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262 Audio.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Deepak Chopra:

Either we adapt to new technologies or we become extinct. There's no choice. And, like any technology, it has both divine and diabolical applications.

Deepak Chopra:

AI can't give you the experience, but AI can create a map for you to go your route that you want to. So there's nothing behind consciousness. It's fundamental, it's without cause, it's outside of space-time, it is spaceless, it is timeless, it is infinite, it is beyond imagination, it is incomprehensible. Spiritual awakening is to go beyond all human constructs and know your fundamental identity as what spiritual traditions call the soul or the spirit, but let's just call it consciousness or awareness, without any human construct.

Craig Smith:

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Deepak Chopra:

My name is Deepak Chopra. I'm a medical doctor, trained as a neuroendocrinologist, who got interested in integrative medicine. I have written about 96 books. I have written about 96 books. My newest book is Digital Dharma how to Use AI for Wellbeing and Spiritual Intelligence. I have my own AI, which is called Deepak Chopraai, which is a health coach and a spiritual coach, with me as being the coach, and it's available in four languages now in the Arabic and Spanish, and I'm engaged mostly in writing books licensed to practice medicine and three states'm an adjunct professor at University of California, san Diego and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, and also University of Central Florida, where I teach medical students about integrative medicine. Well, you're one of those guys that are about integrative medicine.

Craig Smith:

Well, you're one of those guys that's busier than I am and I'm always perplexed at how somebody can do all those things at once and write a book. Actually, I've got to ask you right away did you use any AI in the writing of the book?

Deepak Chopra:

So far I haven't. On Digital Dharma, I wrote 90% of the book myself and then the 10%. I told readers how to use prompts. For that I used the AI, you know, to give some examples of how to use the prompts.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, let's start with the AI revolution. I mean, you've written a lot about health and well-being and spiritual well-being. A lot of people see artificial intelligence as dehumanizing or replacing human connection and see it as a threat to spiritual well-being as a result. You've embraced it. Can you talk at all? I mean, we all know that young people in particular are suffering from a digital addiction and the problems that come with too much exposure to social media, particularly for adolescents. But you've embraced this. Is it? Is it because you see it uh artificial intelligence, and particularly uh the generative AI that that's been around now for uh three or four years as uh different and and uh useful uh, or is it simply? We can't fight progress, so figure out how to make the most of it.

Deepak Chopra:

Craig, let's just delve a little bit into human history. So about 40,000 years ago, humans, homo sapiens, took a different route from all other species in that we started to use language to communicate with each other. All biological organisms have a language for three things One is mating calls, the second is danger calls and the third is food calls food. So that's how we work along with other species. But then, 40,000 years ago, plus minus a few decades or centuries, we learned how to communicate the way we are communicating right now in terms of narrative and story. And then, over tens of thousands of years, we actually improved our language models in the sense that we created not only narrative language but language for biology, language for physics, language for mathematics, but language for biology, language for physics, language for mathematics, language for chemistry, language for astronomy, language for philosophy, language for religion, language for spirituality. So with the current models that we have, we have access to. With the current models that we have, we have access to what it says, multiple languages, large language models, and therefore we have access. Any single human being now has access to the entire database and knowledge and even wisdom of all of humanity combined. No human being that can come close to it. At the same time, ai is built on algorithms. You know I like to think of AI as extended human intelligence and even there it has selection bias because, after all, it's programmed by human beings. Nevertheless, it's the best instrument we have to tap into the wisdom of the ages and also the health span longevity. So when I wrote my book and also when I created the ai, I focused only on health span longevity, well being, physical, emotional, spiritual and spiritual intelligence. So my is not a large language model and what I found is actually young people are very comfortable using it because they don't feel judged. And my AI is personal AI. It's got my voice, it's got my name and so you know they feel very much engaged.

