, and we finally well literally saw the light of here are how certain things work, which also included getting rid of the dogma of the church, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

No, definitely, yeah, and and the enlightenment, uh, and and now I'm talking about something else, it's not about the psychological liberation and and so forth, it has nothing to do with that. Uh, but but the enlightenment was uh a great happening in in our own recent history, and uh exactly it it was all about actually trying to understand the world by your own powers of observation and reasoning, right? And I think there's been in Western history there's been two defining moments, and and the first one was with the pre-Socratics, I mean it's what you could call the birth of Western philosophy, in which for the first time in ancient Greece, but was more like Turkey nowadays, where uh those ancient philosophers lived. Well, for the first time, they didn't just rely on all of their mythological stories, creation stories, and so forth. They said, no, no, let's actually try to understand what this is all about, what the world is all about. And so we've got all of these theories of the pre-Socratics and so forth. And so rational thinking got home. And interestingly, what we find is that in a very short time in history, what we see that first of all, the wealth goes up. I mean, there's much more being produced, there's much more technological innovations and so forth, and also societies undergo profound uh changes. And you know, in ancient Greece, as you know, like in the fourth century BC, they would for the first time start to experiment with non-fully inclusive, that is definitely true. There still was slavery as well, so there's a lot of asterisk you have to put there, but still democratic forms of decision making. And so we find that whenever uh reasoning is allowed to flourish, we find that society undergoes uh massive positive changes. And then uh after, let's say, and this is again, you know, uh very uh high-level perspective here, but after a thousand years of dogmatic uh religion, uh again in the Renaissance and then uh in the Enlightenment, well, we've got that second major, major phase in which we would go back to our own powers of reasoning and allow reason to flourish. And from that, you know, was the birth of the modern sciences with everything it has delivered. But also, again, our societies underwent radical changes from very, you know, dictatorial autocratic societies to more and more open democratic societies. And this is still very much in progress, and obviously it's a trend that goes up and down and so forth. But I think when it comes to external circumstances, we owe almost everything we have our wealth, our freedom, all of our possibilities to these few generations of very courageous thinkers that question the status quo and that actually dare to question things and not just rely on dogma. So, yes, hugely important, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

So now we've covered history. I now would like to go to the future. This is a podcast about how technology and AI is going to change the way we are invested in science and education. What is your take on personal liberation and the age of AI that we live in and how we use technology? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

SPEAKER_02 48:15

That's an interesting one. First of all, I think, as I already mentioned, technology, and then I'm not talking about AI now, but just information technology in general, the internet and so forth, has given us a tremendous opportunity to get acquainted with all of these different traditions and what they have to say, and now we're studying them. So we're bringing together pools of information that would have been much harder to access before. So a huge positive, I would say. What AI can bring to the table for psychological liberation at this point, uh it's hard to tell. But also, and I think that's maybe when we look at the future and we try to predict how these things are going, I think the first thing that should come to mind is humility. Humility in the sense that it is impossible to predict where this is all going. I think a good example of that is if we go back a hundred years, uh, beginning of the 20th century, all of the predictions about what would happen in the future would be, and you also see this in the early science fiction movies and so forth, it was all about transportation technology. Because that was the technology that was in crazy evolution back then, right? So we had the cars, we had the first airplanes, and so we thought, like, okay, in a 50 years and 100 years, we'll all be flying with these little saucers and we'll be doing interplanetary travel, we'll have colonies all over the place, and that was the idea, right? Because those were the technologies of the day in rapid evolution. Actually, what happened? Well, uh, yes, we went to the moon, and yes, we have, you know, very fast-flying airplanes and so forth, but actually, that technology hasn't so much, I mean, there hasn't been a game changer since the 1950s, 1960s, right? And in that type of technology, we're still driving cars, we're flying airplanes, yes, uh, we have rockets and so forth, we're barely using them. Maybe we shouldn't, anyways, that's that's a different kind of question. But there hasn't been a lot of change there. But what we never saw coming in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, perhaps even early 80s was something like the internet that would have a profound, profound impact on our lives and so forth. Then the internet came, and then AI is now in full development, so it's all about information technology. So now, from this point where we're looking, we're all thinking like, okay, this is going to be what it is, the future, and we're trying to extrapolate from here. But maybe, and of course, I'm not saying that in the short term it is going to keep evolving and it's going to do a lot of things, and maybe it is going to keep evolving incredibly, and and and it will be unrecognizable in 100 years. I just don't know. But maybe uh we're also looking from this very myopic place in which we're very much aware of this one rapidly evolving technology, and there might be something completely else, you know, emerging 40-50 years from now that would be a total different game changer that by no means we could see coming right now. So who knows?

