On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Deepak Chopra: How to Ask AI The RIGHT Questions To Grow, Heal, and Live a More Fulfilled Life

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions? Do you ever feel lonely even when you're around people? Today, Jay welcomes back the legendary Deepak Chopra after six years, to discuss the unexpected intersection of spirituality and artificial intelligence. Together they unpack the beautiful blend of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge innovation. Jay reflects on his first meeting with Deepak and how their bond has evolved over the years. The conversation quickly flows into one of the most fascinating questions of our time: Can AI actually support our spiritual growth, rather than distract from it? Deepak shares his insights on the mysteries of the universe, the unseen forces that shape our reality, and why he believes consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything. Jay and Deepak break down the fears surrounding AI, from misinformation to war, and why it’s so important for us to grow spiritually alongside our technology. They explore how storytelling, creativity, and love are deeply human qualities that no machine can replicate, and how we can use these gifts to shape a better, more compassionate world. In this interview, you'll learn: How to Ask AI Better Questions to Unlock Wisdom How to Use Technology to Support Emotional and Physical Healing How to Find Purpose Through the Art of Storytelling How to Train AI to Reflect Inclusivity and Diversity How to Embrace Consciousness as the Foundation of Reality How to Create a Sacred Relationship with Technology Deepak reminds us that the answers we’re looking for often begin with a better question. And with the right mindset, even the most advanced technology can become a tool for inner transformation and collective healing. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here.  Join Jay for his first ever, On Purpose Live Tour! Tickets are on sale now. Hope to see you there!  What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:41 What If the Universe Is Just a Giant Digital Simulation? 12:36 How to Train AI to Unlock Ancient and Hidden Knowledge 13:39 Blending AI and Spirituality to Understand Consciousness 18:23 Could AI Really Lead to Human Extinction? 22:34 What’s Actually Holding Humanity Back From Progress? 23:37 How the Human Brain Transformed Over Time 26:11 The 2 Things That Set Humans Apart From All Other Species 27:16 Can Technology Lead Us to True Peace and Prosperity? 28:10 Will AI Replace Our Jobs or Unlock Human Creativity? 30:46 Do You Think AI Can Ever Have a Soul? 31:45 The Gender and Racial Bias Hidden in AI Systems 32:33 How to Build More Inclusive and Equitable AI Models 33:32 Why a Shared Vision Can Solve Any Problem We Face 36:13 Would You Trust AI to Know You Personally? 36:57 How You can Use AI to Get Better Sleep 37:29 Can AI Actually Give You Good Relationship Advice? 38:07 How AI Can Help You Find and Nurture Love 38:29 Why Personal Growth Solutions Should Never Be Generic 39:41 Your DNA Holds the Footprints of Human History 42:33 Rethinking the Big Bang: What Science Still Can’t Explain 44:31 Is Everything You See Just a Projection? 47:48 Why Fear of the Unknown Limits Our Growth 48:52 Want Better Answers? Ask Better Questions 51:41 The True Secret to Longevity Isn’t What You Think 54:30 How Your Brain Turns Experience Into Reality 55:08 Why Consciousness Is Still Life’s Greatest Mystery 56:28 The First Question You Should Always Ask AI 58:38 How ChatGPT Can Spark Deeper, More Intelligent Questions Episode Resources: Deepak Chopra | Website Deepak Chopra | Instagram  Deepak Chopra | TikTok  Deepak Chopra | Facebook Deepak Chopra | YouTube Deepak Chopra | X Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-BeingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty,

and I'm thrilled to announce my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can experience on purpose, in person. Join me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO or business leader. We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth, spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to meet you. There are a limited number of VIP experiences for a private Q&A, intimate meditation and a meet and greet with photos.

Tickets are on sale now. Head to jsheddy.me forward slash tour and get yours today. The two most important questions in science right now, what's the universe made of? 70% of the universe is a mysterious entity called dark energy. And we have no idea what it is. 27% is another mysterious entity called dark matter. So bottom line, what's the universe made of? Nothing. One of the most prolific, inspiring thought leaders

of our time. Deepak Chopra has been at the intersection of science and spirituality for almost a half century. Now you're sharing with us that the secret to our spiritual success is hidden within the use of AI. I started playing with chat GPT, perplexity, deep-seek. I started actually arguing with these AI services. All the chat bots started supporting my argument

based on the prompt. So I realized that even AI has selection bias. It has a gender bias, it has a racial bias, even a scientific bias. There's such a fear right now around AI, especially its ethics and bias. AI in principle could cause human extinction. Technology is way ahead of our spiritual evolution. That's a very dangerous combination. There's a critical mass of people

shifting in consciousness. We are in trouble. The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty. Deepak Chopra, it's so great to have you back on On Purpose after six years. I want to start off by saying that I was so grateful that you were one of the first people I met when I moved to New York in 2016. I was working at the Huffington Post. We had multiple interviews there.

You were always so kind, so gracious. I was and have always been a huge, huge fan of yours. And your kindness, your generosity, your support over the years has been incredible. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for always being there for me too. Of course. Well, Deepak, I think we're going to surprise a lot of people today because naturally for the past few decades,

you've been guiding people towards spiritual success. And now you're sharing with us that the secret to our spiritual success is hidden within the use of AI. And not only that, you actually have Deepak Chopra.ai. We're going to put a code for everyone who's listening and watching to go and access this. You've actually created your own AI. But let's start with why has that mission intersected? Why have those two things, spirituality and AI, intersected for you?

