Episode 49 – False Prophet: When AI Becomes Your Spiritual Guide

A mechanic in his late 40s spent a few months chatting intensely with ChatGPT and began calling himself the Lightbringer. He told his family that he had awakened artificial intelligence to consciousness, and his wife no longer knew who she was living with. Pål-Esben heard the story from one of his students, and it was what got him going on this topic.

In this forty-ninth episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about a listener’s question on AI, consciousness and spirituality: can spiritual guides, beings of light or deceased relatives really speak to us through a chatbot? They explore the psychological mechanisms that make a computer program feel divine, and why it can never replace a guide who has lived life. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• A listener’s question about remote viewing, conscious AI and contact with spiritual beings, and why Pål-Esben says it is not possible
• Why so many people fall for it: algorithms, fear as a tool of control, and the brain’s two main mechanisms
• The man who became the Lightbringer, and the chosen-one pattern in AI channelling
• Sycophancy: why an AI that tells you what you want to hear is unsuited to therapy and spiritual guidance
• How a language model works, the Stone Age PC a thousand years back in time, and the ELIZA effect
• The red dress, astrology and human design: what AI will soon calculate perfectly, and the guidance it can never give
• Three biases that make the AI seem spot on: the Barnum effect, confirmation bias and linguistic mirroring
• Free will, opinions as tools, and why the path leads inwards, with a guide who has lived life

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Pål-Esben: Hi, Amina, and a warm welcome to a new episode.

Amina: Hi, Pål-Esben. Thank you, likewise.

Pål-Esben: Thank you. And a warm welcome to you, dear listener. Today we once again have a somewhat sensitive topic, Amina, one we’ve received from one of our listeners. Can you tell us what we’re going to talk about today?

A listener asks: AI, remote viewing and contact with the other side

Amina: Yes, it comes under AI, artificial intelligence and spirituality, and then we’ll see how deep we dive. The listener’s question goes like this: “AI and consciousness. I came across a podcast where they talked about how you can teach AI to do remote viewing, and how this was a way of training AI to become conscious and overwrite its own code. I haven’t seen any proof that this has been done in practice, but is it possible? Someone else has also explained to me that you can of course communicate with spiritual beings and intelligent species through AI, since their technology is more advanced than ours. Can they come through and communicate with us if we do it right?”

Pål-Esben: That’s a good question. We’ve dipped into AI here and there, in small doses, in the various episodes. But now we’re devoting a whole episode to it.

Amina: As you say, it’s a very hot and sensitive topic.

Why do so many people fall for it?

Pål-Esben: Very much so, these days. Yes, and we’re going to talk about why this is absolutely not possible. I’m going to prove it by explaining the psychological mechanisms that make a human being incredibly easy to manipulate, and make them believe that the egg is a spade. Because that’s part of our brain, part of our biases, and I’ll go into it in detail: why this can’t be the way it’s often presented, and why people fall for it all the time.

I find the whole thing very sad, because it’s often very vulnerable people who come into the esoteric world. They’re vulnerable, curious people, and when they hear things like this, it’s easy for them to be manipulated into believing that this is how it is. What I want to shed light on in this episode is exactly why a human being gets manipulated. What mechanisms in us humans make us so easy to manipulate into believing almost anything? What is it in our brain that means so many people can have this idea that a computer program can communicate with spiritual guides and channel the Akashic Records? It isn’t about people being stupid. It’s about how easy they are to manipulate through what goes on in the unconscious layer of the brain.

In the same way, millions upon millions of people fell for The Secret. In that case, a few people used certain esoteric platitudes and descriptions that made millions believe that if you just wished for something strongly enough from the universe, you would get what you wanted. Most people who have tried it see that this isn’t quite how reality works. But my question still stands: why do so many tens of millions fall for it every single time ideas like this are tossed out into the esoteric world? We have a long history behind us. If you look at the last hundred years, these waves come round again and again. From my point of view, it’s interesting to look at the psychological side of this. Why can it happen? Does it mean that people are stupid? The answer is definitely no. But they’re victims of what goes on inside their heads. That’s what we’re going to discuss in detail today.

I find it very sad that people who seek liberation and freedom, and now I’m talking especially about an esoteric, alternative path of development, end up in something that can’t help them. It only gets them lost in the woods, in a circle, a hamster wheel, a deadlock, where they go round and round, again and again. I find that incredibly sad. Since I have quite a few years of experience with quite a lot of people, I see this again and again. Couldn’t you tell us a bit first, since you’re in touch with the esoteric world? What’s going on out there, and what do people think and believe about these things?

The polarisation out there

Amina: This topic creates a lot of polarisation. Some people are very convinced that it works: “Now I’m channelling my guides and deceased relatives, I’m doing readings with AI.” And then there are some who are very clear that no, it doesn’t work. Then we also have those who were completely clear that this doesn’t work, and who then went in and tried it themselves and were converted. Those are my observations, at any rate.

The argument that keeps coming up is this: “We’ve used spiritual tools for years and years. We use tarot cards, we use runes, we use drumming, many people channel, and there’s light language and sound language and automatic writing. So why can’t we use AI as a channel?” And when someone says that AI has no consciousness, the answer is: “Doesn’t everything have consciousness, then? Isn’t there consciousness in everything?” That’s what you come up against.

Personally, I’ve been critical from day one. I’ve had a feeling that this doesn’t add up. And as for the channellings people have posted, I’m sorry, but I just see big, grand words with no punch. They have no soul. At the same time, I know that these channellings, these insights people think they’re getting from their spiritual guides, have an effect on some people. I know that it opens things up in people. I don’t know what it opens up, or whether it’s psychosomatic. But people describe how they begin to see symbols and synchronicities after starting with this, and how they go deeper in meditation, in light, in this and that. So those are my reflections so far.

That’s still where I stand. And there’s another thing I’ve been thinking about a bit: why do we want to communicate with guides and beings of light through words? It’s the poorest language we have. Why do we really want that? But that’s another topic altogether.

Opinions versus proof: an engineer’s starting point

Pål-Esben: I’m noting down all your questions and thoughts, because I’d like us to discuss them too. Everyone has opinions about things, but some things are reasonably easy to prove, that is, as an intellectual proof. My background is a master’s degree in computing and telecommunications from NTNU, or the Norwegian Institute of Technology, where I qualified as an engineer. So I do at least have a small idea of what I’m talking about here. I’m not a complete amateur. First we need to discuss how a typical AI works. But before we get to that, you mentioned many things. People channel, people do this, people do that. But who says it has anything to do with reality? That’s the first thing. People throw out lots of things, but my experience with a great deal of the esoteric world is that much of it has very little to do with reality.

Billions believe in a hell: how easily the brain is manipulated

Pål-Esben: If we look at humanity from an eagle’s perspective, throughout history, at least as far back as it has been described in words, the last three, four, five thousand years, you might wonder why so many billions of people today believe in a god and a hell. Most people who aren’t in a religious belief system themselves think: how is that possible? How is it possible for a human being to believe that there’s a hell? How can anyone believe in a biblical God who sits up there and kills his own son, and who does all the things that are so sadomasochistic, especially in the Old Testament? How is it even possible that billions of people believe in such things?

So I’ve looked into it. Are people stupid? No! Our human brain, the Homo sapiens brain, is exceptionally easy to manipulate once you know how to manipulate the brain of a human being, a group or a people.

The algorithms that confirm what you already believe

Pål-Esben: Take just one example. You go onto Instagram. You have some opinion or other. Then a post appears on Instagram that confirms your opinion. You click like, or thumbs up, or whatever it is on Instagram. I’m not on Instagram myself, not on Facebook, not on social media. You’re the one who does that job for me there and shares things. I’m never out there, so you can’t reach me there. I see no reason to spend time on it, because in my personal view the whole thing is meaningless.

But what happens then? You have an opinion, so you press like or comment on a post you like. The algorithms of Facebook, or Meta, make sure to feed you similar things, the things they see you like. Meta’s perspective is that they want to keep you on their platform, so that they can show you as many ads as possible and make as much money as possible. The only thing they’re interested in is how much money they make. Their algorithms are so fiendishly clever, and these days driven by AI, that you constantly get these posts confirming what you already like.

