The Diary of a CEODeepak Chopra: The 5 Simple Steps That Will Make Your Mind Limitless! | E241
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
130 min read · 26,418 words- 0:00 – 2:00
Intro
- DCDeepak Chopra
We've created a world that's very dangerous right now. I think we are on the brink of a possible extinction.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Deepak Chopra here. One of the world's biggest experts-
- DCDeepak Chopra
... on health, wellness-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Time Magazine's one of the top 100 icons of the century. He's also written 93 books. When you look at the direction of travel as a civilization, what advice do we need now?
- DCDeepak Chopra
War, greed, stress, humanity's problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing. We're always doing, doing, doing. We are human doings. We are not human beings anymore. Take some time every day to be unoccupied. Ask yourself, "Who am I? What do I want? And what is my purpose?" People don't ask these questions. They only know that they suffer and they want an immediate solution, which is, you know, something like an antidepressant. (laughs) And that's what we've created. Every experience shapes our biology. When you look at a situation, do you see an adversity or an opportunity? How is this determined by your childhood? If your parents were complaining, condemning, criticizing, playing the victim, you will see every situation as an adversity. Can it be changed? Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How?
- DCDeepak Chopra
There are actually many studies on what is called the happiness equation. Number one is ...
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is your 93rd book. If you were to write one last book, what would be the top line message?
- DCDeepak Chopra
I hate to use this word, it's misinterpreted, but the title would be ...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. (instrumental music plays)
- 2:00 – 9:40
Your mission & early context
- SBSteven Bartlett
Deepak, as I was reading through your work, a certain word came up over and over again, and it was the word "purpose". Um, so I wanted to start this really by asking you, what is your purpose? What mission are you on? You've written, I'm hearing this is your 93rd book. If there is an umbrella that one could call your purpose, what would it be?
- DCDeepak Chopra
For the last, uh, 35 years, um, I've, um, used our nonprofit foundation, Chopra Foundation, with, uh, the mission statement of reaching a critical mass of people, in my mind, a billion people, um, for personal and social transformation for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. So those words are very carefully chosen, peaceful, sustainable, healthier, just, and joyful. Um, so everything is under that umbrella.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Going back to the start of your story, um, what do I need to... you know, the, that profound purpose, that mission you've been on for the last 30 plus years, where does that stem from? What's the earliest sort of domino that fell to put you on course to, to pursue that as your life's work?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Uh, I s-... I trained in internal medicine and then endocrinology, which is a study of hormones. And then I went on to, um, study neuroscience and neuroendocrinology. I saw the relationship between what happens in our consciousness and, uh, particularly emotions, and how that affects our biology. As a physician, I was always impressed by how giving information to a patient affected their metabolism. You know, if I told somebody he had cancer, just the word "cancer", you could see immediately their blood pressure go up, their heart rate speed up, their platelets get sticky, and, um, you know, a whole cascade of events in their biology, which was essentially inflammation and propensity to disease, just hearing bad news and interpreting it and having an emotional response to it. I remember, uh, giving that news to a patient, and then immediately realizing that I'd made a mistake. I was reading the wrong chart. So I immediately apologized, and I saw his biology change in a moment. And now, you know, 40 years later, we realized that every experience you have, every experience, doesn't matter what the experience is, could be emotional, but it could be food, it could be sleep, it could be exercise, it could be, um, breathing or yoga. Right now, this conversation, you know, we're having this conversation, and you and I are exchanging information in our frontal cortex of the brain, and genes are going on to facilitate the neural networks that make this happen. But then there are people listening to us, maybe hundreds of thousands, their brains are being activated. So I realized that, you know, you couldn't localize the mind. You know, if you ask a neuroscientist, conventional neuroscientist, "Where's the mind?" They'll point to their brain. But the brain only has the neural correlates of the mind. The mind itself, you can't localize. It's both embodied... it's a relational and embodied process.... so, you know, the mind doesn't exist by itself. It exists in relationship to other minds, so it's relational and embodied in the brain, but in your biology, and it regulates the flow of energy and information in our bodies and in the ecosystem of relationships. Now, if our identity, fundamental identity, which is that of the separate self, is- which is a socially induced hallucination, in my opinion-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... because the separate self doesn't exist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Period. But that hallucination, or that idea of the separate self, creates anxiety. It also creates anger because of trauma in the past. So, anger is nothing but remembery- uh, the memory of trauma. Hostility is the desire to get even. Anxiety is the anticipation of trauma again in the future. Blaming yourself is guilt, and guilt leads to humiliation. Humiliation and the combination of everything I've said leads to depression, which is the number one pandemic of our time. Not COVID. Depression, stress, hostility, resentment, that causes inflammation. So, you know, suddenly, I had this idea that if we went back to some of the wisdom traditions of the world that said, uh, our essential nature is, as the Buddhists say, interbeingness. We are, uh, you know, famous statement of Thich Nhat Hanh, "We are interbeings that inter-arise in the inter-is-ness." There's no isolated self. And, but that isolated, fearful self has created the trauma that we see in the world, that m- that actually manifests as war, terrorism, eco-destruction, greed, leaders who are only interested in power mongering, influence peddling, cronyism, corruption, and their own self-interest. So, we've created a world that's, that's actually, um, very dangerous right now. And, uh, I thought in my naivete about 35, 40 years ago, if we had something that could actually collectively shift consciousness, and actually I was one of the founders of an association called Alliance for a New Humanity, and we had, uh, people from civil society, lawyers, attorneys, um, people from the United Nations, with this idea that we could reach a critical mass of people for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. But even the organization (laughs) faltered, because there was schism within the organization, you know, people, again, power mongering and, uh, fighting within the organization for dominance or, or, uh, you know, leadership, um, in a very selfish way. So, the organization, um, faltered. It didn't go anywhere. I decided to continue on my own.
- 9:40 – 12:25
Humans are inherently greedy
- DCDeepak Chopra
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, when you talk about this separated self, you're referring to identity, like this-
- DCDeepak Chopra
I'm referring to identity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Identity.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Which is, you know, identity, our crisis today, and has been, of identity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And identity on a personal level is this, th- the pers- you know, this story that I tell myself about who I am and that I accept about myself.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And for a country, they have their own identity. They accept that they are the United States of America, and we are this, and this is who we are.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then that causes separation and a disconnectedness.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Correct.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You talked about how you created an organization to try and combat this and get to that critical mass, and then the organization itself failed, which makes me think, is this not just innate in humans that we are greedy, selfish, power mongering, corrupt at our core?
