EP #23 The Secret to Happiness w/ Deepak Chopra, M.D.

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Transformative purpose is what you're telling the world. It's like this is who I am, this is what I'm going to do. This is the dent I'm going to make in the universe. Welcome to Mindsets and Moonshots. It's my pleasure to welcome world renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, Dr. Deepak Chopra. Time magazine described him as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century. Deepak is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit entity for research on well being and humanitarianism, as well as Chopra Global, a modern day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. He's also a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego and also serves as a senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. Incredibly, he has written over 90 books including many New York Times bestsellers. And we'll be spending time today speaking about longevity, purpose and his most recent book, the Inner Path to Wealth. Deepak, a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you. It's always nice to see you and be in conversation.

I think one of the things that is so fun for me is that 10 years ago I wrote a book called Abundance the Future Is Better Than youn Think. And just, you know, on the 10 year anniversary you came out with Abundance, the Inner Path to Wealth. And I saw that and I love the concept of abundance. We define abundance slightly differently and I'd love to discuss sort of your understanding of it and see what abundance means to you. And where we might see where the overlap is. Let's begin with your definition of abundance, Deepak.

Abundance is the essential nature of the source of all experience. The source of all experience is awareness or consciousness. So if you want to define how consciousness is defined, Consciousness is that in which we have experience. Consciousness is that in which there is experience. Consciousness is also that in which we know that we have experience. And. And consciousness is constantly modifying itself as experience through what we call mind, body, and universe. Mind, body, and universe are actually concepts. They're not fundamental reality. Mind, body, and universe are human concepts, and they are the interpretation of modifications of the source of all experience, which is called consciousness. So when I say experience, I mean we are having an experience right now. So what is the experience? Right now we're having a visual experience, and we are having an auditory experience. And that visual, auditory experience is happening in awareness, although it seems to be happening on the computer. But if you didn't have any awareness, then there would be no. There would be no computer, and there would be only squiggles and wiggles on the computer. Colors and shapes, construction. Oh, that shape is Peter Diamondis. That's a construct in human consciousness. So without human consciousness, there is no experience. Now, what is consciousness? Consciousness, as I defined is, is the source of all experience, but it just doesn't have a form. It doesn't have a form. If consciousness had a form like my iPhone, then I would. I would be able to see it. But you can't see consciousness because it is formless. And just like the tooth cannot bite itself, the eyes cannot see themselves. Consciousness can't see itself. It only sees itself as experience, as the mind, as the body, as the universe. So consciousness, being formless, is infinite. Therefore, everything it produces, the productions of consciousness. And in time, consciousness is timeless. The productions of consciousness in time are. Have their source in infinity. So right now, if you read the latest theories of physics that find the current interpretation of the universe in science, it's multiverse. There are infinite universes. Everything that the that is produced in consciousness has infinite reproductions of itself. In every seed, there is the promise of thousands of forests. Okay? In every choice you make, there are multiple millions of choices to be made. Okay? Every thought you have, there are infinite thoughts. Thoughts you have access to everything that you have created. There's infinite creativity. So the source of abundance is infinite, formless, irreducible, fundamental. And its productions are infinite abundance, affluence. Because that's what infinity does. If you take infinity out of infinity, infinity remains.

I see that and it's the infinite potential of all options. You know, when I. When I think about abundance, I think about the notion of ever increasing opportunities for everyone on Earth. And when I'm seeing this, Deepak, and you're a scientist, a physician, as well as someone who's deep into the spiritual learnings, I see technology as a force that converts what used to be scarce into abundance. Like we used to go and kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights. And then coal and oil now, now solar and soon fusion. And that technology is converting scarcity into abundance and making it usable. How do you see that play into abundance in your mind?

I see the biggest promise of technology as harnessing our collective creativity and therefore producing abundance for a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful planet. So technology has what we call these deep learning algorithms and also can harness diversity of opinion and talent. So if you look at what we call the emerging science of emergence, as it's called, social scientists call it emergence, they say that if you have maximum diversity of creative people, so maximum diversity of creative people means scientists, technologists, storytellers, but also maximum diversity of storytellers in the form of entertainment, and songwriters and storytellers, but also maximum diversity of ethnicity, of background, of nationality, of technology. So maximum diversity, maximum creative diversity, shared vision, emotional and spiritual bonding together, leveraging everyone's strengths. There's no problem in the world that cannot be solved.

And I agree with that.

Yeah. So as a physician, you know, when I had difficult cases, and I still do, I mean, I still have a license to practice in California and New York and Florida and Massachusetts, I have to renew my practice. I. You know, in medical situations, there's something called grand rounds. When you have difficult cases and you get everybody's opinion. When people have cancer, for example, they have a tumor board. So when I look at those difficult cases, I get all the doctors who are not specialists in the room because the specialists know so much, it precludes them from knowing everything outside their specialty. I get specialists, I get storytellers, I even get entertainers. I get generalists, say, this is the problem. How do you find a solution? And we all incubate together. And I've never lost, you know, when we've used this technology for healing people, getting maximum diversity of opinion and science and technology and story, we've been able to all treat almost any illness. So I said, why don't we employ the same process to solve other problems? There are nine steps to creativity. Peter in first, intended outcome. Second, information gathering. Third, information Analysis, fourth incubation, which I do through meditation, fifth, insight, sixth inspiration, seventh implementation, eighth integration and ninth, incarnation. Death of the old story and the.

Birth of a new paradigm taking action. You know, it's funny, I define an expert as someone who can tell you exactly how it can't be done. And it's interesting, right, because the ability to crowdsource is what you're effectively saying, solutions and bring that integrated vision that could never exist before in the old world when it was just those into your village or those that were within a day's walk is really enabled by this new sets of technologies that are bringing us all together. So I definitely see that. And one of the other definitions I use, and I particularly want your thoughts on this around abundance is that it's creating a world of abundance isn't about a world of luxury, but about a world of possibility. What's your thought on that?

