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You have to have experience love in order to create love, and then you bring into action.
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It starts with empathy, which is feeling what others are feeling, compassion, which is the desire to alleviate suffering.
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And if you have that, then that is the basis of all love.
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But then love has to move into action as well.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to On Purpose.
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Thank you so much for making this commitment to learning and listening about work, life, and love.
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And today's episode is going to be a real treat for each and every single one of us.
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Our guest today needs no introduction.
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He's an incredible thinker in this space.
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He has been inspiring us for decades, and he's the co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing and the Chopra Foundation, and has written over 86 books on health, wellness, medicine, and several of them are New York Times bestsellers.
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Today's guest is none other than Deepak Chopra.
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I know so many of you are so excited for this episode.
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I know so many of you've been looking forward to us sitting down together again.
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Deepak, thank you so much Thank you. Thank you, Jay.
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I'm so grateful for this opportunity.
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I was just sharing with you earlier, I had the opportunity and the fortune to meet you 3 years ago in New York.
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And I was interviewing you for two of your books at the time, Radical Beauty and You Are the Universe.
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And when I met Deepak, I I want everyone who's watching and listening to know this, I'd heard so much about him.
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I'd read his books because my father used to read his books, so they'd be in my house, and so I was a young young boy.
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And when I met him, the most fulfilling feeling I got to experience was that he wanted me to succeed, and he wanted me to succeed because I was trying to help others.
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And he was so encouraging and so supportive that I felt that genuine energy of love and encouragement and empowerment from him.
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So, your blessings have been Thank you.
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very important in my life, dear brother.
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Well, your success is very important for everyone. Yeah, well, thank you. just about you. Absolutely, 100%. For me, it's not at all.
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And so, we're very grateful to have you today. Thank you.
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And today, I'm very excited because you interviewed me 2 days ago and you were sharing that you can't wait to talk about your past and your journey, which I think will be really illuminating for my audience.
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And let's go all the way back.
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New Delhi, I believe, is where it all began. Uh for you.
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I was born immediately before India's independence uh from British colonialism.
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So, I'm frequently referred to as one of midnight's children.
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Do you know that phrase coined by uh Salman Rushdie. Mhm.
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Uh so, it refers to all of us who were kind of at the cusp of the old era of colonialism and independent India.
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And uh my father was an army doctor.
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He was actually in the war when I was born, so he wasn't in New Delhi.
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He was uh a prisoner uh in um Imphal, which is now in uh what we call used to call Burma, Myanmar, uh and under siege by the Japanese.
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So, he saw me months after I was born. Wow.
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And uh what was that experience of growing up at that time and on that cusp like?
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Like, take us back to what that experience was like and Well, you grow up uh and uh awareness comes very gradually.
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So, my first memory, actually, very significant memory, is when I was 6 years of age.
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My father was at that time England training to be a medical doctor and then a cardiologist.
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And I was living with my grandparents as was my younger brother who later became the dean of medical education at Harvard Medical School.
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So, we're all a family of doctors.
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And I remember at the age of 6 years getting a telegram from England.
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In those days the postman used to knock at the door.
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It took actually 48 hours to get a telegram from England.
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2 weeks to go by ship or boat and 2 days by airplane. The quota planes.
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Anyway, the telegram was that my father had passed all his exams.
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He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians.
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My grandfather used to be an old army sergeant in the British Army. So, he had a gun.
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He went to the ceiling of the apartment building shot a few rounds into the air to celebrate took us to the movies.
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I still remember the movie Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.
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And then he took us to a carnival and then in the middle of the night he died.
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So, I remember waking up to the wailing of women.
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He was taken for cremation and the next day he was brought back in a little bottle of ashes.
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And one of my uncles said "What is life?
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Here he was yesterday celebrating with the kids and now he's a bunch of ashes in the um in that bottle."
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And I remember not only being scared but also even at the age of 6 years having my first existential crisis. What's going on? Where is he now? So, you know.
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And that continued throughout my childhood uh and into medical school and essentially shaped my life. Yeah, that's episode.
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Yeah, what an unbelievable experience to experience so young. Yes.
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And thank you for sharing that.
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And and I really feel that how When were the moments where you started finding those answers to that existential questioning?