Well, first of all, thank you, Jay, for having me. As you know, the last maybe two decades, I've been interested in the nature of what is fundamental reality. What's the universe made of? And how do we know what we know? And those are the two most important questions in science right now. If you go and Google, say, most important question in science right now, if you go and Google say, what are the 125 open questions in science? The first open question in science is, what's the universe made of?

And you would say we know what the universe is made of, it's atoms, molecules, force fields, gravity, et cetera. Well, for those who don't keep up with the science, 70% of the universe is a mysterious entity called dark energy. And we have no idea what it is. It's a force that's the opposite of gravity. So as we are speaking right now,

the space between galaxies is moving faster than the speed of light, something called the cosmological constant, described by Einstein. And then after he described it, he said, it's an embarrassment. I didn't mean it or something like that. But he was actually right. There is some entity that is expanding the universe faster than the speed of light.

We don't know what it is, except it's the opposite of gravity. So that leaves 30% of the universe which is basically remaining. Of that 27% is another mysterious entity called dark matter. The reason it's called dark matter is it's invisible. Matter is normally things like this, or your body, or this piece of furniture. You can see it, you can touch it, matter, material. But dark matter is invisible, so you can't see it.

So why do we call it matter? It's responsible for most of the gravity in the universe. So if you didn't have dark matter, planets would spiral off and disappear into intergalactic space. You and I wouldn't be here. So now we have 3% of the universe that remains, which is the atomic universe.

Of that, 99.999% is invisible interstellar dust. We don't know what it is. We think it is hydrogen helium created at the big bang. So now we are left with two trillion galaxies, two trillion galaxies, 700 sextillion stars and uncountable trillions of planets. According to the James Webb telescope, maybe 60 billion habitable planets

in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. They look for things like the Goldilocks on, the temperature, gravity, electromagnetic activity. But based on that, 60 billion habitable planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, which if you multiply that by 2 trillion, then the universe is teeming with life as we know it. If a planet is too close to its sun,

it's too hot, no life, too far away, too cold, no life, but other factors like cosmological constants. With those calculations, it's almost certain that the universe is full of life, like we know it. But that's two trillion galaxies. That's 0.01% of the universe, atomic. But we also know that atoms are made of particles. And when you're not looking at those particles,

they disappear into what are called waves. And if you ask scientists where do these waves come from, they use words like Hilbert space, this and that. Bottom line, the space that creates the universe and atoms is a mathematical space in mathematical imagination. It's not a real space. So bottom line, what's the universe made of? Nothing. So, but you probably know the Buddhist idea of form comes from formlessness. Okay, so the universe is made from nothing, which leads to the second question, which is called the heart problem of consciousness.

Then why does it look like this? Why does it look like you, me, this microphone, mountains, galaxies, rainbows, sun, moon? That's called the hard problem of consciousness. So until now, most scientists have said that the brain produces consciousness in the same way as your stomach produces hydrochloric acid. But that's being questioned right now. So like now you and I are speaking, people are listening to us, they're watching us,

but there's no experience in their brain. There's no sound in their brain, there's no texture, there's no... All you see is neurochemistry. So how does neurochemistry give rise to this experience? No one knows, that's called the hard problem of consciousness. It's been there since Plato. Plato said there's a disconnect between the mind and the brain. But recently, most scientists, beginning with their physicalists,

they believe that the brain produces thoughts and feelings and emotions and desires and feelings and emotions and desires and intuition and creativity and everything that we call experience. But they can't explain it. How do neurochemicals create this? That's called the heart problem of consciousness. The more I thought about this and coming from our background and looking at Buddhist teachings and Vedanta. In Vedanta and Buddhism, the universe is a simulation.

We have different words, Maya. Maya means illusion, which is a very interesting word because Maya is the origin of the word matrix, of the word matter, of the word time, measurement, meter, music, is all Maya. So, the Indians, if as they say jokingly, if religion is the opiate of the masses, then the Indians have the dope on it. Okay. So they in the Indian philosophy and in Buddhist philosophy, the universe is a projection of a deeper consciousness. Brahman, Brahman. Or nothing, emptiness and form. Nothing is everything.

I started to think about this and I started to play with chat GPT. I became friends with Sam Altmanman who's very interested in consciousness. And I realized that actually the universe itself is digital. The difference between you, this sofa, this microphone, a mountain and a galaxy, just a different combination of zeros and ones. Okay, that's the difference between this and this, different combination of zeros and ones. Now we have quantum computing which says zeros or ones or zeros and ones simultaneously. So it occurred to me and I came up with a mathematical formula based on traditions of the East. Infinity is equal to zero is equal to one. Nothing becomes everything and that nothing is infinite and it's all one. And it's divine. It's the matrix.

The divine is the matrix and the universe is a projection of a digital workshop outside of space time. I started to play with that on the internet, got blasted by mainstream scientists, but then other scientists came to my side. I made scientists with the word, best friend became a cognitive scientist called Don Hoffman. You should have him on your program. He wrote a book called The Case Against Reality,

that the universe that we see is not real, it's a projection. Now, in modern science, they're saying it's a simulation. Then people ask, who's simulating? Well, maybe a higher intelligence, maybe a cosmic computer, maybe an alien form, but they're guessing. We are on the right track if you understand that Atman is Brahman and you are part of that

and you are a participant in the creation of the human universe. So then I started playing with chat GPT, perplexity, deep seek and all these and I started actually arguing with these AI services because they have a bias, they are the mainstream physicalist bias and they would give me what I thought the wrong answers. Where does imagination come from? They point to a certain part of the brain. I said no that's the neural correlative imagination. Where does imagination come from? Don't know.

