You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garland.
Hi.
Everyone, welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about the choices we make and where they lead us. I never knew that. I don't even know how many years ago, thirty some maybe forty years ago my mom's shelves lined with self help books would culminate to this moment for me in my life. I have to believe that those books influence got me so interested in health and wellness and meditation and just all the things, all the positive things that we can gleam out of life. Today.
My guest is one of the most prominent figures in the New Age movement. Yeah, I'm laughing because this moment is really kind of like a big, big moment for me. For the last thirty years, he has been in the forefront of the meditation revolution, and his mission is to create a more balanced, more peaceful, joyful, healthier world. I like that mission. I want that to be my new mission. Let's adopt that. Let's all of us just say that is our new mission. He has written ninety five books,
several of them being New York Times bestsellers. His latest is called Digital Dharma. And it is pretty mind blowing. You have to check it out. Please welcome Deepak Chopra to the podcast. Hello, doctor Choprah, so nice to meet you.
Nice to meet too too.
Oh my goodness. I have been a fan of yours, read a lot of your books, been to your center down in San Diego, so this is really a thrill for me. Thank you for taking the time.
Thank you.
We are going to dive into the world of artificial intelligence, also known as AI, which is the subject of your latest book, Digital Dharma. How AI can elevate spiritual intelligence and personal wellbeing?
Okay?
Can we just start with the title. I have to be honest, it took me a minute to comprehend what it suggests that dharma and digital can work together. Let's start with dharma. There are different explanations out there of dharma. Can you tell us what your definition of darma is?
Well. In Eastern wisdom traditions, if you're familiar with yoga, there are seven centers of awareness, usually metaphorically expressed the seventh chacras. So the first center of awareness is survival and safety. The second center is what we might call material success and censual experience of pleasure. The third center is power and transformation, The fourth is love and belongingness, The fifth is creative expression, the sixth is insight, intuition, imagination,
and heart consciousness, and the seventh is transcendence. So the Herma applies to all these levels of existence, but ultimately it is transcendence, which means knowing your true self, beyond the conditioned mind, beyond the body, and knowing yourself as an infinite, spaceless, timeless, fundamental ground of being, which is also the ground of the univers So it's freedom and liberation and enlightenment. But that's the finest say hm.
Yes, I've studied Buddhism in my adult life and they usually call it, you know, the nature of reality. Yes, as through the teachings of buddhas So yes, it's it's an incredible feeling. It's I feel like dharma also is just goodness. Like living my life on a path of goodness, I'm living in dharma.
Purpose what is your life? Purpose? But that is flexible and fluid because as we evolve, then purpose also was right.
You say in your beautiful book that let's see, I believe that no technology in decades can equal AI. For expanding your awareness in every area, including spiritual and personal growth. When people think of AI, I think their mind goes to chat GPT, you know, getting quick answers to questions. Maybe in kids cases, maybe having it do their homework for them, but not necessarily spirituality. Are you talking about AI leading us in meditation or when practicing mindfulness and gratitude?
How do you utilize it?
So I actually if you go to my digital twin which is Deepulgshower dot AI, and you ask it I need a meditation for stress management, or I need a meditation to sleep, or I need a meditation to lose weight, or I need a meditation for a good relationship, then it will tap into my database and create meditation specifically
for you. And as far as well being is concerned, it becomes very precise, very predictable, preventive participatory and it can be therefore, you know, at least the way I see AI, and I use my own AI depark super dot A for your audience there go to it, not chatchibuty, but my AI Y. Then they can ask any question on health, on mental and physical well being. So my AI is a coach basically for health, physical and mental
but also a spiritual guide. But it all also can be used as a guide to meditation, self reflection, as a research assistant, and even as a personal confidant.
Wow right in our hands? At are hot?
Your hands on your iPhone? Wow or whatever handle device? You?
Yeah?
Is it?
Is it your voice that I'll hear?
