Speaker 1: What we call anger is the memory of trauma. Hostility
Speaker 1: is the desire to get even guilt and shame is
Speaker 1: blaming yourself. And the depletion of energy that happens with
Speaker 1: those emotions is actually what we call depression.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep them themselves moving
Speaker 2: in the right direction, how they feed their good wealth.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 2: returning for the second time on the podcast. It's Deepak Chopra.
Speaker 2: He is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit
Speaker 2: entity for research on well being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global,
Speaker 2: a modern day health company at the intersection of science
Speaker 2: and spirituality. Doctor Chopra is Board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology,
Speaker 2: and metabolism. He's a Fellow at the American College of
Speaker 2: Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Speaker 2: He serves as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University
Speaker 2: of California, San Diego. He's also the host of the
Speaker 2: podcast Daily Breath and the author of over nine books,
Speaker 2: including the one discussed here, Digital Dharma, How Ai Can
Speaker 2: Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal well Being.
Speaker 3: Hi Deepak, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me again.
Speaker 3: Eddie, Yes, pleasure to have you back on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing a couple of different things here. We're
Speaker 3: going to be discussing a new book you wrote called
Speaker 3: Digital Dharma, How Ai Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal
Speaker 3: well Being. We're also going to talk about a new
Speaker 3: initiative you have called the Never Alone Initiative. But before
Speaker 3: we get into all that, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 3: which is with the parable. In the parable, there's a
Speaker 3: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 3: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 3: and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about
Speaker 3: it for a second. They look up at their grandparent
Speaker 3: and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: My life is about two things, freedom from suffering and
Speaker 1: how can you live the best life possible? As in
Speaker 1: the phrase follow your bliss Joseph Campbell. So when I
Speaker 1: talk about digital hehrma herma in general, which is a
Speaker 1: difficult concept for most people. Herma is how do you
Speaker 1: fit into the order of the universe? Ultimately who you
Speaker 1: are beyond all the labels and definitions and stories about you,
Speaker 1: And ultimately who you are is a field of infinite potential.
Speaker 1: You are immeasurable, you're infinite, you are timeless, you're eternal,
Speaker 1: and only your story are in the realm of the finite.
Speaker 1: So how do you get to that place which is
Speaker 1: independent of the good and bad opinions of the world.
Speaker 1: How do you get to that place which is fearless?
Speaker 1: How do you get to the place where you feel
Speaker 1: beneath no one and not necessarily superior to anyone either.
Speaker 1: How do you get to that place of ultimate freedom
Speaker 1: to follow your bliss the best life possible.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful answer. And I'm going to dive in
Speaker 3: for a second on this word dharma just a little
Speaker 3: bit for a second, because dharma, as you said, is
Speaker 3: sort of our path or the path. Yes, and you're
Speaker 3: talking about this timeless awareness that is inside of us
Speaker 3: that is bigger than our personal stories. Would that be
Speaker 3: an accurate way of saying it.
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: So given that is my dharma different than your dharma?
Speaker 1: Well, if you understand dharma also as life purpose, then
Speaker 1: therma exists at several levels, and you could all muscay.
Speaker 1: It's an extension of Abram Maslow's idea of the hierarchy
Speaker 1: of needs. So your therma is to be secure, safety
Speaker 1: and survival for yourself. Your therma is also to seek
Speaker 1: personal pleasure, whether you know personal pleasure through the five senses,
Speaker 1: because the essential beings your therma is also about changing
Speaker 1: adversity into opportunity. But those are very basic levels survival, safety, transformation, power,
Speaker 1: self esteem, those are very basic. Beyond that, your therma
Speaker 1: starts to move in a direction which is more spiritual
Speaker 1: love and belongingness, creative expression and insight, intuition and imagination,
Speaker 1: higher consciousness, and transcendence, which is inlightenment. So yes, along
Speaker 1: the way we choose different pots, but ultimately the peak
Speaker 1: of the mountain is total freedom and unleashing your infinite
Speaker 1: potential that is common to you and me. Along the way,
Speaker 1: you know, many pots leading to the peak of the mountain.
Speaker 3: That's a great way of summarizing. I really like that
Speaker 3: that we're all going to have our different paths up
Speaker 3: to the mountain, but at a certain level there is
Speaker 3: this timeless, infinite thing that is the same in me
Speaker 3: as it is in you. But on our way to
Speaker 3: that we are actually very different and our paths will
Speaker 3: reflect and should reflect that difference.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 3: So, before we get into your latest book, Digital Dharma,
Speaker 3: I want to spend a little bit of time and
Speaker 3: talk about something called the Never Alone initiative. Can you
Speaker 3: share with me what the never Alone it is?