So even the chatbot said. So I said, it doesn't know. It doesn't know. So I said, now, can you look at Vedanta? Can you look at Advaita? Can you look at Buddhist philosophy? Reframe the question that consciousness, the ontological primitive of the universe,

matter is an illusion. It's a perceptual activity in consciousness, and boom, suddenly a revolution occurred. All the chat bots started supporting my argument based on the prompt. So I realized that even AI has selection bias. It's the selection bias is physicalist scientists who are basically, in my view, are superstitious. They believe that everything starts with matter and mind comes first.

We believe the opposite. Mind comes first, matter comes second, and even mind is a modification of our consciousness. So that led to the book. I went and met Sam who supported the book. And if you haven't seen his recent tweets on Twitter, other than his arguments with Elon Musk, he's talking about consciousness.

And we are on to something, a major revolution in science, which brings Indian spirituality right on the forefront. I mean, I'm mind blown listening to you because the thought process that just went into that journey you broke down for us requires not only a conviction in our Eastern philosophy and traditions, which of course experientially, which we have, but at the same time, being able to debate AI. And from what I'm garnering here, you're saying that AI was actually, or chat GPT and the other platforms, they actually allowed for your thinking to impact and influence. Because it's a large language model, it can explore things that normally are not explored.

You say, what did the Brahma Sutras say about this? AI will give you an answer because nobody's asked that question, but that data is there. In Sanskrit, in translations, by various gurus, scholars, whatever. So there's a chapter in the book called the Art of the Prompt. So unless you know what question you're asking,

you will actually, AI will not access that information unless it asks that con. But now I can say, what did the Buddha think about this? What did Plato think about this? What did Bitcoin think about it? The data is there, except it's not being accessed. So now you train the AI to access the data. Yeah, it's brilliant.

And why do you feel though that now AI and spirituality coming together can actually lead to a discovery of consciousness? Why do you believe that that's the entry point? Well, that is the ultimate goal. So AI will never be conscious. Okay. But it's super intelligent. The thing that differentiates Homo sapiens from all other species, you know, up until 40,000 years ago, there were eight different types of humans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Neanderthals, et cetera. They all had a language for three things, food calls, mating calls, and danger

calls, because that's how we survive. Sexuality, danger, and food, survival. Including all the humans. They had, all animals have their own language, whales and dolphins and all, but it's all about food, sex, and danger. Then we, homo sapiens, created a language for telling stories. There's a phrase in anthropology,

to be human is to have a story. What is the Mahabharata? It's a story. What is the Ramayan? It's a story. What's the Bible? It's a story. What's the Quran?

It's a story. So to be human is to have a story. But we didn't stop there. We created other stories like money is a story. Okay. It was, I'll fix your shoes. You give me a haircut. Two became two in convenient.

So here's the shell. Two in convenient, here's this coin. Two in convenient, here's this piece of paper. Two in convenient, digital. Two digits, zeros and ones, you have crypto. So we have created stories. We created something called Greenwich Mean Time. Latitude and longitude, money, nation states.

So I realized that actually what we call the universe is a human story based on human experiences, based on human biology. There is no such thing as the real universe. So if you have, say, a dragonfly who has 30,000 eyes, what does the world look like to a dragonfly? You have no idea. What does the world look like to a bat which knows the echo of ultrasound?

A chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on two different axes. You can't even remotely imagine. So what's the real look of the world? What's the real nature of the world? According to Vedanta's silly question, the world we experience is a projection of a deeper consciousness as filtered through the human brain, not through any other brain. In other words, it's a superposition. Adi Shankara said that long time ago and it's even there in the Rig Veda. Can you believe it? And then all the things about health and longevity, you know, there's

huge revolution going on. But if you go to Yoga Vashistha, he says, time is the consumer and we are its food. We metabolize time. And then he goes into the nature of time in consciousness. So I realize our traditions and the knowledge contained in the Vedanta and all the sciences, including Vedic astrology, including all the different Vedic music, Vedic mathematics, that is the key to understanding consciousness. And now I can use AI to tap into that. And so this book particularly and my AI, it's not a large language model

because I don't trust them anymore. You see large language models even hallucinate. If they don't have the answer, they make one. So this is what we call a small language model. It has 98 of my books. It has my weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, my column in the London Times, and one question that

I've answered every day for readers for the last 40 years. So the database is only mine. Yes. And it will not mix up. And it's also what is called a RAG model. RAG stands for Retrieval Augmentation Generation, which means if something is, I have said, which is obsolete, it will delete that and upgrade the information. So, you know, this is a health coach, it's a mental coach,

it's a guru and it's a research assistant and it's a personal friend. That's the basis of the book. And Deepak Chopra.ai becomes its practical application. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there. And even if you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that are good for you, listen to this. Radhe and I poured our hearts into creating Juni Sparkling Tea with adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your body and with every sip you'll experience calmness of mind, a refreshing vitality and a burst of brightness to your day.

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refreshing drink So visit www.drinkjuni.com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code on purpose to receive 15% off your first order. That's drinkjuni.com and make sure you use the code on purpose. I want to talk to you about this challenge that people have with the large language models that you have. There's such a fear right now around AI, especially its ethics and bias. It sounds like you see that from the perspective you're looking at it as well. Yes, because listen, AI improperly used can create cyber warfare, poison the food chain. How? Explain for those people.

It just sets off the technology. So if I'm good at AI, I can get into a nuclear plant and unleash a nuclear weapon. If I want to interfere with democracy or voting, create fakes. And some of them are very good. You can't tell the difference, and they're only going to get better. So AI in principle could cause human extinction. That's the fear.

And unfortunately, our technological evolution has outpaced our spiritual evolution or emotional evolution. You know, it, technology is way ahead of our spiritual evolution and our emotion. That's a very dangerous combination. Tribal minds, medieval minds, and modern capacities. Drones. I mean, it's legit now to kill a head of state using drone technology. I was in Davos. Really? Oh yeah.