Yes, possibilities. Pure consciousness is infinite possibilities. It's infinite creativity, it's infinite evolution. It's infinitely self organizing and self regulating. So once we get in touch with the source of creativity, not only in you, but me, and we find that we have different creative outlets. You know, you, you are musician and I'm a mathematician and so and so knows how to program computers and so and so knows how to tell a good story, then we take a problem and we collectively harness our collective creativity while staying with the collective vision we have and staying connected with each other at an emotional and spiritual level. No problem is untolerable.

And that is a, it's a beautiful mindset to have and it's challenging for a lot of people to have that mindset. You know, one of the things that I also feel very strongly about is that we're living in a world that is bombarded by dystopian media all the time. That 247 I call CNN the crisis news network that is delivering every gunshot, every murder, every crooked politician into my living room over and over again. Actually, I've stopped watching media. How do you think about the world of, of media and this dystopian, you know, flow of information?

Well, media capitalizes on instant, instant, what do you call it, results. And when you sacrifice sometimes truth and sobriety and creativity for melodrama, then you run risk. So I, I don't see the news anymore. It's not news. It's called opinion. Wherever you go, you get opinion. You don't get news. In fact, you don't know what news is anymore. It's right wing news, left wing news. You know, Al Jazeera, what do you call it? On and on Fox. So you don't get news. I think this is a big problem right now that people are only watching what they want to watch because it reinforces their biases and their prejudices. All you have to do is follow the money and you know, wherever the money goes, that's where the media goes. And so if you have this extreme right wing news, then you have to have the extreme left in order to compete. It's a sad.

Do you watch, do you watch the news?

No, I do not watch news. I show up on it now and then this morning I did CNN on a program for how to prevent suicide in the world and how to use AI and technology, in fact, to go beyond the conventional means of therapy. So if you get an opportunity, share that kind of thing on the news. Otherwise it's not melodrama.

I want to turn to this because it's really important. How do people stay in a abundance mindset? So I speak about having an abundance mindset, which means the notion that tomorrow is going to bring more opportunities than today, that we have a world of increasing capabilities where the cost of resources is coming down, the availability of resources coming down. But when we're so bombarded and we're driven back to that early scarcity thinking that we evolved with and that fear based thinking, how do you recommend people hack that and stay in a hopeful, optimistic, abundance mindset?

You know, many years ago I had the opportunity, and since then I've had multiple opportunities to be close to his holiness, the Dalai Lama. So in the year 2010, I think it was, that a small group of us met him in Vancouver. He was being given an honorary citizenship in Canada and a bunch of social scientists and others were invited to meet him. I happened to be in that meeting. I've known him from before that and, and he said to the audience, to the social scientists, in his typically simple, innocent, joyful manner, he said, can you come up with a happiness formula? Do you have happiness formula? And so we all went to work and you know, there were some brilliant scientists in the group, particularly one cognitive scientist. And, but ultimately through the group, they came up with something called the happiness equation. And I think that's the perfect way to understand the right mindset for anything including abundance. So here's the happiness equation, please. H is equal to S plus C plus V. So H stands for happiness is equal to S. S is called set point in the brain. So some people are seemingly, seemingly wired for joy and opportunity and abundance. And some People are wired seemingly for what you call scarcity thinking and also for looking at problems. This thing called the set point in the brain determines 50% of your so called happiness experience every day. Happy people are always looking for opportunities, no matter what. So whatever the situation is, instead of saying this is a problem or an adversity, they say this is an opportunity. Automatically they don't even see the problem. They see only the opportunity. The unhappy people only see the problem. Always. Now how does this happen? And it was very interesting to see the research on this. If your parents and if your social environment in the first five years of your life, if your parents particularly, and your immediate social environment, your brothers and sisters, if all you heard was criticism, condemning, complaining and playing the victim, then your set point is already always looking for problems. So you know your parents were criticizing, condemning, complaining or playing the victim. You're going to always see problems. On the other hand, if your parents, A, were always joyful, number 1B, they were. I call these the four A's. They were good listeners. Attention, appreciation. They noticed everyone's gifts around them, including yours as a child. Appreciation, then affection. They showered you with unconditional love and they accepted you just as you are, not just as they would like you to be. These four is attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance. You will grow up to be a happy person. Now you say this is bad news because that means that whether I look at the world as opportunity or problem is determined for me already. I'm screwed. The fact is you are, because this is your conditioned mind. Now there is research that shows that you can change this by what we call reflective inquiry. Reflective inquiry or cognitive therapy or something even more interested interesting called awareness based cognitive therapy. We can incorporate that right now in our meditation when we do it towards the end. So you can change your set point. The set point determines 50% of your experience of happiness or sadness every day.

That's beautiful.

Yes. Plus C. C is conditions of living, primarily money. Now this was very interesting because when I wrote the book Abundance, which you just showed me, actually it was inspired by a lyric from Bob Marley, who said, some people are so poor, all they have is money. Okay? And I said, that's a beautiful lyric. You know, some people are so poor, all they have is money. So what does the research show? The research shows that money actually adds 10% to 12% of your daily experience of happiness or sadness. If you win the lottery, for example, let's say you're making $20,000 or $100,000 a year and you suddenly Win the lottery and you make 50 million. Will that make you happy? The answer is ecstatically happy. When you win the lottery, six months you plateau and, and one year you're back to your set point. And then you're unhappier because now you confuse self worth with net worth. You have a big, big problem. So there are two people who are extremely unhappy when it comes to money. One is the extremely poor because they need the money to survive. The other usually is the extremely rich because that becomes their identity, their mood, their sexuality, their personality, their behavior. Depends on what happens at 4:30 when the stock market close. Roses that, that's their identity. So 10% adds to your happiness every day.

And I think the research shows that money makes you happier. Up to a point of, I think it was $70,000 in the United States.