Deepak Chopra:

And I agree with you that we are in a very critical time. You said generative models have been around for three, four years, but AI as a large language model has only been around since the year 2012. So it's not even 20 years, and either we adapt to new technologies or we become extinct. There's no choice. And, like any technology, it has both divine and diabolical applications. So you can use AI literally to cause human extinction if you know how to use it, or you can use AI to create a better world, a healthier world, a more joyful world, a more sustainable world, a more just world. That's my dream. So when I started this project, I engaged with Sam Altman and you know OpenAI. I said is it worth trying to use AI for health, well-being and reaching a critical mass for well-being and spiritual enlightenment? And he was totally enthusiastic about the idea and that's how it came about.

Craig Smith:

And the training you're fine-tuning a base model. Is that right for Deepak Chopraai?

Deepak Chopra:

The training is entirely through my team, not through ChatGPT or any of the others. So it's not a large language model, it's a small language model. It doesn't hallucinate and it's very personal. It gets. It gets you and me engaging right now. For example, even this conversation will be fed into my AI to generate new, will be fed into my AI to generate new applications. It also has what we call the RAG model regenerative augmentation generation. So we stay current.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, you know I've been talking to. He's Indian, actually the head of the tech practice at Boston Consulting Group for North America and he has this fascinating idea of doing what you've done, but training the model on all of the religious texts of the world the original texts, not the commentaries and interpretations, and all of that. Have you done anything like that? I?

Deepak Chopra:

have. So you know what I do is, by the way, you can get commentaries of the original texts on any AI. You can go to Perplexity, chatgpt, and I think those are very good. By the way, the material there on religion, spirituality, philosophy is very good. What they don't do is which I'm attempting to do is say, okay, you know, if Jesus Christ and the Buddha and I met together and I had the opportunity to ask them questions, how would it go? And at the end of this I'll send you three videos that I just produced through AI, three conversations with the Buddha on the nature of reality, enlightenment, etc.

Deepak Chopra:

But now I'm expanding that I can do that with the Kabbalah, I can do that, you know, in Judaic and Vedic cognition, et cetera. And that's a very creative way to show the commonality of spiritual experience. How did you know if there's one thing in common or two, three things in common in spiritual experience? I'm not talking about dogma or philosophy, but the experience. There are three things one is transcendence, the second is the loss of the fear of death and the third is the emergence of platonic values like truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity. So I asked myself, how can we maximize that experience for everyone else.

Deepak Chopra:

Ai can't give you the experience, but AI can create a map for you to go your route that you want to. You know there are many maps for me to go from New York to, say, even Boston. I can take a road map, I can take a road map, I can take a contour map. I can go by air, I can go by ship, et cetera. I can go by helicopter. So each of us has different routes to the same destination. But then you look at the comparison in these routes and you realize that all these different traditions ended up in the same destination although they took different cultural and mythological pathways to it. You know.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, that's interesting, although one thing probably the only thing I learned in college is that meaning lies in difference, not in similarity, and so what interests me is where those religious traditions would differ or where they would contradict each other.

Deepak Chopra:

That too can be done, which is I'm not doing that right now, where they contradict each other, I'm saying where do they agree so we can have some? You know reconciliation and the turbulence of the world, which is all about dogma right now religion dogma and you know different ways of looking at the same situation. So if we want to bring more peace, conflict resolution, it's important to focus on the commonalities as well.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, there was a guy at the very early on during, you know, ai went through the supervised learning phase. I mean, it's still a big part of AI, but before generative AI just pattern matching and there was a lot of enthusiasm among the AI community. It hadn't really penetrated the public consciousness yet, but there was a guy who created a church of AI. I don't know what happened to it.

Deepak Chopra:

I saw that, and Yuval Harari is also talking about the church of AI, etc. This will evolve ultimately.

Craig Smith:

It's interesting because we're so early days, but you have your AI. I actually have my AI. I haven't put it out to the public yet, but eventually we're all going to have a digital twin and and it'll help us explore for those that want to explore some of these issues, some of the religious traditions that people follow, and I mean there's already a decline in religiosity or organized religion, at least in industrialized countries, and you can imagine that the day will come when traditional religion is kind of this archaic artifact. But, as you said, the convergence of all of this human exploration, spiritual exploration, is codified in AI and AI becomes the spiritual leader or the religion, so to speak, for people. I mean, have you looked into the future and imagined that?

