← New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
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- [00:00]
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The fact that AI can cause human extinction is a distinct possibility and might happen. That's why I'm using AI to improve spiritual intelligence, because I believe we have another option. And that other option is to use AI to create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world.
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Keep watching to learn more.
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For early access to our videos and livestream events, sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit, the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu Book 4 in the.
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New Thinking Allowed Dialogue series is Charles T. Tart, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
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Thinking Allowed Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
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Hello and welcome. I'm Emmy Vadnais, co host with Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we'll be exploring the age of AI, Dharma and reality with my guest Dr. Deepak Chopra, who is a consciousness explorer and a world renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Dr. Chopra is co founder of Deepak Chopra AI, his AI twin and well being advisor. He also co founded Cyberhuman AI, a transformative suite of personalized health and wellbeing solutions. He is a Clinical professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a Senior Scientist with Gallup Organization. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is author of over 95 books, translated into over 43 languages and including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Time magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of their top 100 most influential people. He is author of the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Quantum Healing, the Book of Secrets, you Are the Universe, Life After Death, the Way of the wizard and his most recent book, Digital How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal well Being that we'll be discussing today. If you enjoy this program, please like subscribe, press the Bell icon and share. Dr. Chopra is joining us from New York. Now I'll switch over to the Internet video. Welcome Deepak. It is a great pleasure and honor to have you with me on New Thinking Allowed today.
- [03:45]
A
Thank you. I'm so happy to be with you.
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B
In your most recent book, Digital Dharma, you share how AI can help people with personal transformation and be a partner in their own personal evolution. I'm wondering if you can share how AI can help us be connected to our own personal path and our true selves.
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Well, as I wrote in my book Digital Dharma, which is how to use AI for emotional and spiritual intelligence, AI is a tool. And the way I use it is I use it for personal reflection, asking myself questions, but getting input from AI on the answers I intuit, just. Just to make sure that I'm not saying anything that is not factual. So I use it for reflection. I use AI as a personal assistant. I use it as a research tool, and I use it as a spiritual guide. Not that AI can give me the experience of fundamental reality or give me the experience even of transcendence, because AI is basically data and information and knowledge bank. AI does have wisdom, as far as I can tell right now, but AI can point me in the right direction. So I have say, I'm thinking about idealism as taught by Plato, and then idealism as taught by or as expressed by modern philosophers. I can go to AI and say, what's the difference between the analytic idealism of modern philosophers and Plato's allegory of the caves and idealism, because Plato is the first idealist. Or I can say, what did Wittgenstein have to say about this particular topic, the hard problem of consciousness? Or what did Wittgenstein have to say about life being an illusion or everyday reality being an illusion? And there will give me the answer. And then I'll say, how does this compare with the thinking of Buddhists and jains, Vedantic philosophy, etc. It'll give me the answer very, you know, all the parallels. Now I say, can you make a connection between what, what these Platonists are saying about consciousness and the observer effect, and how do you relate that to quantum mechanics and do that too? So it clarifies what I intuitively know. It also clarifies what is there and what is not there. So I actually even argue with my AI, say, no, I don't agree with you on this. Can you go back, check this reference, this reference, and come back? And the nice thing is you can, you know, repeat the same question in 30 different ways to get clarity. And it won't lose its patience and it won't get offended because there's nobody at the back end other than there's a machine with algorithms. So once again, as a tool for personal reflection and meditation, as an assistant, as a research tool and a spiritual.
- [07:26]
B
Guide, what is Dharma? And how can AI help with a person discovering that for themselves. Because isn't that really an internal process to be able to understand what that is for each person?