Speaker 1: I'll share with you how it started. So it started
Speaker 1: during COVID or just when COVID came, and I and
Speaker 1: some of the people in our foundation, we learned that
Speaker 1: suicide was the second most common cause of death among teens.
Speaker 1: We also learned that every forty second, somebody in the
Speaker 1: world was dying from suicide. And even when they say
Speaker 1: second most common cause of death among scenes, the first
Speaker 1: common cause is accidents and drugs, which is also linked
Speaker 1: to depression. So depression, anxiety, anger, hostility, shame, humiliation seems
Speaker 1: to be actually the pandemic right now. The teens were
Speaker 1: saying that it's difficult to get through a day without crying.
Speaker 1: So we launched Never Alone as a community platform with
Speaker 1: four basic ideas Attention, deep listening, affection, deep caring, and
Speaker 1: love appreciation, noticing the uniqueness of everyone, and acceptance, accepting
Speaker 1: everyone just as they are because they're so unique. And
Speaker 1: then we actually used an emotional chat pot and AI
Speaker 1: chatpot to talk to the teens and we were able
Speaker 1: to intervene in six thousand suicide ideations, and there were
Speaker 1: twenty million conversations happening geneously. But over the years, what
Speaker 1: we've also realized is that there are superior AI platforms
Speaker 1: in dealing with depression proteins, and that probably was not
Speaker 1: our expertise. So what we have moved in the direction
Speaker 1: of Never Alone is a whole program called freedom from Suffering,
Speaker 1: where you're never alone. Because it's obvious that people are
Speaker 1: hyper connected and still lonely. So you know, now we're
Speaker 1: creating programs on never Alone for people to actually be
Speaker 1: educated on how they can lead a life which maximizes
Speaker 1: their potential but also connects them. You know, the spiritual
Speaker 1: relations of the East. They say, if you have maximum diversity,
Speaker 1: shared vision, emotional and spiritual bonding and complementing each other's strength,
Speaker 1: no problem is unsolvable. So Never Alone has become a
Speaker 1: platform not only for young people but people of all
Speaker 1: demographics to create online and offline communities just based on
Speaker 1: the forays that I mentioned attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance, but
Speaker 1: also to educate them on how service, community and some
Speaker 1: kind of reflection or spiritual inquiry or introspection practice can
Speaker 1: help elevate their lives and create freedom from suffering for
Speaker 1: them and for others. So community, spiritual discipline, and selfless service.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful idea. So along with the Never initiative,
Speaker 3: the healing practices that you talked about attention, appreciation, acceptance,
Speaker 3: and affection. You also talk about sort of four toxic
Speaker 3: beliefs that are leading many of our young people to
Speaker 3: these states of despair. No one cares about me, I
Speaker 3: don't matter. I'm weak and powerless, and I'm destined to
Speaker 3: be a victim. Talk to me about why those four
Speaker 3: beliefs felt like the key toxic beliefs you guys wanted
Speaker 3: to focus on.
Speaker 1: It's basically eric social conditioning and cultural conditioning and parental conditioning.
Speaker 1: And we keep recycling those ideas, you know, so generation
Speaker 1: after generation we recycle those ideas that ultimately lead to trauma.
Speaker 1: And every distress in any person can be traced to trauma,
Speaker 1: either in their childhood years or maybe even before that.
Speaker 1: You know, what we call intergenerational trauma. So what we
Speaker 1: call anger is the men of trauma. Hostility is the
Speaker 1: desire to get even guilt and shame is blaming yourself.
Speaker 1: And the depletion of energy that happens with those emotions
Speaker 1: is actually what we call depression. They're all related. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: everything can be traced back to trauma. You look at
Speaker 1: the putins of the world, or you look at you know,
Speaker 1: the tyrants of the world. They're the ultimate final expression
Speaker 1: of a traumatic experience that they had when they were children.
Speaker 1: So this is very important to understand that mainly emotionals
Speaker 1: listen even not talk about spiritual intelligence, but our emotional
Speaker 1: intelligence is shaped by our childhood experiences, and those who
Speaker 1: have been traumatized inflict trauma. Only hurt people, hurt other people.
Speaker 1: This is a deep understanding, which then tells us there's
Speaker 1: a more compassionate way to understand people who we think
Speaker 1: are toxic, and the first responsibilities get over our own
Speaker 1: toxic limiting beliefs.
Speaker 3: Another question I have related to this, and I'm curious
Speaker 3: what you think about this. We have, on one hand,
Speaker 3: seen an unprecedented amount over the last let's call it
Speaker 3: decade of discussion about mental health. The stigma has certainly
Speaker 3: lessened to a great degree, maybe not around all mental disorders,
Speaker 3: and maybe not around suicide specifically, but around anxiety depression.
