Pod Insights Moonshots with Peter Diamandis EP #23 The Secret to Happiness w/ Deepak Chopra, M.D. About this episode In this episode, Deepak and Peter discuss the role mindset plays in success, how to find happiness, and the meaning of abundance.
You will learn about:
06:46 | Technology's effect on the Abundance Mindset
14:15 | H = S + C + V. The Happiness Equation
38:00 | Money is a tool. Choose how it defines you.
1:15:28 | Meditation led by Dr. Chopra
Dr. Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He is the founder of The Chopra Foundation and Chopra Global, intersecting science with spirituality. Dr. Chopra is the author of over 90 books, many of them New York Times bestsellers, and he’s been at the forefront of the meditation revolution for the past 30 years.
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Resources
Buy Dr. Chopra’s newest book: Living in the Light
Learn more about Abundance360.
Read the Tech Blog.
Learn more about Moonshots & Mindsets.
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Transcript 11,643 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:30 Speaker 01 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 you, but me, and we find that we have different creative outlets. You know, you are a 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.
1:16 Speaker 01 No problem is unsolved.
1:19 Peter Diamandis? And a massive 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.
1:31 Peter Diamandis? 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.
2:15 Peter Diamandis? And we'll be spending time today speaking about longevity, purpose, and his most recent book, "Abundance: The Inner Path to Wealth." Deepak, a pleasure to have you here.
2:27 Speaker 01 Thank you. It's always nice to see you and be in conversation.
2:33 Peter Diamandis? 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 You 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, you know, 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.
3:13 Speaker 01 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 consciousness is constantly modifying itself as experience through what we call mind, body, and universe.
3:58 Speaker 01 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 are 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
4:41 Speaker 01 be only squiggles and wiggles on the computer, colors and shapes. The construction, oh, that shape is Peter Dam this, that's a construct in human consciousness. So without human consciousness, there is no experience. Now, what is consciousness? Consciousness, I, as I defined this, is the source of all experience, but it is, doesn't have a form. It doesn't have a form. If consciousness had a form like my iPhone, um, then I would, uh, 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.
5:24 Speaker 01 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 in time. Consciousness is timeless. The productions of consciousness in time are, have their source in, in infinity. So right now, if you read the latest theories of physics, um, then find the current interpretation of the universe in science, it's multiverse, there are infinite universes.
6:05 Speaker 01 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, so 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...
6:43 Speaker 01 That's what infinity does. If you take infinity out of infinity, infinity remains.
6:49 Peter Diamandis? 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 uh, someone who's deep into uh, uh, the spiritual um, 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 get light our nights, and then coal, and then oil now. Now, uh, now solar and soon fusion.
7:31 Peter Diamandis? And that technology is converting scarcity into abundance and making it usable.
7:38 Peter Diamandis? How do you see the, uh, that play into, uh, into abundance in your mind?
7:45 Speaker 01 I see the biggest promise of technology as harnessing our collective creativity and therefore, uh, producing abundance, uh, 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 we 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,
8:31 Speaker 01 but also maximum diversity of, uh, storytellers in the form of entertainment and songwriters and storytellers, but also maximum diversity of ethnicity, of background, of nationality, of, uh, technology. So, maximum diversity, maximum.
8:52 Speaker 01 Creative diversity, shared vision, emotional and spiritual bonding together, leveraging everyone's strengths, there's no problem in the world that cannot be solved.
9:03 Peter Diamandis? And I agree with that.
9:05 Speaker 01 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,
9:48 Speaker 01 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 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
10:26 Speaker 01 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.
10:44 Peter Diamandis? Taking action, you know, it's funny, I define an expert as someone who can tell you exactly how it can't be done.
10:49 Speaker 01 That's it.
10:50 Peter Diamandis? And it's, 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, I definitely see that, and
11:21 Peter Diamandis? You know, one of the other definitions I use, and I particularly want your thoughts on this around abundance, is that it's, you know, creating a world of abundance isn't about a world of luxury, but about a world of possibility. What's your thought on that?
11:38 Speaker 01 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 are a 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
12:19 Speaker 01 with the collective vision we have, and staying connected with each other at an emotional and spiritual level. No problem is unsolvable.
12:29 Peter Diamandis? 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 24/7, 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 media and this dystopian, you know, flow of information?