- [07:40]
A
Dharma is a complicated Sanskrit word, and it can be interpreted in many ways. But. But the deepest level of dharma is referred to as the order of the universe and how we personally fit in the scheme of things in the universe. And that highest dharma is find out who you are. Who am I? Am I the body? Am I the mind? Am I emotions? Or I'm something deeper? That's the Dharma. That's the ultimate Dharma. But along the way, there are many levels of dharma which have to do in a way, with the extended hierarchy of needs. So in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is five levels. In the Eastern wisdom traditions, Dharma is seven centers of awareness, which are usually referred to as the seven chakras, metaphorically speaking. So these are centers of awareness. The first center has to do with security and safety. The second center has to do with sensation. You know, sexual sensation, but sensory experience in general. The third center has to do with transformation and. And self power. The fourth center has to do with emotions like empathy, compassion, love, belongingness and compassion. I said love and kindness. Anything to do with wholeness, of emotions that have to do with the heart. The fifth center has to do with creative expression, but also things that are connected to creative expression, such as art and music and poetry and even science. The sixth center has to do with intuition and insight and imagination and higher consciousness. And the seventh center has to do with transcendence. So this is the journey of Dharma till ultimately have liberation or freedom from what is called the conditioned mind. So, yes, AI can guide you into these seven levels. You can ask AI what are the basic elements of security? Is addiction to security the cause of insecurity? And it'll give you the answer and point you what other people have thought about it. Then you can say, okay, now give me a meditation to empower me in this particular center of awareness, and it'll create a meditation. You say, okay, you know, I don't like this meditation. Can you give it to me in the style of Deepak Chopra and then modify that meditation and give it in my style? So I've used AI to program my own AI Deepak Chopra, AI. And the reason is if you go to ChatGPT or one of the large language models, they also hallucinate. So small language models do not hallucinate. Mine is a small language model. It's also called rag retrieval, augmentation generation. But hallucinations also are very useful because they give you creative ideas. So I use it. Even the hallucinations, I use them to express creative ideas. This is a very interesting hallucination. Can you come up with some creative ideas based on this hallucination? And it does. So, you know, there are innumerable ways you can use AI to enhance spiritual intelligence, emotional connections, everything. And, you know, like now, if the Internet is not working, you can, you know, when it works, you say, you know, the Internet was not working. I felt very frustrated. Can you give me something to cool me down? And it'll do that. Especially my AI will do that. My AI is very personalized, very. It can even predict what you're thinking based on how I get to know you.
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B
Why was it so important for you to create your AI twin? Which I believe, when it first began, was also known as an avatar, if I recall correctly.
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A
Yeah, because I believe that as physical persons, you know, as mind, body, Personas, we are already avatars. In the same way as digital avatars work. Digital avatars are autonomous agents, autonomous distributed agents, which means they have capacity, but within a certain ecosystem of, say, information or knowledge. In the same way, I think we as persons are distributed, autonomous agents of an infinite spirit. So we have freedom, but not the infinite freedom that has. That is at the source, like the spiritual source. Every biological organism is a distributed autonomous agent that includes frogs and insects and animals and plants. And they're all expressing a certain aspect of the autonomy of the infinite pure consciousness, which is infinite possibilities. So our digital avatars can do the same. They can extend our capacities for knowledge, for information, and also give us ideas for creativity. Ultimately, creativity is. Cannot be an algorithm. It has to be a disruption of the algorithm. But it's still a useful map. You know, it's still a menu of options. You go to a restaurant, you see a menu, and then you can decide, do I want Caesar salad or do I want, you know, whatever tuna, Do I want chicken? Do I want a vegan dish? But then you can't eat the menu. You have to actually eat the meal. Same thing with AI. It's a menu or a map that guides you in the right direction. Ultimately, it can't meditate for you. You have to do that work yourself. It can't do yoga for you, but it can tell you which posture is useful for which branch of the vagus nerve or which breathing technique is good to slow your heart rate down or to improve your heart rate variability. All that comes from AI. And it can even give you the instructions how to do it. But then you have to do it, it can't do it for you.
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B
I love how you are embracing AI as a way for people to know themselves, understand themselves, and live a more fulfilling, happier, healthier life at the same time. There are research studies coming out that are showing that AI, I suppose maybe depending on the usage, people partake in it, that it can impact their critical thinking, their sense of creativity, and even, maybe even living in harmony with themselves. And people are rushing toward it. So there must be something there that we're all interested in. But I'm wondering if you can comment on how there seems to be kind of two sides to AI.
- [15:31]
A
There are two sides to every technology. A knife can be used to kill a person, but in the hands of a surgeon, the knife helps. Fire can burn down the city, but it can help cook food. Had we not discovered fire, there wouldn't be the steam engine. Had we not had the steam engine, you wouldn't have the industrial age. Had we not had the industrial age, you wouldn't have the age of technology. And yet fire is dangerous. Automobiles can crash, so can airplanes. So, you know, you can use AI to cyber hack. You can use AI to cut off electricity in the city. You can use AI to cause a nuclear plant to leak. You can cause AI to cyber hack democracies. You can use AI to interfere with respirators and pacemakers. I've given enough ideas. But bottom line is AI can be used to cause human extinction. And it might because our technology has outpaced our emotional and spiritual intelligence. And that's a very dangerous situation where you have the minds and tribal minds of medieval ages. Look at all the conflict in the political area or the war or the terrorism that's happening in the world. So medieval minds and modern technologies and drones don't actually go together. So the fact that AI can cause human extinction and is a distinct possibility and might happen, that's why I'm using AI to improve spiritual intelligence, because I believe we have another option. And that other option is to use AI to create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world. We are now at a crossroads. So when you say I'm very optimistic. No, I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I'm realistic. And realism says or realistic. Being realistic means we are at a crossroads. We have the option to heal ourselves and heal the world, or we have the option to sleepwalk to extinction.