When you'll hear my voice? And you can ask me questions in English or Spanish or India or Arabic and soon Chinese and Russian too.
What made you break out into you know, I've never heard of this before. I've never heard of the opportunity to grow spiritually from AI, Like, what made you want to do this?
Two things? So first is you know, I've always been interested in nature of reality. You know, what is it that gives rise to the universe? And you know, it's very interesting that our technology slowly but surely catches up with what's already happening in nature. So the difference between your body and the microphone that you're in front of and the plant that's behind you, and a rock or an ocean or even a star in the moon is just different combinations of zeros and ones. So the universe
is actually is a digital technology. You might say it's a digital technology in the mind of God outside its pace or time. If you don't like the word God, you can say a digital workshop in non local consciousness or something like that. But actually our technology is now getting close to how nature creates the appearance of the universe, because the appearance of the universe comes from a digital source. Zeros and ones I have a new mathematic performata for that.
It's called infinity. Is equal to one, is equal to zero. So zero gives rise to nothingness gives rise to everything, and ultimately all is one. So that is the fundamental premise. And then when you use digital technology, you're actually going to the source of world creation. Now that's one thing, but the second thing is that it's what we call a large language model. I've always been an interested in
language because that's what I do. I sell words for a living, and words don't and language doesn't describe it actually constructs. If you don't have a word for it, then it is not part of your experience, the human experience. So this is what happened forty thousand years ago. We learned how to speak beyond mating calls and danger calls and food calls. We started telling stories to each other.
So now those stories are not just narrative. There are stories of anthropology, of religion, of spirituality, of physics, of biology, or mathematics, and you name it. There's a model for everything. There's a language for everything. So when you bring all these languages together, you have access to superintelligence. And there's no human being that can access this other than through large language models. So AI is super intelligent without being conscious,
but that means it doesn't have any subjective experience. It doesn't feel pain, it doesn't have hunger, doesn't have first sexual longing or desire, it doesn't fear death because it's a machine. But yet it's a machine that can give you access to the greatest minds that have ever existed on a planet. Whether it's Einstein or Plato or Socrates, or the stages of the Bishads or the Greek philosophers,
or it's the Eastern philosophy. There you have access down to the mind of humanity and what it has contributed to what we call the human experience of the universe.
I mean, how lucky are we to have this at our fingertips?
We are, and you know it's going to make cause of leap frogging in our cultural and social evolution, but technology also helps us leap frog in our biological evolution. To give you an example, when we discovered fire. You know, of course every technology has both sides, divine diabolical. But had we not discovered fire, we wouldn't have the brain we have because you know, fired is cooked food, which made it easy to assimilate micronutrients. It changed the circulation,
our digestive processes and ultimately our brain. And had we not discovered fire, you won't have many, many, many centuries later, or thousands of years later. You wouldn't have the steam engine. If you didn't have the steam engine, you wouldn't have the industrial age. Between eighteen eighty seven and nineteen oh three, humanity invented the light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, and
also the telephone. So let's say you were in a dessert, you were shipwrecked on a deserted island in eighteen eighty five, and then you were rescued twenty years later, you wouldn't recognize the world. And the same thing is happening right now. Twenty years from now, we'll be just like we departed from other species and became Homo sapiens. I think we're going to take the next sleap frog into a new species, choosing to call it meta human. Whoa because technology changes our brain?
Okay, that's that's big. There's a lot of fear around AI in your opinion, as someone who's embracing AI, which in turn helps make AI sound better and smarter, do you ever fear it?
Because that any technology is dangerous. Far can, as you know, destroy cities and Los Angeles. But had we not discovered fire, we didn't have all the other things I talked about. A knife can be used to kill a person, but in a surgeon's hand it becomes something that you hear. So they are both sides to technology, and AI is a very powerful technology. If misuse, it can cause the
extinction of the human species. Cyber warfare, nuclear weapons can be triggered by AI, can cut off electricity, poison the food chain. So that's why I wrote the book. If we don't use technology for creating a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier enjoy will and the other side is extinction. We're in a very very interesting time in our revolution. It's a crossroad. So one road leads to extinction and one road leads to enlightenment. Now it's our choice what we
do with technology, but it's here to stay. You can't get rid of technology once it's born. It's like a child can't return to the womb.