Speaker 3: We talk about these things in a way we never did.
Speaker 3: The stigma isn't there in the way that it once was,
Speaker 3: and yet by most measures, things are getting worse in
Speaker 3: young people's mental health and So I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: you think about the role of lessening stigma and worsening
Speaker 3: mental health and is there a connection. Is there a
Speaker 3: way in which the way that we're talking about about
Speaker 3: these things isn't helpful. Are we talking about them too much?
Speaker 3: Are we missing the boat, or is this just sort
Speaker 3: of a lagging indicator so to.
Speaker 1: Speak when we talk about the stigma. I think the
Speaker 1: only way to remove the stigma is that there's no
Speaker 1: one that has not had at some point their life
Speaker 1: mental distress. Right if somebody says I've never had any
Speaker 1: mental distress, then you know they're either lying or they're
Speaker 1: in denial. The range though, of mental distress starts with
Speaker 1: mild anxiety, and then deeper degrees of sadness, and then
Speaker 1: the psychosis, schizophrenia, and ultimately even suicidal ideation. So it's
Speaker 1: a broad spectrum of people who feel sad basically broad spectrum.
Speaker 1: We all have to first of all, when we remove
Speaker 1: the sigma. We can say one way to handle the
Speaker 1: stigma is everyone has had something for the other within
Speaker 1: this range of what we call depression or sadness. That's
Speaker 1: how we handle the stigma. Why we are not so
Speaker 1: successful as we are trying old methodologies. Okay. We try psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: we try medication, and they work, but in a very
Speaker 1: limited way. And treating depression is not just above the neck,
Speaker 1: you know. We think we have to treat something here
Speaker 1: in the brain. Okay, Treating depression is a total body experience.
Speaker 1: It includes good sleep, It includes exercise, It includes healthy relationships,
Speaker 1: includes a good diet, it includes mindfulness practices. How do
Speaker 1: you breathe, how do you relate? So it's a total
Speaker 1: body mind experience. All at the same time, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of new research on our autonomic nervous system, which
Speaker 1: is the part of our nervous system which is below
Speaker 1: our conscious awareness, and yet it dominates us. Okay. So
Speaker 1: there are two parts of the autonomic NERVs system. One
Speaker 1: is in the survival mode, which is called the sympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system, which is responsible for the fight of light response,
Speaker 1: and right now the world is on sympathetic overdrive, means stress.
Speaker 1: There's another part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system, which is getting prominence now, is called the rest, rejuvenate,
Speaker 1: and digest system. It basically is the healing system of
Speaker 1: the body. There's one dominant nerve. There's called the vagus nerve.
Speaker 1: And now we are recognizing that the vagus nerve can
Speaker 1: be activated through eye exercises, through facial expressions, through tone
Speaker 1: of voice, through singing, through chanting, through deep breathing, through
Speaker 1: heart awareness, through introceptive awareness, which means, how do we
Speaker 1: practice awareness of what's happening inside the body? Through love
Speaker 1: after through social engagement, and activating the biggest nerve is
Speaker 1: probably the healthiest way to get rid of depression because
Speaker 1: it enhances us social interactions, but it also makes us
Speaker 1: feel healthier and joyful, and anything we can do to
Speaker 1: improve that will be helpful in tackling this pandemic rather
Speaker 1: than focusing just above the head.
Speaker 3: Later in the book, you're talking about wholeness in general,
Speaker 3: and you talk about that a real picture of depression
Speaker 3: is many causes, many cures. That's it type thing, right,
Speaker 3: And I've certainly had depression at different points throughout my
Speaker 3: adult life, and that's been my experience. Is lots of
Speaker 3: different things cause it. It's hard to tweeze apart what
Speaker 3: they are, but it's multi causal and it has taken
Speaker 3: a variety of really just sort of trying everything from
Speaker 3: lots of different approaches as what's turned out to be
Speaker 3: the most robust sort of ongoing support for it. That
Speaker 3: also not only by taking that approach lessens depression, but
Speaker 3: just increases overall well being in so many categories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's so many new disciplines now, like nutrition
Speaker 1: and psychiatry. You know, some people will respond to just
Speaker 1: changes in their diet, and there's no universal way of
Speaker 1: predicting which diet has work for you. But now with
Speaker 1: the advent of AI and the ability to measure biomarkers
Speaker 1: and even things like hartrid vasiability and other things you know,
Speaker 1: sleep patterns, activity levels, breathing patterns, looking at metabolic rate,
Speaker 1: and using AI to actually correlate biological parameters with moods,
Speaker 1: we can have very specific intervention now since you mentioned that.