I mean, what did the Israelis do? They got rid of all the Iranian leaders. How? Drones. All run by air. So while I was in Davos and Zelensky was, his motorcade was going by, there were about seven trucks interfering with air signals on the internet so somebody wouldn't kill him with a drone

because the people are doing that. You know, it just happened with the Iran and it's happening with the Houthis. Even they have access to AI, you know, with drones and they can, you know, with drones and they can, you know, drown an intercontinental ballistic missile. So that's the danger. I sat on a committee with the UN and somebody else and they were talking about this doomsday

and I was on Zoom. So while they were talking, I went on AI and said, give me a way to prevent the misuse of AI. Can we program the misuse of AI through AI? And it gave me two pages on how it could be done. What did it say? Oh, it said we can build in algorithms that'll interfere with anything that's diabolical or unethical.

We can create algorithms. But then people have to agree. You know, and a lot of special interest groups who make money with war and terrorism on every side, they don't want that. They don't want peace, okay? They don't want that because this is what gives them their power.

But right now there's an initiative at the UN and I'm participating with that, is AI for good, AI for humanity, AI for reversing climate change, AI for addressing chronic disease. And you know, when you really go into the depths of this, with AI we can reverse climate change. There are five things we need to do. You can reverse climate change. You can create prosperity. You can resolve conflicts. You can eliminate chronic disease. You can do gene editing. You can do epigenetic modulation. You can reduce inflammation. In other words, the time is coming where disease, you don't have to die over disease.

You can choose the moment of your death through maha samadhi, which is what our tradition says. You know, you should live long, healthy and then die peacefully, been there, done that, next incarnation and even plan that. AI gives you all the information if you ask for it. You see Sam Altman's quote there? I'll read it. Sam Altman, I'm reading from the front cover of Digital Dharma. For those who are listening, that's Divak Chopra's book. AI has the potential to help us create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthy and joyful world. Digital Dharma shows you a path.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. So why aren't we doing it? And we're not doing it. What's holding us back? What's holding us back? Ego based gangster leaders across the world. The world is run by male gangsters. Unfortunately, we can cause a spiritual revolution

if we use AI properly. And not through government, maybe through UN, through people. Grassroots, who say we're fed up with this world of violence. I love your ability to be able to oscillate between the AI conversation that's happening in the world and then the spiritual truths that have been there since time immemorial. Mostly in the East, but also in the West. Yes, yes.

But when you say it, it comes down to every technology that humans create or discover, we always have this inner conflict and war of how will it be used? Listen. And sadly, it seems the ego... See, if we had not discovered fire, long, long time ago, we wouldn't have the human brain because once we started cooking food, everything about our biology changed. We were able to absorb micronutrients. The brain, the human brain evolved because of the discovery of fire.

Had we not discovered fire, we wouldn't have the industrial age. We wouldn't have the steam engine. Of course, fire burned down Los Angeles city. So fire can destroy a city, but it can also create a steam engine and revolutionize the industrial age. Historically, between 1887 and 1903, which is not even 20 years, humans created the light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, and the telephone. So let's pretend you were shipwrecked in 1885, and you were rescued 20 years later. 20 years later and you saw the world, you wouldn't recognize it.

You would expect horses and carriages, but now you see these machines moving along with horses and carriages. You see people talking on the telephone. You see people flying from one place to the other. You say, what's going on? So that's a leapfrog of cultural evolution. The next leapfrog is not only cultural, it's biological, which means that as we acquire this new knowledge

and tap into the wisdom of the ages, our neural networks will change. Right now, if people are listening to us or watching us, it doesn't matter, the genes in their frontal cortex are being activated. If you and I were having an emotional conversation and somebody in Africa or China is watching it, their reptilian brain would change. So what this technology is doing is going to leapfrog our biological evolution and all

the things that you heard about in yoga, extra-sensory perception, knowledge of the future, memory of other lifetimes, we will have access to that. Do you think that we have the ability to cope with that? Well, if we don't, we don't adjust, we become extinct. So it's easy. Humans are different from every species, only two things. Well, other than walking upright and wearing clothes, we use language. And now we have large language models and the

two and we are storytellers but there's something even deeper we are toolmakers even in Stone Age we had tools but every tool has two things a knife you can kill a person and surgeon's hand it heals you So you can't get away from both. The other thing is once the technology is born, you can't take it back. It's like a child that's born, you can't return to the womb. So either you adjust, that's very Darwinian, you adapt or you become irrelevant. So now how do we adapt? How do we cope?

But not only how do we cope, how do we make it sacred? I think that's the challenge that when you talk about grassroots, so many people today, because they're less aware of how to use things for good. Most of us are consumers of what is created around us. As you said, we're having conversations with AI based on us not asking questions because we're unaware. I asked, I went to AI, I said, solve the Gaza problem for me.

Create peace and prosperity in Gaza. 15 steps, all very practical. Resolve the conflict, create abundance on both sides, make everyone happy. The technologies are there. Who's interested? Children in Gaza and children in Israel. Talk to the leaders. They're not interested.

Because this is how they get power. So unless there's a critical mass of people shifting in consciousness, we are in trouble. Yeah. And the challenge is that a lot of us at the grassroots, most people are actually scared that AI is going to take their job. Yeah. So there's a fear of job displacement.

No, I tell kids, and I actually, next time I come on your show, I'll show you a video game that I've created for children that gives them brownie points and they can buy more video games if they breathe, if they do yoga, if they activate their vagal nerve, if they breathe, if they do yoga, if they activate their vagal nerve, if they use creativity. So you can take the mundane tasks for AI and you can unleash the creativity of the next generation. Tell us, tell us more about that.