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Like when did you start becoming more awakened to the answers that you now share with the world?
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Not till a long time after that, you know.
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When I was uh in high school, all I wanted to do was be a physi- uh to be a writer.
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My secret wish always was to write.
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And my secret wish always was to write fiction more than anything else.
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Now, I have written a lot of fiction, too, but mostly historical fiction.
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And I, at the age of uh 14, was reading a book called Lost Horizon.
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And uh it was about uh this mythical place called Shangri-La, where people don't age and where they don't die.
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And uh it was a very interesting book, and I was inspired to write fiction on my own.
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But my father, as you know, Indian fathers, they want uh kids to either go to medical school or engineering school.
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He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and so he knew that was not my interest.
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And uh when I was about 15, he gave me some books.
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Somerset Maugham, uh who was a physician writer.
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So, the- these are amazing books of human bondage, The Razor's Edge, which talks about existential uh issues.
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And so, I was so inspired by these books that I told my dad, I want to be a doctor.
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And then, you know, I had to do biology all over again to enter medical school.
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And the thing is that, you know, when you go to medical school, you're supposed to understand health, well-being, and all of that.
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But, day one of medical school is anatomy, which means you're introduced to a corpse.
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So, you're supposed to understand life by looking at a dead body. That's the model.
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It's been the model ever since, um, Michelangelo's times, and still is.
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And so, that kind of model stuck in my mind that body is a physical machine.
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And, uh, consciousness is a byproduct that, you know, we are molecules that manufacture thoughts.
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And I lived with that model throughout my medical school years.
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I told you yesterday at that time, because, uh, we were introduced to the dissection table.
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And, you know, there's a certain smell that comes from a corpse.
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And especially if it's been preserved with formalin.
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So, I couldn't get the smell out of my hands, you know, dissection.
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So, I started smoking cigarettes to get rid of the smell.
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And I was experimenting with all kinds of things then.
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We had some students who had come from Harvard.
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Our medical school was founded by, amongst foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation.
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So, we had lots of visiting professors.
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And, um, sometimes visiting students.
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And these students from Harvard Medical School, um, introduced me to LSD first time.
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This is before even the Beatles got involved.
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And, uh, so, I had some interesting experiences during my medical school years with smoking, alcohol, LSD, Scotch, the whole works.
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And it didn't stop till much later after I actually came to the United States.
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Well, so we've had this is so interesting because I was sharing the other day my experimental phase. Yes.
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And what what were you experimenting with?
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Was it just because it was new at that time?
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Was it because you felt a sudden feeling?
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Like where was that experimentation in your mind and life coming from?
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So we're talking about the mid-60s. A lot was going on.
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The Vietnam War was coming to an end.
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There was a lot of protest against the Vietnam War.
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Um uh you won't even know this, but there was the riots in America Yeah.
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uh against the Vietnam War. Of course.
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There was a shooting at Kent State uh University.
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And uh there was huge global uprising for peace.
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The feminist movement was just starting.
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Gloria Steinem was burning her bra in in Cambridge, uh Massachusetts. Greenpeace was coming.
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As young uh late teenagers and people who are just embarking on our life journey, we were very idealistic.
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We thought the world was uh going to change.
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The best hit on Broadway was Oh Calcutta and Hair.
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And uh uh LSD, rock and roll music were in the air.
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The Beatles had just uh published their album Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
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So yeah, there it was a time of idealism, uh but also time of experimentation, and also the feeling that the world was changing, but it didn't. We actually regressed.
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Yeah, how have you felt about that?
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Because it's It's that everyone is listening and watching right now, the audience that's listening now, may feel that we're kind of going through that period again in the world where there's an uprising of conversations around obviously the gender pay gap, women's rights.
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We have more of a conversation right now about equality and unit unity.
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We have again the conversation around the planet and the environment.
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It's almost like those same themes in in our generation are coming to the top.
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Do you think you just said there that we've regressed?
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You don't think that it's regressed?
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we were going to see a world transformation.
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We would sing social justice, economic justice, uh conflict resolution, perhaps the absence of war, a sustainable environment, and a critical mass of consciousness that was moving in the direction of a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. But it did not happen.
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20 years later in the '80s, you had these my own counterparts on Wall Street and all these corrupt scandals on Wall Street uh Wall Street and the idealism was totally shattered.