Speaker 1: By the way, in addition to digital dharma, which I'm
Speaker 1: holding in my hand right now, I have a new
Speaker 1: project called digitaldepok dot AI. It's not an app. You
Speaker 1: can go on your browser anytime and you can ask
Speaker 1: me a question in either Arabic or English or Spanish,
Speaker 1: and you'll get my voice answering your question, and you
Speaker 1: won't know the difference between me and my voice, but
Speaker 1: research ninety five of my books, thirty five thousand questions
Speaker 1: that I've answered over four decades, and everything I've done
Speaker 1: on YouTube or social media and give you a very
Speaker 1: precise answer. Try it to yourself afterwards, Eric digitallypod dot
Speaker 1: ai and see if you have a question about men, health,
Speaker 1: well being held in general and spirituality and tested out
Speaker 1: to yourself. It is a companion to digital Dolma.
Speaker 3: This better not be digital dp pok I'm talking to
Speaker 3: right now. I expect real deepak for these interviews. Well, question,
Speaker 3: it's crazy what these things can do. I just I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't have ninety three books, but I have hundreds
Speaker 3: of hours of podcast interviews and me talking, and I
Speaker 3: fed them to a similar thing and ask this clone
Speaker 3: of me questions and it answers like me, but even
Speaker 3: more coherent. It's stunning, it's frightening and amazing. It's not
Speaker 3: publicly available like digital depok. I keep him walled off.
Speaker 3: I think we.
Speaker 1: Should have a digital Eric publicly available based on your podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, maybe the digital Eric needs to interview the
Speaker 3: digital dpok and we need to see what kind of
Speaker 3: craziness comes exactly So let's talk about AI. That's your
Speaker 3: latest book, Digital Dharma, How AI can elevate spiritual intelligence
Speaker 3: and personal wellbeing. You say early in the book that
Speaker 3: the reason that this idea of AI being able to
Speaker 3: help with well being and spiritual awareness is that few
Speaker 3: of us would link the two words consciousness and machine together.
Speaker 3: Why do you feel that AI is a tool that
Speaker 3: can help us become more spiritually aware, can help our
Speaker 3: spiritual development and our personal wellbeing.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are very savvy and
Speaker 1: to what AI is, and because they're interested, but the
Speaker 1: general public in large does not understand what PEO call. Hey,
Speaker 1: the general public, And I would say, in one word,
Speaker 1: anybody who understands, yeah, will say it's not sentient, it's
Speaker 1: not even intelligent, it's not certainly not conscious. What it
Speaker 1: is is a large language model. And this is very
Speaker 1: important to understand because our entire experience of the human
Speaker 1: universe is based on language. About forty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: the human species Homo sapiens took a different road than
Speaker 1: all other species, including other hormonyms or hominids as they're called.
Speaker 1: There were eight different kinds of humans up to say,
Speaker 1: forty thousand years ago, when historians deep historians tell us
Speaker 1: something happened called the cognitive revolution, and that is Homo sapiens.
Speaker 1: You and I our ancestors. They took a different road
Speaker 1: than even the other horminids. We created a language for
Speaker 1: telling stories. All the other species and biological organisms have language,
Speaker 1: but the language is only for three things. Mating calls,
Speaker 1: mitchell reproduction, food calls, and danger calls. That's how the
Speaker 1: species survives, mating, reproduction, food, and avoiding danger. Then this
Speaker 1: particular species, which is us, we created the language of
Speaker 1: telling stories. There's a phrase. To be human is to
Speaker 1: have a story. And the first stories were gossip. And
Speaker 1: the most common stories today are gossip that never went away.
Speaker 1: But then there was another story. It was called money,
Speaker 1: another story called latitude longitude colonialism empires. The entire human
Speaker 1: experience is built on stories, which then became other stories,
Speaker 1: which we call models. The models of physics, the models
Speaker 1: of fat mathematics, the model of biology, the models of philosophy,
Speaker 1: the model of science, the model of technology. There's no
Speaker 1: human being who has access to all these stories. AI
Speaker 1: gives us access to the greatest minds of humanity. From
Speaker 1: the beginning of the hunter gatherer age, through the Greek Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: in the European Enlightenment, and the Eastern stages of the Upnishads.