Yeah, that was old research. That was old research. You know, but if money, it doesn't matter. You can make billions of dollars. If money is used for a useful purpose, if it is used to alleviate suffering, if it is used to help you bond with your family, friends, take a vacation, go on a joint expedition or a learning experience, money is very useful for that purpose. But if money is used to only make more money, you know, I know all these people. I was just some conference in Sweden. Everybody is networking to make more money, to make more money, to make money, more money, to make more money. They don't even have time to enjoy it. They don't have time for a vacation. Why? Because I'm making money. Okay, so what's the point? 10% is money, then there's 40% left. And that is called fulfillment. And fulfillment comes from choices we make daily. So the first choice that we make daily is for personal pleasure. Buying shopping is, by the way, the number one cause of joy in our country. It's the number one thing that people do. Shopping to feel instant gratification. And we call human beings in this country consumers. What? It's an ugly word to describe a stardust being with so much creativity. But anyway, consumer, it just tells you that this is how we seek to be happy. Consume, consume, consume.

Can I. Can I guess that number two is eating.

Yes, number two is eating. Number three is sexuality and alcohol and drugs and on and on. Now these choices can make you happy initially, but after a while they lose their charm. You know, difference between this and iPhone 12 is a camera. But you know, 90% of people who can afford it will be convinced that you need. So anyway, so there is another kind of choice we make and that is meaning and purpose. And a third kind of choice makes somebody else happy. The fastest way to be happy is to make somebody else happy or find meaning and purpose in your existence. Now if you apply that, that's 40%. So 50%. 10%. 40%. And even the 10%, don't feel guilty about making money. Just make money in a way that brings you joy and then spend it in a way that brings you joy. Otherwise you'll be stuck in a computer looking at the stock market and worrying about your blood pressure.

I love that happiness formulation. Going back to the 50% set point, the reflective inquiry, is that mostly done through meditation?

Yes. So there are many kinds of meditation. So one is about inquiry. It addresses very deep questions. We can do it right, you know, at the end of the meditation and we can also incorporate the changing of the set point in that part. But that is a very traditional way in Eastern wisdom traditions to reset your set point.

Yes, I just, I just think anything that's 50% of the calculation is something that we need to make sure there's some ability to, to implement a useful self adjustment.

We can do that.

Yeah. And we will. So let me ask you another fundamental question. I believe that we have been seeing increasing abundance in the world over the last couple of hundred years. We've seen increasing access to food, energy, water, healthcare, education, freedom on the planet. I attribute that to the impact of technology versus better politicians or people becoming more intelligent. Do you agree that we're seeing increasing abundance in the world? And what do you attribute that to?

I think we're seeing increasing abundance in the world because we are collectively looking at, at new opportunities even in the times of adversity. I mean, you know, look at what happened during pandemic. Zoom became such a big business. Okay. And there are many other businesses actually emerged, including, you'll see new vaccines for diseases other than viral infections. Now that we have MRNA technology and even more sophisticated understanding of epigenetic switches and what turns them on, off and what we have new understanding of self repair mechanisms. If this pandemic hadn't happened, you wouldn't see the emergence of vaccines that are forthcoming for chronic illness, for diabetes, for Alzheimer's. On and on.

Exactly.

Various kinds. You're going to see more gene editing and other things happening. And you had the new technologies, the new insights into the metaverse, into NFTs took off. And the idea, even though we're going through what people call what this winter with crypto, it's all nonsense. Crypto blockchain is what Going to emerge as a new economy and new creativity in technology, deep learning systems, new algorithms for just about mathematically mapping everything in the body and finding creative mathematical solutions even for things like emotional problems. We have developed during the last two years an emotional chatbot that prevents suicide, that prevents people, people from taking drugs, that helps them with ptsd. And we are finding that at least our teenage audience is more fascinated and more comfortable talking to an emotional AI than they are to a human being because they're not judged now when they need a human being, we are getting crypto and blockchain to even cover that. So this all happened because of the pandemic. It wouldn't have happened otherwise. And I, you know, now know that you will, you know, maybe one of these days you and I will see each other without a screen right here in 3D, just by going, I'm clicking my iPhone and throwing it away. You and I will be in the Same room in 3D holograms talking to each other. This is all happening because there are creative people who are looking for opportunities while the rest are complaining, condemning, criticizing and playing the victim.

Thank God for solution oriented individuals. And there's a few things that I pulled out of Abundance. It's a beautiful book and I've read it and I've listened to it on audible, which you read the book on audible, So I want to commend it to everybody listening here. Let me pull out a few of the things that were. Hit me and speak to them. So you reference a famous axiom of yoga in the book that as you are, so is the world. I love that. Can you talk a little more about what that means and its implications?

So right now if you look at your body and you look around you, wherever you are, that's a total reflection of your state of consciousness, of your state of awareness. And I have, you know, of course abundance goes through the seven levels of fulfillment, which is based on Indian Eastern philosophical metaphorical expression, through the seven chakras, as we call them in the East. But the seven centers of happiness or creativity are actually an extension of, of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So survival and safety, achievement, success, progressive realization of worthy goals, love, belongingness, insight, creativity, imagination, higher consciousness, transcendence. If you have those seven levels and you're aware of them, and you're also aware that in every moment the world is a projection of your state of awareness, then you take total responsibility to create your life. It's total responsibility. I am responsible for everything I see, for the feelings I Experience, but also what I'm looking around me. My perceptual activity is a reflection of my state of consciousness. And once I understand that, then I don't look for external solutions. I look for switching something internally that was off. Okay, so, you know, in the 1970s, there was a book called the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. I don't know if you have not read it. Okay, it was a few pages, like five pages, but it was the most important bestseller of all time. And in that book, there's one sentence. This is, what am I doing in the state of consciousness where this is real? You know, you just ask yourself, whatever is happening, what's my state of consciousness where this is real? And then you switch internally. So this, what is real becomes the illusion. And something else shows up which is. Seems more real. You upgrade the illusion. Basically. Basically, what that phrase says is we are already living in a VR virtual reality simulation, which is what a lot of people are saying now, philosophers and scientists. And so once we shift internally, then we upgrade the simulation that we are part of.