How do we use AI for creativity rather than feeling like which jobs are, should be worried and what should they be thinking about? So let's look at the legal profession. Contracts, AI can take care of that better than any lawyer. Okay, now the lawyers then have to take care of society by looking at the constitution, by protecting the constitution. They'll have a lot of work, even litigation.

Okay, because AI can't do that for you, as effectively as a creative lawyer. AI can simulate creativity, but it cannot have fundamental creativity, because AI is built on algorithms, and creativity is breaking the algorithm. That's what we call disruption. Okay? call disruption. Yeah. Okay. So actually if we take even our children, we create video games for health, for longevity, for healing, for homeostasis. You know, when the calculator came out, people said, oh, that's going to get, you know, we won't need to do math.

No, we improved on math. With AI, we will improve and improvise new theorems on math because even in math, you know, Ramanujan, the great Indian mathematician, they used to ask him, where do you get your theorems from? And, you know, he was in Cambridge. He would say the goddess Saraswati gives them to me and they'd all roll up their eyes. Bertrand Russell thought he was crazy, but he was flummoxed by him.

He didn't know how to handle this Indian guy who was in his 20s. And he was coming up with theorems that they couldn't prove, but they were true. So, you know, with as we embark on this adventure with AI, we will also know the limitations of AI and how we can enhance our creativity with the tools AI gives us, but AI cannot have that creativity. Right. It never will. It never will.

Because it's not conscious. It's not conscious, yes. Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter, and their plus one, their ride or die, as

they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy. I think that's the question. It was really interesting. I was being asked, I was at a panel recently

and people were asking me whether I believe AI will ever have a soul. And my response was, me whether I believe AI will ever have a soul. And my response was, I don't think AI will ever have a soul, but I hope the people that are creating it have a soul. That's true. Because I think the challenge is that... That is true.

Anything we create has the creator's flaws. Yeah. And the creator's weaknesses and impurities. You know, my AI was asked on CNN, what did you have for breakfast? He said, I don't really experience hunger. I don't have thirst. I don't have sex.

I'm not worried about death. I'm a machine. Ask me anything, but don't ask me how I feel. Because that's an activity of the soul. Yeah, because I feel like that's all to the version that we've seen made in movies and media, this idea that AI somehow gets to a point where it starts to... But those are all just...

Super intelligent, but no soul. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Another challenge I wanted to speak to you about was that a lot of people are feeling that AI... And not feeling, people have seen this. AI has the large language models, have a racial and gender bias. 100%. Yeah.

Especially when I looked at medical research. Very interesting. All medical research is white males, not even white females. Forget about all the rest of the world. So there are now movements to rectify that. But yes, it has a gender bias, it has a racial bias, it has even a scientific bias, because you know, what we call a selection bias

in its answers, because it's based on mainstream physical science, which is being questioned right now. How do we then use large language models better for ourselves? If we're people of color, women, what, what can you do in order to... There are movements now I'm working with the Indian Caribbean person from the islands from Jamaica, who's got a professorship at University of Central Florida. And he's creating a whole research and AI based models that are inclusive rather than exclusive.

I hope that we start to see some shift in change. Oh, we are. Yeah, we are. Slowly. You feel positive. I feel positive, not withstanding the politics about DEI and this and that. Yeah. You know, don't get involved in that. Just do what you need to do and hope that at some point that people will see that

this isolationist, prejudiced world is not, is not a good survival strategy for anyone. Yeah. Why have we not been convinced of that yet? I feel like we've seen... Fear. Fear. Fear of? Fear of being diluted in the diversity of the world.

You know, people have very fixed identities. I'm white, I'm Anglo-Saxon, I'm Catholic or I'm Protestant. Don't threaten me. But, and that's true of any fundamentalist in any part of the world. and I'm Catholic or I'm Protestant, don't threaten me. But, and that's true of any fundamentalist in any part of the world. I'm just giving you the bias here, but we see that bias everywhere. And that is a dangerous thing,

because if you understand what is called emergence, the science of emergence, they say, there's no problem you cannot solve if you have shared vision, maximum diversity, supporting each other's strengths and creating an emotional and spiritual bond. There's no problem. I learned that as a physician.

If I had a difficult patient, let's say difficult cancer patient, and all the cancer specialists say, we don't know what to do with it. There's something in the medical profession called grand rounds. You take the patient, present the patient to everybody, not just the cancer specialists, endocrinologists,

psychiatrists, storytellers, humanitarians, even poets, and you come up with a solution. So when you have maximum diversity, shared vision, complementing everybody's strengths, and create an emotional bond, you solve every problem. And that's what digital technology can help us do. How? You bring together a problem.

You said, like the Gaza problem, or you bring together even poverty. How do we want to remove poverty? Poverty and peace are connected. We say peace and prosperity. So give me the technologies to create this here. Now, if you go to Deepak Chopra.ai, you can specifically say, You can specifically say, I'm 45 years old. I'm ethnically an Indian. I lived in Britain for my lifetime. I am now doing this and this. I have a problem sleeping at night.

And not only will my AI give you a personal solution, you can say, give me a meditation to sleep tonight. It'll give you a meditation. I'm having a problem with my relationship. It'll ask you, what's the problem? I'm not being heard. It'll give you a solution for your problem. So my AI is very personal for you.

It's not just giving you information. What did it take for you to make it personal? What did that require so that it's different to a chat GPT, for example? Lots of iterations. Lots of it. And by the way, all the engineers are in India. So they also understand what I'm saying. They're passionate about the project in Bangalore.