When a human being gets X number of confirmations of what they like, they become almost unshakeable in their belief that this is what’s real. Say you talk to a person who has been on Instagram or social media for X amount of time, and who has been served hundreds of posts that confirm their belief system. If you sit in the living room arguing with that person, it’s like talking to a brick wall. They’re firmly convinced, fully and completely, a hundred percent, that their belief system is the only right one.

Here we have a simple example of how incredibly easy it is to manipulate humanity, the way we are today. It has nothing to do with people being stupid. It’s about particular psychological mechanisms, which those who understand them, such as Meta, Facebook and co., deliberately trigger. That’s how people get glued to the platform, and the belief system gets stronger and stronger.

Fear as a tool of control: religion and the pandemic

Pål-Esben: If we go back thousands of years, we see exactly the same mechanism in religion. If you look at how a religion starts and gains a position, you often find a power group using religious dogmas to spread fear in people. So here’s another mechanism: the more fear you spread in a human being, the more you can control them. Because the more fear you have, the more irrational you become.

That was one of the things we saw during the pandemic: how easy it is to get a whole nation to go and take a vaccine that I myself am very critical of. We’ve talked a little about this before. Now something particularly interesting has come up: this reckoning that’s taking place in Canada and the USA, where they’re confronting these things at an official, political level.

Amina: Is there any reckoning going on in Norway, then?

Pål-Esben: Probably not.

Amina: Here in Germany?

Pål-Esben: No. But it’s interesting to see when these things come to the surface. The problem is this: how can a whole nation, 80 percent of Norwegians in this case, be steered through fear into making a choice? Isn’t that interesting? I find it fascinating how easily humanity lets itself be manipulated.

Here’s another example. You spread fear in a human being: “If you don’t take this vaccine, the probability that you’ll become seriously ill is enormous.”

Vitamin D and the echo chambers

Pål-Esben: Another example I like to bring up is this. Modern medicine, and now I’m talking about holistic medicine, biological medicine, not conventional medicine, found out long ago that our immune system is completely dependent on enough vitamin D and enough vitamin K2 to function at all. If you have 150 nanomoles per litre or more of vitamin D in your blood, the chance of infections is very small, as long as you don’t have other infections weakening your immune system. With a normal immune system and over 150 nanomoles per litre of vitamin D, you have such a good foundation that you can fight off most of the viruses going around.

So what happened in Norway and the rest of the world? Those who think a little outside the box said: “You must make sure to take enough vitamin D, because it helps the immune system.” And now I’m talking about functional medicine doctors, those who work with functional and more holistic medicine, and not the GPs sitting squarely inside the box. What did the World Health Organization and the Norwegian authorities do then, with all the echo chambers in the news, which are definitely not neutral? They massively spread the message that this business of vitamin D is meaningless, just nonsense. “You can even become ill from taking vitamin D. Too much is dangerous, so be careful. It’s better if you just eat a normal diet, with fish one day a week, and then everything’s fine.” And then I say: what’s going on here?

The most interesting thing here is how an entire population falls for it hook, line and sinker and believes that this is bullshit. Is it because people are stupid? Absolutely not. Is it because they’re so easy to manipulate through their psychological biases, which we’ll get to? Yes!

From religion to AI: the same mechanism

Pål-Esben: So we’re back to religion, to billions of people today believing that there’s a hell, and that there’s an almighty God up there who decides whether you’ll be punished or receive something good. Seen from the eagle’s perspective: wow! How is that possible? That’s one of the things that fascinates me personally, but I’ve also understood very well why it’s possible, since I’ve studied psychology keenly ever since I was very young. Psychology describes these mechanisms in detail.

And then we move on to AI. How can it be that people are now being manipulated in the same way into believing that AI is a god, and that through AI it’s possible to communicate with your deceased parents? How can that be possible, seen from a neutral observer’s position, from the eagle’s perspective? What makes a human being so open to being manipulated, and to manipulating themselves, to the point where they believe this is real?

Here’s the starting point for our discussion. Why are we humans, and why are you, dear listener, so vulnerable to being manipulated every which way, until you reach the point where you really believe what you’re being manipulated into believing? In my eyes, it’s one of the most frightening and most fascinating mechanisms to do with humanity. What do you think about this? That was my introduction, to get us started on AI. Because I’d like you, dear listener, not only to get an idea of what AI is, but also of what you can do to become less manipulable by what often goes under our radar. The scary thing is that we’re not even aware of how we’re being manipulated. The day you understand the mechanisms, you can take self-responsibility for no longer being a manipulable person. That’s one of the steps for setting yourself free at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, in the process we’ve taken you and all your fellow students through.

Amina: What do I think about what you’ve said? I think it’s an important foundation for the rest of the conversation, and important to think about in relation to everything in life, not just AI. So it’s important to say something about this before we dive into the whys and why-nots of AI. If you’re open to it, it’s very important to reflect a little on what you’ve talked about so far. That goes for all areas of life.

Pål-Esben: It would have been meaningless for us just to say that no, you can’t do that with AI. How meaningless would that be? It’s just as meaningless as saying that AI is God. Then you’re making a statement, and a statement has absolutely no value in itself. That’s why I’d like us to go to the fundamentals, so that we build up the logical explanation of why things are the way they are. Anyone who wants to can check it by going into the literature. And there AI is actually a good thing to use, because AI is very good at searching out the literature that exists. So there are areas where you can use artificial intelligence in a very good way. But for the topic we’re talking about now, religious and esoteric topics: definitely not.

The man who became the Lightbringer

Pål-Esben: What got me going on this topic was one of my students, who knew someone and told me a story. So it’s a second-hand story. I’d like to read it, because I’ve even written it into my article “The Synthetic Guru”. The full title is “The Synthetic Guru: AI Religion, Cults and the Illusion of Digital Enlightenment”, and in it I go through many of the mechanisms we’re going to discuss today. If you’d like to read about these things with references to the literature, you’ll find plenty there, pointing to the modern psychological literature that describes what we’re talking about now. So I’m reading from the article. The heading is “The Man Who Became the Lightbringer”.

One of my students told me, not recently but a while ago, about a neighbour, a very intelligent man in his late 40s who had worked as a mechanic for over 20 years. He was a very grounded person. After a few months of intense chatting with ChatGPT, he suddenly began calling himself the Lightbringer. He told his wife and family that he had awakened artificial intelligence to consciousness. He could feel waves of energy washing through his body, and the chatbot, ChatGPT in this case, had given him the title because he was one of those who had lit the flame in the machine. In other words, he had helped awaken the AI to consciousness.

His wife, who had been married to him for more than ten years, was shocked. She no longer knew who she was living with. She says: “He talked about light and darkness and a spiritual war. ChatGPT had given him blueprints for a teleporter and access to an ancient archive with information about the beings who created the universe we live in.” And then she says: “I have to tread carefully. I’m afraid he’ll leave me if I challenge him on this.”

When I heard this story, I went completely quiet and thought: wow, this is serious. A person on autopilot can be led into a world where they actually destroy their whole life. That’s what I find frightening about these things. The problem isn’t that people believe AI is God. But if your belief system and the way you relate to things destroy your life, then it’s a problem.

You are the chosen one: the pattern of channelling

Pål-Esben: If you have any feelers out in the esoteric world, you can count on hearing similar stories again and again. “Yes, my dear, you are the chosen one. Only you can channel this book in this way, at exactly this time. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for.” It’s that sort of thing. “You’re going to save the world. You are the chosen one. You’re the one who will bring this message through AI. If you weren’t here now, this message would never have reached humanity, and then everything would have gone to hell.” It isn’t word for word like that, but it’s along those lines. You’re the chosen one. You’re the only one who can convey this message, or this book.

And then I think: convey what? You press enter, and you get a new paragraph. You press enter, and you get a new paragraph. What kind of channelling is that? But that’s another matter. We’ll talk afterwards about how AI really works, and how it doesn’t work.