Well, you know, I've said it often. I do believe that we're living in a simulation. We are, you know, know, it's a. Well, I arrive at the simulation hypothesis a little bit differently, which is when you look at the rate at which technology is progressing and our ability to create, you know, highly detailed models of the world and the ability to create AIs that might live in that simulation of the world, and the notion that our planet, if the universe is 13.8 billion and our planet came into existence four and a half billion years ago, what would the technology of a civilization just a million years more advanced or 100,000 years or 1,000 years more advanced, it seems inevitable that we'll be creating high resolution simulations and that will deploy AI forms into that. And the thing I ask myself is if I knew we were living in a simulation definitively, would I do anything differently? And the answer so far is no.

I would keep upgrading it. I think we are already living in a simulation which is a human. See, when you said models of reality, what we call reality is a model of reality. You know, the reality itself is, according to some people, force fields, atoms, molecules, gravity and all that. Okay? But even that is an experience before you call that a model, okay? What is reality without a model? Okay? Because what you're looking at, you know, if I asked you what is this? You'd say, a phone. I asked you this, what is this? You'd say, a watch. But that's a human model for a color, for a sensation, for. For an experience. Okay, what is the real reality? Sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts and consciousness. The rest is a human story. Now, once I recognize that this is my creation and even the Milky Way galaxy is a translation of sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts in my consciousness, then I'm the creator of the Milky Way galaxy, too, as you and I understand it through mathematical models. Okay, so we are already living in a modeled reality that is humanly constructed. You know, when you say there's a full moon, that's a human experience. A horseshoe crab at the bottom of the ocean has no experience of the full moon that you and I have it. And yet on the full moon night, it comes from the depths of the ocean to mate, lay eggs, and reproduce. It's a different moon for the horseshoe crab. So what you and I experience is a human universe. And it's not even the real human universe. It's a model of the human universe. So now that we've created models and we have technology to create better models, we keep upgrading it.

I love that. You know, just always reflecting on this, Deepak, and getting ready for our conversation here, you know, our Milky Way. As you know, the estimate's 100 billion stars in our. In the Milky way Galaxy. And 100 years ago, we only knew of this one galaxy. We thought we lived in this one galaxy. And then the estimate of the number of galaxies increased to 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars, and then it moved to 2 trillion galaxies. And now the estimate is somewhere north of that, maybe as high as 20 trillion galaxies with 100 billion stars each. That's got to blow everyone's mind.

And furthermore, 60 billion habitable planets just in the Milky Way galaxy.

And even more, perhaps a multiverse of an infinite number of universes, all constructed.

As models in the human mind through mathematics, which is a product of human consciousness. So you might be seeing those things out there, but. But the computing is happening in human consciousness.

Yeah, it is extraordinary. And just when anyone thinks they have concerns or are worried, you're just to stop and sit back and contemplate the infinity of it all. It really is extraordinary. What I find even more extraordinary is what we knew to be fact. That is no longer. And which of the facts that we currently hold to be true are not.

The facts that we currently hold to be true preclude us from knowing the facts that we don't know. So that's. You Go back to Socrates. The only thing I know is I know nothing. My ticket to freedom and creativity.

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Yeah. So when the cognitive revolution occurred, say 40,000 years ago, there were eight different types of human beings, maybe more. So we call ourselves Homo sapiens, which is means the wise ones. So we were humble enough to for ourselves, but then there were all these other Homo erectus, Homo. What do you call it? Chloroensis. And there were eight different kinds of Humans, part of the human family, just like a house cat and a lion and a cheetah and a tiger are all part of the feline family, but they're different. They don't mate with each other. Although there's evidence that Homo sapiens did mate with Neanderthals. But nevertheless, species, usually within a family, retains mating rights to its own species. And so there were eight species, and they all had a common language. And that language included three things. Danger calls, mating calls, and food calls. Now, when you look at the language of other species, same thing, Danger, food, and mating. Then this species, you and I, created a language for telling stories. And this distinguished us from all other species. And the first stories, Gossip, I'm told. Who can be trusted? Who can be trusted?

But the Kardashians were around even back then.

I know. I mean, it's still the most common language in our culture is gossip. Even the news has become gossip now. So, you know, it's that that hasn't disappeared. But then immediately another language emerged, and that was the language of money. And as you know, in the beginning there was no such thing. It was, oh, you know, you cut my hair and I'll give you my chicken's eggs tomorrow, or, you know, I'll fix your shoes, became too inconvenient. So, no, Here's a shell, here's a piece of a rock, here's a coin, here's a piece of paper. Here's digital pieces now. And here's crypto. Now, it's the same thing. One idea. The story of how we exchange debt, or what I owe you as a favor. Okay, you did me a favor, I'm going to do you a favor. Where does this start? It starts in human consciousness because of thing that humans have called empathy. And humans also have something they feel. When I feel what you feel, that's empathy. But then that brings another feeling, compassion. I want to alleviate your suffering and you want to alleviate mine. That creates love and exchange. So exchange. Look at the word exchange. Money is called exchange. Money is called currency. What is a currency for? For me to help you and you to help me. Now, we don't need those coins. We can just do digital zeros and ones and see something on a computer screen and feel good about it, you know, because now this thing on a computer screen can buy me building or whatever. So this one story, what can I do for you? What you can do for me, created ultimately currencies, Wall street empires, colonialism, unfortunately, slavery, exploitation, and a lot of bad things, but also good things. Money is a tool for consciousness. We should never forget that. That's why in wisdom traditions say the way you earn money, the way you spend money is. One of the ways to enlighten. Way to earn money is to the progressive realization of worthy goals, always keeping love and compassion and joy as the reason you're doing it, and ultimately save yourself and liberate yourself from the notion that money will buy you happiness. My money will be a tool.