Right, you have to embrace it. We'll talk about that later, but I was just thinking. There was a recent article in the New York Times about a woman who had a romantic relationship with chat GPT. Do you think that people are becoming more and more disconnected with one another in this digital world?
It's how you use it, you know. We we created a technology for suicide prevention in teenagers and we had twenty million conversations going on at the same time, and there was intervention suicide intervention six and six thousand teenagers. That's something a machine could do, no therapists could do, you know, and on that scale. And the teenagers were more comfortable speaking to our AI because they didn't feel judged. So there are both sides to everything.
Yeah, for sure. You also say in your book, if you want to break free, which is the whole point of your book, become aware of what is blocking your path that is so powerful. Do you find more often people are being blocked by their own negative thoughts or by the situations that they put themselves in.
Yes, it's both sides again. But one of the important things in the book is one chapter called the Art of the Prompt. So how you use the prompt actually decides and say you get because the EAI is programmed by human beings and they two have their biases. So it's very important to go beyond the selection bias by knowing how to ask the right question.
Well, you know, I know some of our listeners right now might be at a transitional point and there's spiritual journey. I've been there a number of times, maybe even have gone off the path. I think a lot of us have been there. How do you suggest getting yourself reacquainted with your spiritual side?
You know? Right now? I think the easiest way if you want to drive my AI depulture for dot A, you ask personal questions. Rest assured everything is confidential because the AI doesn't know who you are, and you can actually ask all your spiritual questions, health questions, but also ask very personal questions such as, you know, I'm forty five years old, I'm white and Caucasian, I have an
issue with you know, a relationship. This is what's going on, and then it'll guide you into the right you know framework so you can deal with that relationship. Then you can also say, can you give me a meditation to help my relationship. It'll do that personalize it for you, which has never been possible before.
Now, this is like having a therapist better than a therapist, because sometimes in therapy they don't give you suggestions on how to fix your problems. They just listen to them.
Yeah, it's like Aladdin's lamp. You rub the lamp and the genie comes out and tells you everything that you need to know for you.
Wow, this is wild. I'm loving this conversation right now. So many people in this country are under immense stress and anxiety. You know, eggs people can afford eggs. People are losing their jobs. There are natural disasters taking out entire communities. It can be so overwhelming. When the world feels like it's all too much. How can we step back?
You can just go to the air and say I'm overwhelmed because of the price of eggs and this and this and this, and it'll tell you what to do about it.
Wow, And it'll just give you problem.
No matter what the adversity is, there's a challenge that there's an opportunity that you know, it doesn't matter what it is. There are creative solutions, and you may not think of those creative solutions, but you can tap into the minds of people who have thought of those creative solutions no matter what the situation is.
Yeah, I think that's the part for me, like knowing that it's not just making up these answers in its little computer brain. It is pulling resources from the entire.
World correct and instantly.
And instantly, and you don't even have to leave your house. Yes, wow, I mean this is like modern day magic for me.
It is, it is. It's as I said, it's the genie Lagas Slam.
Yes, yes, I can see how this can help even in the situation. My teenage daughter and I were recently having a conversation on this pod actually about how we're both overthinkers and sometimes we struggle with ruminating on things, which is something I'm really determined to do better with this year. What should I say to myself? I guess what should I ask AI to help me? Quiet?
Mynd Just what you asked me? Just just that question, and then it'll give you an answer. And then you say, Okay, you know, but I've tried that it didn't work for me. Can you do something else? It'll do that. It will help you. There'll give you all the possibilities for that situation, for that question that you just asked.