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's been our evolution since hunter-gatherer times, and it got worse in the industrial age, and then I think, um, it got even worse, uh, with, um, with an- the wars, you know, the First World War, Second World War. B- but if you read history, uh, the history is one of violence, ever since human beings have existed (laughs) . Uh, other species are violent too, but not, uh, not in the way we are, for power or for money or for, um, or for, um, this idea of a, you know, uh, extreme nationalism, which is a form of tribalism, in my opinion, or the whole history of colonialism is just that. And now we've reached a point with the information age where, you know, it's kind of, um, nothing is secret anymore, and yet, um, the intensity of what's happening in the world. Look what's happening in Ukraine or, right now, what's happening in Pakistan or what's happening in India or what's happening in Korea, or look at any place in the world. Maybe you leave a few places like New Zealand or, you know, Bali or a couple of places like that, but the rest of the world is, is actually in extreme turmoil. So, we have medieval minds and modern capacities. Now, that is not a good combination, a medieval mind restricted to a little area in medieval times.... caused havoc there, but now globally, that medieval mind, that tribal mind and our modern capacities, it's a terrible combination.
- 12:25 – 17:05
How to suffer less
- DCDeepak Chopra
- SBSteven Bartlett
Everybody, everybody listening to this now in some way is suffering.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know? In some way.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
E- Everyone's suffering is slightly different, but if you zoom out far enough, it's pretty much all the same, to some, to some degree.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, if you had a, you know, a young person come to you, and they were, I don't know, the- they don't even have to be young, 16 years old, maybe 30, maybe 45, and you had to give them some broad advice on how to suffer less for the remainder of their life, what would- advice would you give them?
- DCDeepak Chopra
You know, (sighs) we've reached a stage in our evolution where people don't ask these questions. They only know that they suffer and they want an immediate solution, which is, you know, something like (laughs) an antidepressant or whatever. Um, and that's what we've created with a materialistic interpretation of the universe. Wisdom traditions tell us we suffer because, in impact, in the eastern wisdom tradition, we suffer five causes, not knowing who we are, number one, not knowing the nature of reality, no isolated self, clinging and grasping at experience which is ephemeral. You know, uh, e- ex- experience is ephemeral. It's transient. It- you can't catch it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like regret or...
- DCDeepak Chopra
Even this experience-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... you know, if I ask you-
- SBSteven Bartlett
So trying to hold onto it and like-
- DCDeepak Chopra
You, you can't hold onto this experience. If I asked you, "What happened to your childhood?" you'd say, "It's a dream." Or if I asked you, "What happened last night?" "It's a dream." "What happened this morning?" "It's a dream." What happens to these words? By the time you hear them, they don't exist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And we try to cling onto that, so it's just-
- DCDeepak Chopra
We try to cling on that. Then we also recoil from that if it's unpleasant. We confuse ourselves with our ego identity, which is socially induced, and we fear death. Those are the five causes of suffering. So wisdom traditions say you have to figure out what is reality, and when you figure out what is reality, and you can't do that at 16 unless you have been groomed, you know. In, in wisdom traditions, you were groomed for wisdom, and that started what we call self-education, which is what yoga is, by the way. Yoga means union with the self. Misinterpretation of yoga is that it's just the physical postures, but the eight limbs of yoga are all intended to find your true self. So there are principles of social intelligence, emotional intelligence, physical posture, breathing techniques, withdrawal of the senses, focused awareness, meditation, transcendence. Once you get to these last three aspects of yoga, transcendence is the key. You find out who you are, you really are, the self which knows the self, not bamboozled by social constructs.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So let's go through those five things. Number one.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Not knowing reality. Reality is not local. It's infinite.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, so what do I need to understand then to avoid that form of suffering? I need to understand that it's not localized, and therefore that means...
- DCDeepak Chopra
That you are infinite. You're at one level.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm everything and nothing.
- DCDeepak Chopra
And you're everything and nothing, and actually you experience love. Love not as a sentiment, but the in- ineffable interconnectedness with all that exists. People have those experiences with psychedelics these days.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Or you can actually give somebody an experience like that with even VR-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... um, (laughs) because we are already in a VR.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Number two?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Number two, clinging, grasping that which is ungraspable. Every experience is ungraspable. So the awareness of an experience is not the experience. The awareness of a thought is not a thought. The awareness of a thought is independent of the thought. If you identify with the awareness instead of the thought, which is like a cloud going through the sky, you don't either attach yourself to it or you don't identify with it. It takes training. So you know, in, in the Rigveda, "Let noble thoughts come to me from every side," 'cause your thoughts are not your production. Your thoughts are (laughs) socially constructed, and they re- they re- recycle through you, and yet we identify with them. So number two is identifying with that which is ephemeral, transient, ungraspable. Number three-
- 17:05 – 23:16
How to get away from your thoughts
- SBSteven Bartlett
On number two-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... on number two, we, so we need to not attach, not associate with thoughts, not associate with experiences in order to be free from suffering.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You can associate with them, but you're not attached or identified to them. You can-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... associate with thoughts.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if you've had a trauma in your early life or something, or you've been through something not so good, or you've been dumped by your boyfriend-
- DCDeepak Chopra
And then we would identify with that, and actually, that epigenetically, by the way, that's intergenerational. Now we know that, you know, in the Holocaust, for example, during the invasion of, uh, the Netherlands, uh, by Nazi Germany, uh, there were a lot of, there was famine amongst the Jews, and now three generations, four generations after that, the people's descendants who were traumatized, they have diabetes, because somewhere in their body there's a memory of famine, so they're holding on to carbohydrates. They have insulin resistance, et cetera. If you take a mouse and you expose it to a smell that it likes, for example, lavender, and then you give it a mild electrical shock, for seven generations the mice will be fearful.... of that particular smell. I've been to a cow farm in Hawaii, where they used to have, uh, electrical wires, uh, as fences, mild electrical shocks. Now, they don't have the wires. (laughs) But the descendants of those cows that were traumatized, they won't cross over that fence, or they won't cross over where the border was. So, it's, it's, this is, uh, another mystery. Where is memory? Most people, if you ask them, "Where is memory?" They'll point to the brain. If I ask you, "What did you have for breakfast today?" What did you have for breakfast today?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, that's a really good question. I had a salad-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... with some chicken and avocado.
- DCDeepak Chopra
So, no, where was that, uh, memory before I asked you the question? There's nowhere in the brain you can point out that memory was, but as soon as I ask you the question, the neural networks go fire.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
But where is the memory retrieved from? The only place is consciousness, but consciousness can't be localized.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know when people get brain injuries, car crashes, they lose their memory sometimes.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah, so if the radio is damaged, you don't listen to the music.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. Doesn't that prove that it's in the brain somewhere?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Is, is, the, uh, is Shakespeare in, in, on your movie screen or your television set? Is, is actually anything, uh, you read in the book is the author in the book? It's that, you know, you confuse the instrument with the user of the instrument. The fault of the instrument is not a reflection on the user of the instrument.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Shakespeare and that's, would live on like, the, the CD, or like, the V- V-
- DCDeepak Chopra
That's right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... video cassette.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah, but where is that mind, that localized in the CD?
