Deepak Chopra: Becoming Your Own Guru in the Digital Age

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People Podcast. And I know I say this every episode that we found some remarkable person to inspire you, but today, truly, we have a remarkable person. His name is Deepak Chopra, and I bet every one of you have heard of him. He's world renowned for his integrative medicine and personal transformation work. He's the founder of the Chopra Foundation.
And I mean, how much do I have to introduce you? And he has touched millions of people's lives with his writing, his speaking, his podcasting. And I met him in Hawaii at an EO conference, which was a very special moment for me. And Deepak, you were wearing a really cool jacket that made a very big impression on me. And so I think we discussed it. Was it Issey Miyake jacket?

Deepak Chopra:
It was Issey Miyake. Those are cool, but also easy to travel in, right?

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. So I came right home and I told my wife, "I met Deepak Chopra and he was in an Issey Miyake jacket." She was also impressed. So I want to dive right into your latest book. You've written ninety books, and you have podcasts and YouTube videos all over the place so people will understand the basis.
But I have to tell you that, I read your latest book, and I was just, I guess the right word is astounded Deepak, because of all the people in the world who have embraced AI, I would not have thought it would've been you. And so that was particularly enlightening to me. So I'm going to start off with a quote. The quote from the book. "I believe that no technology in decades can equal AI for expanding your awareness in every area, including spiritual and personal growth."
Can you just explain to me how you came to have so much faith in AI? When I read that, I thought, next thing you know, Warren Buffett is going to tell me he's buying crypto. And Greta Thunberg is driving an SUV, and Jane Goodall loves ribeye steaks. Deepak Chopra has embraced AI. So can you just explain this for me?

Deepak Chopra:
I have my own definition of what is called reality. So what we call the divine, or God, doesn't have a form and not having a form, and that every spiritual tradition says God doesn't have a form, the divine doesn't have a form. Then people say, "What all these pictures of God in the Vatican and this and that?" Hindus have hundreds of deities as do the Buddhists. And those are symbolic representations, what we call divine.
Divine is infinite, and being infinite doesn't have a border, is outside of space-time and has no cause in the world of space-time and causality, everything has a cause. But God transcends all causes and all concepts and all definitions. So I came up with a formula. God has a digital workshop outside of space-time, and the formula is zero is equal to infinity is equal to one. So think of this workshop outside space-time, which is divine, and it's spilling out zeros and ones in infinite combinations.
And the only difference between you and the mountain or the earth and a star and this iPhone and AI is a different combination of zeros and ones. That's it. And it comes from one source. So that is God's language. It's not English within Indian accent, I would have liked to believe that. But God's language is digital language. And once you get that understanding, then you see how did we create the human experience? You and I create the human experience.
And it all began 40,000 years ago when there were eight different kinds of human species. So we call ourselves Homo sapiens, but then we gave ourselves that name, it means the wise ones. We were humble enough to do that, but we gave names to other humans, Homo habilis, Homo erectus. We gave names to other species, giraffes, elephants, this, that, the other. So all started with naming experience, and that created a language for stories.
And that is how the human evolution began. Stories to be human, is to have a story. Right now, we sharing a story. And then that way of telling stories evolved into what we call models. So models means giving reality a stamp through the human mind, latitude, longitude, drainage, mean time, north pole, south pole. We can't live without these concepts even though we made them up. But then we created more languages.
We created language of philosophy, science, anthropology, history, astronomy, biology, mathematics. These are all human languages. And we call AI a large language model because it has access to all these languages that humanity has created to look at what we call the human experience. And now, there's no single human being that can compete with this kind of database.
So in fact, we can't compete with it, but we have access to the entire database of knowledge and wisdom from Jesus Christ to the Buddha, to Plato, to Socrates, to Einstein, to go to the prophets of the Old Testament. AI is a tool for spiritual enlightenment. It can't get you enlightened, but it can show you the maps. And there are many maps on spirituality, just like there are many maps in any terrain.
If I want to go to Boston from New York, I can use an aerial route, I can use a contour map, a road map, go by the ship, take a helicopter, but they all lead to the same destination, which is spiritual realization. So I'm using AI as a tool, it's not just the book. I have my own AI, it's called deepakchopra.ai.
Try it out, deepakchopra.ai. Ask any spiritual question or any dilemma that you have spiritual or about health or about longevity, and you'll get information from ninety-six of my books, from every conversation I've had publicly, from every discussion I've had, from my meetings with spiritual luminaries. So yes, AI is a tool for enhancing spiritual well-being, but also emotional well-being and physical well-being. And my AI deepakchopra.ai is the coach.