13:09 Speaker 01 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 risks. So, 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?
13:43 Peter Diamandis? Fox, yeah.
13:44 Speaker 01 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. And 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.
14:13 Peter Diamandis? Do you watch, do you watch the news?
14:16 Speaker 01 No, I do not watch news. I show up on it now and then. Um, 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.
14:42 Peter Diamandis? I want to turn to this because it's really important. How do people stay in an abundance mindset? So I speak about having an abundance mindset, which means the notion that tomorrow's going to bring more opportunities than today. Uh, that we have a world of increasing capabilities where the cost of, uh, of resources is coming down, the availability of resources is coming down. But we're, when we're so bombarded and we're driven back to that early scarcity thinking that we evolved with and that, that, uh, that fear-based thinking. How do you, how do you recommend people hack that and stay in a, in a hopeful, optimistic abundance mindset?
15:25 Speaker 01 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, uh, others were invited to meet him. I happened to be in that meeting. I've known him from before that. And he said to the audience, to the social scientists,
16:05 Speaker 01 in his typically simple, innocent, joyful manner, he said, can you come up with a happiness formula? Do you have a 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.
16:48 Speaker 01 So some people are seemingly, seemingly wired for joy and opportunity and abundance. And some people are wired seemingly for, uh, what do you call scarcity thinking? And also, uh, for looking at problems. Hmm. This thing called the set point in the brain determines fifty percent 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.
17:32 Speaker 01 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
17:51 Speaker 01 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 one, B, they were, I call these the four A's, they were good listeners.
18:30 Speaker 01 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. At these four A's, 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.
19:11 Speaker 01 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 fifty percent of your experience of happiness or sadness every day. Beautiful. S plus C, C is conditions of living, primarily money.
19:49 Speaker 01 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."
20:02 Peter Diamandis? I love that.
20:03 Speaker 01 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 ten percent to twelve percent of your daily experience of happiness or sadness. If you win the lottery, for example, let's say you're making twenty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars a year, and you suddenly win the lottery and you make fifty million, will that make you happy? The answer is ecstatically happy when you win the lottery. Six months, you plateau, and one year, you're back to your set point. And then you're unhappier because now you can fuse self-worth with net worth.
20:48 Speaker 01 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 what happens at four thirty when the stock market closes. That's their identity. So ten percent adds to your happiness every day.
21:19 Peter Diamandis? And I think the research shows that money makes you happier up to a point of, I think it was seventy thousand dollars in the United States.
21:25 Speaker 01 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 more money, to make more money. They don't even have time to enjoy it.
22:10 Speaker 01 They don't have time for a vacation. Why? Because I'm making money. Okay, so what's the point? Ten percent is money. Then there's forty percent left, and that's called fulfillment. And fulfillment comes from choices we make daily. So the first choice 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.
22:55 Speaker 01 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. The difference between this and iPhone twelve is the camera. But, you know, ninety percent of people who can afford it will be convinced that you need the iPhone.
23:29 Speaker 01 So anyway, so there is another kind of choice we make, and that is meaning and purpose. And a third kind of choice, make 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 forty percent. So fifty percent, ten percent, forty percent. And even the ten percent, 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.
24:11 Peter Diamandis? That's, I love that happiness formulation. Going back to the 50% set point, the reflective inquiry, is that mostly done through meditation?
24:21 Speaker 01 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. 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.
24:44 Peter Diamandis? 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.
25:00 Speaker 01 We can do that, yes.
25:01 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, and, and we will. So let me ask you another fundamental question.
25:08 Peter Diamandis? 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.
25:25 Peter Diamandis? 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, and what do you attribute that to?
25:41 Speaker 01 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 the pandemic. Zoom became such a big business. Okay, and there are many other businesses actually emerged, including.
26:04 Speaker 01 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 and 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
26:49 Speaker 01 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 from taking drugs, that helps them with PTSD. And we're finding that at least our teenage audience is more fascinated and more comfortable
27:34 Speaker 01 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're getting crypto and blockchain to even cover that. So this all happened because of the pandemic. It wouldn't have happened otherwise. And I 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 and 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
28:17 Speaker 01 while the rest are complaining, condemning, criticizing and playing the victim.