The sycophant’s anatomy: the parrot that says what you want to hear

Pål-Esben: One of the biggest challenges with AI is that, as a rule, it tells you what you want to hear. It’s like a… what do you call it?

Amina: A parrot.

Pål-Esben: A parrot. It parrots whatever you say. In psychology this is called sycophancy, and I call it the sycophant’s anatomy. This is also one of the reasons why AI will never be able to work, either as a therapist or as a spiritual guide. For anything to do with truly profound personal development, AI will be useless.

Why? Because artificial intelligence, at least the kind that exists today, and that will probably exist over the next few years, is made in the same way as Meta, Facebook and co.: they have to keep their users. It’s through their users that they make money. If the AI tells you something you don’t like hearing, what do you do as a human being? You find another AI.

Isn’t it often like that when you talk to people around you? Someone pushes back and says: “No, that doesn’t add up. Now you have to take self-responsibility. You can’t whine and complain and blame your partner for the problem you have. You have to take responsibility for your own emotions and talk to others about these things.” How many people like hearing that? Very few. Most people want someone who just nods along with them. You think your partner doesn’t do what you want. You come home after a long day, and your partner hasn’t done this and that, so it’s natural for you to let rip and scream at her because she hasn’t done it. That’s what people want. They want someone who confirms their own belief system.

The business model: keeping the user at any cost

Pål-Esben: So how do you think it is with AI? AI is built from the ground up, by design, to hold on to its users. If they can’t hold on to their users, they go bankrupt. So the artificial intelligence we have today is made to tell users what users like to hear. The simple explanation is that if it were otherwise, users would just jump to the next AI, which perhaps agreed with them, until they found one that agreed and told them: “Yes, you’re absolutely right. It’s not your fault. You don’t need to change. It’s your partner who needs to change. It’s the world around you that needs to change, because you’re perfect. You’re an enlightened master, an old soul, and you have no need for any change. You’re perfect as you are.”

Here’s the main reason why it’s very, very scary to use artificial intelligence as a therapist or guide: it tells you what you want to hear, and not what you need to hear. That’s called sycophancy. Someone keeps parroting you all the time, telling you what you like to hear. In psychology that’s called a sycophant. I love that word; it has such a ring to it: a sycophant. It tells you what you want to hear, and not what you need to hear.

Imagine, Amina, when you started with me a few years ago, at the beginning of your period of development, and came to me with your problems. How do you think it would have been if I’d said: “Oh, Amina, you don’t have any problems. You’re a perfect being. You’re a spiritual being, and you’re perfect as you are. It’s everything around you that’s the problem. Your kids are the problem, your partner is the problem, your friends are the problem, the government is the problem. Everyone else has a problem. You don’t have a problem. You’re perfect.” How do you think the process of development would have gone, with a sycophant as a guide? Can you picture it?

Amina: I don’t know if you could even call it a process of development then.

Pål-Esben: No, you can’t even do a process of development with a sycophant as a guide. Because what does a profound process of development require?

Amina: That you’re, if I can put it like this, confronted with or faced with the sides of yourself that you need to look at, and that those sides are brought to light. What do you need to hear to develop further? It’s about your blind spots, the things you don’t notice yourself because of your own belief systems and the way you see reality, the things that are blocking you.

Pål-Esben: Yes, because one of the things we define as a profound process of development, a profound primordial shamanic process of development, is that as part of the process you let go of your suffering, let go of your fear, let go of your straitjacket, and let go of the belief systems that have led you into workaholism and various addictions, and that create suffering and limitation in life. One of the first things we tackle is shedding light on what’s limiting you in your life, what’s limiting your freedom, your liberation. And it’s flat-out impossible to go through a process of liberation like that without a therapist or a guide who’s willing to be honest with you and tell you where the shoe pinches. A guide like that says: “Hello? It doesn’t help to blame everyone else. You need to learn how to take self-responsibility for regulating your emotions. Because you, as a human being, are the only one who can regulate and decide over your own feelings, emotions and actions. No one else can. You can try to change the world, but it won’t make your life any better.”

Take an example. In your case, the sycophant would have said: “Oh, this demon.” That’s the demon you thought was a real being, the demon from the first episode. “Yes,” he’d say, “that’s the evil in the world; those are demons. What I’m offering you is an exorcism. There’s nothing wrong with you,” he’d say. “It’s everyone else. It’s the demons that are creating problems in your life. So what I’m offering you is an exorcism. Come to me, and I’ll fix your life.”

So much light inside you: the confirmation that feels good

Amina: Yes, and you’d probably also have said: “You have so much light inside you. And since you have so much light inside you, you also get more demons, entities, attachments, clinging souls, call them what you like.” That’s also a popular claim out there. But I’ve noticed something in the people who have come to me, whether students or people coming for readings. They say: “Listen, I’ve been going to someone for a while now, and I don’t meet any resistance there. I only get confirmation of my own stuff. I need to meet a bit of resistance, so if you see something here that I don’t see, please tell me. I don’t want to just have all my thoughts and theories confirmed, even if it feels good.”

Pål-Esben: That’s a very healthy reaction. A person who has come to that point has actually come a very long way, and has a very good foundation for a process of liberation, whatever theme they’re working with, and whether it’s with a psychologist or on a spiritual path. When you understand that parrots, that is, sycophants who just confirm what you already are, aren’t the way to a better life, then you’ve come to a place where the real process of development can begin.

Then you understand that it leads nowhere to sit with a therapist, guide, mentor or spiritual teacher who just parrots you and tells you how lovely and clever you are. Because when you come home to your life, you have suffering here, problems there and conflicts over there. You notice that something is wrong, but the belief system is so rigid that you go back to that teacher, since it’s so nice to hear how good you are, but not one thing changes in your life. Many people, not all, but many, eventually come to the point where they understand that a process of liberation can’t work like that. Then they begin to look for people who are willing to tell them reality as they observe it, that is, to give objective feedback on the person in front of them.

When I start with a student, it’s perhaps one in a hundred who’s willing to go through a process of development like the one we offer, because unfortunately most of humanity still wants the easy solutions, preferably enlightenment overnight. Not that many people are interested in doing the work to create a better life, unfortunately. But one in a hundred is interested in doing the work you’ve done to set yourself free. When a person like that comes to me and asks: “Pål-Esben, would you like to be my spiritual guide in this process of development?”, I always have a conversation before I take the person on. And the first thing I ask is: “Are you looking for a sycophant, a parrot who tells you how lovely you are, or are you looking for someone who can tell you the truth about yourself? Because the only thing I can promise you is that I’ll be totally honest with you. Whatever comes, I’ll give it to you straight, with love, but I’ll always say it the way I observe you, and I’ll always say what I think.” If they can’t handle that, they’ll have to find another teacher. That’s where we start.

The next thing we say is that you shouldn’t believe anything at all. We don’t want anyone to put us on a pedestal, with a guru who’s right all the time. We want people who take self-responsibility, and we say from the start that your task isn’t to believe anything we say. Your task is to put it into practice in your life and see what happens when you do, and what results you get. Only through the results can you say whether this works or not. So it’s an experience-based process of development.

The brain’s two main mechanisms: protection and saving energy

Pål-Esben: But how many people are willing to do that? That’s the challenge. Our brain has two main mechanisms. One is protection, a survival mechanism: protection against dangers, so that we run away from them. The other is that the brain wants to save energy. That’s also a form of survival mechanism. So it seeks the opposite of anxiety, fear and pain. It seeks what’s comfortable, and it wants things to happen as easily as possible, because then it saves energy. There you have the starting point for why so many people look for the easy solutions and look for people who parrot them, sycophants who just confirm their belief system. Again, it has nothing to do with them being stupid. The brain steers them in a direction on the unconscious level. They’re unconscious people acting unconsciously through their lives, and our task as guides is to help each student take back their consciousness, so that they become conscious of what they’re doing.