- [17:50]
B
Throughout your book, you talk many times about self awareness. Why is that so important? And how can AI assist with that?
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Okay, so self awareness is not the same thing as your ego, self or your personality. Okay? That is your self image, it's not yourself. I like to say that our ego personality is like our selfie. And so there's a lot of confusion in the world because people confuse themselves with their selfies. Yourself is a spiritual being. Your person is the avatar, I hope that's clear. Your spirit. So we are never the same person. You've never been the same person since you were a baby, a child, a teenager, an adult, and so on. And you know, you're never the same person, but you're always the same being. That being is the self. And that being is a field of infinite possibilities, infinite creativity, and also evolution. Infinite evolution, self regulation, self organization, entanglement. It is infinite. It's spaceless, it's timeless, it's irreducible, it's fundamental. It is the self of the universe. So in knowing yourself, you know everything else that can be known. Know that thing by which everything else can be known. So AI cannot give you self awareness, but it can again be a map to show you what you can do to become self aware. But becoming self aware, I say, is the ultimate spiritual goal because 99.999% of people are sleepwalking. They're not self aware. They're like. Well, they're actually like algorithms themselves, constantly being triggered by people and circumstance into predictable outcomes. So AI can help point the right direction and even give us the tools to expand our awareness.
- [20:06]
B
What is the nature of reality and how does that relate to consciousness?
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A
Okay, so the good question, what is reality? One simple answer is nothing conceptual or perceptual, which nothing that you can perceive, see, hear, touch, taste or smell, or nothing conceptual, which means thoughts, feelings, emotions, is inherently real. Okay, I'll say that again. Nothing that you can perceive. So if you can touch something, taste it, smell it, see it, think about it, imagine it, it's not real. It's a projection of something more fundamental. And that more fundamental entity is consciousness. For example, I'm now seeing on my screen an entity called Emmy. Emmy Vadnais. Okay? And I'm seeing her. I'm seeing her image. I'm listening to her. I can see the color of her eyes and color of hair. None of that is inherently real, okay? That is dependent on the modes of knowing and perception, which are limited. Because our human nervous system is limited, our sensory apparatus is limited. So what we perceive is a fragment of reality. Reality is infinite, infinite. And it is infinite consciousness, spaceless, timeless, irreducible, fundamental and self organizing. And all the things, infinite possibilities. So nothing that we perceive or conceive can give us access to that. In fact, everything that you see is an edited version of reality. Now, these days, people are recognizing them. Some people say the universe is a simulation. Other people say the universe is a human construct. Yet other people say it's a vibration of something or more fundamental, that more fundamental thing. Entities, consciousness, which is infinite. And it can vibrate in infinite ways. So which one is the true reality? The answer is none of them. We are fictional characters in a collective dreamscape. And, you know, as Wittgenstein, the German philosopher, said, we are asleep, our life is a dream. But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming. That waking up from the dream is realizing that actually you are the infinite divine being. And you are playing a particular role. You are playing the role of Emmy. I am playing the role of Deepak. But we play many roles. It's our destiny to play almost an infinity of roles. I'm a father, I'm a son. I'm a husband, I'm a writer. I'm a doctor. These are roles I'm playing. But the one who's playing the roles is infinite. That's what waking up means, that it's my destiny to play an infinity of roles, but I'm not the roles I'm playing. And how do I find that out? Through meditation, through self reflection, through mindfulness, through transcendence. But I have to take the journey myself. Once again, AI can be a guide because it tells me this is what other people did in the past. This is what the great luminaries, the great scientists, the great sages, and even the psychotics who broke out of the hypnosis of social conditioning. So then you say, are there any problems to wake up? Is there something called the dark night of the soul? And AI Will guide you there as well.
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B
How do we resolve that? Our dharma, our life purpose, the roles we play, are very important. At the same time, you're suggesting that they're not essentially real.
- [24:25]
A
Well, if you're on a dreamscape and a fictional character, would you like to see a movie that's uplifting or a movie that's terrorizing? Some people like terror movies, and that's okay. But I think we can always upgrade the quality of the illusory world that we live in. And we can create, as I said, more peace, more harmony, more laughter, more joy. All the while recognizing that it's our projection. So we can upgrade the quality of our life experience, recognizing that it's still limited and not fundamental.