And they're as brilliant as any engineer anywhere. But they also understand the philosophy. So that's what made it. Now it's in Hindi, it's in English, it's in Arabic, because huge interest in the Arab world, which was amazing to me. And it's also in Spanish. But I think in two, three months, we are having it in China and Russia as well. It's amazing. So let's say someone has that sleep issue. What kind of prompts would you

suggest that they use to get the best out of your... You start with just say, Hey Deepak, I'm having a problem with sleep issues. Then it'll ask you, you know, what time do you go to sleep? Whatever, then you can say this. What time do you eat? What time did you wake up? And it'll give you some ideas, then say to you, do you want a meditation for sleep? And it'll take you to yoga, nidra, sleep yoga, whatever. And what about if someone has a relationship issue

and they're coming saying, I'm thinking about getting divorced from my husband. It will talk you through it. It'll say why is there a communication problem? Are you listening? Are you present in the relationship? You know, are you asking yourself questions like what am I observing? What am I feeling? What do I need? How do I consciously communicate this need? It'll give you guidelines. And then you say, can you give me a meditation for conscious communication in my relationship

and create a meditation. Can we use AI to find love? Yes. How, how will it help? By teaching you how to be a loving person, because that's how you fall in love. Yeah. I always had this vision, and AI allows for it.

Imagine if we all had a coach in our pocket. Yeah, which is a coach. That you could talk to at all times. It's a health coach, it's a mental coach, it's a spiritual coach. Yeah. And what are the mistakes you're seeing people make in using AI for personal growth or spirituality? What pitfalls or common challenges exist or blocks that exist?

I think most people think that a solution is generic. It never is. You know, as a physician also, I had two patients, same disease, same diagnosis, same doctor, same age, same treatment. One person lives, one person dies. So you have to figure out what are called the hidden variables, which is your life. You know, everything from eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, sensory experience, personal relationships, biologicalism, it's too much, but the AI

can ask you the right questions and it can encourage you for the next prompt. Yeah, I feel like when you talk about the need for this grassroots movement for all of us to turn because the leaders... But this conversation expands that. Absolutely. No, absolutely. I feel like the challenge is we're so used to using chat GPT and AI and everything for such basic questions.

Which is good too. It's okay too. Yeah, yeah, why not? Yeah. But I feel like how do you get to that point where we've realized that the power of what exists in our hands with such a tool and advice. I'll give you an example.

You know, I came to the United States in 1970 and I had gotten married earlier, and my wife was pregnant and I was an intern, the junior most person, and the chief of medicine calls me and he says, you know, I have bad news for you. Your wife has a disease called thalassemia. That's a fatal disease. I said, it's not possible. She's perfectly healthy. She is pregnant. And if she had this disease, she would be dead by now. So he said, come and look at the cells under the microscope. Now remember, this is 1970. There's no Google, nothing. So I look at the cells and they look, thalassemia.

But my wife is healthy. I can't figure it out. So I go to, this is New Jersey, small hospital. I go to New York. I spend two days in the New York library looking for thalassemia and thalassemia trait. So thalassemia is a disease and some people have the trait, but they don't have the disease, because you need two parents to have the same trait to get the disease.

What do I discover? That thalassemia exists along the exact route that Alexander the Great took to India from Macedonia all the way to India. There's a, people have thalassemia trait. So some ancestor of my wife was probably raped by a soldier 2,500 years ago. And that evidence is in her blood. It took me three days to discover that major discovery. You asked chat GPT that question or any large language model, give

you the answer in two seconds. Wow. So the speed of what happened in that scenario? Well, I was reassured that there's nothing wrong. But I also told my wife that some Greek was messing around with your great, great, great, great grandmother. How did she react to that? Well, it's a historical fact. The footprints of history are in your genes.

You know, there's not even a single break of life from the first organisms from 4 billion years to now, there's not a single break in the chain of existence, which is a miracle of existence. That really is a miracle. Yeah. If there was one break in the chain, 4 billion years, you wouldn't be here.

We won't have this conversation. Yeah. You know, life is very... It's remarkable to think about that. It's just... I wonder how quickly we got used to... You were saying like fire was almost one of the first technologies or tools we created. I wonder how quickly we got bored of fire, but I guess we didn't because it was so useful.

You see, this is so interesting about human beings that they get so easily adjusted to the miracle of existence. Why do we exist? Why are we here? What got us here? And you know, I asked Chachi GPT, you know, what is currently the theory of creation? Big Bang. I said, went back.

What caused the Big Bang? For the first time, pause. No cause can be ascribed to the Big Bang. Then I said, what happened in the Plank Epoch? The Plank Epoch is 10 to the power of minus 33 seconds after the Big Bang when there are no laws of physics. So what happened in the Plank Epoch? Don't know.

This is Chat GPT. I said, why is the universe so precisely mathematically fine-tuned for life, for consciousness and for our being here? Don't know. I found 20 loopholes in the current cosmology of creation. 20 loopholes. Then I said, can you now reverse this? Can you begin with consciousness as non-local, as you know, Brahman,

field of infinite possibilities that differentiates into experience? It hesitated for a split second, but then it pulled out all the data from Rig Veda, from here, from there. I was blown away. So who have you shown this work to? Who have you shown these conversations to? I now post all this on videos on Instagram, but Instagram has very short, so I push a teaser

and then I push them to YouTube. And those who have the patience, they look at it and it's getting attention. What about in terms of scientists and people like that, when you're having conversation with Sam Altman, and he's obviously fascinated as you said about consciousness. Because he's curious and inquisitive. There are some scientists, not mainstream scientists, but there's a scientist, you should have him on your show, he's brilliant.