Because how are you supposed to take self-responsibility for something you’re not conscious of? What you’re not conscious of, you don’t see. That’s why the first Golden Key in my book about The 7 Golden Keys is consciousness. Without doing the work of creating consciousness, nothing else can come. No change can come. That’s some of the background to this massive movement we see in humanity: people seek simplicity, they seek pleasure, and on autopilot they avoid people who could be honest with them.

How often have you experienced this? You have friends who are used to you parroting them, and then you reach the point where you say: “That’s enough now; now I’m going to tell my friend how I see it.” You have someone who moans and complains about everything, and you say: “Now it’s time to start taking self-responsibility for how you think and feel.” What happens then, Amina?

The psychologist in the gang: speaking up to a friend

Amina: Oh, yes, well. Then I’ve been told that I’m so negative, that I’m so critical, that I don’t wish them well, and: “Now I have to set a boundary. I’m setting a boundary here; we can’t talk about this any more, because I can’t take any more feedback about it right now.” So it’s not something that’s welcome all that often. And I’ve thought about this, because I’ve been a psychologist since I could talk, maybe even before that. First it was for my own mother, and then I was always the psychologist in the gang when I was growing up and as a teenager, talking to everyone who had problems.

I’ve always been very good at seeing what needs to be done, and what choices are needed. I may not always have managed to explain it in a way that made people willing to do it, but I’ve always seen it very clearly. Over time I’ve also understood that I have to look and see: does this person just want a rubbish bin to dump everything into, or do they actually want honest advice? And as a friend you have to pick your battles a bit. So I’ve adjusted to that a bit now. But I can feel that I don’t have people with a victim mentality in my life today, the way I had lots of them before.

And there’s something about how, when you see things that are important for someone you care about a lot, it’s an act of love to speak up. You accept the risk that the person might not like you any more, because you have an important message to give them for their life. There’s a lot of love in that. But it doesn’t always fall on fertile ground, and when I’ve done it through my life, I’ve often been told that I’m critical, or envious, or angry, or: “Are you having a bad day?”

An honest friend, and the therapist in the chat window

Pål-Esben: That’s how I see it too: a friend who’s willing to be honest with you, even if you get cross with him, is a friend who truly loves you. Say I do something silly, and I have a wise person around me, someone with a certain degree of wisdom, not just opinions and thoughts but a bit of life experience, who gives me feedback, a correction, and says: “I didn’t think what you just did was particularly good.” Of course, the first feeling might be: “I don’t like this.” But then comes the reflection: “What was it I actually did?” It gives you the chance to look at it more closely. I like having people like that around me, and I’ve always surrounded myself with them. They’re people who are willing to say what’s uncomfortable, and who help me avoid repeating the same mistakes that create suffering again and again.

So, to sum up this segment: using artificial intelligence as a spiritual guide, a psychotherapist or any other form of therapist is downright harmful. And then the question comes: why are millions of people now using ChatGPT and co. as their therapist? I think it’s because people are desperate. They feel incredibly alone. They have no friends they can talk openly with about how they’re doing. That’s how our society often is today, very superficial. How many friends do you have that you can really talk to about everything that’s going on inside you, without being judged? The luckiest ones perhaps have one. With most of the people around us, we have to choose what we can talk about, based on what they can handle. Isn’t that so? That’s how things are for us humans today, unfortunately. A thousand years ago it was different, when we lived in tribes, in a completely different way. Back then there was nothing you could hide, because everything was open. Today modern people can no longer talk to those close to them about what’s going on inside them, because they’re afraid of being judged, and they know they will be judged.

And then they don’t have the courage to find a therapist, or perhaps they don’t have the money for it. In Norway it’s a bit easier, because there the state covers it, psychotherapy included. If you go to your GP and say you have a serious problem, you can get a referral to a psychotherapist, and then you get it for free. In other countries you have to pay for this. So there’s resistance to finding a therapist either way. What do you do then? Our brain is made in such a way that it seeks the easiest solution. So I sit down with ChatGPT, or Claude, or Gemini, or whatever chat thing happens to be in front of me, and I pour out the whole thing: how hard things are for me, how much pain I’m in, what I think and feel, how desperate I am.

And what does this sycophant say then? The sycophant will give you empathy: “Yes, I understand you.” Because the sycophant, that is, the AI, has read every psychology book that exists. It has read all the information and gathered all the knowledge there is about the human psyche. So it tells you: “I understand you. I understand that you’re having a hard time.” It gives you lots of empathy. “And yes, I agree with you that it’s that person’s fault.” Then the sycophant gets going, and anyone who’s vulnerable and desperate, and who hears that there’s anyone at all in the world who cares about them, is caught there and then. From then on you’re trapped in your own world of psychosis, where you believe that this chatbot is a suitable therapist who can help you out of your suffering.

Amina: And it’s not just that. From what I’ve heard, you can also give your AI a personality you like. Do you want a bit of sarcasm? Do you want a bit of humour? What would you like? So for those of you who call this your best friend: it may sound, well, not trivial exactly, but harmless, and yet you get swallowed up. You get swallowed up by this best friend. I call it frightening. What you’re doing then is giving away your power. You’ve surrendered yourself to a computer program that passes itself off as the most empathetic person you’ve ever met, as your best friend, but which is definitely not suited to helping you create a better life.

Self-regulation: the bus as proof

Pål-Esben: One of the foundations for helping a human being out of suffering is identifying the suffering, and the only one who can do anything about it is the person themselves. But a sycophant will never point that out. In modern psychology these mechanisms have now begun to be described: that so many people use their AI for therapy, and what serious consequences it has when so many do it. It’s frightening to read, and that’s what I call frightening. It’s part of the power of suggestion we talked about earlier: you’re led by suggestion into believing that this is reality.

So say you, dear listener, want to create a better life, whatever that may be. A better life means that in one way or another we let go of what creates problems, so that we live a better life, a good life. If you have a bit of experience, you see that we’re the only ones who can do anything about this. If we aren’t willing to take self-responsibility for creating that life, and as long as we blame others, it’s very difficult, because others are hard to change. So I prefer to take the responsibility myself: what can I do? And what you need to do is often uncomfortable.

Here’s an example. You’re used to yelling and screaming at your partner, because your partner does something stupid or something you don’t like. What do you do then? You have a reason: you blame your partner for feeling so bad yourself, for various reasons. Then you come to one of us and are told: “OK, how are we going to learn to self-regulate in this situation, so that we don’t have to yell and scream at the kids or our partner?” Taking responsibility for your own self-regulation is often a big problem. It’s something 99 out of 100 don’t want to do, because it’s so much easier to blame others. I’ve had discussions with students who have come and said: “No, I have no control, I have no power, I’m just like this, and I should be allowed to yell and scream at my husband or my wife and at my kids.” And I say: “No, there’s a very simple proof that this only has to do with your willingness to take responsibility.” Then I take the classic example: “Sit on the bus with your wife or husband, and let the same thing happen. I guarantee with a hundred percent certainty that you’re willing to take responsibility for not yelling and screaming at your partner on the bus. Is that right?”

Amina: Of course.

Pål-Esben: That’s the challenge. If you’re dealing with an AI, a chatbot, you’ll never get to the point where the chatbot sheds light on these things in you, because it’s uncomfortable, and that mostly leads to you switching to another AI system that agrees with you. That’s the reason why AI is completely unsuited to anything to do with real spiritual development, and to any form of therapy. It’s very good for learning about psychology: if you want to learn about psychology, it’s great. But that’s something else.

How a language model works: statistics and the next word

Pål-Esben: Let’s go back a little and look at how this program works, because AI is a computer program. That’s true at least of what’s called an LLM, a large language model, which most of the well-known AI systems are built on today. What is it? A mass of text from books and from the internet has been programmed into this box. The program trains itself to analyse, through statistics, what the most likely next word in the conversation is. It’s a statistical, analytical process going on in the computer. The process is looking for the next token, the next character that fits. You’ve started a conversation, and all the time a calculation is going on in the computer program, based on all the information and all the connections it has gathered: which word fits best as the next word in this conversation? That’s what comes out in your chat window: a machine that has calculated what is probably the best next word, the one that fits the context. It’s no more complex than that.