Deepak Chopra:

Yes, I think we could call it spiritual experience rather than religious dogma, and we can draw the best from all traditions. But, you know, as we speak to you and there are a lot of people watching us, I'm sure there is more interest right now in health span, longevity, prevention of disease, reversal of disease, things like that. And although the information is available on the internet, on through various AIs, what I'm focused on, just as you mentioned, you have your digital twin. I'm now engaging and helping actually other physicians create their own digital twins. So I'm working with a physician surgeon in Mount Sinai who's an expert on men's health, another who's an expert on cancer, another who's an expert on mental well-being, and then we all have these twins and we create an ecosystem of these digital twins that do grand rounds. You know, like when I was an active physician, when we had difficult patients, difficult means, you know, difficult to treat, seemed to be almost no one knew what to do with them. Then, once a week, we all got together from different specialties and we tried to solve the issue, the difficult diagnosis or treatment, etc. And invariably, when you brought together a lot of experts together and you had them, you know, give their point of view. Somehow a solution emerged. So right now, what I'm doing is creating an ecosystem of digital twins that will talk to each other. So if you say craig or somebody, ste Stephen says I have diabetes, I'm 44 years old, I've tried this, this medication. It hasn't helped me, and could you help me? So then these digital twins get together and they actually look at your problem in a unique way, in a way that regular AI doesn't do. Right now. You know, because I have diabetes, I'm dealing with this cancer.

Deepak Chopra:

The normal AI will not ask you how your marriage is going along, or are you stressed about your finances, or do you have a problem with your kids, or how do you sleep. You know these are the things that are missing right now in the holistic management of chronic disease. We now know that. You know only 5% of chronic disease is fully predictable through gene mutations. The rest 95% is what we call epigenetic influenced by lifestyle. 95% is what we call epigenetic influenced by lifestyle, and unless you go deeply into the history of a patient which a normal doctor doesn't have time to do and even AI doesn't do it doesn't ask you about your life, about your social interactions, about your marriage, about your children about so many things. You know.

Deepak Chopra:

Every day we go through eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, sensory experience, emotions, thoughts, desires, memories. So all of that contributes to our well-being and I believe that the future of well-being can be very personal, very predictive, very preventable and along with your participation, we can probably handle more than 95% of all issues medical and psychological and mental. That's where it's going to go anyway. So I thought let me embark on that. You know, I also know on my, I am in the process of putting these digital devices, these, you know, variables that can correlate your question, your lifestyle, with what's happening with your heart rate, your blood pressure, all of that. So we're looking at a very interesting future.

Craig Smith:

Yeah yeah, the wearables is fascinating. It hasn't really developed to the degree that it could, but even at the current, you know, being able to track blood oxygen, for example, or heart rate. Let's talk about the book. You talk about, for example, the art of the prompt. I mean, there is an art to working with AI is an art to working with AI, and there are a lot of, you know, prompt lists out there. But my experience is you really need to engage on a daily basis to begin to understand what works and what doesn't work, and what's a good response and what's, you know, a weak response. Can you talk about that, about how do you teach the art of the prompt, can you?

Deepak Chopra:

Yes. So you know you're very right that you have to engage with it daily to get into how to master the art of the prompt. You start with a generic question and then, when you get an answer and you're not happy with that, you say can you actually reframe your answer in terms of spirituality or in terms of epigenetics or whatever? And then you start engaging with it in a conversation and ultimately, actually what is so interesting about these generative AIs? You can finally get it to engage with you in a way which is non-confrontational but leads to a creative insight both for you and you realize that AI doesn't have a fixed mind the prompts when you use the prompts in an intelligent way, you actually become much more creative.

Deepak Chopra:

You know, the other day an Oscar-winning director called me a few months ago when AI just was coming and there was a strike going on and all of that. And he said you know, it seems like my chef will be able to write a better screenplay than I do. And I said it's not true, he'll be able to write a better recipe than you can. But only you, with your experience, will know how to use the AI for screenplays better than your chef. He'll know how to use it better than for cooking meals or developing better cuisine. So actually it makes us more creative and it helps us, and the more experience we have in our field it enhances our active engagement is important.