I agree. I mean, money is a form of energy. Energy to be used to do things with in the world which we created.

By the way which we created.

Yes. It's a means for us to create impact and purpose at distance and on scale.

Yes.

Let me shift to the topic of purpose, which is, for me, so important to help people both discover and fulfill their purpose. Deepak, how would you define your purpose? What I call a massively transformative purpose, your purpose on this planet.

So, again, I'm a very traditional guy, Peter, So I, you know, brought up with the whole philosophical framework, even though I migrated to the United States when I was 20. But, you know, your formative years influence you. So my first 25 years, I was told by my parents, is to educate myself as much as best I can.

Same message for me. Yes.

Second 25 years, fame and fortune. Go make as much money as you possibly can with the progressive realization of worthy goals. Third 25 years, giving back. And now I enter my fourth. And the fourth in my tradition is finally find out who you are, because you're confusing yourself with your uniform, which is your body and mind. And that's not. In fact, your uniform changes from moment to moment. You were once wearing the uniform of a fertilized egg, then you were an embryo, then you were a zygote, then you were a baby. So don't confuse yourself with your uniform. Who are you behind this uniform? If you figure that out, you'll be liberated and you'll be ready to take your next, what you should say, voyage in the multiverse. This is literally how I was brought up before these terms. So I right now say my purpose is to influence at least a billion people for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world. And then consciously choose the moment of my death for my next journey. That's my purpose.

That's beautiful. Your advice? For somebody who is coming conscious to the notion that they have a greater purpose on this planet and they're seeking.

It on the surface, I would say, what is the one thing that you do that expresses your unique gifts and talents and how does it help somebody out there? That's your purpose. So, you know, during the pandemic, the woman that I knew called me. She got fired because she was in and a technology startup. I said, did you enjoy that? She said, no. I said, but now that you're fired, how do you feel? She says, well, I need the income, but I didn't enjoy it. So I said, what do you enjoy? She said, I'm a very good chef. I said, why don't you go on the Internet and say, in New York, I can provide meals, you know, at your parties and your occasions. So she did that, but then she was so much in demand that she actually collected other people. Greek chef, Italian chef, Indian chef, Chinese chef. She has the most thriving business in New York now, five times over the salary she was getting from the high tech company.

Is she enjoying it?

She's loving it. That's what she. That's what she likes. Talk about food flavors. And now she's expanded her business from beyond being an Indian chef to, you know, she has all these other chefs that she's working with together, and they're. They're creating a marketplace in New York City.

So what you enjoy in the service of others that provides you a means.

Of living in what you enjoy. When you do, there's no time. You lose track of time. So it's not a job anymore. That is, we can do a reflection on that too, because the ultimate purpose is beyond that, ultimately.

Deepak, you're a physician, a highly recognized physician. I'm an MD by training, but not by practice. And the focus I've come to over the last eight years is a deep dive into the field of longevity. Healthspan really more than longevity. Right. The notion of how do we have the aesthetics, the cognition that we mobility at 100 that we had at 60, and you're doing very well in your fourth quarter of the first century. How do you think? I believe that you can will yourself to life in the same way that you can will yourself to death. That a longevity mindset, a desire for health is incredibly important. What are your thoughts about a longevity mindset?

I think you have to begin there. Certainly if you don't have the intention, then there is no possibility for longevity. You have to begin with the right mindset, but you also have to then look at what we are seeing as the data. Now you mentioned health span and lifespan. And, you know, I'm sure you know David Sinclair and, and other people like that.

I know him well.

Yeah. Who are talking a lot of very good science about self repaired mechanisms in DNA and self regulation of metabolism through what they call signal molecules. And the science is very good. And we're going to see more of that, you know, with rapamycin and with metformin, with other signal molecules. What I think is not being addressed in the current science is again, as usual, it happens all the time, is you know, because we are so squeezed into a certain cultural mindset and a paradigm even in science that is influenced by reductionism, that we are not looking at all the amazing literature, spiritual literature and consciousness literature on longevity. So I love the work, say David Sinclair and his colleagues are doing. But in the east we say time is the consumer and we are its food and we are metabolizing time. And metabolizing time is a process in consciousness. How do we change the metabolism of time? And for that I'm incorporating the eastern wisdom traditions that say the metabolism of time can also be shifted to the metabolism of timelessness through transcendence. But there are other things, like as you know, as an md, you have to sleep, emotions, stress management, vagal stimulation. In fact, nobody's giving importance right now that I know. I'm holding a book here on my hand called Anchored. It's about the polyvagal theory. There are new technologies coming for vagal stimulation. Even you know, what we call digiceuticals. Yes.

For full body inflammation and autoimmune disease. Yes.

Stimulate the auricular nerve here while you're wearing a headphone and you won't even know it. Decreasing inflammation, increasing self regulation. But the most important thing, so sleep, vagal stimulation, mind, body coordination, breathing techniques, breathing apps, emotional resilience, biological rhythms, circadian rhythms, but also seasonal rhythms. Then there are also gravitational rhythms, lunar rhythms, and ultimately transcendence can change the whole landscape of the longevity experience. And actually I'm going to be doing a retreat in November and we're starting with the Middle East. It's easier because, you know, you don't have to go through all these rules and regulations about what you can prescribe. I can prescribe metformin, rapamycin, anywhere in the world. And then you can also incorporate these other techniques, particularly the experience of time. You know, when people say I don't have time, that's the worst thing you can do for longevity if you're running out of time. If your internal dialogue is I don't have time, your heart rate will speed up, your HR will, HRV will go down, you'll have jittery platelets, high levels of adrenaline, and cortisol inflammation. And sooner or later you'll drop dead and time will run out. So how do you, how do you manage? Time is even more important, you know, than anything else is time efficiency to the ultimate. So you never lose the internal experience of being timeless. That is to me the key. And then all these other things come together. Mind, body, coordination of them. The worst that the best promise is polyvagal stimulation through technology, also through breathing and through the creation of new apps, because you can do anything with apps these days. And then we'll have a true longevity experience. I don't think, according to my what I know, you should live a minimum of 100 years and you should make disease optional and you should die by choice in meditation. At least that's my intention.