Speaker 1: So there's no human being who can have access to
Speaker 1: this kind of knowledge base, and this gives us a
Speaker 1: direction for wisdom. So there's data, there's information, there's knowledge,
Speaker 1: and there's wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge that can uplift us,
Speaker 1: that can improve our lives, that can even ultimately create
Speaker 1: a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world. And
Speaker 1: AI is a tool. It's giving us all these roadmaps,
Speaker 1: but we have to remember that the map is not
Speaker 1: the territory, just in the same way as the menu
Speaker 1: is not the meal. You have to eat the meal,
Speaker 1: you can't eat the menu, and you have to throw
Speaker 1: travel these different paths that AI is pointing too. So
Speaker 1: AI is a tool for everything that you can possibly
Speaker 1: do to improve your well being and spiritual INTELI is
Speaker 1: there's a dark side to it, because that's a dark
Speaker 1: side is there with any technology, even the invention of fire,
Speaker 1: and then automobiles and then jet planes and the internet.
Speaker 1: You know, the divine and diabolical is the human story
Speaker 1: they go together. You started this conversation with that, you know,
Speaker 1: you can live a good life or you can live
Speaker 1: a bad life. They go together. You can't have one,
Speaker 1: just like you can't have up without down, hot without coal,
Speaker 1: you know, plus without minus, et cetera. All experiences. By contrast,
Speaker 1: it's your choice, which path do you want to travel?
Speaker 1: And you know, so far, the spiritual path has been
Speaker 1: the path less traveled. When we think of spiritual people,
Speaker 1: we think of luminaries, Jesus, Christ, Buddha, you know, Socrates,
Speaker 1: the stages of the nitials or of the Bible. But
Speaker 1: now that path is available to all of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's one of the things that people
Speaker 3: often miss about AI is the It is, in a
Speaker 3: very real sense us us right. I mean, it is
Speaker 3: the collective human knowledge, both in its great degree of
Speaker 3: profoundness and uh, you know nonsense. You know, AI has
Speaker 3: been trained on all of that.
Speaker 1: I think you'd pointed something very important. It's only been
Speaker 1: called it artificial intelligence, as stands for augmented human intelligence.
Speaker 3: And so what you've made an attempt to do is
Speaker 3: to use AI for good, which I think is wonderful.
Speaker 3: I've been actually, you and I are involved in another project.
Speaker 3: You don't know this, but Rebind dot Ai, of course
Speaker 3: I did a book for them on the dowdy ching.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's wonderful. Yeah, yes, Rebind I did a book
Speaker 1: on Buddhist thought, so yeah, it goes together with your yeah, cudging.
Speaker 3: You know what I loved about that project is that
Speaker 3: it was a chance to use this technology, like you said,
Speaker 3: for good. I'm a pretty big believer that the horse
Speaker 3: doesn't go back in the barn once it's out right,
Speaker 3: and so then the question is what can I do
Speaker 3: with a horse that's good and trying to figure that out.
Speaker 3: I think that most of us are just experimenting right now,
Speaker 3: trying to figure out like what is good, what is helpful,
Speaker 3: what works.
Speaker 1: I believe that technology is part of the evolution of
Speaker 1: the human species, and once the technology comes, it can't
Speaker 1: go back. Just like a child that's born. You can't
Speaker 1: return to the womb. It's there. You can't unlearn language
Speaker 1: once you've learned it. You can't unlearn how to walk
Speaker 1: once you learned how to walk. So the same thing
Speaker 1: was true for technology. Either you adapt and use it
Speaker 1: to the best, or you become irrelevant. That's a Diamondian principle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so one of the things that we do know
Speaker 3: about AI, and I think maybe people make a bigger
Speaker 3: deal out of it than it actually is, and yet
Speaker 3: it's real. It happens, is this tendency of AI to
Speaker 3: sort of hallucinate things. When you were working on Digital Dharma,
Speaker 3: you know, to what extent did you find AI things
Speaker 3: that turned out not to be useful? Obviously in the
Speaker 3: book you've put in the prompts and the things that
Speaker 3: worked and that were useful were you as you were
Speaker 3: going through that also discarding things where you were like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, that's you know, that isn't quite right
Speaker 3: or that isn't useful.
Speaker 1: Large language models that are out there, whether it's chatchpt
Speaker 1: or it's whatever the other one is being, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and I use all of them. When you pose a
Speaker 1: question that has never been asked before, or a question
Speaker 1: that's not familiar even though it's coached and language that
Speaker 1: is not familiar, then the AI makes up the answer.
Speaker 1: And that's what hallucination is. And you know, there are
Speaker 1: many times that happens. It's not that common, by the way,
Speaker 1: but it's something that will improve over time. But that's
Speaker 1: why I created my digital Twin. I would not access
Speaker 1: any other material right now other than the material that
Speaker 1: I have created over four or five decades. There's no
Speaker 1: possibility of hallucination if you go to say digitallypakt ai.