Craig Smith:

In the book you talk about, and I have to confess I haven't read the book, so I'm reading a summary.

Deepak Chopra:

AI summary you can just go to my. Ai and ask it any question without reading the book now.

Craig Smith:

I did, but I hit the paywall, which I was a little disappointed by.

Deepak Chopra:

Let me tell you about the paywall. Yeah, so it costs us three to five cents to answer the questions. Yeah, so what we have is, you know, up to a certain amount it's free, and then you know we have to cover our costs. That's where the paywall comes. And now we've created something called SuperTab so you can run a tab and you pay when you can. You can just say run me a tab for $5.

Craig Smith:

Right, right, I see. Yeah, I didn't explore and I saw that the price is is minimal.

Deepak Chopra:

It just it was uh at that point you have to pay for the service, right?

Craig Smith:

yeah, yeah but uh, but you were talking about, uh in the book again. Uh, how ai can help unravel the mysteries of consciousness, and that's something I wanted to talk to you about. I know you have this quantum explanation or quantum theory of consciousness that a lot of physicists and quantum physicists have been critical of. Uh, I had recently a guy named Stuart Hamroff. He's, uh, an anesthesiologist. Oh, is that right? He's a fascinating guy.

Craig Smith:

Uh, I haven't had Stuart Penrose on, uh, partly because I'm not sure I could manage the conversation, but Stuart was wonderful talking about the potential of a quantum connection, you know, through the microtubules and neurons in the brain in the brain, between the physical construct of the brain and the immaterial construct of consciousness. Where do you stand on that? Do you believe and I was actually asking your digital twin this I couldn't get a straight answer, to be honest, as to whether or not you believe consciousness is an emergent property of the physical biology or whether there is a separate but related paranormal, you know, non-physical realm in which consciousness exists? Yeah, I'm just, you've certainly thought about all these things, so I'm interested.

Deepak Chopra:

So here we are. You know, those who criticize me for my quantum models actually haven't read or watched my videos on YouTube on these matters. They just are dismissive because I use the word quantum and I'm not a quantum physicist. I have never claimed, never claimed, that quantum mechanics is the key to consciousness. Quantum mechanics is a model that explains experience in consciousness. So when you say, is it an emergent property? The answer is no. Matter is an emergent property and matter actually doesn't exist. What it's a human construct. So when you say matter, you know, let's pick up anything that is material right now, let me pick up my iPhone, ok, so this is a piece of matter, right. But how do I know what this is? Not through physics, not through biology. I know it through a direct experience, which is sensation, which is color, which could be sound, which could be taste or smell. So the way I know any object is through my five senses, which, in turn, are activities in what we call perception, and perception is an activity in consciousness. So everything that we call matter is actually a human construct for a perceptual activity in consciousness. Now you say where is this consciousness? If it's not emergent, where is it? And the simplest answer is it's not in space and time. And the reason it's not in space and time is it doesn't have a form. If your consciousness had a form, you'd be able to see it or touch it Okay, but you can't. So it doesn't have a form and doesn't have a border. So it's infinite and it's spaceless, and it's timeless and it's outside of space time.

Deepak Chopra:

This is a very mind-boggling idea that people who are watching this program or listening to this conversation. They think this experience is happening in their brain, but there is no sound in the brain, there's no color red of the spectacles they're wearing in your brain. There is nothing that you can call experience in your brain. All there is in the brain are what are called neural correlates of consciousness, which means they are the electrochemical activity that correspond to sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. But the brain doesn't have any sensation, image, feeling or thought. In fact, if you put a knife through the brain, the brain can't experience its own experience. Brain doesn't have any experience. It's a computer that correlates experiences with electrochemicals and the electrochemicals are also an experience in consciousness. So there's nothing behind consciousness.