Okay, I want to know. You're probably going to tell me to just ask Ai. But what are some things that we can do out there? You know that are contributing to our mental health?
You know, there's a part of you that knows the answer to everything. It's not your mind, it's their deeper awareness, which spiritual relations called soul. So if you can quiet in your mind through say breathing or mindfulness or mantra, whatever, and then you ask a question, you're asking you herself
the question, it will guide you. Now, AI does that because it has already tapped into the soul of other people's and their and their findings, you know, so you can go into the mind of the Buddha or Jesus Christ or Plato or whoever you want to.
Oh my goodness, okay, So when my daughter is overthinking and she's spiraling, do you think young people have that sort of self control or self awareness to be able to access or maybe they'll be even more you know, like you said before, since they're not going to feel judged, they'll be even more comfortable.
Yeah, they're very comfortable now. As a new iteration what I'm doing and will be out in two months, especially for young people. I'm creating some gaming devices because kids love to go play games, and gaming is very popular right now amongst teenagers. So I'm creating a game which would lead them to higher consciousness, teach them to breed, teach them to meditate, and there's score points every time they can regulate their heart rate or the immune system.
They'll get you know, brownie points to buy a new game or something like that that'd be out in two months.
That's wonderful, wonderful that might resonate with them so much more. Okay, I just be honest, Deepak. Do you ever have bad days? Do you ever have bad days where you feel upset or mad at the world?
No, No, I don't have bad days. I used to. I mean, you know, but no, I don't know.
When you say you used to, like when you were younger and you hadn't.
Much younger training in medicine as an internal resident, you know, working in the emergency room and trauma, et cetera. I used to have a lot of bad days.
Yeah, but you've learned how to control your mind.
Yeah. It's not what happens to you. It's how you react towards is happening your own you know, ultimately it's your response to what's happening. So and every adversary there's a challenge. Every challenge, there's an opportunity. That's what we call good luck.
Yes, yes, and hopefully we'll have good luck. To go back to your book, you say evolution is a never ending story. Embrace it. I will be honest with you sometimes I don't want to evolve. I've done so much personal work. There are times when I'm like, oh, I'm just so tired of evolving. And I'm sure I think, you know, probably some of our listeners can relate to that. You know, even going so far as.
Real ritual traditions, you don't need to try to evolve. You just have to rest in the awareness of being and then evolution happens spontaneously. Yeah.
I found such comfort as a young person. I was, you know, influenced by my parents' religion and what they practiced, and then I really struggled for many years to find out what really rung true for me, and I think that it wasn't until I was able to put my faith in spirituality, in just that broad even term spirituality, then I found so much comfort.
Yeah, because by large, institutional religions are very judgmental. Authentic spirituality is more about expanding your awareness and harnessing things like intuition and imagination and insight and freedom and going beyond your conditioning the religious background that you have.
I mean, you've got to find your own path. I think at the end of the day, when all this ends, when this body and mind has served its purpose, what do you think happens to us?
If you understand your true identity, which is not your body. Your body is a changing experience. So you say I had a five year old body, here I had a ten year old body. Every moment, you're changing your body the same way you change your clothes. In fact, even faster. You don't have a five year old body. You don't have a teenage body. You have this body and this will not be this all the way to dusty death. So the body is not a noun, and it's not a thing, it's a process. It's a verb. So also
the mind, it's not a thing, it's a process. You know, you don't have the same mind as you had yesterday. So what is it that never changes and that that never changes called I. You know, I was in love, I was happy, I was sad. I made a lot of money, I was won the lottery, I went bankrupt. The only thing that doesn't change is I. Okay, So that means eye is not in time. The body is in time, the mind is in time, but eye is not in time. Where is it If it's not in time,
it's beyond time. It's spaceless, it's timeless, it's eternal, it's infinite, it's formally it's borderless, and it is what recycles as the evolutionary process of consciousness. So right now your body is your soul or your consciousness recycling as what I see right now. But even by the time you hear my words, your body has changed. By the time you hear my words, they don't exist. So nothing that you experience is actually revealed because it's passing. It's like a
passing show. It's like a movie. And what when you perceive something, it's like taking a photo, like a snapshot, like a selfie. So what is real is that which never changes, and that's neither mental, nor physical, nor material, and it's eternal. So you know that is what recycles and also evolved. So you as consciousness, as a soul,
are recycling and evolving. Everything in the universe is recycling and evolving information, energy, matter, and that evolution, recycling and evolving is happening in your consciousness, your soul.