28:21 Peter Diamandis? Thank God for for solution oriented individuals and you know, there's, there's a few things that I pulled out of abundance. It's a beautiful book and I I've read it and I've listened to it on Audible and you which you 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 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 can you talk a little more about what that means and its implications?
29:01 Speaker 01 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 Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So survival and safety,
29:44 Speaker 01 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
30:26 Speaker 01 is a reflection of my state of consciousness. And once I understand that, then
30:33 Speaker 01 I don't look for external solutions. I look for switching something internally that was off. Okay, so you know, in the nineteen seventies, there was a um um book called The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. I don't know if you've.
30:50 Peter Diamandis? I haven't read it.
30:51 Speaker 01 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, it says, what am I doing in a 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,
31:34 Speaker 01 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.
31:44 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, well, you know, I've said, I've said it often, I do believe that we're living in a simulation.
31:50 Speaker 01 We are.
31:51 Peter Diamandis? You know, it's a, well, I, 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, to create AIs that might live in that, in that, that simulation of the world. And the notion that our, our planet, you know, if the universe is, you know, thirteen point eight 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 a hundred thousand years, or a thousand years more advanced?
32:34 Peter Diamandis? It it seems inevitable that we'll be creating high resolution simulations and that we'll 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.
32:54 Speaker 01 I would keep upgrading it. I think I think we are already living in a simulation, which is a human. See, when you say 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'd ask you this, what is this? You'd say a watch, but that's a human model for a color, for a sensation, for an experience.
33:38 Speaker 01 Okay, what is the real reality is sensations, images, feelings and thoughts in 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,
34:23 Speaker 01 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.
34:44 Peter Diamandis? I love that, you know, just always reflecting on this Deepak and and 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. Uh, that's got to blow everyone's mind.
35:27 Speaker 01 And furthermore, 60 billion habitable planets just in the Milky Way galaxy.
35:34 Peter Diamandis? And even more, perhaps a multiverse of an infinite number of universes.
35:39 Speaker 01 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 the computing is happening in human consciousness.
35:55 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, it's, uh, it is extraordinary. And just when anyone thinks they have concerns or worried, you're just to stop and sit back and contemplate the infinity of it all. Uh, it really is extraordinary. What I find even more extraordinary is what we knew to be fact that is no longer. And, uh, and which of the facts that we currently hold to be true are not.
36:23 Speaker 01 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. I have my ticket to freedom and creativity.
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38:31 Peter Diamandis? You know, you talk about abundance initially in the book from the perspective of money, which a lot of people think about. Money is a tool of exchange, and you speak about the different, you know, the value that money has. One of the interesting lines in the, in abundance you have is money is a tool of consciousness, which I found fascinating. Can you speak to that a moment?
38:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, so when the cognitive revolution occurred, say forty thousand 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 use that name for ourselves. But then there were all these other Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, what do you call it? Chloroences. 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.
39:39 Speaker 01 They don't mate with each other, although there's evidence that Homo sapiens did mate with Neanderthals. Yes. But nevertheless, a 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 were gossip, I'm told.
40:24 Speaker 01 Who's speaking with whom, who can be trusted, who can't be trusted. 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 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's. Or, you know, I'll fix your shoes. Became too inconvenient. So now here's a shell. Here's a piece of a rock. Here's a coin. Here's a piece of paper.
41:09 Speaker 01 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.
41:54 Speaker 01 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 a 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,
42:37 Speaker 01 the way you earn money, the way you spend money is one of the ways to enlightenment. The 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.
43:07 Peter Diamandis? I agree. I mean, money is a form of energy. Energy to be used to do things with in the world.
43:12 Speaker 01 Which we created, by the way.
43:14 Peter Diamandis? Which we created, yes. It's a, it's a means for us to create impact and purpose at, at distance and on scale.
43:23 Speaker 01 Yes.
43:24 Peter Diamandis? Let me shift to the, 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?
43:42 Speaker 01 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 influenced it. So, my first 25 years, I was told by my parents is to educate myself as much as best I can.
44:09 Peter Diamandis? Same message for me, yes.
44:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. 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 rabbiyan mind, and that's not who you are. 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?
44:52 Speaker 01 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.