Guy Kawasaki:
So the irony is that this quote-unquote technology is really democratizing spirituality. It represents all the knowledge as opposed to just whatever narrow slice you had access to before, depending on what book or what person you knew. Now you get everything.

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah, I'll send you three short videos. Feel free to show them on your program. My conversations with the Buddha on AI.

Guy Kawasaki:
So this is better than the conversation in 1930 with Albert Einstein and God, I can't remember the other fellow's name.

Deepak Chopra:
Rabindranath Tagore. The Indian sage. Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
Here's my next quote from the book because I found this also stunning in a sense. So this is the quote, "The function of the guru needs to be overhauled in modern times, getting rid of the cult of personality, stepping away from superstitious beliefs in the magical attributes of enlightened beings.
AI can step in to renovate a time-honored role almost immediately." Now, Deepak, when I read that, I said, "Deepak is the mother of all gurus, and he's telling us that the function of a guru is being overhauled by AI." Isn't that in a sense putting you out of business?

Deepak Chopra:
Spell the word guru for me, slowly.

Guy Kawasaki:
G-U-R-U.

Deepak Chopra:
G-U-R-U. So the ultimate guru is you. And AI is helping you to discover your own guru, which is the only real guru. The others are deep fakes like me.

Guy Kawasaki:
And so the concept of guru means that you're removing darkness, right? So now you can remove darkness yourself with AI.

Deepak Chopra:
Correct.

Guy Kawasaki:
And so what does that mean for all the other people who hold themselves out as gurus? Guru is a big industry.

Deepak Chopra:
I know it's going to slowly fade out. But there are human beings who like to look up to other human beings and they will never get enlightened. If Jesus or the Buddha are pointing their finger at the moon, I shouldn't be worshipping the finger, I should be looking at the moon and saying, "How can I get there?" So a true guru is not into self-adulation. A true guru allows you to become your own guru, and that happens only once in a few thousand years. The rest are all deep fakes.

Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. You earlier mentioned the fact that there is, I forget the name you use, but let's just for my purposes, let's just call it ChopraGPT.

Deepak Chopra:
Chopra.ai.

Guy Kawasaki:
The data in that is only your stuff. It doesn't go outside, so it cannot hallucinate. It's only your data what you put into it, or have you opened it up to the whole internet?

Deepak Chopra:
It's only my data and it does not hallucinate. Although there are advantages to hallucinations, because anytime you have hallucination data, it gives you creative ideas. So I think hallucinations also have a role, but my AI doesn't hallucinate. It's database is all my ninety-six books, every conversation I've had publicly, my YouTube videos, my discussions, my talks with luminaries, etc.

Madisun Nuismer:
Can I interrupt really quick? It sounds like there may be some construction going on. I can't tell if it's on your end or Deepak's end.

Deepak Chopra:
Nothing happening on my side, but let's just do it and then whatever happens, we leave it up to the divine matrix.

Madisun Nuismer:
Love it. All right.

Guy Kawasaki:
There's no construction on my side.

Deepak Chopra:
It's a hallucination.

Guy Kawasaki:
Madisun is making her own reality.

Deepak Chopra:
All of us.

Guy Kawasaki:
I have to mention that, maybe, I'm flattering myself, but great minds think alike, because I also, with Madisun's help, we created KawasakiGPT and KawasakiGPT has all my writings, my podcasting, all that kind of stuff too. And I swear Deepak, KawasakiGPT is better at being me than I am. And I often use it to draft newsletters, to draft blurbs, to figure out what to do on my podcast. It's better at being me than me. Do you think your GPT is better at being you than you?