- SBSteven Bartlett
In the brain somewhere, isn't it? (laughs)
- DCDeepak Chopra
No, the brain is just like a CD set.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DCDeepak Chopra
What happens in the brain is called the neural correlates of experience, NCE. There's, as I said earlier, there's no experience in the brain. That's why you can put a knife through it. The brain has no self-awareness.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you think about some of these, um, neurological diseases like dementia, Alzheimer's, what does that present evidence for, in terms of, I mean, I guess a lot of people aren't really clear at the moment where, where Alzheimer's and dementia starts, or what's causing it.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Well, Alzheimer's, now we know, is due to accumulation of a substance called amyloid in the brain. So, about, there are 40 genes that predispose you to, for s- um, Alzheimer's, of which three are probably fully penetrant, which means they predict the disease, because that's genetic determinism. The rest are related to things like lack of sleep or inflammation, or stress, or a diet that causes inflammation, or lack of unregulated biological rhythms, et cetera. So, there are identifiable causes for Alzheimer's, but again, Alzheimer's is, and these neurological diseases, all diseases like that, we're talking about two different things. We're talking about consciousness as a fundamental reality-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... and then we're talking about the instrument that we call the brain. Now, I should say to you though, that what I'm saying is not necessarily accepted by mainstream science. But mainstream science cannot answer the hard problem of consciousness or where experience happens, and is not interested. You know, uh, right now, the two most promising things in medical science, well, there are three or four, but our, you know, one is, um, what we call gene editing and CRISPR, so you'll be able to cut and paste genes soon, the way you cut and paste emails. Um, but that'll affect maybe 5%, 6% of genetic determinism. The rest is lifestyle, epigenetics. So, that's where we are-
- 23:16 – 31:43
Dealing with bad past experiences
- DCDeepak Chopra
from experiences that we interpret as unpleasant.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DCDeepak Chopra
But see, once again, the awareness of the experience is not the experience. So, once you can observe the experience-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... you're free of the experience. You don't identify with the experience. "Oh, that's an interesting thought passing by the screen of my consciousness, like a cloud in the sky." I'm not the cloud, I'm the sky. I'm not the scr- I'm not the play on the screen, I'm the screen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, an example would be, so, that, the sentence is, "Recoiling from experiences that-"
- DCDeepak Chopra
Unpleasant.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They're unpleasant. So give me an example. Someone in my life, someone in my family dies.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah. So, you, obviously you're scared, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Because you identify with the experience. But everybody dies. I mean, trillions of people have died. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You're not the only one who's going to die. And then what dies is another mystery. The body dies. The seeds of memory recycle, because what is memory but it's information.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
And it's recycled-... through collective consciousness. As soon as you are born, you're already born into an interpreted world, a world with memory, a world with imagination, a world with non-local consciousness that is now localizing through your brain-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... as this process that you call the body. The body mind is a process in consciousness. Consciousness itself is not subject to time. Uh, only, you know, time is an experience we have as soon as we have subject-object split. So as soon as there's subject-object split, which is artificial, and nature is a unified activity, then time is born. The experience of time is born.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So in your life, if someone dies, God forbid, um, do you suffer?
- DCDeepak Chopra
You grieve, which is a natural process, and it has a life cycle. You don't hold onto it. In fact, you embrace it. You embrace the- the- anytime you recoil or d- deny, resistance creates even more stress. So what we call stress is resistance to existence in the moment, okay? If you don't resist experience in the moment, you know it's passing by.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So something really bad happens at work. I get a really bad... You know, my boss tells me I'm fired. The mindset required to avert- avoid suffering in that case is to take the news.
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's not a mindset.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's a...
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's a step in awareness. The awareness of the mind is not the mind. Who is it that or what is it that knows a thought? That is what you need to shift to.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Once you shift from the experience to the awareness in which the experience is happening, you're independent of it, and that's what actually those eight limbs of yoga are about. It's a process, a shift in identity. We started with that, a shift in identity from your assumed self to your fundamental self, which is infinite, which is without cause, which is not subject to birth and death, which is spaceless, timeless, incomprehensible, infinite, irreducible, and fundamental.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It feels almost like I'm stepping out of myself and looking at myself.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Correct. Looking at the projection of yourself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The projection of myself, yeah, would make more sense.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah, you're looking at the projection of yourself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is very hard to do.
- 31:43 – 35:45
How to find out who you truly are
- DCDeepak Chopra
Not-
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does one transcend?
- DCDeepak Chopra
There's no... Here's another thing, there's no system of thought, no system of thought, religion, philosophy or science, that will get you into knowing true reality. Because systems of thought are just that, systems of thought. What is it that gives rise to thought? That is what you want to know, and that's been the eternal quest in spiritual traditions. I'm not talking about religious dogma or ideology. The re- you know, these days, it's very fashionable for people to say, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." It means the same thing. When you have a spiritual experience, number one, transcendence. You find your identity bef- beyond space and time. Number two, emergence of platonic values like truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, named after Plato. Or, uh, love, compassion, joy, equanimity. And number three, loss of the fear of death. That's Jesus, that's Muhammad, that's Rumi, that's Buddha, that's every luminary that you have s- can study since people created systems of thought.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So how does... What's the easiest way to tr- You know, there's someone listening to this right now. They are driving up the motorway. They're a lorry driver.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Take some time every day to be unoccupied. Even spiritual pursuit is an occupation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
So take a little bit of... You know, what's it... I think it was Kafka or somebody who said, "All of human's problem, humanity's problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing."
- SBSteven Bartlett
We'd rather electrocute ourselves.
- DCDeepak Chopra
We always doing, doing, doing. We are human doings. We're not human beings anymore.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if I take some... I, I pull over the, the lorry that I'm driving up the motorway and I say, "Do you know what? Deepak told me take some time for myself." So I sit in the lorry for 15 minutes every day. How is that gonna help me to transcend?
- DCDeepak Chopra
It starts a process. You begin to ask yourself, "Who am I?" I reflect on this, these questions every day. Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? And who am I without these constructs? It's, it's a big mystery, right? Who you are. Ultimately, you realize you're the awareness in which all experience happens, but you're not the experience. The experience is in time, you are not in time. And th- this requires a different kind of education, it's not part of our culture. It used to be part of cultures. You know, if you read Plato and The Republic, and you'll see that, you know, this was part of every culture. (sighs) But it was few luminaries. People romanticize even about this, you know, India as a spiritual country. Well, India's been violent forever. A few luminaries, the sages of the Upanishad, and we have romance around them. Greek culture, you know, oh, ba- you know, the Greeks were the most civilized in the world. Well, yes, Socrates and Parmenides and, you know, Pythagoras, and, uh, I can name a few. But the rest of the country, even in those times, you know, they had slavery, they had sexism, they had, uh, these, uh, the source of the Olympics (laughs) where they used to sacrifice, uh, humans. And you know, we're still p- performing it. Even in our days, we're still repeating that cycle with the, what do you call it, cheerleaders, the, the virgin vestals of the past. We haven't changed actually much.