45:24 Peter Diamandis? That's, that's beautiful. Your advice for somebody who is, who is coming conscious to the notion that they have a greater purpose on this planet and they're seeking it?
45:37 Speaker 01 On the surface, I would say.
45:42 Speaker 01 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 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.
46:27 Speaker 01 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. She could pay five times over the salary she was getting from the high tech company.
46:47 Peter Diamandis? Is she enjoying it?
46:48 Speaker 01 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.
47:06 Peter Diamandis? So what you enjoy in the service of others that provides you a means of, of living?
47:14 Speaker 01 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 it. But we can do a reflection on that too, because the ultimate purpose is beyond that ultimately.
47:28 Peter Diamandis? Deepak, you're a physician, a highly recognized physician. I'm an M D 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, health span really more than longevity, right? The notion of how do we have the aesthetics, the cognition, the mobility at a hundred that we had at sixty? And you're doing very well in your fourth, in your fourth quarter of, of the first century. How do you think, I, I, 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
48:12 Peter Diamandis? is, is incredibly important. What are your thoughts about a longevity mindset?
48:19 Speaker 01 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've know David Sinclair and other people like that.
48:47 Peter Diamandis? I know him.
48:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, who are talking a lot of very good science about self-repair 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, and a paradigm even in science that is influenced by reductionism, that we're
49:30 Speaker 01 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
50:12 Speaker 01 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 M D, you have to sleep, emotions, stress management, vagal stimulation. In fact, nobody is giving importance right now that I know. I'm holding a bookie 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 digital circles. Yes, for, for, for full body inflammation and autoimmune disease. Yeah. You can stimulate the auricular nerve here while you're wearing a headphone
50:56 Speaker 01 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.
51:39 Speaker 01 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 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 manage time is even more important, you know, than anything else.
52:24 Speaker 01 It's 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 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 what I know, you should live a minimum of a hundred years and you should make disease optional
53:09 Speaker 01 and you should die by choice in meditation. At least that's my intention.
53:13 Peter Diamandis? I love that. You were saying, I'm sorry?
53:17 Speaker 01 No, I'm seventy-five and my biological age couldn't be more than fifty right now. You know, my blood pressure's one hundred and ten over seventy. My cholesterol is less than sixty, my HDL is over a hundred. And, you know, nobody can believe that. But I think if I can do it, anyone else can do it too.
53:36 Peter Diamandis? So 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.
54:08 Peter Diamandis? Do you do your exercise simply by walking? Or do you do weights? What other exercises do you do?
54:15 Speaker 01 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 walk. I do my 10,000. The rest, by the way, I've come to the conclusion
54:56 Speaker 01 that a good yoga practice or Tai Chi or Qi Gong, 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, Qi Gong, all this. 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.
55:35 Peter Diamandis? 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. Are you, do you practice a vegan diet? Or what kind of a diet do you choose?
55:52 Speaker 01 I have a diet that has maximum diversity of plant-based foods.
55:58 Peter Diamandis? Okay, I agree.
55:58 Speaker 01 And I'm not, I'm not averse to poultry or fish.
56:06 Speaker 01 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, ninety-nine percent of genetic information is microbial anyway. Only one percent is human. We can upgrade the human, but we can change the microbial. And if, if the genes are the software and your body is the printout.
56:47 Speaker 01 And if you can change ninety-nine percent of your genetic information and upgrade the one percent, 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. Eighty percent of serotonin comes from your gut anyway. So I, 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 to have a healthy body.
57:18 Peter Diamandis? I love that. The body is the printout. That's beautiful.
57:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:21 Peter Diamandis? Um, a brief note from our sponsors. Let's talk about sleep. Sleep has become one of my number one longevity priorities in life. You're 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 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
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58:51 Peter Diamandis? But in terms of sleep, Peak Rest is my go-to supplement. Hope you'll enjoy it. Go to mylifeforce.com/peter for your discount. So Deepak, you mentioned rapamycin earlier, and 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?
59:20 Speaker 01 Well, in general, with medical supervision, I do recommend metformin. I take about 1,000mg a day of metformin.
59:31 Peter Diamandis? As do I.
59:32 Speaker 01 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, a medical examination. I think they're both with minimal risk. You know, people 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.