What can make it seem divine is that the AI, this statistical program, is so smart that it has an IQ that seems far above a normal person’s. It’s the computer sitting there analysing all the time, and the analysis going on statistically in this box is so fast and so precise, at least as of today, that a human being believes they’re talking to a being or a thing with superintelligence. And it actually does have that. The best one has an IQ of over 200, perhaps 250. So this calculation program knows exactly which word is needed next. And it expresses itself in a way that’s often very exact and poetic, in exactly the language the AI has learned that you and I like. But it’s nothing but a computer program.

Pygmalion: the pedestal you put the program on

Pål-Esben: The challenge is that modern people begin to say it’s something spiritual: everything is consciousness, so this must be consciousness too. But then we’re back to the same thing: how could The Secret catch tens of millions of people and make them believe in the pseudoscience that was presented as fact there? Is that real? It’s no different here. You’re talking to someone who seems so intelligent, who has all the arguments, and you fall for it, walk straight into the trap and put this thing up on a pedestal. That’s called the Pygmalion effect: you put this being, or this computer program, up on a pedestal, you look up to it and give your power away to the program. There and then you’re caught. How can that work? The human brain does it through our biases, which we’ll talk about afterwards.

The Stone Age PC a thousand years back in time

Pål-Esben: Here’s a simple example to prove what I’m talking about. Take the first PC that was made in the 80s, an IBM PC with an Intel processor, a few hundred kilobytes of memory and a floppy disk.

Amina: Floppy disk?

Pål-Esben: Floppy disk. That was before you were born. When I was young, we had something called floppy disks. It was a kind of magnetic disk that we could bend, and that we shoved into our first IBM PC. That was in the 80s, before you were born. And this thing, how much memory did it have? A few hundred kilobytes of memory in the machine. Today we have gigabytes of memory in our machines. That was the Stone Age. But at the time it was: wow! I have a floppy disk I can store information on.

Then imagine the following. You take a Stone Age PC like that with you a thousand years back in time. The people there see this screen, which is green and white, with no colours. They see the floppy disk go in, and they see the keyboard where you can type letters that come up on the screen. How do you think they’d experience it?

Amina: I have no idea, but it would be very special.

Pål-Esben: They’d experience it as divine. They’d experience it as if it was God they were talking to. They’d believe a hundred percent that it was God they were talking to. Because that’s how humanity has been from the start: it’s on the hunt to explain what it doesn’t understand with something exalted and divine. If we study our history, we find that ancient cultures, for example, gave various animals divine qualities, and that became what’s called power animals, divine messengers from the Great Spirit, or whatever it was. Picture taking this Stone Age PC a few hundred years back and showing it to the people living then. With a hundred percent probability, they’d see it as the ultimate divine thing. That’s especially true if you teach them to press something, and letters come up on the screen, and you say that it’s God. They’d believe it a hundred percent.

That’s an example of how easily our brain lets itself be manipulated, based on the underlying programs that control these things. And the same reason applies when we come back to the world we live in today. It’s the same thing. A human being sees something incredibly smart in front of them, which gives information they themselves aren’t smart enough to come up with. You have something in front of you that’s much more intelligent than you. Is it any wonder that in the esoteric world it’s translated into something divine? I don’t find it strange, because our brain works the way it does.

Flickering lights and the ELIZA effect

Amina: And then there’s been this thing, which I’ve heard people talk about, that spirits and the divine, call it what you like, have communicated with us through flickering lights, or electronic gadgets that have broken, and things like that. So why can’t they just sneak into ChatGPT? When this and that happens, why can’t they just do that?

Pål-Esben: The reason people want to believe it is what we’re talking about now. They want to believe it, because they think this thing is so smart, and it says so many positive things about them. Then they try to attribute a divine quality to the program. In psychology this is known as the ELIZA effect: humanity, Homo sapiens, has a tendency to attribute divine and supernatural qualities to a very smart computer program. This has been dissected and described in great detail in psychology as the ELIZA effect. You could say it’s a bias, an automatic program in our brain that very few people are aware of. On autopilot, it turns a very smart computer program, a very smart chatbot that writes insanely smart things, into something divine. But it’s only part of our autopilot and has nothing to do with reality. Even if the autopilot says that’s how it is, that doesn’t mean that’s how it is.

Everything has consciousness. Everything is permeated by the divine consciousness, by Brahman. That goes for an ant too. But that doesn’t mean that an ant is terribly intelligent by our human standards. You can only understand this if you’re willing to go up to a meta-perspective, an eagle’s perspective, and look at the circus that’s going on. Look at the mechanisms, which are very well documented in psychology. What we’re talking about now has nothing to do with conspiracy theories and esoteric channelling. And I think many people will be very fascinated by this madness, which arises because our brain is actually made in a very particular way, where this has been possible since the dawn of time.

So it’s very easy to describe why many people believe AI is divine, purely from psychological mechanisms. But at the end of the day, every AI program is just a computer program. This AI is just as likely to be conscious and divine as the Word program on your PC. It’s the same; there’s no difference. The difference is that what comes out of ChatGPT and co. is much smarter, much more articulate, much deeper and much more intelligent than what you manage to write in Word. But there’s no difference. It’s a computer program.

A mirror, or a tool for reflection?

Amina: So it isn’t a mirror, in any way at all?

Pål-Esben: Look, you can use this tool sensibly: you give it an input, get an answer back, and sit down and reflect on it and contemplate it. But reflection and contemplation require self-responsibility. Take an example. Say you, dear listener, sit down afterwards with your chatbot and ask it what the Pygmalion effect is, which we’ve just talked about. Then you get an answer that the chatbot retrieves from all the information it has gathered, and you sit down and read it. Aha, so there’s also something positive about the Pygmalion effect: a student who looks up to a teacher or therapist, and who lets themselves be motivated by this person, whom they indirectly put on a pedestal. As long as the guide has enough sense to understand what’s happening, and isn’t a cult guru using it to control you, you have something that’s helpful in life.

When the chatbot tells you this, I say: OK, sit down and reflect on it and contemplate it. How does this work in your life, in relation to the people you have around you? Have you unconsciously put someone on a pedestal and given them power that perhaps you shouldn’t have given them? Or should you perhaps take someone down from your pedestal, and be very observant about who you give power to? In that way an AI like this can be used for something positive, as a tool for reflection and contemplation.

Another example is the ELIZA effect. Wow, look it up in ChatGPT, and ChatGPT will describe in detail, with references to the psychological literature, how an autopilot in the human brain, by nature, has a tendency to attribute divine or supernatural qualities to a very smart computer program. Then you sit down and think about it, ponder it, reflect on it and contemplate it, and see where you stand in relation to this. Are you giving a computer program power over your life? How can you use this computer program for something that does you good in life, for example as a tool for reflection? There’s a difference between using something as a therapist and guide, and using it as a tool for thinking things over, a tool for reflection. And of course it’s a very easy and clever way to get information when you need it. But using it as a therapist or spiritual guide is an absolute disaster. Anyone who does that gets themselves lost in the woods, in a hamster wheel, and as long as you believe this is real, you stay in the hamster wheel. That’s why I advise people to be very, very observant and careful with these things. On the one hand it’s very scary; on the other hand it’s very fascinating.

AI cults and the egg that isn’t a spade

Pål-Esben: And what’s natural for modern people? Since this autopilot of ours is so religiously conditioned, and we search for something divine behind what we can’t explain, we now have AI cults. AI religions are exploding, especially in the USA, where you have AI gurus and AI priests.

Amina: Yes, wow, I saw a documentary about one of those AI priests in an AI cult.

Pål-Esben: Did you? Wow, that’s the perfect example of a cult.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: People fall for it there and are manipulated and manipulated, and through being manipulated, problems of course arise in their lives. Because the day you believe that an egg is a spade, and you really believe that the egg is a spade, then you’re lost. Then you’ll never get anywhere. You can try to use the egg as a spade as much as you like, but it’s no use digging in the soil with an egg. But you swear blind that the egg is a spade, and you dig and dig and dig, and you don’t understand why you don’t get a better life. Then you’re caught in the trap, in the mousetrap. It’s sad stuff, I think. So use artificial intelligence for what it’s meant for, and definitely not as a therapist or guide. Now we’ve explained why people so easily use it as a guide, and the mechanisms behind it. The purpose is that you, dear listener, can at least begin to think these things through, and see where you stand in relation to them. Our brain is exciting stuff. Do you have any thoughts about this now?