- 35:45 – 41:11
The best daily habits to follow
- SBSteven Bartlett
What else in terms of starting your day, like daily habits? So you talk about sleep as being incredibly important.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Here are the, the daily habits. Um, number one is sleep. The... Now we know, by the way, that lack of sleep is the number one predictor of premature death from cardiovascular disease. Lack of sleep is also a predictor of Alzheimer's. Lack of sleep interferes with your creativity. Lack of sleep causes inflammation. So that's for sure, number one. Number two, uh, I think is, uh, any practice that quietens the mind, meditation, reflection, contemplation, sitting quietly, watching your breath, et cetera. Number three is exercise. Number four is mind-body coordination, as in... That's different than regular exercise. Y- yoga practice and martial arts, breathing practices, Tai Chi, Qigong, they actually activate a different part of your nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system, which-... it causes self-regulation in the body. So, it's not just exercise, it's, you know, something that puts mind and body together, even gymnastics or, um, uh, y- things like judo, and I mentioned martial arts, but yoga is my practice. Uh, then emotionals, your emotional and physical e- environment, your social environment, because we live as social beings. So, you know, if you're, if you're, you have toxic relationships, it's going to cause physical toxicity. Um, then nutrition. We now know that, uh, you know, that food that causes inflammation, refined, manufactured, processed food with chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, insecticides, pesticides, it's poison. It's like putting poison d- putting Agent Orange in your body. (laughs) Uh, so organic food, farm to table, maximum diversity of plant-based foods. Now, we know a lot about micronutrients. We know about biological rhythms. But ultimately, I think spiritual experience is very important, because no matter what you do, no matter what you do, no matter how healthy you are, there is old age, there is infirmity, and there is death. So, unless you face those right head-on, when you are healthy, not when you're in a crisis, not when somebody dies in your family, then everybody panics, okay? I had a crisis in my life when I was six years old, and my father was in England. He was, um, uh, training to be a cardiologist. I was living with my grandfather, and one day we got a telegram that my father had passed all his exams. He was now Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, big deal in those days. We got a telegram. My grandfather, uh, wanted to celebrate, so he took me and my little brother to a carnival, then to a, uh, to a movie. I even remember the movie, Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. And then, uh, we went to a fancy restaurant, and then in the middle of the night he died, and, uh, they took him t- to for cremation, brought his ashes back in a little jar about the size of this coffee cup or a little bigger, and one of my uncles said, "What happened? L- l- yesterday he was taking the kids to a carnival and today he's a bunch of ashes." My little brother, who later became the Dean of Education at Harvard Medical School, he was four years old, he started to lose his skin, his skin started peeling off. I went into a panic and, you know, my uncles took my brother to every physician. They couldn't find a diagnosis till somebody said, "You know, he's missing his parents, he's feeling vulnerable, he's losing his skin. He's shedding his skin because he's, that's a metaphor for his vulnerability. He'll be fine when his parents come back." And sure enough, as soon as they came, my brother was healed. So, at six years, I had a crisis, existential crisis. Went on to become a doctor. But what happens? You g- go to medical school, the first thing you see is an, is, um, is a corpse. You're supposed to understand life by (laughs) dissecting a body. You know, it's the way we are trained. You started off by looking at a human being as an anatomical structure rather than a process in consciousness. So, it took me a long time, you know, going through medical school, training, myself going through crises, smoking, addictive behavior, alcohol. I remember, um, res- uh, resuscitating a patient, putting a pacemaker, putting him o- on a respirator and then going outside to smoke a cigarette. And then, you know, I was disgusted with myself. I threw away my cigarette that evening, I threw away the Scotch, and I decided that I, I wanted to understand, who am I?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's almost like in that
- 41:11 – 51:33
Trying to justify sadness
- SBSteven Bartlett
moment you observed someone that was so full of life just moments earlier turn into, as you said, ashes in a jar.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Ashes in the jar, scattered in the wind.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you go, "Where is the, where is my granddad?"
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
He's not local.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Non-local, right? Which is our essential nature, actually, to be non-local is to be connected with all that is. Uh, Indian poetry and poets in general, tr- William Blake-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... you know, uh, "We are led to believe a lie when we see with and not through the eye, that was born in the night to perish in the night, while the soul slept in beams of light." So, when we look through the conditioned mind, that's a lie. When you look beyond the conditioned mind, that is light.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you think you'd be doing the work you are today if your granddad hadn't passed away when you were six in those circumstances?
- DCDeepak Chopra
I think that was a very pivotal moment at six years of age, existential crisis. Most people don't have that at the age of six.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause it, it, it brought you a bunch of questions, didn't it?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really profound questions about the nature of life-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and ...
- DCDeepak Chopra
Existence.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... existence and, and love and ...
- DCDeepak Chopra
Mm-hmm. Tagore, Indian poet, "Love is not a sentiment, it's the ultimate truth at the heart of creation, that you and the other are the same being in different uniforms."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is, do you, do you ever ponder if some of your beliefs are... if that moment really was pivotal, that some of your beliefs might have been a way to justify your sadness?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah. Denial is a way of justifying sadness. I don't think belief is... Belief, in many ways, is a cover-up for insecurity. You know, if I said, "Do you believe in electricity?" You say, "No, I see that device, that transistor, that TV set. Electricity, gravity is my experience." So, I don't believe in belief. But faith is something else. Faith is the knowingness of the invisible without which there is nothing visible. The invisible is the source of all things visible. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So when you- when your day comes, when my day comes, when we're no longer in-
- DCDeepak Chopra
I'm preparing for it right now.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're preparing for it?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yes. In my tradition, there are four stages of life. First 25 years, they're called Ashrams. Ashram is a place to rest, or that which you identify as your home. First 25 years, education. Second 25 years, family, children, fame, fortune, if you want. Third 25 years, giving back. Now fourth, self-realization, preparation for death.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does one prepare for death?
- DCDeepak Chopra
By knowing and experiencing your non-local self.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is- is that what people would call spirituality or-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah, spiritually, but authentic experience. I'm not talking about dogma, or self-righteous morality, or jealousy with a halo, or cunning hypocrisy. We all pretend to be spiritual. But if you've had the experience, then you know yourself as non-local, then the unknown is the only place to be. The known has already happened, it's a prison.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what do you believe happens once you die?