Deepak Chopra:
It is because it's also something called a rag model retrieval augmentation in a generation, which means anything that's obsolete, it automatically deletes it and not upgrades it. Yes, it's more effective than I am. You could have easily done this interview with my deepakchopra.ai.

Guy Kawasaki:
It could have been KawasakiGPT talking to your GPT, and it would've been interesting. So have you thought that, because you created this, you are in a sense now immortal, that for the rest of time people can ask you questions?

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah. Not only immortal, it can keep updating as the years go by. Whatever I've said can be upgraded to a new level of understanding.

Guy Kawasaki:
And are lots of people asking and stuff and interacting with it a lot?

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah. Yeah. Now it's available in four languages, English, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic and soon we are introducing it in China as well.

Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. Wow. Okay. The next mind-blowing quote from the book is this, "To me, AI is a mirror to the user's consciousness." So can you please explain what that means and how in a sense, what you ask AI reflects what you are?

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah, because if you're going to ask what kind of shoes I should buy? Or candidate, do I prefer Democrat or Republican, then my AI will not participate in that conversation. My AI will only participate in conversations about health, longevity, health span, emotional and spiritual well-being.
So the way you ask the question, obviously, reflects your own issues, obviously. So then AI becomes a mirror, and depending on how much experience it has from your asking it questions, it actually knows more about you than you know about yourself.

Guy Kawasaki:
I agree. So from a technical standpoint, what you or your team has done is, it has constricted the answers of your GPT so that it only answers stuff that you care about or that you feel you're relevant to. It won't answer a question about how do I become a better surfer? It will say, "I cannot answer that question."

Deepak Chopra:
It'll say, "Yeah, you can consult ChatGPT for that." I only wanted offer to the world what I think I've spent my life doing, otherwise I would be a hypocrite.

Guy Kawasaki:
And getting outside of your GPT or my GPT, are you not concerned about AI taking over the world?

Deepak Chopra:
It already has. And so you can't worry about that. Once a child is born, it can't return to the womb. So this child is born, it's not going to return to the womb. And so we have to decide now, whether we use it to risk our extinction or we use it to create a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world. And that was the goal. Every technology can be used for harmful purposes.
A knife can be used to kill a person, but in the hands of a surgeon, it heals a person. And so too, with every other technology, AI can be used for poisoning the food chain, cyber hacking, interfering with democracy, causing a nuclear, I don't want to give too many ideas, somebody's listening. But it can also be used for good purposes. But it's here, you can't stop it.

Guy Kawasaki:
It also seems to me Deepak, that when you read these doomsday articles about AI, they are comparing a worst case of AI against the best case of humans. And to me, that is an unfair comparison. If you compare best case AI, best case human or worst case AI, worst case human. But in this doomsday scenario that what if two AIs get angry with each other and launch a nuclear war? I would say it's much higher probability that some fascist dictators will do that than an AI will do it.

Deepak Chopra:
You're correct. AI doesn't have emotions. AI doesn't have subjective experience. You can program it to simulate that, but it inherently does not have emotional experience, therefore it cannot act out of emotions. Now, you can as a human being, program it in a way that it simulates that. And that's a danger because there are enough people who are crazy in the world.

Guy Kawasaki:
I noticed in your book that sometimes you're citing chat and sometimes you're citing other LLMs. So how do you pick? When do you use which one? Which is your favorite? How do you decide which one to use?

Deepak Chopra:
Right now my favorite is my own, which is deepakchopra.ai. But Perplexity is a good one because it gives you references and data. And now this DeepSeek that has come from China, which came much after I wrote the book, is actually far superior to anything I've seen. And as we move into the future, we are going to have all these different AI companies competing with each other. And that's a good thing because you're going to see something much more creative and it's leapfrogging us into a new future.

Guy Kawasaki:
So when I see in your book that sometimes you use one LLM and sometimes you use another, in the writing of the book, did you ask the same prompt of several LLMs and then pick the answer you liked the best? Or did you just ask one?

Deepak Chopra:
No, I asked several LLMs, and then I would also see how I could corroborate the information with research. And that's how it happened.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. And I never in a million years thought I would be asking Deepak Chopra this question, but how do you create great prompts? What's the art of a Deepak Chopra prompt?