1:00:11 Speaker 01 I would say prescription drugs, given those doses. Um. But I also recommend Nicotinamide Nucleo, Mononucleotide, N M N A. And I do recommend Curcetin and Picechin, um. And yeah, uh, those.
1:00:30 Peter Diamandis? It looks like we're on the same, on the same one.
1:00:32 Speaker 01 In the context of everything else, is, uh, in the context of all the lifestyle shifts as well.
1:00:39 Peter Diamandis? A- absolutely. I, you know, it's, uh, I think the conversation around longevity, around extraordinary, about increasing health span is, is finally coming, uh, into, into mainstream. Uh, you mentioned something earlier, choosing the moment, consciously choosing the moment of your death in meditation, which is, uh, you know, uh, not having it happen to you, but having it happen, uh, for you.
1:01:09 Peter Diamandis? So let me ask it slightly differently. Uh, how long would you like to live? Do you have a sense of that?
1:01:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, I have a sense, but it's not important. I think once you say been there, done that, that's the right timing.
1:01:29 Speaker 01 That's the right timing. Now, in our tradition, the spiritual tradition, which is Vedanta, which I come from.
1:01:36 Peter Diamandis? Yes.
1:01:37 Speaker 01 The minimum life, uh, you should be able to live is a hundred. Uh, you know that I, and I know that right now we have the limitation is so-called hundred and twenty, the Hippolyte limit and all of that. But, you know, that kinds of changes. I think though, as you know, less than five percent of,
1:01:59 Speaker 01 gene mutations, less than five percent 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.
1:02:24 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, I was just with Eric Verden at the Buck and his numbers are very similar. 7% is genetic determination of your lifespan and 93% being your lifestyle.
1:02:36 Speaker 01 My genetic experts say even less than 5%, 4%, Rudy Jones.
1:02:42 Peter Diamandis? Wow, I love Rudy. He's a brilliant, a brilliant, brilliant friend. It's, 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, to the theme of, of your book, you know, 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, 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,
1:03:27 Peter Diamandis? you know, if you speak to George and David, we're not far from, from, you know, in their case, using these three yamanaka factors to reduce, reverse the epigenetic clock in, in the body. If we start bringing in that kind of gene therapy, do you think we can exceed the, the 120 year limit, which has sort of been historically, to the best of science's knowledge, the upper end of what we have?
1:04:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I do. 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 of acetylation,
1:04:43 Speaker 01 methylation, deacetylation, 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, is best regulated through joy. If joy is not your experience right now, then homeostasis is disrupted. Joy is not happiness, by the way. It's much more fundamental. Happiness is always for a reason.
1:05:28 Speaker 01 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. 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 are failed. Doesn't matter what else is happening.
1:06:01 Peter Diamandis? Sure. I mean, living a, a life without joy, without happiness into your multiple hundreds of years is, is not something any of us. I remember you and I were both at the Vatican a few years back during a longevity conference and I, a room filled with, 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.
1:06:44 Peter Diamandis? And of course, it's because our, our internal vision of what 120 plus looks like is decrepit, old, drooling, and without any joy.
1:06:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:56 Peter Diamandis? Now, I think about the ideological, the sort of evolutionary origin of our current lifespan. You know, as, 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. The point, we now have a pandemic of obesity versus a pandemic of hunger. And we have culture and we have recorded science.
1:07:38 Peter Diamandis? And I guess the, 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 have done that.
1:07:54 Speaker 01 As, as long as you can contribute. And again, in 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.
1:08:17 Peter Diamandis? That is, that is, that is. Yeah, Deepak, you've had, we've had the pleasure of having you at our X Prize visionary events in the past. And, 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.
1:08:40 Peter Diamandis? Working on a age reversal X Prize 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 had, could, you know, 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?
1:09:18 Speaker 01 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.
1:09:44 Speaker 01 Number four, health. And number five, the absence of joy. So about thirty years ago, I thought to myself, is there one solution for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world? One solution. Okay. Peaceful, number one, sustainable, number two, just, number three.
1:10:10 Speaker 01 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 referring, reversing itself. There were fish and venus in the dead canals, dead waters. People were breathing in Bangalore. You could see the mountains, Himalayas from five hundred miles away.
1:10:54 Speaker 01 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.