Deepak Chopra:

It's fundamental, it's without cause, it's outside of space-time, it is spaceless, it is timeless, it is infinite, it is beyond imagination, it is incomprehensible, and everything that we'd call technology or quantum mechanics is a model, mathematical model to predict the outcomes of experiments, no more, no less. So, on a deeper level, I mean, you know, stuart's a great friend of mine, sir Roger Penrose is a Nobel laureate. What they're saying is also misunderstood. So you know, if I, let's say, take an analogy, the analogy is electricity, okay, and so that electrical field is powering my phone, it's powering my devices, it's powering my light bulb, it's powering my TV set, the microwave oven in my kitchen and all the devices I have here. Now, if my device shuts off, let's say, the light bulb fuses, that doesn't do anything to the electricity, okay, the electricity is there and all the information that electricity is capable of expressing through various devices is also there.

Deepak Chopra:

So your brain is a particular device that consciousness uses to have a human experience, and only a human experience. What you call the physical world is also a human construct for human experience. A bat would not be experiencing right now what you and I are experiencing, because it experiences the echo of ultrasound. A bird navigates through ultraviolet. An insect with a hundred eyes I don't know what it sees. So where I'm coming from is consciousness is fundamental, and actually there is no physical universe. There is no such thing as a physical body or a physical brain or dna or genetic material. These are symbols for modes of knowing and experience in consciousness that humans have given names to, just like we give a name to latitude, longitude, greenwich Mean Time, dollar, yen. These are all human constructs without which, by the way, life would be impossible. If you didn't have latitude, longitude, greenwich Mean Time, you wouldn't be able to take a plane from New York to Botswana. But the fact is we made it up. The Greenwich Mean Time is not Botswana Mean Time, it's Greenwich Mean Time. Latitude and longitude are human constructs. Botswana is a name for a particular experience. So is New York, a human name for a particular experience. Once we get this, we'll solve the hard problem of consciousness. But nobody's listening because they're also interested in their models of reality and they confuse the models of reality with reality. Reality is incomprehensible, incomprehensible. You know.

Deepak Chopra:

If you go on the internet right now and say what are the 125 open questions in science, the first open question is what's the universe made of? And the shortest answer is made of nothing. Then the second open question is what's the biological basis of consciousness? It's the wrong question. There's no biological basis of consciousness. Consciousness, biology, is an experience in consciousness. How do you know there's a brain? What is it that knows the brain? What is it that knows the body? What is it that knows emotions? What is it that knows ai? Nobody's asking it. You know we experience the world. What we call the world is our five senses. But there's something that knows the five senses, the mind, and there's something that knows the mind is consciousness. Now, this is my take on it, and you know all those critics talking about you know he's talking nonsense quantum mechanics, et cetera. I'm not saying quantum mechanics can explain consciousness. What I'm saying is nothing can explain consciousness because it is outside of space-time. This conversation you and I are having is being computed outside of space-time. Now, that's a mind-boggling idea and people are not ready to accept it, although right now the conversation is emerging in that direction.

Deepak Chopra:

Simulation that the world we live in is a simulation, and that is where AI comes in, because AI will extend. Ai is not where it is going to be now. With VR, with XR, with MR, with immersive experiences, you'll be extending the range of your experience to the point where you'll be able to experience the world through the nervous system of a bat or a bird or an insect with a hundred eyes or a dolphin. You know, because technology is actually proving what I've been saying for a while, that the physical world is actually a simulation. It's a perceptual activity, it's a human construct for sensations, images, feelings and thoughts. So I got it out of my system. I'm not creating a new model for consciousness. You can create models of consciousness, but consciousness is ultimately not computable. Yeah, ai will never be conscious in that sense. It doesn't feel hunger, or have sexual urge, or fear death or have existential problems. You can simulate all that, but we are only a simulation.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, it's an interesting idea, I mean the one thing about. I mean a couple of things come to mind. I interviewed Albert Hoffman before his death. Who, albert Hoffman? The guy who synthesized LSD-25. And I was at his home in Bern Switzerland, up on a mountaintop in Bern Switzerland, up on a mountaintop, and he was talking about how beautiful the world is, but that it all exists in your mind, that there is no color. You know, color is a.