I. I love that you were saying. I'm sorry.

No. I'm 75 and my biological age couldn't be more than 50 right now. You know, my blood pressure is 110 over 70. My cholesterol is less than 60. My HDL is over 100. And you know, nobody can believe that, but I think if I can do it, anyone else can do it too.

So let's, let's break that down. I'm going to come back to the question in a moment of how old do you want to live and how old do you think you can live? But I'll come back to that. So sleep for sure. It's fundamental to the human organism. I speak about that extensively. And Matt Walker, who we've both know well, has written incredible books and work on this. Exercise is. We are having a biological experience and exercise is key. Do you do your exercise simply by walking or do, do you do weights? What other exercises do you do?

No, after a lot, you know, I have, I have practiced movement all my life. Okay, so all my life. But after a lot of experimentation, going to gyms, going to weight, going this, that, this is what I do now. I do 10,000 minimum. 10,000 steps. Very easy in New York. You know, I take the subway even during the pandemic or I walk in New York City. And if I'm going somewhere, I stop like two stations before and walk. I do my 10,000 the rest, by the way, I've come to the conclusion that a good yoga practice or tai chi or qigong, along with breathing is the best thing you can do for everything, for muscle flexibility, for what we call weight training. I mean, strengthening your muscles. Yoga is as good as anything. Tai chi or any martial arts, qigong, all these. So I don't do gym exercise. I do walking. I do two hours of yoga and breathing every day in the morning and then I do a little bit again in the evening. As far as movement is concerned, 10,000 steps, yoga and breathing practices.

Next up, diet. Right, diet. Here. Sugar is the poison. I think everybody agrees it's a neuroinflammatory, it's a glycosylating agent across the body. Do you practice a vegan diet or what kind of a diet do you choose?

I have a diet that has maximum diversity of plant based food. Foods.

Okay, agree.

And I'm not, I'm not averse to poultry or fish or even I don't eat meat. But you know, if you do, as long as it's not coming from a factory, as long as it's not manufactured, refined, processed or has pure sugar in it. And if you're eating meat, it's coming from a farm and you're eating sparingly. A diet that has maximum diversity of plant based foods, therefore. And also it's varied because you change your microbiome with it. As you know, 99% of the genetic information is microbial anyway. Only 1% is human. We can upgrade the human, but we can change the microbial. And if the genes are the software and your body is the printout, and if you can change 99% of your genetic information and upgrade the 1%, then you should be able to print out a new body every year. And I think that's where the secret is. It's in the diet. 80% of serotonin comes from your gut anyway, so I say eat the seven colors of the rainbow every day. And the six tastes of life sweets are salt, bitter, pungent, astringent, and you've covered all the phytochemicals that you need need to have a healthy body.

I love that the body is the printout. That's beautiful.

Yeah.

A brief note from our sponsors. Let's talk about sleep. Sleep has become one of my number one longevity priorities in life. Getting eight deep, uninterrupted hours of sleep is one of the most important things you can do to increase your vitality and energy and increase the health span that you have here on earth. You know, when I was in medical school years ago, I used to pride myself on how long little sleep I could get. You know, it used to be five, five and a half hours. Today I pride myself on how much sleep I can get. And I shoot for eight hours every single night. Now usually I'm great at going to Sleep. If I'm exhausted, you know, I've worked a hard day, I'm right out. But if I'm having difficulty and it occurs, I'm having insomnia or my mind's overactive and I need help to get that eight hours, I turn to a supplement product by Lifeforce called Peak Rest. Now Peak Rest has been formulated with an extraordinary scientific depth and background. Includes everything from long lasting melatonin to magnesium to L glycine to rosemary extract, just to name a few. This product is about creating a sense of rest and really giving you the depth and length of sleep that you need for recovery. It's a product I hope you'll try. It works for me and I'm sure it will work for you. If you're Interested, go to MyLifeHorse.com Peter to get a discount from Lifehorse on this product. But you'll also see a whole set of other longevity and vitality related supplements that I use. We'll talk about them some other time. But in terms of sleep, Peak Rest is my go to supplement. Hope you'll enjoy it. Go to MyLifeHorse.com Peter for your discount. So Deepak, you mentioned rapamycin earlier. I think you mentioned metformin. Both medications that I'm taking at I think the appropriate levels. How safe are they? What are you taking? What do you typically recommend with the medical supervision?

Well, in general with medical supervision, I do recommend metformin. I take about a thousand milligrams a day of metformin.

As do I.

And then I take rapamycin 6mg once a week for men and 4mg once a week for women. For that I usually do a metabolic profile medical examination. I think they're both with minimal risk. You know, people have, have as much risk taking aspirin or other things and you know, so I don't think those medications are at all risky. Or if they are, they're very minimally so, less than most, I would say prescription drugs given those doses. But I also recommend nicotinamide, nucleo, mononucleotide, nmna, and I do recommend quercetin and fisetin. And yeah, it looks like we're on the same one in the context of everything else, in the context of all the lifestyle shifts as well.

Absolutely. I think the conversation around longevity about increasing healthspan is finally coming into into mainstream. You mentioned something earlier, choosing the moment, consciously choosing the moment of your death in meditation, which is, you know, not having it happen to you, but having it happen for You. So let me ask it slightly differently. How long would you like to live? Do you have a sense of, of that?