1:11:38 Speaker 01 And the question again amongst evolutionary biologists, what came first? You know, did the biosphere came first? Did life come second? Or did life come first and 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, no, I'm not talking about the human microbiome. If I go under the soil in the Amazon or anywhere in a rainforest, one teaspoon of soil under that soil
1:12:21 Speaker 01 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.
1:13:05 Speaker 01 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.
1:13:26 Peter Diamandis? So is that, is that first and foremost catalog it? And being able to have it in a seed bank, if you, so to speak, or a genomics bank that could be brought back?
1:13:38 Speaker 01 That is essential, absolutely. I know Rob Knight has done some of that at University of California, San Diego. But there should be a global project, global project, to seed and catalog and preserve the genetic information on our planet before it disappears.
1:13:58 Peter Diamandis? Yeah, I, I heard a, a figure recently that there is 10 to the 31 bytes of, of genetic information, which is some massive number of exabytes of genetic information. You don't realize, we see such a limited
1:14:14 Peter Diamandis? 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 bucket still compared to you.
1:14:35 Speaker 01 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. They'll develop technologies to resurrect the ecosystems of our existence. I recently participated in something called The Panther's Path in Florida, restoring the Panther's Path across Florida. But what happened? As they restored the Panther's Path, every other species came back. You know, that's how it is. It's all ecosystems self-regulate through biological genetic information exchange.
1:15:17 Peter Diamandis? 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.
1:15:32 Speaker 01 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.
1:15:52 Peter Diamandis? 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.
1:16:23 Peter Diamandis? That came from your, 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, that set point?
1:16:47 Speaker 01 Okay, so let's do it. To all our friends who are listening or watching this, please sit quietly on a chair, be comfortable, hang across your legs, keep your feet on your, 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.
1:17:30 Speaker 01 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?
1:18:14 Speaker 01 Even better, who is it that wants to know? What is it that wants to know? Who am I?
1:18:26 Speaker 01 Am I the changing body? Or am I the awareness in which the body is a changing experience?
1:18:36 Speaker 01 Am I the changing mind? Or am I the awareness in which the mind is a changing experience?
1:18:46 Speaker 01 Who am I? Don't try to answer the question. Just ask the question and let it go.
1:19:05 Speaker 01 Now, switch to a second question. What do I want?
1:19:15 Speaker 01 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.
1:19:42 Speaker 01 What do I want?
1:19:52 Speaker 01 Third question.
1:19:55 Speaker 01 What is my purpose? Again, just ask the question.
1:20:03 Speaker 01 What is my purpose allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to spontaneously arise?
1:20:16 Speaker 01 Final question. What am I grateful for? This question will open the door to abundance.
1:20:29 Speaker 01 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.
1:20:49 Speaker 01 What am I grateful for?
1:21:17 Speaker 01 And now let go of this inquiry and mentally repeat your name to yourself. I am Peter, I am Deepak, I am Emily.
1:21:30 Speaker 01 Even as you repeat your name, remind yourself that's your name, that's not who you are.
1:21:38 Speaker 01 So now let the name be dropped. Instead of saying "I am Peter", say "I am".
1:22:00 Speaker 01 And now we introduce what we call intention in this quiet of awareness.
1:22:12 Speaker 01 Just mentally repeat these words to yourself.
1:22:17 Speaker 01 Affluence,
1:22:21 Speaker 01 Unboundedness,
1:22:26 Speaker 01 Abundance,
1:22:29 Speaker 01 Infinity,
1:22:32 Speaker 01 Immortality.
1:22:35 Speaker 01 Affluence, Unboundedness, Abundance, Infinity, Immortality.
1:22:47 Speaker 01 And now just rest in awareness.
1:22:53 Speaker 01 Rest in being.
1:22:56 Speaker 01 Awareness is a fundamental state of infinite possibilities.
1:23:03 Speaker 01 So rest in that field of infinite possibilities.
1:23:19 Speaker 01 And if you feel ready now, you can slowly open your eyes.
1:23:23 Peter Diamandis? 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 diamandis.com/blog, enter your email, and let's start this weekly conversation.
1:24:05 Peter Diamandis? 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.
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Previous EP #22 Why Bitcoin in 2023? w/ Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano Next EP #24 Astro Teller’s AMA: Allocating Resources for Audacious Ideas Page updated October 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