- DCDeepak Chopra
I think the dream continues. The dream continues in a different frequency domain of consciousness. These days, actually, if you look at some of the theories of the universe, mathematical theories, (sighs) current materialistic view is that the visible universe is about two trillion galaxies, 700 sextillion stars, uncountable trillions of planets. Based on that current estimate with the James Webb Telescope and all this, our planet is not even a speck, one grain of sand in all the beaches of the world. So the other day, I went to the beach, picked up a grain of sand, and a breeze came, it drifted off and the beach didn't notice that one grain was missing. That's planet Earth, two trillion galaxies. But I recently interviewed a- a Caltech professor of physics, Sean Carroll, who sits on the desk of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein sat at that desk for a while. Sean Carroll believes there are infinite universes. Infinite universes. It's incomprehensible, the idea that there are infinite universes. But I believe they are, and that you and I have a- a cosmic journey that is infinite. And infinite means infinite. Infinite is incomprehensible, it never ends. You change uniforms, you change experiences. Hopefully, you evolve like a spiral staircase, but it's a never-ending horizon.
- 51:33 – 53:27
The thing people disagree with you on
- SBSteven Bartlett
(page turns) What is the thing that you believe to be true that most people disagree with you on?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Right now, my interpretation of what I call quantum healing, (laughs) quantum mechanics, I wrote a book called Quantum Healing in 1988. It was vilified. I reissued it a few years ago, because now we have science, and I'm doing a book with, with a quantum physicist at the moment, where I believe that our biology, like everything else, is, is quantum mechanical. It's, it's, it's goes... Every experience shapes, uh, our biology, and experience happens in the moment. So your body is changing in the moment depending on the experience you're having, at a very fundamental level. Pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, thinking, feeling, aspiring, fearing, all, every experience shapes our biology. We are the metabolic product of experience, and experience doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in the matrix of relationship. So, what people disagree with me is this whole interpretation. I've been attacked by, you know, mainstream scientists, but I have been persistent because I'm a physician, and I see people. (laughs) And you know, I'm not sitting in a lab dissecting rats or doing, designing experiments theoretically. Um, but you see people, and as you said, people suffer. And, uh, you know, if you're a physician, that should be your job, to address suffering, not be a technician who can fix everything about the human body and know nothing about the human soul or the human experience.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(smacks lips)
- 53:27 – 1:02:59
What to do when feeling trapped by your own life
- SBSteven Bartlett
This, this morning I was at an event and, uh, I had a guy come up to me after, and he said, "I'm, I'm 40 years old now, Steve, and, um, I'm in a job, and I don't like it." Uh, really doesn't like his job that he's in. Um, he's, I'd say trapped is maybe a strong word, but he feels unable to take the leap towards a life that he feels will fulfill him. Um, he referenced being scared of what his friends might say. Um, and h- he just... There was this, there was almost this desperation in his face as he spoke to me. He was seeking words of advice from me to him, to help him out of that situation of like, "I'm 40 years old. I've got a partner. I've built this life, but it's not resonating with who I, I am." And I just, you could, I could feel the suffering. That's a lot of people that are listening to this right now. They are-
- DCDeepak Chopra
That's, that's, that's what our social structures have created. And yet, you know, the people like Joseph Campbell, who coined the expression, "Follow your bliss," uh, or follow your joy, follow your purpose, follow your meaning, follow your dharma. You know, in Buddhism, they say three things will save you. One is, um, um, take refuge in the community of conscious beings, take refuge in a higher purpose, and take refuge in transcendence. If you do that, your life will be meaningful. And meaning is what drives us. You know, there are actually many studies, by the way, recent studies on what is called the happiness equation. I'll give it to you. Um, um, H is equal to S plus C plus B. So H stands for happiness, is equal to S, set point in the brain. The set point in the brain is, uh-... when you look at a situation, do you see an adversity or an opportunity? How is the set point determined by your childhood? If your parents were complaining, condemning, criticizing, playing the victim, you will see every problem, every situation as an adversity. Condemn, complain, criticize, and play the victim. On th- the o- other hand, your parents or your caretakers, or your ecosystem or relationship when you were growing up, first three, four years of life, they were looking at opportunities, they were always, you know, uh, engaging in compassionate, empathetic conversation, and joy, and laughter, and celebration, then you'll have a set point for happiness. This set point determines 50% of our daily happiness experience. Can the set point be changed? Yes, by self-awareness, by reflective inquiry, by mindfulness, by actually knowing that you have a problem. Most people don't even know they have a problem. So, that's 50%. So, S plus C, conditions of living. Primarily material conditions of living, money. So, if you have, uh, if you're extremely poor, you will suffer. If you're extremely rich, that doesn't guarantee that you'll be happy. In fact, what a lot of rich people do is they confuse their self-worth with their net worth. So, I, I wrote a book before this called Abundance that was inspired by Bob Marley. One of his lyrics where he said, uh, "Some people are so poor, all they have is money." So, happiness, when it pertains to money is 10% of your daily experience. Uh, if, uh, you win the lottery, you'll be ecstatic in the beginning. In six months, you'll plateau. In one year, you'll be back to your set point. So, uh, even if you win the lottery, in five years you might be worse off, because now you're worrying about taxes, you want to put your money in the wherever, you know, in the Bahamas or something, and y- your, it's become your identity, money. If you're, you know, all billionaires, money is their identity. They confuse self-worth with, uh, net worth. So, that's 10%. Now, we have 40% remaining. That's the choices we make every day. There are two kinds of choices we make every day. One's for personal pleasure, sex, alcohol, entertainment, movies, shopping. Shopping is the number one choice for pleasure, by the way, in the world. That's why we call people consumers. A very ugly word to describe a stardust being with self-awareness. But, uh, does pleasure bring you happiness? It does, but it's transient. You know, if you're ... And you have the danger of being addicted to pleasure, if you have an addictive personality as I did. Okay, so, uh, pleasure brings happiness transiently. There's another choice you can make that actually is called fulfillment. When you have meaning, purpose in your life, and if you know how to make other people happy by giving them attention, which means listening, appreciation, noticing their uniqueness, affection, letting them know you care, and acceptance. Radical acceptance. You can't change another person so you feel better, which is what we're trying to do all the time, changing other people so we feel better. Impossible. You can't change yourself even if you try. So, acceptance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what would you, what would you say to that guy? What should I have said to him in terms of advice? 'Cause he did really look like he was struggling.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You should actually have told him, "Let's take a day off and let's go fishing," or, "Let's go into, you know, have a picnic," or, "Let's go to see a comedy," or, "Let's goes to see a..." Just take, discontinue, and try this. A little moment of being. Not doing, not thinking, not feeling, not speaking. I take a week of silence every year. Now I'm taking even longer. So, sometimes I'm thinking, you know, a month in silence. But, you know, I'm 76, so that's, uh, different stages of life, too.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In the hope that that might help him realize that he's playing the wrong game, or he's thinking about the wrong-
- DCDeepak Chopra
In the hope that, you know, one thing you can do to alleviate anybody's suffering, to some extent, is fully accept them and listen to them. Don't give them advice.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You know, people feel better if you (laughs) just listen to them. And there's neuroscience that their amygdala cools down if you just listen with deep empathy, which means you feel what another person feels. There's some biology around this, you know, when you feel what another person feels and you deeply listen, there's a phenomenon called limbic resonance. Your emotional brain resonates with their brain. And then if you deeply listen to them and you let them know you care for them, there's another thing that happens. It's called limbic regulation. And then the third step is limbic revision. Their neural networks rewire. So, acceptance, affection, appreciation, and attention. That's what you do. Don't give them advice. People go to therapists to get advice. Therapists don't do that. They listen. Good therapists listen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting. So-
- DCDeepak Chopra
And in the old traditions, you know, that's why people went to confession. They'd basically, you know, reveal their so-called sins to the priest and they felt better.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things I've read about, um, I've read you talk about is this, the role that affirmations and positive self-talk and, um, those kinds of things can have on our...... healing.