- [25:12]
B
Some are suggesting that AI is conscious, and in the future it can perhaps. And there's even some evidence that it might have its own consciousness or beginnings of that. I'm wondering if you've been seeing that or what your thoughts are on that.
- [25:27]
A
It's ridiculous. Even you and I are not conscious. You know, we are intelligent, but we are not conscious in the ultimate sense that we cannot think of ourselves as spaceless, timeless, irreducible, fundamental unless we take the journey. So you and I as avatars, are experiences in consciousness. So, too, is an AI an experience in consciousness, but it has limited experience. AI doesn't feel hunger or feel thirst or have sexual impulse or sexual arousal. AI doesn't fear death. AI doesn't have existential anxiety or the dark night of the soul. So if those people who say AI is going to be conscious, they don't understand what consciousness is. They are confusing super intelligence, which is an attribute of consciousness, with consciousness, which is fundamental, raw experience. Being in love, having compassion, having fear, going through the dark night of the soul, having hunger, arousal. None of these things can ever be expressed through algorithms. So AI can be super intelligent, not conscious. It can be more intelligent than all of humanity combined, but it'll never be conscious because people don't understand consciousness. They probably haven't even read or know about what is called the hard problem of consciousness. How do atoms, molecules, force fields, electricity, chemicals create thought? AI doesn't do that. Okay? Air gives you information which has already been thought out. So it's ridiculous when people say, I can. It can be super intelligent and dangerous, but it'll never be conscious.
- [27:33]
B
Can you share how love is the highest form of consciousness or intelligence and how that relates to everybody's dharma?
- [27:45]
A
Well, ultimately, love is unity consciousness, where you recognize that there is no separation between the subject of experience and the object of experience. No separation between the lover and the beloved, no separation between the knower and the known, no separation between the observer and the observed. This is called unity consciousness, the highest level of dharma, pure love. Now, these days, people talk about unconditional love without actually grasping what that means. Unconditional love means love radiates from you like light from a bonfire or light from the sun is denied to none, and it's focused on none. It is both the subject and object of the experience that is the highest love. Along the way, there is all kinds of love. Attraction, infatuation, intimacy, sexuality, passion, surrender, detachment. But not transcendence. Transcendence is the highest love, where you and the universe, you. And the object that appears on the screen of consciousness is one unity consciousness. The highest Dharma is that pure love. Beautiful. Which is also, by the way, which is also pure creativity.
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B
I love that. Yeah. And maybe also aligned with intuition.
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A
It's also pure beauty. Yeah, and also beauty, Love, beauty, truth, goodness, harmony, creativity. They all go together.
- [29:37]
B
Yes. Our own inner wisdom we can tap into. Deepak, you have been a fabulous physician advocating for holistic and integrative medicine for several decades. I'm wondering if you can share how people can live a long and happy healthy life. I know that's a big topic, but I would just love to hear what comes to mind.
- [30:02]
A
Well, to start with, you can start with meditation. You can manage your stress. You can enhance mind body coordination. You can eat healthy food. You can expand your relationships with other people. You can practice divine attitudes like empathy, compassion, love, kindness, joy, equanimity. You can serve and you can be of service. So there is. These are all categories of yoga. So there's Gyana yoga, the yoga of the intellect. There's Karma yoga, love in action. There's the yoga that we call the physical aspects of yoga that everybody is familiar with. So these are all aspects of yoga, which means unity with your higher self. Ultimately, it's transcendence from subject, object split, and transcendence from the projection that we call the theater of space, time and causality. That's the highest level. But in the meanwhile, there's a journey to be taken to truly understand that the Internet should be working.
- [31:26]
B
Deepak, I know you have a popular membership. I'm wondering how people can learn more about that and join.
- [31:34]
A
Very simple. Go to my website, www. Deepak chopra.com Once again, deepak chopra.com and there are many options. You can be join, become a member for free. There are also premium options. There are many free meditations. And then I do live appearances and we talk to each other. Basically, we are creating a global community of spiritual seekers@deepakshopra.com so check it out. I encourage everybody to become a member either for nothing or for some premium for more elaborate programs and advanced meditations.
- [32:19]
B
Deepak, thank you so much for all that you've shared today. I know we could talk for hours. I know you have other projects to get onto. I certainly hope that you will come back as a guest on new thinking allowed. I understand you're writing a book with Donald Hoffman about consciousness, and I really look forward to reading that. Deepak, thank you so much for being with me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
- [32:43]
A
Thank you. I enjoyed it too. Yes, thank you for having me.
- [32:48]
B
And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [33:16]
C
For early access to our videos and live stream events, sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit, the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org Sam.