Deepak Chopra - How Self-Awareness Connects Humanity

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:34My guest today needs absolutely no introduction, Deepak Chopra. If you've ever followed this work, my podcast here, you would know that I normally am not the kind of person that would get excited when I meet a rock star or, you know, one of the top athletes. But when I meet one of my teachers, I am so humbled in his presence and I'm so grateful for the opportunity. And Deepak, we met a couple of times. First time was right around the time when I issued my first book, when I published my first book. And, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. Deepak's always been Deepak. And we spoke together on a panel in New York City where obviously, obviously he knew a million times more than I did.

1:22But he was so kind and so generous. And every question that was issued to the panel, Deepak would look at me and say, I think Mo would answer this better. No, I would not answer it better. But the confidence and the kindness of him encouraging me to try to do what I was doing is probably the reason I am here today speaking to you. It's probably the reason that you heard of my work. I have to say I have learned so much, so much from Deepak that I honestly and truly feel that I spent a retreat with him because I followed all of his work, all of his content he may not know. And I always found nuggets of wisdom in his work that are summarized in such a short and precise and articulate way that it would blow me away.

2:17It's such a joy because today is the second time I meet my teacher who is here in Riyadh speaking at the leadership conference of KFD, CAFD, the King Abdullah Financial District in Saudi. And he spoke in the morning about leadership. And I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring the wisdom of Deepak Chopra to all of you. So Deepak, I start by not thanking you for the opportunity to be with you today, but thank you for all that you taught me. And I know you get this quite a bit. I don't think you can even imagine how much difference you've made for so many of us. Has it always been this way?

3:03Have you always been this wise, this articulate, this... I mean, it feels somehow that anytime you're asked a question, You know the answer already. You somehow answer it in two and a half words, sometimes two and a half sentences, and we go like, yeah, I get it. That's exactly what it should be. Has it always been like that? I don't know. I mean, I'm still figuring out my own identities. Are you really? I can't believe that to be true. What do you mean? How can Deepak Chopra be figuring out his identity? In a way, because every identity we assume is provisional. It has nothing to do with who we really are.

3:50Where you went to school, your credentials, your bio. It's a constantly evolving identity, I hope. And none of it is really you, is it? None of it is really you, because it's all conditioned separate mind, conditioned by everything from economics to ancestors to religion to societal norms, nation states, tribes, nothing that you assume you are is who you really are. Does that mean that all that we hear about in terms of finding yourself and finding who you are is futile? I mean, is it not something we should dedicate effort and attention to? Well, it's certainly your self-image. Your personality is your self-image, but it's not yourself.

4:45So yourself is when you remove every label, what's left. What's left is, interestingly enough, what we call I. I was a baby. I was a child. I was a teenager. I'm a young adult I'm an old adult all the way to dusty death so I is a constant the body mind is not a constant you are a fertilized egg embryo so what is that I that's a constant so you know everything else is in time but I is not in time but then that I is also separate from everything that's ever been me. So it's different than all that I considered is me. What you consider yourself is a conditioning of the infinite as a finite expression.

5:43Because I is infinite. I doesn't have borders. I doesn't have a form. This is a form and it's a verb. It's a changing verb. Mind, body is a form and the experience of the world is also form. but I has no form. It's what the religions say, Allah has no form. Correct. But therefore, whatever that entity is must be infinite, without cause, not in time, incomprehensible, unimaginable, irreducible, but fundamental. Everything else is kind of a derivative of that. I have to say the questions are at the magnitude of the teacher. So I am actually going to ask very difficult questions that I'm completely puzzled with in today's world.

6:35When we think of the infinite that we are, humanity has always felt that we were the sort of the superior life form. We were the only life form that was capable of reasoning, that was sort of aware of its surrounding in a way that is intelligent, if you want. And we live in a world today where there are questions around the society and the world that we're creating, where there are other forms of entities, artificially intelligent, that are coming to join our world. And they are interestingly behaving in ways that mimics consciousness, mimics life, sentient. They're sentient in their behavior.