- DCDeepak Chopra
To some extent. Anything mental is weak.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is what I've wondered, because a lot of like, you know, books and like, Instagram will say, "Look in the mirror and say nice things to yourself." Or-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah. Doesn't work. It's mental. Mind is weak. You have to go deeper. It's, you know, uh, to say, if you're trying to force yourself to be positive, that's exasperating, that's very stressful. But instead of forcing yourself to be positive, observe your thoughts. You know, observe both negative and positive thoughts, and you see that all experience is by contrasts. You can't have a one without the other. You know, it's like a pendulum can't swing only in one direction. It has to swing in two directions. Hot doesn't, is meaningless without cold. Pleasure is meaningless without pain. Joy is meaningless without suffering. Birth and death are actually not even opposites. Birth and death are opposites. Life is the continuum of birth and death. You can't have one without the other. In biology, there's something called apoptosis, programmed cellular death. When a cell forgets to die, it becomes cancer. That's what it is. A cancer cell doesn't die (laughs) when it's supposed to. Normally, uh, our cells are dying constantly so you can be born again. That's the literal meaning of "born again".
- 1:02:59 – 1:05:45
What sucess really is
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do you think of, um... What do you think success is then? If we're stepping away from this I- identity which can cause so much suffering, what is...
- DCDeepak Chopra
For me, success is the progressive realization of worthy goals, number one.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And worthy goal, that's a subjective measure. So for me, that's... It could be taking care of my dog, could be my worthy goal.
- DCDeepak Chopra
If it gives you pleasure, yes, taking care of your dog. But if money is your goal, for the sake of making money, then you'll never be happy. But if money is your goal so you can actually make a difference in people's lives, including your own and your family, but also community at large, then that's a worthy goal. So it's number one, progressive realization of worthy goals. Number two, the ability to love and have compassion. And number three, actually, which is for me, the most important, to always go back to your creative source. Once you have this ability to go back to your creative source, you will be successful no matter what. Don't be bamboozled by the hypnosis of social conditioning. Don't be in a rush to conform. You know, there are studies that if you... Gallup, I'm on the advisory board of Gallup. If you have a house that's $50,000 and you're offered a house that's $500,000, but your neighbors have million-dollar homes, you won't move. (laughs) You're always comparing yourself to the other person. This is how we are socially programmed. Rush to conform, comparison with others. And you know, if the, uh, the child doesn't conform, then he's not a good student. And I used to... Um, when my son was growing up, he always was reading comic books and, you know, engaging in, uh, games and sports and my... Was very poor at mathematics, and my wife would constantly complain that he's not good at school. I said, "Wait a minute. We'll, he'll, he'll do what he's enjoying. Let him do what he's enjoying." He ended up creating a sports company, a comic book company, and now he has a very successful business called The Religion of Sport with Tom Brady, won five Emmys. Wasn't a good student. So I say don't focus on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths, and if you have a child who loves to play tennis, is poor at math, get him a tennis coach, and one day, he might get a mathematician to be his accountant.
- 1:05:45 – 1:09:29
The advise civilisation needs to listen to
- SBSteven Bartlett
You, when you look forward at the direction of travel that we're on as a civilization, what advice do we need now? The most.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Don't get stuck in melodrama. This whole world is full of drama, drama. Everything is, that sells, is drama. News is not news anymore. It's opinion and drama. And all the violence in the world is drama, and you know, you read about drama. Shooting, killing, incest. I mean, all crazy stuff. And we're addicted to drama, actually. And then we complain about it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We're addicted to trauma or drama?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah. Both.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what's the cost of being addicted to trauma and drama?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Suffering.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because...
- DCDeepak Chopra
Because you sacrifice yourself for the drama. For being a conformist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does this mean we have, we should take... Like, you know, I'm thinking about my re- my relationship with technology and social media and news feeds and stuff.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Well, technology is neutral, you know. Uh, and it's inescapable. It's past, part of our evolution. If you don't adapt to technology, you'll become extinct. Well, so, so it's part of our evolution. How do we use technology?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You know, in my field, AI, machine learning, precision diagnosis, and even intervention, I believe technology is, uh, is a great gift. But again, technology can destroy the world too. This is what it means to be human. Humans are a very interesting species. Our fall from grace is exactly what-... you know, mythical traditions tell us, the knowledge of good and evil. We ate the fruit.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's hard to go through life these days and not be tempted by drama. Even someone who, you know-
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's a process. It's a process.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is that process?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Growth. You know, people, some people do grow, some people do evolve. And I think, um, ultimately that is the purpose of our existence, is to keep evolving.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you ever get tempted by drama? Or distracted?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Not anymore. I used to. I used to, I used to engage in debates. It was like, you know, a big high for me to win a debate. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
How long ago?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Well, I started in school and I left debating only recently. It was just five years ago, I was debating Richard Dawkins in, um, in Mexico. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
And I felt foolish after that, (laughs) you know.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So y- y- you made the decision not to debate anymore?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Not to engage in debate anymore, no.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Y- nobody changes their mind. The debaters don't change their mind, the audience doesn't change their mind. (laughs) They, in fact, they get reinforced by the opinions they came with.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, if we do wanna try and change people's mind, because we-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Be the change. If you want peace in your life, be peaceful. If you want love in your life, give love. Whatever you want, engage in that. I think that's the only thing. You can't, uh, you have to be the change that you want to see in others, and then people respond. Not by what you say, not by what you do, but just by your presence.
- 1:09:29 – 1:16:19
Your 94th book
- DCDeepak Chopra
- SBSteven Bartlett
You've written 93 books, as I said earlier. I think this is your 93rd, I've been told, this book about-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... Living in the Light, new book, Yoga for Self-Realization. I guess my question, you know, I, I s- I can't comprehend the concept of writing so many books. I, I've like, I wrote my first one and then I'm currently writing my second one, and I've been, it's just consuming all of my time. And I'm, I went off to Bali, in fact I spent a month there writing it in Ubud.