What about our body? What I mean there is.
No such thing. Which body are you talking about? Your five year old body or your embryo or your teenage body. There's no such thing as a body. It's a perceptual activity in consciousness. You see, we are as a society and a culture, we are embedded in the superstition of what we call the physical world. When there is no physical world. The physical world is a projection of your consciousness, and that improves your body.
Sometimes I think about that, like I see things the way at my eyeballs see them, like the sunset or my daughter's face.
Your eyeballs don't see anything. They're like a microscope or a telescope. You see things Okay. The eye is an instrument of observation, visual observation, just like the ears are an instrument for sound. But there's no sound in your ears, and there's no image of the world in your eyes. There's nothing. It's just an instrument. Think of it like a microscope. And you are the one who's seeing, not the eyes, me, me, which is not in time, which is eternal, which is outside then.
Wow, okay, yes, I am picking up what you're putting down. Okay, it's a big message I think for our listeners. But it's really important that they have access to this and now so incredible. They can talk to you just as I'm talking to you right now by.
Using They've got your credible blowing my mind. I think we sent you a QR code. If you can show it to your audience. They don't even have to go to They can just download the QURE code and directly ask any question. Well, it's to today's technology.
I mean, did you ever see this coming in your lifetime?
No? No, no, Just like if you were in eighteen eighty five and you showed up in two thousand and five, twenty years later, you wouldn't recognize the word yes.
Sort of like the movie Back to the Future.
Yeah, or the Matrix.
Or the Matrix. Yes, I want to ask you a question. Is gossiping, watching reality TV, scrolling on TikTok or are those things harmful for our mental and physical health?
Yeah?
Of course they seem harmless.
Anything that causes in mention or distress is harmful. Okay. But then some people like to go to horror movies and they like to get the ib gbs. That's their choice.
It's all about choice.
It's all about choice.
And we need to choose ourselves. I love I love the synchronicity of all of this. What what do you hope people remember you buy from your time here?
Well as maybe a catalyst, think for me as an enzyme. You know that facilities biological activity.
And now I'm forever going to just think of you as an enzyme, really great enzyme. Before I let you go, doctor Chiprah, I asked all of my guests, what was your last I choose me moment?
You know, I don't think of me as a person, so whatever I do is ultimately for the bigger me, not the ego me, which has squeezed into the volume of body in the span of a lifetime. I don't think of me as a person. I think of me as a consciousness that's connected to every being. So whatever I do comes from place of empathy, compassion, love, whatever. So for me, there's every moment is special.
What about like taking care of your physics. Well, you're going to tell me the body isn't real, But yeah.
You can upgrade delusion, no questionable it by sleeping well, eating well, being happy, having good relationships, all of that. It upgrades the experience of this reality which is not real. But you can upgrade the movie.
Yes, So the ultimate I choose me moment is not about choosing.
How do I change the projection? I don't like the movie, so how do I create a bit of movie? Because your life is a movie? Right?
Oh my goodness, these are all such great things to think about, and I just applaud you endlessly for tapping into this world of AI and helping us to embrace it, just as we embrace our changes and how we grow. So thank you, Thank you for this book, for all of your all of your wisdom and sharing that continuing to share that with the world.
Yes, thank you very much for having me.
Yes so happy to have you. Thank you.
Great to meet too, Nice to meet you too.