7:25I mean, first of all, what's your view on AI? Do you think AI will ever be alive in the form, in the way we think of life? And then do you think it will ever actually mimic the way humanity is in its consciousness, in its interaction with emotions, with values? AI will be super intelligent, more intelligent than any human being. Because as you know, you've written about this, AI can take all forms of intelligence. biological intelligence, linguistic intelligence, artistical intelligence, musical intelligence, mathematical intelligence, and create superintelligence. But that's not consciousness.

8:16So consciousness, I have a digital twin called Digital Deepak. Do you? I did not know that. He's been on many shows, including CNN. and, you know, the anchors ask him questions like, what did you eat for breakfast? He says, I don't feel hungry. I don't have sexual urges. I don't fear death. We all think of you as that. It's like, you know, it's like Deepak. I don't fear death. I don't have existential conundrums. So, you know, intelligence and awareness are not the same thing. Correct. See, intelligence is still a byproduct of awareness. And awareness cannot be replicated. It cannot. Its modes of knowing can be replicated.

9:09So awareness knows itself as experience. Correct. And yet, the awareness of an experience is independent of the experience. So if you look at your television screen, you're seeing a program. Let's say that's the experience, but you need a screen. And the program will come and go, but the screen is, in a sense, in this metaphor, timeless. That's correct. Okay, so awareness is that screen on which events happen, experiences happen. The experience includes what we call mind, what we call intellect, what we call our ego personality, what we call our five senses, what we call our imagination, what we call our creativity, what we call feelings and thoughts.

10:05They are objects of experience. You know, when people say I, the body-mind, they mean the body-mind, but that's not true. Absolutely not. The body-mind is an object of awareness. Explain that. Let's not pass this quickly. What is it that knows I have a body and a mind? Correct. What is it? It's my awareness. It's your awareness. Yeah. So awareness is the common ground of experience in everything, in that plant. The plant has a different mode of knowing. It will gravitate towards where the sun is. It will capture photons, photosynthesis. That's a different form of knowing. A bat experiences the world as the echo of ultrasound.

10:55What does the world look like to an insect with 100 eyes? I could give you many examples. Okay, but what we call perception is a species-specific mode of knowing. Correct. But awareness is the common ground in all these modes of knowing. So it unifies us, my awareness and the tree's awareness and the insect's awareness? It's one awareness only. But its modes of knowing are species-specific. And as humans, we have the ability to trace back every experience and go to its source. So you say, you know, I think the major problem with science today, you know, if you look Google or these days chat GBT or whatever, say what are the 125 open questions in science?

11:52The first open question in science is what's the universe made of? now you'd say we know gravity, space time particles force fields but by the way that's less than 4 % of the universe in any case the rest is non-atomic so we have no idea what it is dark matter, dark energy probably unknowable even though we try to attempt to know it unknowable because it's not atomic and you and I are made of atoms So we can only interact with atoms. Anyway, that's 4 % of the universe, of which 99.99 % is invisible interstellar dust. So the 2 trillion galaxies, which is the visible universe, 2 trillion galaxies, 700 sextillion stars, uncountable number.

12:49And right now, because of the telescopes right there, looking at biospheres, they say probably 60 billion habitable planets in just the Milky Way galaxy. Yes. Milky Way galaxy, 60 billion habitable planets. Habitable because they might be in what is called the Goldilocks zone. If a planet is too close to its sun, too hot, no life as we know it, too far, too cold, no life. And then other things, gravity, etc. has to be like us. But given that biosphere, 60 billion almost certain habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Multiply that by 2 trillion and the number is enormous. But here's the problem with the atomic universe.

13:38As you know, when you are looking at particles, they occupy space and time. They have matter and energy. But you stop looking at them, they evolve into probability waves in mathematical space. So if you really want to know what the universe is like and you want one answer, it's made of nothing. So that leads to the second question in science. If it's made of nothing, why does it look like this? like you, me, like this bracelet, like this hand, like this shoe that's called the hard problem of consciousness and so the second most important question open science is what's the biological basis of consciousness now you know I believe along with a few other scientists that these are the wrong questions the universe there's no such thing as a universe it's a human construct for a species specific mode of experience and knowing there's no objective universe what you and i call the universe is a human label for human sensations perceptions images feelings and thoughts so it's a construct there's no universe number one there's no physical matter number two nobody has ever actually found a substance called matter.