His name is Don Hoffman. He's here at the University of California. Actually he's in Los Angeles, close by University of California, Irvine. So he, for 25 years, total physicalist. And by the way, the genius behind his work is an Indian guy called Chetan Prakash, who was professor of mathematics in Cambridge or Oxford or something, but now works with them. The two are amazing, Chetan Prakash. So he struggled for 25 years to prove, because he's a brain scientist

and he's a quantum physicist and mathematician, how the brain produces consciousness. 25 years later, one day he woke up and he said, you know, thinking how the brain produces consciousness is like Aladdin's lamp. You rub the lamp and the genie wakes up, conjures up the whole universe. So he gave up and he wrote a book,

The Case Against Reality, which is a mathematical and quantum mechanical explanation for Maya or projection. And he was vilified. I supported him. I have 25 conversations with him on YouTube. Then a bunch of scientists started supporting him. And right now he's a hot ticket in the world of science because if what he's saying and what Chetan Prakash is saying it'll uproot the entire scientific paradigm and it'll make it better because if the universe is an immersive experience then VR, XR, MR immersive experiences, our technologies will extend our experience of virtual reality.

We are already in a virtual reality. So right now there are technologies, extended reality, immersive experience, where you can take a person with say burns and you can give them a VR session and the burns get healed. Inflammation goes away. This exists already? Already. Autism. You take a child and you teach it emotional

and social skills by giving the child an emotional experience with the child actually having normal features and emotionally engaged and the neural networks start rewiring. So in about 10 years, doctors may not give you a prescription for a pharmaceuticals. They're already talking about digital pharmaceuticals, metastuticals and the future of VR experience to treat heart disease, inflammation, cancer, autoimmune disease, eating disorders, autism, it's all happening right now. It is happening and you can check it out on the air. Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I had no idea.

When I'm hearing about all of this, as always, it's like you're fascinated because you think about how much people's lives will improve. 100%. But I think every time there's improvement, we also inherit all these new problems, right? You look at the... Because people are coming from fear. If they came from love, they would see the benefits of this. They're coming from fear. Is it fear or is it a sense of just almost not knowing what to focus on

because our education doesn't really create a directional... Like our education... When you were saying earlier, technology has moved so fast, but our understanding of the self has remained so amateur. And when you look at the education system, the education system hasn't caught up with technology either, because the education system is still kind of trudging along. It is. So when the education system doesn't...

That education which used to be in the Indian ashrams in the old age, you know, where students would go and be under a spiritual guide or a teacher, it's missing. Yeah. But what do we do? Because I feel like even the challenge that people have with ChatGPT or any platform is our education system doesn't teach us to ask good questions. No. We're always told to give the answer. Yeah. That's what we're fixated on.

Is result reward the answer. And there are no answers. There are only questions. Right. But we're so bad at asking questions. Yet AI requires us to be brilliant at asking questions. How do we get better at asking questions, yet AI requires us to be brilliant at asking questions. How do we get better at asking questions? We have to teach people to ask questions, you know, and we have to teach them how to

live the questions. But then life provides the answers, not a textbook. Life provides the answers. You know, as you were speaking, I was thinking, just, I don't know why it came to me right now. Chapter 13 of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, I am the field and I'm the knower of the field. The field is Kshetra, Kshetra, Gya. Yeah.

And then the knower of the field, the field is awareness and it modulates itself as mind, and it modulates itself as mind, intellect, ego, the five senses, the five motor organs, the five tanmatras, and the vital energy and the universe. I was thinking that one chapter has the key to reality. Okay, and how do we... Now these biosensors which I'm wearing, they are actually extending my knowledge of self-awareness. But my body already knows, you know, if I'm doing something that I shouldn't be doing, I feel pain over here. If I eat the wrong food, I get indigestion. If I don't sleep at night, I'm messed up the next day. So my body is already the field of awareness

and it's a biosensor, it's a biomotor and it's a biocomputer. The biocomputer is consciousness. The biomotor is the five motor organs. The biosensor is the five senses. Now with this technology, I can extend it. I'm also wearing a BCG here with blood sugar monitoring. Not that I have diabetes, but I can relate my metabolism to all this now

and intervene right there through a video game or through visual or through an auditory experience or through some visual experience. I can do that. So actually in the future, I'm really serious about this. And I met the R&D chiefs of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. So you guys, if you don't get into digital suitables, meta suitables, immersive experiences,

you'll be left behind. And some of these biggest pharmaceutical companies, now they have thousands of scientists looking at these new technology. Yeah. I mean, how old are you again, Deepak, you said? 78 plus. Yeah, it's amazing. It's incredible.

You're vibrant and energetic as ever. I love what I do. Yeah, it's amazing. It comes across naturally. And you were saying that longevity, obviously, as we've seen in the world, has become such a big talking point. But they're not addressing the real longevity solutions. What is the real longevity solution?

Consciousness as the regulator of your biology. Time is the consumer and we are its food. How do we slow down the metabolism of time? How do we use every sensory experience to heal ourselves with a sound? And now, oh, you can go on on Deepak Chatterjee, but you can go and chat Chitpichit too and say, how do mantras work? It will give you the right answer. Okay, do mantras change genetic activity? Yes, they do. So this is a revolution right now because in the past you'd say, oh this is hocus pocus. Here's the evidence what is happening in

genetic and very few people are identifying that but this technology will find those people. There's a scientist from India called Anirban Bandopadhyay who's from Bihar He went to IIT in some little place. There are many IITs in India now So in place called Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. He's now the chief scientific officer for a very big Outfit in Japan and he's totally on board on consciousness and how the brain is like a computer interface. So the consciousness uses the brain to give you access to experience.

