Elon Musk has not only pushed tech frontiers to achieve feats which were unthinkable some years back but remains equally curious in concepts of metaphysics and eventually unravelling some of the mysteries of universe.
The Tesla chief spoke at length about a wide variety of subjects including collective consciousness, reality of the world, and what he thinks about spirituality in his recent conversation with Nikhil Kamath on his podcast. The conversation quickly drifted from technology to collective consciousness and gradually to spirituality.
When the soon-to-be trillionaire expressed his desire to devise a global platform that could harness “sort of a collective consciousness of humanity”, Kamath asked Musk why it’s important to him, for ‘collective consciousness to have one platform’.
The SpaceX CEO said “humans are composed of around 30 to 40 trillion cells and there’s trillions of synapses in your mind. But the why of it, I mean, I guess is just so we can increase our understanding, our understanding of the universe.”
What’s the meaning of life?
Musk then broadened the lens further, grappling with humanity’s oldest and most elusive questions – the very meaning of existence, the birth of the universe, and how it all might end.
“So I guess I had this sort of question about what’s the meaning of life? Why is anything important? Why are we here? What’s the origin of the universe? What is the end? What are the questions that we don’t even know to ask? And probably the questions we don’t even know to ask are the most important ones,” he said.
During the conversation, Musk said he was “just curious about the nature of the universe. And I think if we, it’s safe to say, if we increase the scope and scale of consciousness, we’re much more likely to understand the nature of the universe than if we reduce it.”
Is Elon Musk spiritual?
This steered the conversation into the direction of spirituality and Elon Musk’s thought on it. In his earlier interviews, the tech billionaire speaks about being atheist or agnostic, and more recently what he calls “cultural Christianity”, in a July 2024 interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson. “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise,” Musk had earlier said.
Kamath wondered if Musk’s curiosity about universe and metaphysics is a form of spirituality.
To this, Musk said that spirituality is deeply meaningful for many people but not a universal experience.
“…Yeah, I mean, a lot of people have spiritual feelings, right? And I wouldn’t try to deny that those spiritual feelings are real to them, but it doesn’t entirely translate. I can’t—just because somebody else has a spiritual feeling doesn’t mean that I would have that spiritual feeling,” he said.
“So, you know, I tend to be kind of physics-pulled, which is like, if something has predictive value, then, you know, pay more attention to it than if it doesn’t have predictive value,” he added. “So you know, physics, I would say, is the study of that which has predictive value. There’s pretty good definition.”