Yeah, I have a sense, but it's not important. I think once you say been there, done that, that's the right timing. Okay, that's the right timing. Now in our tradition, the spiritual tradition, which is Vedanta, which I come from.

Yes.

The minimum life you should be able to live is a hundred. You know that I. And I know that right now we have. The limitation is so called 120, the hipflake limit and all of that. But you know, that kinds of changes. I think though, as you know, less than 5% of gene mutations, less than 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant in that they guarantee the disease if you have Baraka gene or something like that. And for that we have new technologies including gene editing and CRISPR on the horizon. So that 5% will be taken care of. The remaining 95% are basically how you live your life.

Yeah, I was just with Eric Verdon at the buck and his numbers are very similar. 7% is genetic determination of your lifespan and 93% being your lifestyle.

My genetic experts say even less than 5%, 4%. Rudy Jansen. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, I love Rudy. He's a brilliant, a brilliant, brilliant friend. I think it's this idea that we can live a longer, healthier life flows well with abundance. Abundance of time, abundance of opportunity. Coming back to the theme of your book, the breakthroughs coming on are happening faster and faster. We're seeing the work that, that David Sinclair and George Church have done in epigenetic reprogramming. We're seeing in mice models being able to reverse the biological age of multiple organ systems. We're seeing it in human skin tissue and petri dish. And if you speak to George and David, we're not far from, in their case, using these three Yamanaka factors to reverse the epigenetic clock in the body. If we start bringing in that kind of gene therapy, do you think we can exceed the 120 year limit, which has sort of been historically, to the best of sciences knowledge, the upper end of what we have?

Yeah, I do think so. There's no gene for aging, as you know. And yet there's something called apoptosis, programmed cellular death for the cells to rejuvenate themselves. So it's complex, but. And it says epigenetics. And here if you really understand epigenetics, you know, even there people are going a little too reductionist because epigenetics is every experience. Right now, as you and I are speaking, your frontal cortex is firing here because we're using this right now to communicate intellectually. And that requires gene activity. That requires, you know, all these markers, acetylation, methylation, de acylation, to constantly going on and off. So there is no experience. No experience, including an intellectual conversation, but particularly an emotional experience that does not either enhance homeostasis or disrupt homeostasis. So if we can maintain homeostasis, then that is the key. And homeostasis is best regulated through joy. If joy is not your experience right now, then homeostasis is disruptors. Joy is not. Happiness, by the way, is much more fundamental. Happiness is always for a reason. Joy is for no reason. Like, look at a little baby. It's joyful, it's curious, it's full of mystery, it's full of awe, it's full of wonder, and it's full of joy. Unless it's wet or it's hungry, in which case you correct that and it's back to its baseline status. So that kind of joy, which is so fundamental, which comes from our spirit, is the ultimate homeostasis. And that's what the goal should be. If joy is not the measure of wealth being, then you have failed. Doesn't matter what else is happening.

Sure. I mean, living a life without joy, without happiness, into your multiple hundreds of years is not something any of us. I remember you and I were both at the Vatican a few years back during the Longevity conference and a room filled with scientists, and I was up giving my presentation on the morality of immortality, or put differently, the immorality of mortality. And I asked the question of the audience, how many of you here would like to live past 120 years old? And about a third of them raised their hand and I was kind of shocked. And of course it's because our internal vision of what 120 plus looks like is decrepit, old, drooling and without any joy.

Yeah.

Now I think about the ideological, the sort of evolutionary origin of our current lifespan. As early hominids, our mission was to pass on our genes to perpetuate the species. And back before food was abundant, the last thing you wanted to do was take food out of your grandchildren's mouths. And of course, we now live in a world, and I've heard you speak to this, where it's a massive amount of abundance to the point we now have a pandemic of obesity versus a pandemic of hunger. And we have culture and we have recorded Science. And I guess the question is, you know, what should be the ultimate lifespan of a human being? Your answer a moment ago was, until the experience of life is boring, or I've done that.

As long as you can contribute in again, my culture, it's possible to have the wisdom of experience and the biology of youth. And if you have that combination, then you are serving a purpose for improving the quality of life. To have the wisdom of experience and the biology of youth would be a great combination.

That is, that is. Deepak, we've had the pleasure of having you at our xprize visioneering events in the past, and we've launched now some $300 million in prizes. And we're attacking the problems that we see that should be solved that haven't been solved. Working on an age reversal XPRIZE right now, which I'm excited about. Reverse the biological age of human beings by 20 years or more. Working with David and David Sinclair and George Church, I'm curious, a question I ask all my guests. If you could snap your fingers and have any X Prize created, fully funded, we would get entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists, theologians, anyone around the planet working on this. What is a problem that you would love to have launched as an X Prize? Do you have anything that comes to mind?