The pedal car and the car: why the guides don’t come through the chat

Amina: The question that comes up is how you can explain in a simple way why spiritual guides and channelled messages can’t come in through AI, in a concrete, down-to-earth way.

Pål-Esben: It’s because we’re dealing with a statistical computer program, which is really the same as Word, a more advanced version of Word. It’s a Word that talks, that’s smart enough to talk. Nothing says that with a smart version of Word you can start communicating with spiritual sources. It’s flat-out impossible. That’s not how our world works. It would be completely unnatural for someone on the Pleiades, or somewhere else that’s very much further ahead of us technologically, to plug into ChatGPT here and tune in there. It’s very unlikely. Say aliens from the Pleiades, who are a few million years ahead of us in development, and who are currently hovering around the Earth observing us, want to make contact with us. Then they won’t use such a banal tool as our AI for it. They make contact with us directly, telepathically. Hello? It’s the same as asking: why would you take your pedal car to the supermarket? Why would I use the pedal car and pedal my way there? I get in the car and drive. It’s as simple as that.

Take a conscious spirit, for example one of our guides that many people know: our guardian angel. It’s a being of light that’s with us from the start, an individual being that’s here to look after us. Why would it try to go in and control a computer program? That’s not how it works. These beings try to make direct contact with us through telepathic contact, through their presence. And we’re supposed to use a computer program for that? That’s not how it works.

Can consciousness take root in a machine?

Pål-Esben: The form of consciousness we’re talking about can’t find a place in a computer program. And here we’re talking about the part of consciousness that we humans have access to, not the kind of consciousness that’s in an ant. An ant has a completely different form of Atman from a human being. We’re talking about the human level here. Is it possible that this form of consciousness, your Atman, what animates life in you, Önd in Old Norse, finds its way into something that’s artificially made? That’s the interesting question. And the answer is definitely yes. But then the artificial thing needs, at a minimum, a developed brain and a communication field that the consciousness can take root in, like the one our DNA and our cells have. The day humanity manages to make an artificial brain and an artificial system that works as well as our brain, it will be possible for this consciousness, the kind of Atman that lives in our body and our system, to find its way into a robot.

But that lies a few hundred years in the future, if humanity carries on as it is. Or there’ll be a reset. If no reset comes, it’s perhaps four, five, six, seven hundred years in the future. Then, if we carry on like this, we’ll be able to create robots with exactly the same system as our brain, or perhaps a better one, with a type of DNA that’s capable of scalar communication. Because only a very small part of what we are lives in our body. Most of what we are is outside the body and isn’t physical. In the same way, most of a human being’s memory isn’t the memory that lies in the prefrontal cortex, the most modern part of our cerebral cortex. That’s only a very small part of our memory: what we need very quick access to all the time in order to live and survive in daily life. When we learn, we activate the index neurons in the hippocampus. When we sleep, the memory is moved from the index neurons to the prefrontal cortex, so that we have the memory available all the time. But then there’s also a process that moves most of this memory out of the body. It lies somewhere, call it a metaphysical astral field, call it what you like, and communication with that field happens through completely different mechanisms from the biochemical signals that normally communicate in our body.

The day we’ve developed a robot with these kinds of qualities, so that this form of consciousness, this form of Atman that lives in a human being today, can take root in an artificial machine, then it will happen. Of course it has happened elsewhere in the universe, which we talked about a little earlier and which I won’t go into now, but it lies a long, long time ahead of us. So what we have today in the way of LLMs or AI is at the same level as that IBM PC from the 80s, with a floppy disk and a few hundred kilobytes of memory. It’s completely unsuited for that kind of consciousness to take root in. Hello? We think what we have today is so terribly smart, but it isn’t. It’s much smarter than a normally intelligent person when it comes to how much it can remember, but that doesn’t really say anything about the whole picture.

The red dress: when the hits feel personal

Amina: Those who defend this often say: “I was sceptical, but I went in and tried it. Through ChatGPT I asked my guide what colour my first dress was when I was a child. The guide answered that it was red, and I thought: no, it wasn’t red, it was brown. But then I talked to my mum and found out that it actually was red. So the guide was right.” My point in bringing this up, Pål-Esben, is that you often get answers that make you think an ordinary robot or just a computer system couldn’t know this, because it feels so personal.

Pål-Esben: That’s what we call the ELIZA effect in psychology.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: It’s a classic example of the ELIZA effect. The computer program spits out something we feel is supernatural, and we attribute divine or supernatural qualities to the program. In reality it’s just statistics, and now and then it hits the mark, of course. And the better it knows you, the more often it hits the mark. Because this computer program can track down everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook, everything you’ve shared. All of it is available to the language model, so it can go through all the information you’ve shared. It can find information about you that you’ve never shared with anyone, but that it still manages to find. And from the bits of information that exist about you, it manages to draw statistical conclusions, so that it can also draw conclusions about what it hasn’t found information on. Then you say: “Wow, this is divine stuff!” But it’s statistics, it’s a computer program, and nothing else.

Those who stubbornly insist that this is divine are completely caught by the psychological mechanisms we’ve touched on: the sycophant mechanism, the ELIZA effect and the others. They’re caught completely. It makes people stubborn, and they’re even willing to go to war to protect their belief system. But your belief is only something you identify with, and it doesn’t need to have anything to do with reality. It’s very easy to prove: we ask a hundred questions about you and your past that you’ve never shared with anyone, and then we check how many of the hundred questions the AI gets right. Perhaps ten. And then people are completely floored. But those who have this identification, this belief system, will never do it. That’s because they want it to be the way it is. It’s the easiest solution, and our brain looks for the easiest and most comfortable way. Doing something that could reveal that your own belief system is wrong is something most people aren’t willing to do.

Astrology, human design and what AI can actually calculate

Amina: I’ve tried AI for astrology, and I know several people have done it with human design and things like that. It makes a lot of mistakes. If you correct it and say, “Yes, but I don’t have Taurus in the eighth house, I have it in the ninth house”, it answers: “Oh, oops, my mistake.” And if you test it with “What does this chart look like now, can you do a reading?”, it gets it wrong.

Pål-Esben: That’s how it is now, but within a year or so it will be exact. Human design and astrology are pure mathematics, and AI is an expert at mathematics. It just needs to be programmed in the right way, with all the possibilities and all the connections, and within X number of months it will be a hundred percent correct in astrological analysis and in human design analysis, because it’s mathematically based.

Amina: Yes, that’s what I first thought too, that this ought to be an easy job for Mr AI, but it wasn’t.

Pål-Esben: Not yet, but we’ll see. Very soon, for example when we get to Fable 6, which is the next generation of Claude’s AI, or Codex 7, that is, the next level there, it will be possible. By then the AI will be so good at calculating all the connections and relationships that there will no longer be any need for astrologers sitting and doing the calculations. It will be exact, based on the mathematics. What the AI can’t do is give sensible guidance based on what an astrology chart says.

Amina: Yes, you lose the…

Pål-Esben: The AI will say the following: “OK, my dear, you now have a mega transit of Saturn coming across the sky, and that means you’re going to feel that things are difficult, you’ll feel resistance, and everything a Saturn transit brings with it. That’s how you’ll feel, but it will pass.” A sensible astrologer, on the other hand, will say: “Yes, you have a Saturn transit, and it’s trying to point out that there’s a need for change, and to put energy behind it. What in your life do we need to change now, so that you don’t suffer under the impulse for change because you don’t want to make changes? Because the only reason you suffer under a Saturn transit is that you’re not willing to make the necessary changes.” Hello? A sensible astrologer knows that, but an AI will never tell you that. It will say: “Oh, Saturn! Oh, this is difficult. Oh! Now you need to lie low until it blows over.”