- DCDeepak Chopra
I'm sure you enjoyed that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, I love it. I always go there to write.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, it was amazing. But my question to you, you know, I think this book is fantastic, and I think that, well, we'll talk a little bit about you again in a sec. But your 94th book.
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's coming this year. It's called Quantum Body with a quantum physicist. And so I feel kind of, uh, uh, good about that because I've been talking about that for now, since 1988. That's 12 plus 23, that's over 30 years. I've been vilified, attacked, everything about that. And I realized that people are territorial. You know, the physicists say, "Who the heck is he talking about quantum physics?" The biologists say, "He's not trained in biology, he's a physician. Who the heck is he talking about biology?" And yet, my experience tells me that your body is non-local. It follows the principles of quantum mechanics and have now found some, some supporters who know the math. And, you know, even the body can be understood, uh, mathematically now. I don't know if you're familiar with this theorem called Godel's Theorem, which says, um, uh, it's a very famous theorem. And, you know, Godel was a German mathematician who was Einstein's favorite colleague, when they, they're both immigrants to America at Princeton. But he came up with a theorem which says there are theorems in math that are true but you can't prove them, and they're disruptions. They are, they're basically mathematics is platonic truth, describes everything in the universe, and yet there are theorems that don't follow algorithms. When a mathematician thinks of them, he said, "Where did this come from?" They don't know. They can't even prove it, but it seems intuitively true, and if they follow the theorem, it leads to new creativity. So I think creativity is inherent in the universe, we are aspects of that creativity, and with self-awareness, we have source to that creativity. But that creativity will never happen if you don't take time to actually incubate in discontinuity. In my life, I've figured it out, nine steps. Intended outcome, number one, information gathering, number two, information analysis, number three. Incubation, taking time off, go to Bali, play golf. If you're a Republican, that's mystery school for Republicans (laughs) or whatever. So incubation, and that is a time you settle with uncertainty, and then there's that eureka experience, insight. So incubation leads to insight, which is a disruption. It's something totally new, new context, new relationship, new story. And then if the insight is accurate, then you're inspired, not motivated. Motivation is mental, inspiration, as the word says, in spirit. Then you implement it, then you integrate it, and then you are a death and a resurrection. These are my nine steps to creativity. I just made them up. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DCDeepak Chopra
So information f- intended analysis, information gathering, information analysis, incubation, insight, inspiration, implementation, integration, incarnation.I use that for writing my books.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can tell, yeah. And if- so if you were to write one last book, if I said, "Deepak, you could write one more book. That's it. You can only write one. It's gonna be your last ever book." Which subject matter would you think was the most important subject matter to write that last book about, and what would be the top line message of that book?
- DCDeepak Chopra
I hate to use this word, it's, uh, misinterpreted, but the title would be Enlightenment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Explain. What do you mean? Like, why would- why enlightenment? And what would the book be about?
- DCDeepak Chopra
It's the only solution ultimately, to know Truth with a capital T. You're not your body. You're not your mind. You're not your emotions. They're all, um, like, uh, clouds passing through the sky. You know, when, um, when I read some of the great luminaries, Wittgenstein, "Our life is a dream. We are asleep, but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we were sleeping." Buddha, when he died, he said, "This lifetime of ours is transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain." As I look back now, my life, 76 years, it's a dream. But it's been a good dream with a few nightmares here and there. But it's been a dream, and I feel the only solution is to wake up now. You know, when the Buddha was dying, people asked him, "Who are you? Are you a messiah? Are you God? Are you a messenger?" He said, "None of the above." They said, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm awake finally." I think that's our ultimate destiny, to wake up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do we need to do to wake up?
- DCDeepak Chopra
We need to question our everyday reality and human constructs. They're useful. Money is a useful construct. Latitude, longitude are useful constructs. But they're still constructs. They're not reality. What is the source of these constructs? When you get to the source, you realize that your capacity for creativity is infinite. Your capacity for love is infinite. Your capacity for compassion is infinite. Your capacity for healing is infinite. And ultimately, you are infinite having a dream right
- 1:16:19 – 1:22:44
The one change to lead us to a better future
- DCDeepak Chopra
now.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If I made you prime minister or president of the world, you know, if there was a s- one significant change you could make to lead us more towards that better future of enlightenment...
- DCDeepak Chopra
I would say an education that does not sacrifice self-awareness. We have information overload right now. I don't need information overload. I can Google it or now go to ChatGPT or something like that. What I need to know is who am I?
- SBSteven Bartlett
How do you feel about ChatGTP, ChatGPT?
- DCDeepak Chopra
PT. It's good. I think it's very good. And I think it's unavoidable also. (laughs) I actually went to a, uh, demonstration recently by Microsoft on something that's coming soon. It's called Prometheus. It's way beyond ChatGPT.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting.
- DCDeepak Chopra
It'll put most of us physicians out of business because it makes the best diagnosis, gives the best information.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What happens then-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in terms of your purpose and your meaning?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Well, we- w- we have more time for creativity, fundamental creativity to create joy in the world. I think the essential message is, if you're not joyful, you wasted your life. I b- you know, I see entrepreneurs all the time, young guys coming up to me with amazing ideas, but they're talking about exit strategy before they've started the business. It's like, you know, dividing the loot before there's a train to rob. But they're already talking. And we're living in a hustle culture, you know? "I have five exits." You keep exiting, exiting, exiting, and you're still hustling, and you're dying, and that's the final exit. You're still a hustler. So I say make joy and self-understanding, self-awareness the fundamental purpose of existence, and everything else will follow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where's your joy? What does that- where do you drive it from?
- DCDeepak Chopra
The fact that I exist and I'm aware of existence, that's a perpetual surprise to me. I was looking at emotions, and what's the healthiest emotion you can have? It's not love. It's not compassion. It's not even joy. It's awe. It's wonder. Why do we exist? And why do we have the awareness that we exist? If you're perpetually surprised and full of wonder and joy, you return to innocence. And what we've lost to this world today is the loss of innocence.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How do I get my innocence back?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Are you married?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm in love.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Okay. Well, when you have a child, you'll see it. You'll see it. You know, a child is spontaneous, is in the moment, is joyful, unless it's wet or hungry, but that's a different situation. But it's joyful. It's just looking... I was... The other day, I was in a, in a train, uh, you know, from...... Orlando Airport to baggage claim. Everybody was stressed in the train, wearing masks, panicked. A mother on the phone and full of anxiety, and she had a little baby in the crib, and this baby was looking around in total amazement. Finally, it caught my eyes and it gave the most amazing smile, and the whole, the whole room lighted up just looking at that innocence. We have lost our innocence and we, we, we take it away from our children. So you know, when a... Children love laughter, they love stories, they love surprises. You know, they love to play peekaboo. When's the last time you were surprised?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can't recall-
- DCDeepak Chopra
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... being surprised.