15:16When you look for a substance called matter, all you have access is to your own perceptions. Correct. So, and we call that matter, but that's a nice name and it's convenient to do science and technology. But that is not giving me access to fundamental truth, okay, because I'm starting with an assumption that the ontological primitive of the universe is a substance called matter. But even atoms and molecules and force fields are human constructs for modes of experience and knowing in the human mind. Okay, so if you ask the wrong questions, what's the universe made of? What's the biological basis of consciousness?

16:00You never have an answer. There's no biological basis of consciousness because biology itself is an experience in consciousness. Correct. How do you know you have a biology experience? You're conscious of it. You're aware of it. And furthermore, it's a verb, it's not a noun. So your mind and body are constantly changing. Every experience is a perceptual snapshot. So I look at you, I look here, I look back at you. That's a different snapshot. Now, you might say, but it looks the same. Actually, it doesn't. And I keep taking selfies of you over 10 years. I see there's a transformation. So every experience is a single perceptual snapshot, period.

16:45Now we give continuity to it because we create a storyline out of it. That's human. We create stories and say, I have a body, I have a mind, I have a personality. But if you actually examine this proposition very closely, You say, is there such a thing as an unseen color? Is there such a thing as a color we've ever saw the both of us the same way? It doesn't matter, but is there... Must be. An unseen color. What would an unseen color look like? Because as soon as you say seeing, you implied that seeing is the color. It's supposed to be seeing it, yeah. Okay. So when you look at every experience, you'll see it has no reality.

17:36It has zero reality. So, you know, Western philosophers have said this, which can shine, our life is a dream, we are asleep. But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming. The Buddha said the same thing. This lifetime of ours is transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain. So if I asked you right now, what happened to your childhood? You'd say, it's a dream. But if I asked you what happened to yesterday, it's a dream.

18:15What happened to this morning? It's a dream. What happens to these words? By the time you hear them, they don't exist. So everything you're looking at is a ghost. It's already happened. You and I are fictional characters. in a collective dreamscape. And our spiritual quest is to find out who or what is doing the dreaming. Who or what is dreaming this thing that we call the body-mind. Now, if you were a religious person, you wouldn't have a problem with this. You say Allah is doing dreaming. We are God's dream, or Brahman, or Ain Sof, or It, whatever it is. what is it that dreams the world through different modes of knowing and experience?

19:01Because the body-mind is just a mode of knowing and experience. Every living species is a mode of knowing and experience. Now, this leads to, you know, your question, will AI ever become conscious? And the answer is no. Okay. In fact, AI thrives on being predictable. Right? There are two terms in AI that you obviously must know. perplexity and what is called entropy. So perplexity influences the likelihood of an answer. You start typing out, I will, can you have, and it already types out, dinner with me. And then it says, tonight, tomorrow, it gives you ideas. So it's trying to be predictable.

19:47On the other hand, entropy is a measure of unpredictability. Consciousness is unpredictable because it's creative, fundamental creative. So even though AI will simulate creativity, it cannot have fundamental creativity, nor can it have conscious experience, nor can it have subjective dilemmas. and uncertainty, ambiguity, contradiction and paradox and chaos is the basis of creativity. So even though we think these systems will be immensely creative, they'll be super intelligent but not creative. Creativity means disruption, like fundamental disruption. We say these days disruptive technology, But disruptive technologies has to be fundamentally disruptive, which means a complete destruction of context, meaning, relationship and story.

20:53Dead and a new... A new one is emerged. It's like, you know, death. It's a virgin birth. It's to be born again in spiritual traditions to see the world as for the first time. because as soon as you're born, before you're given a name, you have all that. You have infinite possibilities, full of wonder, curiosity. You have no limits to your imagination. You have empathy. You kick a dog in front of a baby, it winces, okay, because it has fields what the other feels. It's connected. But then as soon as you give somebody a name, a nationality, a tribe, a religion, you limit possibilities. And even AI reflects those biases, as you were saying this morning in your panel.