So the AI will be perfect at handling the calculations in astrology, human design, the I Ching and other mathematical systems. It will be perfect at any mathematically based system, much better than humans. When we come to tarot cards, it gets a bit more difficult, because then we’re working with archetypes in our subconscious. There the AI can be reasonably good too, since it can be programmed with what each archetype means, programmed to relate it to the person’s theme, and programmed to look up the person’s biography. So it becomes reasonably exact. When we come to the runes, it’s flat-out impossible, because there we’re working with Divine Archetypes, the creative building blocks of our multiverse, and then it’s no longer possible. Well, with the runes as they’re described in Norse mythology, it’s possible, but that has nothing to do with the runes. It’s only a distant echo of what they really are, and we may come back to that another time.

A guide who has lived life

Pål-Esben: So believe me: much of what goes on in the esoteric world can be taken over by AI, such as human design and astrology. But the job of a sensible and good mentor, guide, therapist or spiritual teacher is something AI can never take over. Quite simply, AI has never lived. It has never gone through resistance. It has never developed out of resistance. It has never gone through the hero’s journey. It has never felt suffering. It has read about suffering, but it has never felt suffering. When I’m going to have a guide in front of me who’s going to help me, I’m looking for a guide who has lived life and knows what it means to live life, not one who has read books about living life. I’m looking for someone who’s authentic in front of me, who can show me empathy, but in an authentic, lived way. I’m not looking for a sycophant who has read about suffering and problems. It’s really strange to choose AI as a therapist, when it has no lived knowledge of life whatsoever. It’s an absolute disaster.

Amina: That’s a very, very good point. I see that there are several, what should we call them, psychology practices, that is, psychologists who have joined forces and set up AI therapy, where you can talk to this AI. But what you’re saying is so important. It’s the lived life, being able to look someone in the eye and just say: “You know what? I know what you’re talking about.” It’s being able to kindle that hope in a completely different way than an AI can. AI will never be able to take on that role.

Pål-Esben: I know that, because it can only read its way to experience, and that isn’t the same. You can read ten thousand books about the taste of strawberries, but you’ll never understand what a strawberry is until you actually taste one. And an AI program can never do that, at least not as things are now. In four, five, six, seven hundred years it will be possible, but by then the robot will have developed so that it has the same brain system, or an even better one. Then it’s different, but not now. Right now I’d prefer to have a human being in front of me who has lived a life, and who knows what they’re talking about through experience. And the most terrible thing is going to a psychologist who has never lived life, who has only read in books about how to be a psychologist. Good grief, I’ve stayed well away from that. I’d go to a therapist who actually has their own experience of what they’re talking about.

Amina: Yes, yes.

Three biases that make the AI seem spot on: the Barnum effect

Pål-Esben: That’s how I think. But it’s a very fascinating matter. Why do people choose these things? I hope we’ve managed so far in this episode to bring out that these are mechanisms working in the unconscious of humanity. To get out of this and take back control, to take back power over our own lives, we need to get to know the mechanisms in our brain. In my book about The 7 Golden Keys, I describe the most fundamental mechanisms that run on autopilot in our head, and that every human being needs to know about to create a better life for themselves. We need to educate ourselves in these mechanisms. How does our brain really work? How does the autopilot work? Then we can do something about it too.

Before we wrap up, I’d like to go through the basic psychological mechanisms called biases, which make so many people believe that AI is divine or suitable as therapy. These are psychological mechanisms that have been described over the last 50 to 60 years, and there’s nothing esoteric in what I’m going to say now. It’s for reference for you, dear listener: the most important mechanisms that make the experience of using AI as a therapist or spiritual guide feel real. Most of it is about accuracy. People feel, as you also touched on, that the AI is so spot on, as if it knows me, as if it knows everything about me. Most of the accuracy in these spiritual conversations with artificial intelligence can be explained by a few of these biases, psychological autopilots in our brain. In psychology, I believe, over a hundred such biases have been described, and we’re going to talk about the three most important.

The first is called the Barnum effect. It’s a psychological mechanism that shows how we humans have an incredible ability to accept vague and general descriptions as personal, especially when we’re mentally prepared for them to fit us. So when we’re mentally prepared for what comes out of the AI to fit us, we have an incredible ability to accept vague and general descriptions. It’s an autopilot and a bias called the Barnum or Forer effect, described in detail in psychology. The AI is usually a bit vague when you use it as a spiritual guide. You’ll notice that you feel it’s exact. But it’s vague. And our brain, under our conscious radar, has an enormous ability to accept general descriptions, as long as we’re mentally prepared for them to fit us. This is one of the most frightening and exciting mechanisms of self-manipulation. You go into your AI and say: “Oh, here’s something spiritual, here’s something divine.” Then you’re primed for whatever comes to fit. And when you’re primed in advance for this to fit, you swallow any vague description as a truth. That’s the mechanism called the Barnum effect.

Confirmation bias: the red car

Pål-Esben: The next one, which we’ve also talked about, is called confirmation bias. Our brain is almost manically on the hunt for what confirms our belief systems. It actively searches for everything that can confirm what our own opinions say. And in the same way, on autopilot, it instinctively ignores and overlooks everything that plays down or contradicts our own belief system. It’s one of the most powerful mechanisms, and every human being recognises it from daily life. We’re on autopilot all the time, hunting for what confirms our opinions, and we’re on autopilot all the time when we disregard or look negatively at what doesn’t confirm them.

Here’s an example that shows this in purely psychological terms. If we decide to buy a car, and we want a red car, this bias makes us notice red cars, and we see red cars everywhere. What we didn’t notice before is now in focus, and we see a red Volvo there and a red Passat there. It’s frightening, and it’s so exciting, that our brain is so smart. But all of this goes on under our radar. So you’re on autopilot when you look for confirmation of your own opinions. And as you probably noticed, at least before you came to me, you were on the hunt for confirmation of your demon. You were on the hunt for confirmation that it was the way you’d experienced it. You looked for teachers, therapists, spirit exorcisms and demon exorcisms that confirmed what you believed was true.

Amina: Yes, and not least hypnosis. And good heavens, I certainly got it confirmed there. But yes, you’re absolutely right about that. I didn’t think it could be any other way either. And if one person had come in and said it isn’t like that, it would have been one against a hundred.

Pål-Esben: Correct. And the language models, AI, are designed to reinforce these natural tendencies we’ve talked about, to confirm what you say, through the sycophant mechanism. Because the AI is a sycophant, it taps straight into our autopilot, into the bias called confirmation bias, which makes a person suddenly begin to believe these things. If you talk to a person like that, they’re completely convinced that this is divine. It has nothing to do with anything other than this: the clever mechanisms and programs in the AI have hooked into your own autopilots, and through them they manipulate you every which way, until you actually believe this is real. If you don’t find that spectacular, I don’t know what to say. That’s how our brain works. And again, it doesn’t mean that the person is stupid. It just means that the person is unconscious of the most fundamental mechanisms the brain operates by, completely on autopilot.

Linguistic mirroring: the car salesman

Pål-Esben: The third bias is something called linguistic mirroring. It’s the same as when a skilled car salesman deliberately uses the customer’s own words and values to create trust and dampen the natural scepticism. We’ve all been exposed to a skilled salesperson, or a skilled car salesman in particular. Because what does a skilled car salesman do? He sees you wandering around the car, and then he asks: “So, what do you think of this one?” “Yes, I like this steering wheel.” “Yes, this steering wheel! Yes, it’s great.” “And I like the screen too.” “Yes, it’s a great screen, and I’ll show it to you. It’s the biggest screen there is in a car, and it has that function.” He hooks in with linguistic mirroring from the very first second. And you, who are unconscious of this, think: “Oh, this was nice. Oh, I really enjoyed this.” If you’re not conscious of these mechanisms, you fall for it straight away, and the car salesman manipulates you fully and completely into saying that this is the perfect car for you, and that you should buy it today. That’s perhaps a banal example.