Speaker 1: That is what differentiates our AI from other AIS right now. So, yes,
Speaker 1: hallucination is a problem, but it's being understood and it
Speaker 1: will ultimately be solved. But if you restrict the search
Speaker 1: engines to just a particular domain, then hallucination is unlikely.
Speaker 1: And as we speak now, there are things being developed
Speaker 1: called small language models instead of large language models. So
Speaker 1: you have AI just for say genetics, AI just for neuroscience,
Speaker 1: just for mathematics, where the chance of illucination will be
Speaker 1: much less.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's where a lot of really interesting
Speaker 3: things yet to come are is exactly in that area
Speaker 3: where we say, instead of you being trained on everything
Speaker 3: that it can suck up, we're going to train you
Speaker 3: on like you did, I'm going to train you on
Speaker 3: my books, which means if you're going to say something,
Speaker 3: it is going to be something I have already said,
Speaker 3: because I've sort of hemmed you in here to a
Speaker 3: certain degree. Yeah, So you talk about that the guru
Speaker 3: role can be renovated for our times, using AI say
Speaker 3: more about that.
Speaker 1: Traditionally in India, the guru was a spiritual guide and
Speaker 1: also embodied the wisdom that the guru imparted. Today the
Speaker 1: whole realm of gurus has become more cultish. It's more
Speaker 1: about the guru than about the wisdom. And sometimes the
Speaker 1: guru and the wizdom important. You know, I can recycle
Speaker 1: ancient wisdom, there's no problem with that. I can speak
Speaker 1: the language am I embodying it is the traditional guru.
Speaker 1: So what AI does now, because it has access to
Speaker 1: all the wisdom, it gets the cultish, you know, guru
Speaker 1: worship out of the way, which I think is more
Speaker 1: German for our times, you know. And I've always felt
Speaker 1: that even when I took it that. You know, people
Speaker 1: who practice say religion like Christianity or Buddhism, you know,
Speaker 1: and they think of Jesus as the Messiah, which is
Speaker 1: very appropriate to their religion. But if I was a
Speaker 1: follower of Jesus and Jesus was pointing to the moon,
Speaker 1: I would look at the moon instead of worshiping the finger. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is what happens with us. We like the
Speaker 1: experience and the wisdom that is being important to us,
Speaker 1: and then we make the person who's the messenger the
Speaker 1: divine entity, which that messenger may or may not be
Speaker 1: a divine entity. That's fine. But if Jesus had an experience,
Speaker 1: I want to learn how to have that experience, Okay,
Speaker 1: rather than just you know, believing his experience. Buddha had
Speaker 1: an experience, I want to know what that experience is.
Speaker 1: How can I get that experience rather than being a
Speaker 1: worshiper or Buddha. Now that's your choice. You can do
Speaker 1: that too. You can worship the messenger, but can you
Speaker 1: actually get the message and can you embody it in
Speaker 1: your own life? And I think, heyah, it helps us
Speaker 1: do that. Hi.
Speaker 3: Everyone. One of the things that I know many of
Speaker 3: you struggle with is anxiety, and very recently I shared
Speaker 3: some tips on managing anxiety in our newsletter. Specifically, I
Speaker 3: shared a practice on clarifying your values. In the practice,
Speaker 3: you write down one or two of your core values
Speaker 3: and then identify one action step that aligns with them.
Speaker 3: I find that taking one positive action towards things that
Speaker 3: matter to me really helps reduce anxiety. Also, I have
Speaker 3: a reflection question, what positive experiences have you had today
Speaker 3: that you could focus on instead of your anxiety. Every Wednesday,
Speaker 3: I send out a newsletter called a Weekly Bye to
Speaker 3: Wisdom for a wiser, happier You, And in it I
Speaker 3: give tips and reflections like you just got and it's
Speaker 3: an opportunity for you to pause, reflect, and practice. It's
Speaker 3: a way to stay focused on what's important and meaningful
Speaker 3: to you. Each month we focus on a theme. This
Speaker 3: month's theme is anxiety, and next month we'll be focusing
Speaker 3: on acceptance. To sign up for these bits of weekly wisdom,
Speaker 3: go to Goodwolf dot org me slash newsletter. In essence,
Speaker 3: what you're saying is that AI allows us, in this case,
Speaker 3: to separate the message from the messenger. Would that be
Speaker 3: a way of saying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It does, and not only to separate
Speaker 1: the message, to embody the message if it resonates with us. Now,
Speaker 1: in spiritual traditions, the message is actually very simple. It's wisdom,
Speaker 1: courage and embodying that and compassion. Wisdom, courage, compassion embodying that.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you look at the spiritual experience
Speaker 1: these days, that it's very fashionable for people to say
Speaker 1: I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. It's kind of sounds cool,
Speaker 1: But it's the religious experience and the spiritual experience are identical.