Deepak Chopra:
You act as if you're speaking to a personal friend, number one, to a coach, number two, to a research assistant, number three and number four, to someone or an instrument that can access the minds of the greatest luminaries that humanity has had.
So you assume those things and then you go back and forth, back and forth, and actually you can train your AI ultimately even ChatGPT or Perplexity to actually have a reasonably good debate or even argument without any contentiousness, without any emotional engagement. Then you get to the right answers. It's called generative AI for a reason. It generates new information based on the context and the art of the prompt. So in my book you had, there's a whole chapter called “The Art of the Prompt.”

Guy Kawasaki:
And basically, if I figure out this prompts and I embrace, this is going to put me on my path to Dharma.

Deepak Chopra:
Yes.

Guy Kawasaki:
For people not familiar with the term, can you just quickly define Dharma?

Deepak Chopra:
Dharma means purpose in life. So there are many stages of Dharma. First is survival and safety, second is material success, third is maximizing the delight of the senses, fourth is love and belongingness. Fifth is creative expression, sixth is intuition and higher consciousness, and the seventh is self-discovery or self-realization. So these are stages of Dharma of purpose.

Guy Kawasaki:
And how do I use AI to get myself down this path?

Deepak Chopra:
Ask my AI this question deepakchopra.ai say, "How do I get on the path to Dharma?" See what it comes up with. But ultimately, it will resonate with you. What's my unique talent? How does it help the world? And how can I use my unique talents to be of service and be in a state of gratitude? Then you're in Dharma.

Guy Kawasaki:
Deepak, I took your spiritual intelligence test in your book. Okay?

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
And maybe what I'm going to tell you is going to show that I haven't reached my Dharma, but I have to say that I answered every question often or always. So does that mean that I'm doing pretty well spiritually?

Deepak Chopra:
It means you're on the right track. Yes.

Guy Kawasaki:
That's good to know. And then I asked Madisun, if I answered all these this way, am I deluding myself? And she said I wasn't. But then I asked her if I was deluding myself, would you dare tell me that I wasn't? And she said she would tell me so. Right, Madisun?

Madisun Nuismer:
That's correct.

Guy Kawasaki:
I have a thought for you on the name of one of the chapters in the book and let me be so bold as to offer this thought. I realize I'm talking to Deepak Chopra, but. So you have a chapter called “Trust the Process.” And as I read that chapter, I think that it would be more accurate to call that chapter “Trust the Processing” as opposed to the process.
Because to me, a process is like a sequence of steps. And I think the point of that chapter is not so much to trust the documented steps, but to trust the processing of the steps to going through the processing, not the process steps itself.

Deepak Chopra:
Yeah, no, that's good. The process though, is about self-reflection and contemplative inquiry. That's the process. But processing is good.

Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, so I can say that I made a good suggestion to Deepak.

Deepak Chopra:
I’ll use it in the next edition.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. My life is complete. So now, next question for you, because a lot of people listen to my podcast, including people like Marc Benioff, they're really into meditation. And can you just explain to people how AI could possibly help with meditation? Because most people's initial reaction is, AI is the opposite of meditation. It's technical, it's staring at a screen, it's all this. So how can AI help meditation?

Deepak Chopra:
So there are many kinds of meditation. There is meditation that is called contemplative inquiry. There's awareness of the body, there's awareness of the mind, there's awareness of the ego, there's awareness of the intellect, there's awareness of what's happening inside your body. There's awareness of relationship. There's awareness with the divine, and there's awareness with your own self.
So those are all the different disciplines of meditation. AI can help tailor a meditation for you very precisely. So you might go to my AI and say, "Deepak, I have a lot of stress. I'm in a relationship that is getting toxic, can you help me with the meditation?" And my AI will give you a guided meditation. You don't have to stare at the screen, you just have to listen to me guiding you through the meditation. So that's how it works.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Do you think that science and spirituality are opposing forces?

Deepak Chopra:
No. Science always asks what's happening out there. And spirituality asks who is asking and why? Science is about the objective world, and spirituality is about the subjective world. And they go together. You can't have an object without a subject, and you can't have a subject without an object. They go together so they're complementary to each other.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So then, how does one find spirituality? Are you just going to say, use AI. But people are searching for spirituality, how do they do it?