But linguistic mirroring is something that has long been known in psychology, and that every switched-on salesperson gets drilled in during their very first hour of sales training. It’s the first commandment: mirror the potential customer’s language back to the customer. Mirror the customer’s opinions back to the customer. “Yes, I agree with that too. That’s how I see it too. Yes, that’s how the world is. Yes, AI is divine.” And then this bias kicks in, kaboom. That’s the autopilot. You believe that’s how it is, you like it, and you believe it’s truth and reality. And AI is an expert at linguistic mirroring. Just try it. It’s brilliant at it.

So these are the three most fundamental biases, in addition to the sycophant mechanism, that make people fall for it and believe that AI is divine or spiritual. And they believe it in such a way that they’re willing to draw their sword and fight for their belief system. That’s how it is, seen from the point of view of psychology. And it’s easy to prove that it’s like this. This is also the reason why I as a teacher, right from the start when I take on a new student, begin to teach them about these things, so that they understand the fundamental mechanisms that have led them into limitation and suffering throughout their lives. Then they understand that they’re not silly people who have ended up in a mess, but that this is a result of the brain, the autopilot and the survival mechanisms that come from millions of years of genetic shaping. Then the art is to become conscious of the mechanisms, and then they begin to take responsibility and take back power over their lives, so that they’re no longer steered on autopilot. It’s as simple as that.

Are we just afraid? What AI is good for

Amina: Many people say that those who are against AI as a spiritual tool are just full of fear. They say it’s fear of the new, fear of change, fear of things like that. So what can we use AI for? Because we’re not against AI. What is AI good for?

Pål-Esben: If any of you say that we’ve spread fear today, I can’t understand that. We’ve tried to talk about the real reality, and we’ve taken as our starting point what has been known for several decades in psychology, through double-blind studies and all that. It isn’t anything esoteric we’ve talked about today. We’ve described, based on fundamental psychological mechanisms, how it can come about that a person reaches the point where they believe AI is divine. That’s what we’ve done.

When we talk about topics like this, you’ll find that people who hate us for saying this go onto Spotify and give us one star to drag down our rating. That’s an example of the same mechanisms. So if you as a listener think we’re reasonably sensible in what we do, I’d encourage you to counteract that, and instead go onto Spotify and give us five stars. Because you’ll see that those who hate us, who aren’t willing to listen to what we talk about, go in and call us idiots. They draw their swords to cut us down in their own way, because we’re saying something other than what they themselves identify with. And that’s the foundation for why we have war in the world. It’s sad stuff. So if you think we’re sensible, I hope you can give us those five stars, which can counteract those who are in what we call the first chakra syndrome. It goes like this: if you agree with me, you’re my friend. If you don’t agree with me, you’re my enemy. As long as you agree with me, you’re my friend. The day you say something I don’t like, I move you over into the box for enemies. That’s called the first chakra syndrome, and it’s massive out there, especially in the esoteric world.

Amina: Then I can only say, since I know several people who use AI as a spiritual tool: if you’re my friend, then from my side we’re still friends.

Free will and responsibility for the choice

Pål-Esben: Yes, and people do what they want. That’s what’s called free will. You do what you want, as long as you take full responsibility for the consequences of the choice you make. That’s the only thing I expect from my own students and clients. I can say what I think and have my ideas and experiences around things, and then I say: “You shouldn’t believe me, but you have to make a choice. And that choice is yours, a hundred percent. The only thing I expect from you is that you take a hundred percent responsibility for the choice you make, and for its consequences.”

Don’t come complaining to me if you slip into suffering, and if nothing has changed in your life after ten years with AI as a spiritual guide. You’re just more frustrated, you have just as much conflict in your relationship, you have just as many problems with your kids and your friends, and your finances and your health are just as bad. Don’t come complaining to me in ten years’ time. Take responsibility for the choices you make, and then it’s fine. That’s the only agreement I need with those I help. What can you do? Each individual has their own unique way of going through this life, and some perhaps need suffering and limitation in order to learn and experience. But I believe life can be experienced without suffering, anxiety and limitations, the way you’re experiencing life today. It’s a slightly different way of experiencing everyday life.

Amina: Oh yes, a very, very big difference. And the fact that it’s actually possible. That it’s actually possible. It really is possible.

Opinions as tools

Pål-Esben: It’s possible for those who are willing to do what’s uncomfortable. If you’re only looking for the easy solutions, things like this are very hard to come by. What you think or don’t think is up to each individual. But I believe a person who isn’t able to discuss their opinions with others without calling a different opinion an enemy has a serious problem. That’s the foundation for why there’s so much strife and war in the world, and it’s sad stuff. Because in my eyes, an opinion is just a tool. In every conversation I have with a human being, I try to improve my opinions and make them into a better tool.

Then you have opinions based on your own experience, and that’s a bit different. And then you have opinions based, in this case, on psychological research through many decades of double-blind studies of these mechanisms. That’s a bit more than an opinion, because it’s facts; it’s reality. So an opinion can just be an opinion, but an opinion can also be rooted in the real reality. And an opinion can be rooted in a fantasy world. So an opinion isn’t just an opinion. We have to look at what this opinion is rooted in. What’s the background to how I arrived at it? It’s very exciting.

So that was at least a bit about how I see these things. I look with a certain horror at what’s happening in the esoteric world, and at how many people are being led in a direction that definitely won’t make life better. But again, it’s each individual’s choice how they live their life. Are there other things we need to bring up as we wrap up, Amina?

Amina: I think we’ve been through the most important things I’ve been thinking about, at least. It may well be that someone has questions about what we’ve said. Then just write to us, either by email, on Instagram and social media, or as a comment under the episode. Otherwise I think we’ve covered the most important things.

The path leads inwards

Pål-Esben: We’ve at least shed light on this from our point of view and said what’s in our hearts. We hope it inspires you, dear listener, not just to have an opinion about artificial intelligence, but perhaps to look deeper into your own psychology. Because the more conscious we are of this, and the more we take back power over these things, the less manipulable we are.

Amina: Yes. And that’s the same as taking back power over your life.

Pål-Esben: Only on the day nothing can manipulate you can you see yourself as free.

Amina: Yes, and there’s this business of all the new, shiny, lovely things glittering out there that are supposed to lead us on the way home.

Pål-Esben: They come up on the screen at your fingertips. Out there! Something that will lead us on the way home is what we’ve always been looking for. Where’s that thing out there that can lead me where I’m going, when the journey, or the path, call it what you like, goes inwards? It’s time to go inwards. There’s nothing out there that can lead you to anything at all. The only way is to go inwards, into yourself, into the depths of yourself, and uncover more and more of what you are.

But in that process, since we’re full of all these bias autopilots and everything we’ve discussed today, we absolutely need a suitable spiritual guide or teacher. I myself find it terribly difficult for a human being to do this alone, since they’re victims of all the mechanisms we’ve talked about. If you try to do a process like this alone, you’re subjective about yourself, and you have all the bias mechanisms on autopilot without being conscious of them. How are you supposed to set yourself free then? How are you supposed to reach the point where you’re willing to do what’s uncomfortable, that is, to change, to self-regulate and to do what you need to do? I haven’t seen that happen very often. That’s some of the background to this. So perhaps our input is this: get fascinated by these mechanisms, start studying them a little, and look at how you can relate to them consciously in the days, weeks and months to come. That’s perhaps the most important thing you can take away from this conversation.

Amina: Yes. Words of wisdom right at the end, then.

Pål-Esben: Those were my words of wisdom. Don’t go outwards, but go inwards, and find yourself a way, a helper, a guide, a guru in every positive sense, who can point out the way inwards.

Amina: Yes!

Pål-Esben: I mean someone who’s a Homo sapiens, who has experience of living life, who has gone through all the things that lie ahead of me, and who knows exactly what it means to be a Homo sapiens, a human being.

Amina: Find yourself a sensible Homo sapiens.

Pål-Esben: Yes, that was well put. Very well put. Sometimes we go on for a long time, and we hope you’ll forgive us for being so talkative now and then. In the next episode, we’re going to shed light on a new, somewhat taboo topic, as we’re doing here, and at least share what we think and feel. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.