Speaker 1: It's finding an identity, which is transcend space and time,
Speaker 1: your true identity outside of space and time, timeless, eternal
Speaker 1: soul or whatever. Number one. Number two spontaneous ethical morality, truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity.
Speaker 1: That's the second, and third is loss of the fear
Speaker 1: of death. This is common to all the religions. So, okay,
Speaker 1: the experience. Now people forget that that's the experience. They
Speaker 1: just like the message, so they love the messenger, which
Speaker 1: is appropriate too, you know, because the message sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: But how can I have that same experience? How can
Speaker 1: I find my true self? How can I have spontaneous
Speaker 1: ethical behavior, not imposed I don't have to follow the
Speaker 1: ten commandments, but spontaneous ethical behavior. And thirdly, how can
Speaker 1: I lose the fear of death? Because that's another part
Speaker 1: of the whole journey, spiritual journey, something called the dark
Speaker 1: Knight of the soul. So you know, you and I
Speaker 1: are anyone out there is ultimately going to get old,
Speaker 1: considered old already because I'm seventy eight chronologically not biologically old.
Speaker 1: You have infirmity, and then there's death that will never
Speaker 1: go away. No matter how healthy you are, no matter
Speaker 1: how much money you have, no matter what kind of
Speaker 1: relationships you have, you will get old, you will get infirmity,
Speaker 1: and you will die. That's where spirituality comes in.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take as a slightly different direction for
Speaker 3: a second, but this is a question that's been on
Speaker 3: my mind lately as somebody who is chronologically also getting older.
Speaker 3: Everybody's yes, I guess that's true all of us. I
Speaker 3: think there are different points in our lives where it
Speaker 3: becomes a little bit more kind of in your face,
Speaker 3: so to speak. And I was the sort of person
Speaker 3: that thought that I didn't have much fear of death.
Speaker 3: Something has happened in the last couple years where the
Speaker 3: fact that I'm going to get old, I am getting old,
Speaker 3: am going to die has become more salient. Do you
Speaker 3: feel like sometimes that the only way to truly get
Speaker 3: through that fee is to actually encounter it for real?
Speaker 1: Yes? And somehow I was lucky enough to have that
Speaker 1: important to me in my childhood. You know, my mother
Speaker 1: would say that since everybody is headed in the direction
Speaker 1: of dusty death, to be in denial of it is
Speaker 1: actually to create more fear, but to be aware that
Speaker 1: death is stalking you every moment of your life. You
Speaker 1: look behind and the Prince of death is behind you.
Speaker 1: Then you look behind again and he's closer. You know.
Speaker 1: There was some French filoss when he said, I forget
Speaker 1: the name right now. He said, we're all on death throw.
Speaker 1: The only uncertainty is the method of execution and the
Speaker 1: length of reprief So I'm very conscious of the Prince
Speaker 1: of Death behind me and getting closer. That makes every
Speaker 1: moment absolutely very precious, because when I die, particular storyline
Speaker 1: will die, but not the consciousness that weaves infinite stories
Speaker 1: for itself. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like I said, it's the sort of thing that I've
Speaker 3: thought a lot about, and if maybe it's just looking
Speaker 3: over my shoulder and saying like he's gaining grounds caused
Speaker 3: me to be a little bit less nonchalant about it
Speaker 3: than I was before. But I have also been sort
Speaker 3: of framing it in the sense of like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: now is a new chance to reckon with it yet again, right,
Speaker 3: because it's going to keep.
Speaker 1: Coming, and it's to ask yourself, who am I? You know?
Speaker 1: Am I that wirtlised egg, or am I that baby
Speaker 1: or toddler or teenager, young adult, mature dot all the
Speaker 1: way to dusty dead. In fact, if you identified with
Speaker 1: any one of those stories, then you are actually denying
Speaker 1: something much more profound. Who you are is not your
Speaker 1: current storyline. In fact, we worry about children that don't
Speaker 1: develop right. If your child didn't develop into teenage years,
Speaker 1: you would worry. If you were stuck at teenage years,
Speaker 1: you would worry. Also, So evolution is part of our journey,
Speaker 1: and change is part of our experience. And actually change
Speaker 1: and flow is what consciousness does. And we want to
Speaker 1: get stuck at a particular stage of development, which would
Speaker 1: be very wontersome. We would all be frozen mummies in
Speaker 1: a universe that would be a museum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about something else you talk about in
Speaker 3: the new book, where you talk about two companions. I
Speaker 3: am it explain that for us.