SPEAKER_00 51:14

It's a surprising answer because I thought you were going to say it's garbage, get rid of it. It's it's only going to confuse us, it's not gonna bring us in this state of personal liberation, but uh you have a lot more balanced view on it. And I think you're right. It's I mean, I think I I was going to tap into the difficult effects of technology addiction and you know, social media, the overkill of social media and the negative effects, but it would be an injustice to technology and the internet and kind of all those things, just coining it with those things, right? It's just an element of, and I'm sure we're gonna work it out in the long run.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

Yeah, I think that there are major challenges and major challenges to well-being and social media addiction and so forth. I mean, we're only scratching the surface of what is this going to do long term. I mean, the young children now born with social media, it has a profound influence on the brain. Research right now is pretty alarming. Uh, so definitely I'm not dismissing that as uh as something that has no importance whatsoever. We'll have to learn to use all of these technologies. That is so clear. But again, and this is perhaps the the optimist in me like whenever there were major technological innovations, people all around thought this is going to be a disaster. This is the demise of humanity. There's these interesting texts. I mean, it's the stuff of mitzvah perhaps, but uh interesting texts in ancient Egypt, in which uh, you know, they talk about the invention of writing as you know the one invention that is going to make people completely dependent and stupid, or memory is going to decline. It's a disaster, we should stop that. I mean, we're going to become also very stupid. Well, what would we be without writing, right? Without libraries, books, and so forth. Then we could say the same of the internet. And now we're definitely saying the same about AI. Oh, the children will not learn to read and write anymore, think for themselves. They're just asking it to Chat GPT, and then they get an answer. It's a disaster. And obviously, it's true, it comes with certain kinds of challenges. But again, we should see the bigger picture of that. We're going to integrate that technology, and it's going to, I think, I believe, you know, lift human understanding, enhance scientific research, make our lives hopefully in the long term much more interesting, and and so forth. So I do believe that when we're cautious about the possible uh negative side effects of these technology and learn to use them wisely, well, uh they can be of added value.

SPEAKER_00 53:47

Yeah. I was going to add that as long as technology serves human beings, because I think this is the the big scary thing that loads of people are talking about. Like, well, it's AI is so much more clever than we are, so it's gonna it's gonna take over. We've given life to something that's bigger than ourselves. But hey, this might be, as you say, the scare narrative that the ancient Egyptians also had when people started writing. I don't know, but that that's the you know yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

And I think we're we're anthropomorphizing AI a little bit, yeah, and thinking, oh well, be or whatever is more intelligent and more powerful than us will also want to dominate us and eradicate us and so forth. And I think that the whole separation between us humans here and AI there, I think it's much more integrated. There's this interesting concept in in uh in philosophy of mind and uh and philosophy of science. It's about you know extended mind. You know, what makes humans smart is not our biological brain in isolation. It never was, right? Yes, we have a pretty big brain for the type of bodies we have, and it can do a number of interesting things, but in isolation, we have those biologically modern, fully fledged brains for let's say 150 to 200,000 years. That's how long you know Homo sapiens has been around. And for the first 90-95% of that time, it didn't bring us any farther than you know, tending to fire, making some rudimentary tools, and having some clever hunting strategies, right? So uh what really made us smart, what made this giant leap of scientific investigation and so forth and technological innovation possible, is not that these brains got better, it's just that we used more elements in our environment or integrated more elements into our thinking, right? From very simply, you know, uh using your fingers to count. That's already a type of mind extension. You're offloading some of the cognitive work to something external, to uh language allowing us to actually manipulate certain kinds of representations, you know, communicate much better, uh, to uh obviously uh cognitive artifacts like logic, mathematics that we've gradually developed that enable us to look very differently at the world, to then technology, computers, uh telescopes and the like that radically enhance the scope of our senses and uh our computational power and so forth. That is always what humans have thrived on. And so these new technologies are uh again, you know, enhancing that scope, and uh and I think we should be careful. Uh we should be careful of what the future brings, but uh we should be more scared of humans than of the technological tools we're using. I think so too. I think so too.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Michael, I know that we can talk for hours, but on that note, um I have invited you to come back because we're doing loads of happiness interviews on Pulse as well. And we as you are aware, we did a first one with Dr. Mark Breckett, Executive Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Um and I'm gonna do more of those. And uh it would be a great honor if you would like to be my co-host for these interviews, just to give it some more gravitas, because you can talk so beautifully about all of these topics uh a lot better than I can. So it would be a great honor if you were to join me for next guests that have interesting things to say about personal liberation, about happiness, and potentially about other things that we would like to talk about in the more psychological realm, you know, moving forward with this podcast. You've already said yes, but I'm now inviting you on the record for this. So what do you say, Dr. Blairick?