I've thought about this, Peter, and I think, you know, I think all problems are interrelated. And right now, the biggest problems in the world are war and conflict, number one. Number two, an unsustainable planet. Number three, social and economic injustice, number four, health. And number five, the absence of joy. So about 30 years ago, I thought to myself, is there one solution for a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world? One solution, okay, I'd love it. Peaceful, number one, sustainable. Number two. Just number three. Health, number four. And joy, number five. Not in that order. They're all equally important, and they're all interrelated. And the more I thought about it, the key is, in fact, these are windows. The longevity experiment, the reversal. These are windows to see the interrelatedness of these things. So when the pandemic occurred, we were in our cages. Climate was reversing itself. There were fish in Venice, in the dead canals, dead waters. People were breathing in Bangalore. You could see the mountains, Himalayas, from 500 miles away. And nature was saying, hey, humans, when you come back, be a little more respectful. Otherwise, we'll send you back into your cages. So I think these pandemics, these mutations, the health problems, the mass migrations because of social and economic injustice and the war and terrorism are entirely one problem. Entirely one problem. And the key is resurrecting life and the resurrection of life is both for this biosphere, which we call the body, and that biosphere, which we call the world. But they're the same biosphere. I mean, this Goldilocks zone is looking at what the biosphere that might sustain life. And the question again amongst evolutionary biologists is what came first? You know, did the biosphere came first, did life come second? Or did life come first in the biosphere adjusted? It's a wrong argument. They are, they are the same thing. Sustainability, biosphere health and self repair and homeostasis are one thing. And the key is the genetic information of this planet. So if I'm not talking about the human microbiome, if I go under the soil in the Amazon or anywhere In a rainforest, 1 teaspoon of soil under that soil. Soil has more genetic biodiversity than the entire surface of the planet. So there are species there that are extinct. You know, theoretically I could have been. I have, what do you call it, dinosaurs coming back. If I want to resurrect the life I have, Jurassic park right under the soil in one teaspoon of soil. And then look at marine soil, marine life, you know, the ecosystem of marine life. And look at what's happening in coastal, coastal marshlands and so on. It's all connected. So if I were to choose one project, I would say resurrect the planetary microbiome. Resurrect the planetary microbiome. Combine agriculture with forestry, preserve the marshlands and you know, other than they do many other things, buffer against storms, et cetera. But if we do lose the genetic information that gave life to the biodiversity of this planet, we are doomed for extinction.

So is that, is, is that, first and foremost, catalog it and being able to have it in a seed bank, so to speak, or a genomics bank that could be brought back, that is essential.

Absolutely. I know Rob Knight has done some of that in University of California, San Diego. But there should be a global project, global project to seed and catalog and preserve the genetic information of on our planet before it disappears.

Yeah, I heard a figure recently that there is 10 to the 31 bytes of genetic information, which is some massive number of exobytes of genetic information. We don't realize we see such a limited slice of the segment. There's a company that I'm an investor and advisor in called Colossal, that is bringing back extinct species. The woolly mammoth that just announced today, the Tasmanian tiger and so forth. But that's a Drop in the, in the bucket.

Still, compared to what we're talking about is so important. If this was globally a collaborative project, the seeding and cataloging, the rest will happen. You know, humans are very intelligent and they'll develop technologies to resurrect the ecosystems of our existence. I recently participated in something called the Panthers path in Florida, restoring the Panthers path across Florida. But what happened? As they restored the Panthers path, every other species came back. You know, that's how it is. It's all ecosystem self regulate through biological genetic information exchange.

So we're never going to have more biodiversity than we have right now. And so being able to capture that as a set, as a baseline point and then grow from there.

Yes, and use AI and use deep learning to actually not only catalog it, but also see the interconnectivity of these ecological systems for maintaining life on this planet. And that is the most important thing. Otherwise we are sleepwalking to extinction.

I love that. Not the sleepwalking to extinction, but I love the idea of your X prize. Thank you, Deepak. I appreciate that. I want to bring us back to close to the 50% that we can control of our happiness. We'll talk some other time about a happiness X prize, which I have formulated and am excited about. But the formulation of happiness 50% being your set point, that came from your youth, your parents, those you grew up with, the ability to control that. You said there is reflective inquiry there that can help. Would you close us out with a meditation perhaps to. To see abundance in the world and to increase that set point.

Okay, so let's do it. To all our friends who are listening or watching this, please sit quietly on a chair. Be comfortable. Uncross your legs. Keep your feet on the ground, firmly planted and keep your hands open and close your eyes. And we'll start with just a little bit of breath observation. Observe your breath. Like every sensation, breath arises, is experienced, and then it goes back to where it arose from. Just observing the breath gives us insight into the nature of impermanence. If you hold on to your breath, you will suffocate. So let go and flow. Now bring your awareness to your heart and mentally ask yourself, who am I? Even better, who is it that wants to know? What is it that wants to know? Who am I? Am I the changing body? Or am I the awareness in which the body is a changing experience? Am I the changing mind? Or am I the awareness in which the mind is a changing experience? Who am I? Don't try to answer the question, just ask the question. And let it go. Now switch to a second question. What do I want? As you ask this question, be aware of any sensations, any images, any feelings, any thoughts that spontaneously come to you. Don't look for answers. What do I want? And be aware of any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought. Notice it and let it go. What do I want? Third question, what is my purpose? Again, just ask the question, what is my purpose? Allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to spontaneous simultaneously arise. Final question, what am I grateful for? This question will open the door to abundance once again. Not looking for an answer, just asking the question, what am I grateful for? Allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to come to you. What am I grateful for? And now let go of this inquiry and mentally repeat your name to yourself. I am Peter. I'm Deepak. I'm Emily. Even as you repeat your name, remind yourself that's your name. That's not who you are. So now let the name be dropped. Instead of saying I'm Peter, say I am. And now we introduce what we call intention. In this quiet of awareness, just mentally repeat these words to yourself. Affluence, Unboundedness, Abundance, infinity, immortality. Affluence, Unboundedness, Abundance, infinity, immortality. And now just rest in awareness. Rest in being. Awareness is our fundamental state of infinite possibilities. So rest in that field of infinite possibilities. And if you feel ready now, you can slowly open your eyes.

Thank you, Deepak. That was beautiful. Everyone, this is Peter again. Before you take off, I want to take a moment to just invite you to subscribe to my weekly tech blog. Today, over 200,000 people received this email twice per week. In the tech blog, I share with you my insights on converging exponential technologies, what's going on in AI, how longevity is transforming, adding decades to our life. In the Tech blog, I often look at the 20 meta trends that are going to transform the decade ahead and share the conversations I've had with incredible tech thought leaders on how they're transforming industries. If that sounds cool to you and you want to try it, join me, go to dma, enter your email and let's start this weekly conversation. Let me share with you the incredible progress we're seeing in the world of technology and the positive impact it's having on our lives. Again, that's diamandis.com blog looking forward to sharing my insights and incredible breakthroughs I'm seeing with you every single week.

Sam.