21:41Let's go back to AI, because I think what you bring is a much bigger topic than AI. So this entire physical universe is a subjective experience for the dreamer, let's just call it that. The human dreamer. The human dreamer. This is a human universe. It's not the universe of a bat that knows reality through the echo of ultrasound. A very different universe. Yeah, or a snake that moves through infrared. Correct. Or a chameleon whose eyeballs are on two different axes. You can't even remotely imagine what this would look like to a chameleon. That's absolutely spot on. I mean, we always use the example.

22:17So there's no such thing as the universe. There is the perception of every different vantage point of a species to the universe. Correct. And the source of that is awareness. But... Awareness is not species specific. Awareness is the common ground. So it all adds up to one... Singularity, as you call it. Yeah, not source, but destination of all of our awareness. And source. And source, probably. The alpha and the omega. So here's the question. If this entirely is happening within our awareness, our consciousness, not our physical minds or brains so that nobody mixes this up. These are just instruments to give us the perception.

22:58But if this is all happening within our own construction, if we want, Why are we so concerned about it? You said the objective is to connect back to that dreamer, to that side of you that's aware of all of this, correct? Why are we so concerned about AI is rising, AI is falling, AI is dangerous, AI is amazing? Why do humans spend so much of our living? Because as humans, we are conditioned to feel that we are separate. and separation implies fear. And so everything we do as humans is based on fear and the conditioned mind. So, you know, this is a very important question which you're asking. Where does experience happen?

23:46Right now, where is this experience happening? Let's look at this in a little deep way. Okay, I'm speaking to you. Let's see what science has to say about it. I was speaking to you, I'm vibrating vocal cords. The atmosphere is vibrating. There's something happening in your eardrum, which is vibrating. There are little hair follicles in there, which sense the vibration. They send an electrical current to your brain. And you hear Deepak, but there's no sound in your brain. There's no experience in your brain. And if I put a knife through your brain, you don't feel pain. Any anesthesiologist will tell you.

24:32All you see in the brain is electrochemistry. Correct. Now, the heart problem of consciousness is we don't know how electrochemistry produces sound. But where is the sound? There's no sound in the brain. There's no sound here. All this is vibration of air molecules. So where is the sound? And the only answer you can come up with, it must be an awareness. Now, where is this awareness? Well, you can't localize it. You can't see it. It doesn't have a form. If it had a form, you'd see it. So actually, this sound is being processed outside of space-time. That's a mind-boggling conclusion. Okay, now also look at vision.

25:17Say, ask, I do this regularly with neuroscientists. And they've never thought of this. So where is the experience of seeing happening? Let's say I look at that object, those utensils or that plant. Where is the experience of seeing that plant happening? Some people will say it's happening there. But I say you are here, how is the experience happening there? Then say it's happening in my eyes. Your eyes are 2.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters. They're 9 centimeters apart. Your retina is curved. And by the time light goes there, it crosses over and everything is inverted. So if the experience is happening in your eyes, then you should see two of me about this size, upside down and curved.

26:09It's not happening in eyes. So it sits in my brain. Well, my brain is 10 centimeters by 15, 14 centimeters by 12. how does this building or that tree or that Milky Way galaxy fit inside here? See, it's very mind-boggling. You do not know where experience is happening. You say, okay, then it's happening in consciousness. Where is this consciousness? Can't see. It doesn't have a form. So every experience that we have is being processed outside of space-time. But we bamboozle ourselves by saying, I am in this body-mind, and then I am here, and everything else is there. But the body-mind is also being experienced at the same place, where everything else is being experienced.