SPEAKER_02 57:38

My answer is yes, Aldo. Thank you very much. Uh, I think it will be uh a great experience to co-host some of these episodes with you and find myself at the other side of the table and actually being able to talk to and and and listen to uh very interesting guests on these topics that I find truly fascinating. So very much so.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah. Well, looking forward to that. So keep an eye out for that, dear listener. We've got uh more interviews coming about happiness, happiness in the workplace, happiness in technology, uh personal liberation as well, and and all a little bit on this crossroads of you know science, education, and kind of our well-being and and how technology and AI can change that. I appreciate it's quite broad, but that also is what makes it fun, right? So so uh and then for my two very last questions, uh Michael, before I let you go on this Friday afternoon, one is a question that I ask all my guests, and I think we've we've already addressed it because we've done quite uh a bit of interviews, uh, but it's about morning rituals. So I ask all my guests whether they have a morning ritual, and if so, if they would care to share.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

Definitely. So I wake up and I meditate half an hour, and then uh I typically will go for uh an hour or so of uh running, cycling, weight training, something to that effect. So take care of the mind, take care of the body, and then take care of the work. And you do that every morning? Every morning, yeah. Oh wow. Well, sometimes maybe I miss it. I try not to be too anal about it as well. That's what I said. That's some of the possible uh negative effects of uh trying to be too disciplined here. But uh again, and I must say this has grown gradually, and actually, this is not something I I think I should do, uh, but something I really want to do. So uh I enjoy it very much, both the meditation and and the uh and the exercise.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

And so just just for me, for the understand the logistics, there's no eating there, there's no kind of no I'll eat after after the training session.

SPEAKER_02 59:50

So after yeah. Yeah, I like to uh train on an anti-stomach.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Yep. Wow, well done. Uh quite quite discipline. No, I I shouldn't say a discipline, you like to do it, it has nothing to do with discipline, it's something that is No, no, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

And and and discipline is just habit formation, right? If you're in the habit of it and you enjoy doing it, it actually costs you no mental energy. But to get there, it needs some consistency. And so the best thing you can do is start very small. If you want to create a new habit, start very easy, very small. Make it a habit, do it for one or two months consecutively, but maybe five minutes a day. If you want to work out, do something for five minutes. If you want to meditate, do something, do it for five minutes again. Uh but be consistent, and then you'll find that uh you'll want to do it, and uh, and when that happens, and and that you no longer have to think about it, that you automatically do it, and then you can start extending your practice a little bit. But again, this shouldn't be viewed as uh some investment now for future happiness. That is the major pitfall here, right? So do no more than you enjoy doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

Yes. Last question about this, because I know you have three lovely daughters, so you you're in a busy household. So do you do it before they get up, or do they know kind of dad's doing this and he'll he'll resurface once done, or how does that exactly work?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:15

Yeah, yeah. Typically the meditation is done before they wake up, and then I just say hi, they go to school. Now they're pretty independent, so they take their bikes, and uh I um jump on my bike or go for a run and I'm uh yeah, so typically I will wake up like 6:30, do the meditation, 7, 7:30, 45. Uh um, be around the daughters, the family, if I'm here, because I'm also teaching in Tilburg, then I would just be by myself or just uh keep going and uh and then do my training, and then by 9 I'm uh typically I start my work day. Ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

Okay. Yeah. Thank you for uh enlightening us with that for this morning ritual. I've already heard quite a few interesting ones, and then also people who I catch off guard and say, No, I don't have any. You know, I just try to get out of the house and whatever, and that's fair enough too, right? No, exactly. Whatever suits you. Whatever suits you. And then for my very last question, and I think also a question I've asked you before, it's about reading and kind of you as a philosopher and someone who's written several books. Has there been any book that has inspired you to be the person who you are today? And if so, would you care to share that? It doesn't have to be a book, by the way, it could be an article or you know, maybe could even be like a platform or a person preferably reading, but I was wondering if you had one in mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Yeah, so it's such a tough question because there's so many books, and um and I feel it's I mean, I couldn't really just pick one out. Yeah, books have definitely changed my life. I I I once, I mean, now it's I don't know, uh probably almost 20 years ago. I read this very small book in Dutch, evolutionary thinking, and that set me on the path of doing a PhD in philosophy and applying evolutionary thinking to uh to knowledge and science and so forth. So that was that was uh what I researched for for my PhD. And so I'm very much indebted to that one book, and that really defined the course of my life to a certain extent. Uh, but then when it comes to psychological liberation and and what we've been talking about, at least in the beginning of this interview, um I think the major books that set me on the way or the content was by somebody like Mathieu Ricard in the beginning, uh, but then also Sam Harris, who has a wonderful podcast as well, but also interesting books about it uh waking up, uh, very much uh connecting you know scientific research to these liberation uh traditions and so forth. Um, but there's so many others uh from different traditions. Now I'm I'm reading and listening to uh a guy named Muji, and who's uh working from the Advaita Vedantic tradition. I'm actually gonna do a retreat with him, and this uh their teachings are so very, very impactful. So uh there's so many people and so many books um so very much adapted to, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

But evolutionary thinking, I think was the one you mentioned last.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

Yeah, interesting that I yeah, I'm yeah, because that book actually had a profound influence on the direction of my life because, as I said, you know, it determined in which direction my academic research uh first took off.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Beautiful! Thank you uh once again for this beautiful interview on personal liberation and enlightenment, and we're gonna do loads more interviews. Uh, thank you so much for your time, Dr. Michael Vlerick. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Aldo. You've listened to Pulse by Alphawire, produced by Natalie Piles and Amela Fezel. With great music, The Optimist, written by Holly Hamel, performed and produced by Alo. Episodes hosted weekly by me, Aldo De Pau.