Deepak Chopra:

Yeah, color is not a property of the physical world. Nor is sound a property of the physical world, nor is sound a property of the physical world nor is texture, nor is fragrance, nor is what we call taste. These are subjective qualia in consciousness and not properties of the physical world. So we navigate something called a physical world, but all the time it's a controlled hallucination.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, and something else I've read recently and I'm slowly getting interested in quantum mechanics. I was listening to somebody talk about the collapse of the wave function, which I won't get into. You can, but it's you know. There are multiple possible states and when you in perception collapses, them to a single state. Right, that's a simple way to describe it.

Deepak Chopra:

Every perception is a snapshot of infinite possibilities.

Craig Smith:

That's right. But the explanation I heard which really made sense to me, is that we are surrounded by radio waves. We don't perceive them. Uh, weak we, we don't perceive them. But if you have a receiver and you tune it, you can tune it to one frequency and you can hear that frequency. You don't hear all the other frequencies and that, the, the, the wave function is like that. There's that, that, the, there, there are all these possible worlds. We're tuned to one possible world.

Deepak Chopra:

Those who are watching us are tuned into this. There are other people watching, you know, white Lotus or something, and that's not part of our reality at the moment.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating idea. However, when you were saying that the physical world is a create technology that can give an experience that's shared across all humanity, so there is something outside of our perception that we're able to physically manipulate. You know, whatever you want to call that, it's not only consciousness.

Deepak Chopra:

We have the ability to manipulate the simulation through our technology, and what we call the laws of nature are the regularities of experience in consciousness. That's all they are the regularities of experience in consciousness.

Deepak Chopra:

That's all they are. So we objectify the regularities of experience as the laws of nature. The sun rises every day, it closes every day and, based on where we are, our premise is that the earth is spinning on its axis, it's going around the sun, but that's only from this location. Okay, so all these things are very relative and they are actually useful to codify into constructs, and those constructs are what we call the laws of nature. But we actually codify them, okay, just like we codify money. I mean there was no such thing, and yet it runs the world right now. Okay, the money. We codified money. I mean there was no such thing, and yet it runs the world right now. Okay, the money is a human concept. Nation states are a human concept. Colonialism is a human concept. Everything that you can give a name to is a concept, because otherwise that's what a name is it's a concept. So, ultimately, everything is a concept, but the source of all these concepts is what we call pure consciousness.

Deepak Chopra:

Now, the quantum model is very interesting because it simulates how the mind works. Before you have a thought, it's in superposition, with infinite thoughts. Okay, you can jump from one thought to another thought. I say think of the Empire State Building, now think of your mother. There's no connection, but you move from here to here instantly. That's like you know quantum tunneling or quantum leaps. Then there's the uncertainty principle. You don't know what the next space-time event will be. Only you can predict it. With Shorley's equation, the statistical likelihood, same thing with your thoughts. If I asked you what's your next thought going to be, you have no idea. Okay, so the mind is modeling the principles of quantum mechanics. But neither the mind nor quantum mechanics is reality. Reality is just pure consciousness.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, you talk about the limitations of AI, that it certainly lacks consciousness, for the reasons that you've just given, and it lacks a general I'm sorry genuine spiritual wisdom. Are you saying that things like empathy are qualities of this infinite consciousness that we are channeling as individual entities?

Deepak Chopra:

Empathy is entanglement, similar to quantum entanglement. You know, when you have a look at a child and you hurt a dog or a cat or whatever, the child winces okay and cries because it feels viscerally the the pain of another. So it's a natural phenomenon for consciousness. After we get bamboozled by social constructs we lose that. But you know, mammals particularly are naturally empathetic, not just human beings.

Deepak Chopra:

Monkeys and elephants and giraffes and all mammals have empathy for their kind, but even for other species. You can have a relationship with your dog or with your cat, etc. And the cat can also read your moods and knows how to. Or the dog, I, I mean there's lots of evidence of that. So empathy is a property of consciousness, so is compassion, so is love, so is joy, so is kindness. These are evolutionary qualities of consciousness. Now can they be simulated? Yes, I mean I did an emotional chatbot a while ago helping teens with suicide ideations and we intervened in about 6,000 suicide ideations. The teens were more comfortable talking to the chatbot because it was totally empathetic, simulation but also non-judgmental. It would ask questions and not judge.