Deepak Chopra:
You start with four questions. Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? And what am I grateful for? And then you sit in silence and listen to the answers. Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? And that's the first step.

Guy Kawasaki:
Do you have any people that you would say, this person really has integrated spirituality and leadership? And are there some shining examples that people should not necessarily worship, they should be inspired by what people have accomplished? Or who people you hold up as they have their act together?

Deepak Chopra:
In recent times, I would say people like Martin Luther King, Jr. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Bishop Tutu. These were people who had integrated their lives in a very spiritual way and made a big impact on the world.

Guy Kawasaki:
And is there anybody alive? Who would you put in that category?

Deepak Chopra:
I would have to think about that.

Guy Kawasaki:
I would be interested based on my limited knowledge of your work. I would say the only person who qualifies is Jane Goodall.

Deepak Chopra:
She does good. I'm glad you mentioned her.

Guy Kawasaki:
All right. I would just like to know for you, at this point in your life, how do you define success?

Deepak Chopra:
Success is the progressive realization of worthy goals. It's the ability to love and have compassion. And it's the ability to get in touch with your soul, the creative center from where everything happens.

Guy Kawasaki:
By that, the vision of success, there are many people who are very rich and very famous and are failures.

Deepak Chopra:
Some people are so poor, all they have is money.

Guy Kawasaki:
All right. There has been some skepticism about your work and from quote-unquote science and medicine and stuff. So how do you approach when you hear skepticism about your work and your alternative medicine and things like that? What goes through your brain when people conflict you this way?

Deepak Chopra:
I used to get very defensive, but now, I ignore my critics and they can't stand it.

Guy Kawasaki:
And do you think, are they flawed? Are they ignorant? What's going on with them?

Deepak Chopra:
They come from a different worldview, that's all. We all express our worldviews, how we were conditioned as children, and then the schools we went to, the education we got. And right now the worldview in science is very physicalist. And so anything that's non-physical is denigrated. But that's okay. You need all kinds of people, because it makes for maximum diversity of opinion leads to creativity.

Guy Kawasaki:
And how do you figure out, sometimes you ignore people, but sometimes they have valid feedback. So how do you separate the two?

Deepak Chopra:
You don't get personally offended, and you always are open to feedback. Don't take it personally, emotionally.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. And I have one last question for you. And that last question is, do you ever have moments of personal doubt too?

Deepak Chopra:
I live in the wisdom of uncertainty at all times. And without uncertainty, there's no creativity. So yes, doubt is a very important part of our creative process. The more doubt you have about your habitual certainties, the more room there is to grow spiritually.

Guy Kawasaki:
And how do you keep pushing through that uncertainty?

Deepak Chopra:
I always ask, what's the creative opportunity?

Guy Kawasaki:
So you have these moments of uncertainty.

Deepak Chopra:
Let’s call it, moment of not knowing. Not knowing is the highest knowing, because if you know everything, then there's nothing to know.

Guy Kawasaki:
Wow, okay. That is the way to end this podcast. So the highest knowing is, I'll let you say it again, Deepak. Will you say that again? That was very inspiring.

Deepak Chopra:
Not knowing is the highest knowing, is the window to infinite creativity.

Guy Kawasaki:
I can't ask for a better end to the podcast than this. Thank you very much, Deepak.

Deepak Chopra:
Thank you Guy. Pleasure to speak to you.

Guy Kawasaki:
I hope we can speak at another event again soon. Maybe someday we can be on stage together. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This has been the Remarkable People podcast. And truly, we have had a remarkable episode today with the one and only Deepak Chopra.
And so I want to thank you again and thank you Madisun for making this happen. And Tessa Nuismer, her sister and ace researcher, Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez, our great sound design team. And above all, thank you Deepak Chopra, it's been a very special moment for us. Thank you very much, and I hope to see you again. And I hope you're wearing that Issey Miyake's jacket, because I just love that jacket.

Deepak Chopra:
Thank you. God bless.

Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, God bless you too.