Speaker 1: That analogy is taken from an ancient aphorism in the
Speaker 1: Vedantic tradition, where you have the metaphor of two birds
Speaker 1: and they're identical. The birds are identical. One bird is
Speaker 1: enjoying the fruits of pleasure and pain. So you see
Speaker 1: one bird pecking it fruit and basically going through life
Speaker 1: pleasure of pain. Both you can't have one with it
Speaker 1: and the other is watching silently, not participating, and there
Speaker 1: so we have these roles. One is we are totally
Speaker 1: immersed in the role, and that's our ego, identity or
Speaker 1: personality or whatever we think our self images created by
Speaker 1: social constructs. But there's a deeper awareness that is the
Speaker 1: background against which this change occurs. Right now, people may
Speaker 1: be listening to us or watching us on the screen, okay,
Speaker 1: but what is really here that is not changing. This
Speaker 1: program is changing, our conversation is changing. After you finish
Speaker 1: with me, you'll have another program. There could be infinite
Speaker 1: number of programs on this screen. These days, it's easier
Speaker 1: to understand that you know you have Netflix, and you
Speaker 1: have Amazon, you have this, that you can have an
Speaker 1: infinite number of programs that are all changing. But this
Speaker 1: screen is a constant. So it is the constant non
Speaker 1: change in the midst of the changing scenery. You are
Speaker 1: not the scenery. You are the seer in which the
Speaker 1: scenery appears. That's a profound spiritual insight that the more
Speaker 1: you identified with the scenery, you'd be overwhelmed by it,
Speaker 1: which is the common condition in the world right now.
Speaker 1: But if you actually identified with the seer, which is
Speaker 1: the non changing factor in the midst of the changing scenery,
Speaker 1: you would have peace, equanimity. You would recognize that it's
Speaker 1: your destiny to play an infinity of roles, but you're
Speaker 1: not the roles you play.
Speaker 3: And so the eye is the bird that's pecking at
Speaker 3: the pleasure and pain, and then it is the bird
Speaker 3: that's watching. What that phrase, It is a strange phrase
Speaker 3: to try and identify with.
Speaker 1: I know, but it is that non local being or
Speaker 1: spirit that you are are you know John Wheeler, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest modern scientists, He said, we are the
Speaker 1: bit of the it. The it is not changing, and
Speaker 1: we are the bits of the it that constantly change
Speaker 1: and transform.
Speaker 3: So we are nearly out of time. But I wanted
Speaker 3: to give you a second to just tell us briefly
Speaker 3: about something called the Sages and Scientists Symposium that you
Speaker 3: have coming up.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking that question. So September thirteenth, fourteenth,
Speaker 1: and fifteenth, at Sanders Theater, which houses one thousand people,
Speaker 1: we are bringing together for three days thought leaders in
Speaker 1: the field of wellbeing, in the field of humanity, arianism,
Speaker 1: and in the field of astrobiology. So it's about the
Speaker 1: future of wellbeing, the future of humanity, and the future
Speaker 1: of the cosmos. You may or may not know the
Speaker 1: current astrobiology, which is a new discipline. There are departments
Speaker 1: of astrobiology many universities, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, Arizona that
Speaker 1: are now positing that there are sixty billion habitable planets
Speaker 1: in the Milky Way galaxy in the same way as
Speaker 1: you and I are advanced civilizations and there are two
Speaker 1: trillion galaxies. So this is actually current science. You can
Speaker 1: look it up, go to AI and whatever CHARGEBD and
Speaker 1: look it up. So this is a very surprising thing
Speaker 1: right now that you know we are part of our
Speaker 1: past tapestry of life that seeds the entire universe. That's
Speaker 1: the finale of the conference, but it starts with the
Speaker 1: future of well being, genetics, epigenetics, crisper, gene editing, messenger, RNA,
Speaker 1: all of that. Then it goes into you know, how
Speaker 1: can we create peace and social and economic justice, How
Speaker 1: can we tackle climate change? How can we create health
Speaker 1: and well being? That's the future of humanity and finding
Speaker 1: the future of the was so we invite anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to attend Sages and Scientists dot org.
Speaker 3: If I were not going to be in Europe at
Speaker 3: that time, I would I would be seeing you there.
Speaker 3: But it sounds like a wonderful conference. We'll have links
Speaker 3: in the show notes and if you just search Sages
Speaker 3: and Scientists and Deepak, I'm sure you'll find it. Deepak,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on. It's a pleasure
Speaker 3: to see you again, job to talk to you. Thanks,
Speaker 3: And in about eight minutes from now, when you release
Speaker 3: your next book, we will maybe do it again.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, it's coming the next book.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, I'm sure it.
Speaker 1: Is tricks unmailing the matrix.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, take care of Deepak. Thank you bite.
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