26:58So where is experience happening? The only thing you can say is it's happening here, in this space. This space, right in front of you, is connected to intergalactic space. Correct. This space here, you are surrounded by infinity right now. Right this moment, you are surrounded by infinity and your connection to infinity is this. Now, if you talk to some really good cognitive scientists, they'll say the space is modifying itself into objects. And now science tells us that too. You know, the fundamental activity of the universe is whatever you might call it, the quantum vacuum. Correct. And particles, virtual particles popping in and out as determined by the uncertainty principle.

27:53And somehow that's leading to this world. Remove all the objects, even space would disappear. Because space is defined by the objects in the space. And the objects are modifications of space. So space, which is infinite, is awareness. Once again, that basically means that none of this entire physical existence matters at all because awareness persists before and after space-time. Correct. And that we're going through this experience so hung up about it. Because of our false identity. Because of our provisional identity. Because we believe that we are the avatar, not the dreamer. You believe you're the avatar and not the dreamer.

28:37But the dreamer is one. The dreams are infinite through different modes of... This is an instrument. Think of this as a biosensor. Five senses, five motor organs, feelings, thoughts, emotions, interpretations, conditioned mind. It's a sensor. It's a biosensor. That's all it is. So this is not who you are. This is an experience you're having. You're a non-local being having a local experience and the locality is based on false identity. And is your explanation then that this is a multi-threaded existence of one single being? Correct. That's a big question. Multi-universes. You know, now if you talk to some brilliant scientists like Caltech professor Sean Carroll, they're not interested in what we're talking about.

29:32But in fact, when what's-his-name got the Nobel Prize in Gravity recently, two years ago, I asked him about consciousness. And he said, I'm not interested in consciousness. I don't want to understand consciousness. I don't give a shit about consciousness. But yet, if you talk to now the new guys, the one Nobel Prize recently on entanglement, which is very getting close to that. Entanglement means every experience is inseparably entangled with every experience. Not connected, entangled. So what they call the multiverse, Sean Carroll says there are infinite universes. Yes, I agree, there are infinite universes, but they're all species-specific biological expressions of a singularity.

30:28what you this morning also referred to as the... Yeah, you referred to it as the singularity, right? The singularity differentiates into entangled universes. Okay, this is going to be a very deep question that I have struggled with for a very long time. So, you know I'm a video gamer. Yes, yes. This is a video game. Yes. So, to win a video game, or to end a video game, there is one of two ways. One is to win, and the other is to enjoy the gameplay until the game ends. And in a very interesting way, humanity, with our attempt for control and building civilization and improving things and protecting our tribes and so on, as we are within this illusion of an avatar, we're constantly trying to win the game.

31:17When sometimes failing might actually be a very interesting option. So one of my wonderful conversations recently, Stephen basically was saying that failure might benefit humanity to slow down climate change or to sort of reduce our constant strive for capitalism and capitalist growth and consumerism and so on. That's another interesting way of sort of playing the game. But another way altogether is to just let the game end, right? In a very interesting way, some people pessimistically will say this is the most disruptive time of humanity's time. We have climate change upon us. There is uncertainty around where AI in the wrong hands, what that could do to us.

32:01There is a bit of geopolitical, a bit of economic challenges and so on. The way you describe it basically says, chill. The dreamer doesn't care about any of that. The dreamer wants to experience all of that. The dreamer wants to be emerged and submerged and to feel it and to sort of relate to it. But it's really not affecting the dreamer at all. Is that a possibility that this is a video game that's like Tetris at the end of it, getting a little faster and eventually will pass? The key is to differentiate between a game and play. Totally. It's a game you want to win. place you want to enjoy the experience.

32:44Correct. Infinite and finite games. Infinite games you just want to play forever. You don't care if you win or win. If you treat this as a play then you can assume any role you want. Like a great Shakespeare Shakespearean actor. That's incredible Deepak. So can I ask you this? Look at you and all of the incredible wisdom that you've acquired over the years. someone else was born the same day like you and may have ended up through a different a very different path of life and you're saying those two lives are the same if we learn to play absolutely absolutely they're two lives at the same because what is playing the game is infinite the game itself is finite the infinite will keep on playing games whatever it is or play and it It plays everything, from an insect to a bird to an eagle to a cloud, because all these are just modes of knowing and experience.