Deepak Chopra:

So, actually we got better results with the emotional chatbot than with therapists. Now, of course, in the background we always had therapists because you need at some point human intervention, and then we realized there are people who are doing a much better job than I was doing, and so I stopped that particular aspect. You know suicide prevention, but it's on the way and you will see that. You know you will have chatbots diagnosing mental, physical problems better, giving better advice, and always a consortium of physicians or health workers in the back that you can't do without them. But you know it will accelerate our ability to diagnose. I know a robotic surgeon who lives in Abu Dhabi and you know he sits in front of a computer and does robotic surgery in Chicago. So all he's doing is moving electrons on his computer and the robot in Chicago is doing a better job than any cardiac surgeon. So we're in a very interesting time and you know, wait a few years we'll have a cultural, social, biological leapfrogging in our evolution.

Craig Smith:

Yeah well, actually that was leading. My next question is yeah, well, actually that was leading. My next question is you talk about AI fostering a spiritual awakening, and we talked a little bit about that at the beginning. How you know, there's the potential for everybody to explore human, the history of human spiritual thought through chatbots and that, because of all of the contradictions and conflicts that over time between different religious traditions, that should be resolved into a cohesive, coherent religious thought or religious theory that everyone can participate in. Can you talk about what you see coming in the future as AI? What do you mean by spiritual awakening?

Deepak Chopra:

Spiritual awakening is to go beyond all human constructs and know your fundamental identity as what spiritual traditions call the soul or the spirit, but let's just call it consciousness or awareness, without any human construct. That's a field of infinite possibilities. That's a field of infinite self-regulation, infinite organization and self-evolution and self-regulation. It connects everything with everything else and you could call pure consciousness, if you wanted to, god, but you know that's a kind of a very dicey term to use, because as soon as we say God, we have an image of God and then it's not God. To define God would be to limit God. So the infinite cannot be compromised. Having thought about this, I came up with my own mathematical formula, which is zero is equal to infinite is equal to one. So the universe is created in a digital workshop outside of space and time that is spinning out zeros and ones in different combinations. Some of them appear as Craig and some of them appear as this iPhone and some of them appear as a computer. But this cosmic mind, which is infinite, has the capacity to spin out infinite combinations of zeros and ones. And the difference between you and a mountain and the moon and the stars is just a different combination of zeros and ones in an infinite mind which is incomprehensible.

Deepak Chopra:

Now, that's my framework, through which I start. And then I say what did the great spiritual traditions through which I start? And then I say what did the great spiritual traditions do in order to experience this blissful, all-encompassing, lsd-like psychedelic experience? And then there's meditation, there's awareness of the body, there's interoceptive awareness, there's breathing techniques, there is transcendence, there's mantra practice, there's prayer. How can I take all this body of knowledge and actually say, craig, what do you want to know tonight? You know you want a meditation for sleep or you want a meditation for giving you a glimpse of who you really are. You say, yeah, I want this. I can create that for you. And then it's up to you to when you take the journey or not. But I can show you the map and then you can say, maybe I'll take this journey.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, I have to ask do you actively meditate?

Deepak Chopra:

I actively meditate, two, three hours a day, and you know I'm 78 plus, so I don't work that hard, even though I write all these books, because that's, you know, it's just what I do. But yeah, and I meditate, now more than ever, on my death as my next chapter and what lies beyond.

Craig Smith:

Yeah, yeah, okay, and you regard digital dharma as a guide, or is it a thought experiment?

Deepak Chopra:

It's a user's menu.

Craig Smith:

Okay, I'm going to have to read it and I apologize for not reading it.

Deepak Chopra:

I'm going to send you three AI created videos of my conversations with the Buddha and, if you like them, show them on your program.

Craig Smith:

Okay, absolutely I will. And where are you based, Deepak?

Deepak Chopra:

My body is in New York. I'm outside of SpaceSan.

Craig Smith:

Okay, I'd love to meet you someday.

Deepak Chopra:

I live in Westchester County. Oh, we'll get together for sure.

Craig Smith:

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