- DCDeepak Chopra
So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Not in a good way, anyway (laughs) .
- DCDeepak Chopra
... when I feel, when I feel I want some joy, I just look at children playing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there a way to bring that joy back into our lives as a practice, that innocence?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah. Play.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Play. Not drama.
- SBSteven Bartlett
As adults, play is seen as a waste of time.
- DCDeepak Chopra
No. Play is, is when you find creativity and joy. I'm not talking about drama, I'm talking about play. Play for the sake of play. Now even sports has become competitive, but when you played because you were playing. When a musician is playing, they're not thinking of the end. When you're singing a song, you're not thinking of the ending of the song. You're in the song. When you become the song, when you become that which you're playing, when the music and the musician become one, when the knower and the known become one, when the observer and the observed become one, when the lover and the beloved become one, that's transcendence. That's joy. That's play.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Living in the Light: Yoga for Self-Realization. This is your fourth phase of life, and you're into your self-realization phase. Do you know the book The, The Body Holds the Score?
- 1:22:44 – 1:26:08
Why you should be doing yoga
- SBSteven Bartlett
us as humans?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yoga means union, union with yourself. And yoga has eight limbs, as I talk about-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... in this book. And ultimately, all those bo- eight limbs are meant to give you only one insight. You and the universe are made of awareness. You're not made of energy, you're not made of matter, you're not made of information, you're made of awareness. Awareness is non-local, fundamental, non-subject to birth and death, infinite and formless. So befriend your non-local, formless self. You know, again, I go back to poetry. Acting is great. Poetry is even better. Rabindranath Tagore, one of my favorite poets, said, "In this playhouse of infinite forms, I caught sight of the formless, and so my life was blessed." Befriend the formless, and then the forms will be seen as expressions of the formless. Without the formless, there is no form. Form is the morphing of the formless into spacetime and causality, this theater of spacetime and causality where we are playing as avatars.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That is something for me to think about (laughs) tonight. Um, it's become a- abundantly clear to me over the last, I don't know, um, over the last couple of years in particular, as, um, more people know who I am because of this podcast, and I do t- some stuff on TV, that you can cause yourself such a tremendous amount of suffering by getting more and more attached to your avatar. And, like, your avatar becoming more of a defined thing. And I've, I think I've spent a lot of my, uh, definitely the last two and a half years trying to resist as much as I can this temptation of becoming my avatar. And doing that on a practical level, I thought, you know, "Well, resist labels, Steve. So don't be anything. Don't, like, in terms of your bio, you know, your, your professional bio, don't be those things. Just-"
- DCDeepak Chopra
You're 32, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
30.
- DCDeepak Chopra
30. Wow. That's pretty young to have that awareness.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, 'cause I, I could see how I could cause myself a ton of suffering and build a life which wasn't really who I am by being a social media CEO, for example, for-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yes, se- success at an early age.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
You confuse your celebrity with yourself. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Outside of me just, like, saying to myself, "Okay, I'm gonna write books and I'm gonna do this theater and we'll do this music show," and I DJ now, and I do all these other bits and pieces. I was in psychedelics for a while with, um, uh, Atali Sciences as a creative director and an investor. And outside of me doing, just doing lots of stuff, which is, I thought was the antidote to not, to resisting my label, you're telling me that the real antidote to resisting my label is, like, a higher sense of enlightenment?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Right. Uh, I would suggest a book for you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DCDeepak Chopra
At your stage, you'll find it very useful. It's called The Wisdom of Insecurity-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting.
- DCDeepak Chopra
... by Alan Watts. The more you embrace insecurity and unpredictability, the more access you'll have to the unknown, and the unknown is the source of all creativity. The known is the prison of the past.
- 1:26:08 – 1:30:44
The last guests question
- SBSteven Bartlett
We have a closing tradition on this... (laughs) That's funny. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest. Look at what the question is. I'll show you. You're the first person to ever see that question. Can you see it?
- DCDeepak Chopra
What is my biggest insecurity? I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw of a grave site, and there was a sign on the grave site and it said to whoever was standing by the grave site, "Where you are, I was. Where I am, you will be." So embrace the idea of death, and if you do it, you'll see it's death that makes life possible, because death is creativity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you struggled with the idea of death?
- DCDeepak Chopra
All my life since six years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that reared its head to some degree when your parents passed?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yes. And now I'm in a stage where I'm embracing it totally.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How did that impact you, losing your parents, as someone that's been sensitive and insecure about the concept of death?
- DCDeepak Chopra
I would say grief, sadness, longing, but a longing can be the way to.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How long ago was that, that you lost your parents?
- DCDeepak Chopra
Oh, my parents only in the last 20 years, but my grandfather, with whom I lived in the first few years of my life, he was like a parent. My grandparents were my parents because my, my parents were in England at that time and I was, I and my brother were left with our grandparents who brought us up. And that, by the way, was a big... That fear of abandonment also is a driver. The fear of abandonment is a driver, and there is no cure for that other than don't think about yourself all the time. Anytime, by the way, you are suffering, ask yourself, "Who am I thinking about?" You're thinking about your avatar.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Very true. Deepak, thank you so much for-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Thank you for having me. This was one of the best conversations I've had.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, thank you so much. That's a huge honor.
- DCDeepak Chopra
No, no.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You, you really are, um, you've been a, someone that I followed from, from afar but have had tremendous admiration for and everyone that I've-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Oh, thank you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... encountered that's encountered you-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Thank you. Well...
- SBSteven Bartlett
... has been so... And, you know, we have mutual friends. We're-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We're sort of in business together in many respects through The Healing Company.
- DCDeepak Chopra
That's great actually. They're lovely people.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, um, and it's been a- an honor that you'd come here and spend some time with me today and, and-
- DCDeepak Chopra
Yeah, it's been my privilege. Thank you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Thank you so much, Deepak.
- DCDeepak Chopra
Thank you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
As you might know, this show is now sponsored by Airbnb. Absolutely love Airbnb, always have. Always been a, you know, saved my life on so many occasions, and my team, when we first got in touch with Airbnb, were talking about how most people don't realize that their place where they currently live could become an Airbnb. And I guess the second question there is, how much could your place be worth? And it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing it. Some people Airbnb their entire homes when they're away. That's what I did in New York. Whenever I left New York, uh, my place was on Airbnb and people rented it out. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for two days, sometimes for a week, and it's a great way to cover some of the bills while you're away. So whether you're looking to go on holiday or you just want some extra cash for bills or you wanna buy something nice for a Valentine that you love, whatever it might be, head over to airbnb.co.uk/host, and you can find out how much your current property where you live can earn while you're not there. I suspect it might blow your mind, because it certainly blew mine.
Episode duration: 1:30:33
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