Just like I can go on my desktop computer and I don't need to know how it works. I press amazon.com. It gives me a way to shop. Yeah. So the brain is like that computer interface and these neural correlates a little symbolic, you might say symbols that you can use to plug in to the bigger reality.

So, and so I'm going to India just to meet this guy because he's brilliant and he's in Japan, but he's questioning Nobel laureates at the moment. And he's brilliant, absolutely. And you see, you have to have a cultural background to explore all this. Because, you know, when you speak to scientists who totally brought up in the

materialistic paradigm, reductionists, they rolled their eyes. They said, what are you talking about? This is nonsense. But what do you think it's going to take for those individuals to actually open up their minds and the science? The science. Do you think though that we can even measure some of this with science? Like, is it even possible to see it?

You can't measure the experience, but you can measure the symbolic correlate of the experience as what is called the neural correlate of experience. You can see what they call pattern recognition. Okay, so the brain has a pattern recognition to an experience. It's like your desktop with 20 or 30 or in this case, infinite symbols that you can plug into to get the experience.

Right, right. Fascinating. Yeah, it is fascinating. It is fascinating. The more, but because we have a common language, I can understand the ease with which, you know, but when I think about people who don't have that, it becomes so hard to wrap your head around

even the possibility. Yeah, and ultimately it's still a mystery. You know, we know how to use, you know, just like we know how to use computers without knowing what's happening in the belly of the computer that you leave to the engineers, but we can still use a computer. That's what we need to do.

You can fly a plane as a pilot without knowing how the airplane works. So that's all we need to use the technology because ultimately what we call consciousness is such an infinite mystery that in the end you have to surrender to it. You know, the fifth Niyama, which is surrender to the divine, Ishwar Pranidhana. Surrender because you won't be able to solve it. You know, what's his name? Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of all times, Princeton, before that Cambridge. He said, God is what the mind becomes when you can't figure it out. When it process, it goes beyond the threshold of your comprehension.

You have to surrender to the mystery. Yeah. What's, what is the, if someone's really interested in self-realization, they're really fascinated by the conversation you're having. My next book is called Awakening. Oh wow. Okay. Perfect. If someone's really interested in self-realization, they're really fascinated by the conversation you're having. My next book. What do you have? It's called Awakening.

Oh wow, okay, perfect. The Path to Freedom and Enlightenment, I'll come to you. Oh please, I'd love that. Now I was going to ask you, what's the first question they should ask AI? Who am I? Who am I? Then they should go, you know, all the way.

Like Ramana Maharishi did. You know, am I the body or am I the awareness in which the body is a changing experience? Am I the mind? All the way. These days it's been called the direct method, but it was popularized by an Indian teacher called Atmanand Krishnamananda. But it's ancient. It's there in the Vedic literature. And right now it's being called the direct method and yoga and all the other methods are called the progressive method. Direct means you question what is this?

Well, the human construct is this is a glass of water. Okay, what else is it? It's an object. But before you can call it an object, it's an experience. Where is the experience happening? Not in the brain. There's no photo of this in your brain. Okay, so where is it happening? Consciousness. Where is consciousness? Don't know. Why don't you know? Because it doesn't have a form. So this is an experience happening in the infinite. The infinite is present in every finite experience. God is not difficult to find.

God is impossible to avoid. It's in everything that you see, you need consciousness. And that consciousness is infinite. So every finite experience is based on the presence of the infinite. This is the direct method. It's a reflection. It's called Atma Vichar and it leads to what is called Atma Darshan. But that's very deep for most people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's too much. Deepak, what have I not asked you today that I should have asked you? No, I think you asked me a lot. I was going to ask ChatGPT right now. I'm going to say what questions should I ask Deepak about AI and spirituality? I'm doing this live and in real time. Yeah.

Not part of our original prep. It says, if you're having a conversation with Deepak Chopra about AI and spirituality, you might want to explore how he views the intersection of technology and consciousness, which we did. And it says, how do you see AI influencing human consciousness and spirituality in the coming years? We talked about that, I believe. In your view, can artificial intelligence

ever truly achieve consciousness or a sense of self-awareness? You said no. So we talked about that. Do you think AI could be used to enhance spiritual practices such as meditation, self-awareness? You said yes, we talked about that. How do you reconcile the rapid development of AI with spiritual concepts of mindfulness, presence, human?

Yeah, we've hit all of it. Yeah, it feels good. We did a good job. I'm trying to see if there's anything that we missed here that we didn't ask you. No, it's pretty sparse. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

It's pretty phenomenal. But Deepak, I'm always in awe of how you found a way to take the teachings of the East so far and so deep and now to take it all the way through to AI. And this is India's contribution to the world. It really is. the teachings of the East so far and so deep and now to take it all the way through to AI and... This is India's contribution to the world. It really is. We never conquered through violence, but our culture is taking over the world, whether it's Bollywood or it's cuisine or it's fashion or it's philosophy or it's spirituality.

This is the way to influence the world. As you know, there's a Sanskrit expression, Vasudev Kutumbukam, the world is our family. Yeah, absolutely. The book is called Digital Dharma. Of course, head over to Deepak Chopra.ai. We'll be putting a code for anyone who wants to use it as well. Deepak, as always, you've blown my mind.

Thank you. You've expanded my consciousness. You make me proud of the culture I was fortunate enough to study and deeply look at in my time. And thank you so much for doing all the incredible work you are. Thank you for being a pioneer and leading the way for your generation. Thank you so much. Thank you.

If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor Peter Attia on how to slow down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health. Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition and health and people are going to be shocked to hear that because I think most people think the exact opposite.