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And then we started to regress until as you said recently now the conversation is picking up.
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But it's not enough to pick up this conversation.
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You know, we have to actually see why we failed in the past.
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And that is because idealism without action is useless.
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You know, they say that love without action is irrelevant and action without love is meaningless.
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But when you have love in action and love for the greater good, then things can happen.
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And I'm hoping it'll happen now or we'll wait another 30 years long after I'm gone.
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I'm We might not even survive with climate change and all that that's happening right now. Yeah, wow.
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So you really think and I'm just digressing from your journey.
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I want to go back to it, but I think this is such a fascinating point that you've raised that actually the real missing link is acting on our idealistic views and and getting involved.
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being a angry social activist, without being an angry peace activist.
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That's a contradiction in itself.
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You can't be an angry peace activist.
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You have to be a peaceful being in order to create peace.
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You have to have experienced love in order to create love.
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And then you bring into action.
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It starts with empathy, which is feeling what others are feeling, compassion, which is the desire to alleviate suffering.
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And if you have that, then that is the basis of all love.
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But then love has to move into action as well. Yeah, absolutely.
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What a beautiful answer and I really hope everyone who's listening and watching right now if there's any cause that you feel empathy towards, if there's ever a moment in your life you feel compassionate, start thinking about how you can experience that and then act with it. That's what we need.
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Let love lead creep in Yes.
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and let it become the healer and motivation for everything you do. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We need more of that. I I couldn't agree more.
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I really feel that way that we live in a world today also when something's happening, we're very good at changing our social media picture. Correct.
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We're very good at changing the color of our profile and that's good because we're standing up for something, but to really change something is going to require require activation.
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We're polishing our selfies instead of getting in touch with ourselves. Yes, yeah, exactly.
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And it's it's just such a simple option to take that versus to do more. So no, I love that.
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Let's let's go back to your story because I I really want to get there.
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So when was it now that you're experimenting with LSD, you're you're smoking cigarettes, you're you're drinking scotch, you're having all of these experiences while being a medical student.
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When is the point that you come to a spiritual awakening? So the year 1970, Mhm.
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I get a letter from a foundation in the United States that if I pass certain exams that were then given by the American Medical Association and another agency called the foreign something executive council for foreign medical graduates uh that I could get a scholarship. Mhm.
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Now, I had not even applied or thought for a scholarship, but I did the exams and I passed I showed up in New Jersey at a little hospital in Plainfield, New Jersey, a community hospital.
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I realized when I was here that actually this whole scholarship thing was an excuse to bring foreign doctors into the United States because all the American doctors were in Vietnam. Wow.
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And there was a big shortage of physicians.
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The prestigious posts went to university hospitals for American graduates.
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And the foreign graduates were then relegated to community hospitals which offered no education but lots of work.
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So, I ended up being in this small hospital in New Jersey and all my colleagues were also foreign doctors.
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They were from Egypt, from Korea from uh Italy, from uh the islands and so on.
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And basically we were cheap labor for $5 an hour.
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But I got to actually experience what it was to be in uh a very traumatic environment.
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So, we had gunshot wounds um the hospital had a reputation for being connected {quote} and {quote} to the mafia and all of that.
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So, I worked hard that one year.
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And then I uh got uh a position in an academic institution Boston associated with Harvard Medical School.
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And what happened there was I first did my internal medicine I still smoking and drinking and partying as a intern and resident.
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And then as I was finishing my internship and residency I became a quote unquote internist.
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I then took a specialty training in endocrinology which is the study of hormones.
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And then in neuroendocrinology which is looking at brain chemistry.
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And I had some very interesting colleagues but also my mentor at that time was a a person called Seymour Reichlin. He was world famous.
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He's now 94 and he's still if he finds a snake in his garden he'll dissect the brain of the snake looking for neurochemicals.
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But at that time now we're well into the mid 70s we were discovering in the brain these chemicals that now everybody knows about.
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They're called neuropeptides.
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So neuro because they're in the brain peptides because they're protein-like molecules.
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And one of my colleagues at that time Candace Pert she was later the chief of brain chemistry at the NIH she used the phrase molecules of emotion.
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And I'd never heard that word and now everybody knows things like serotonin and dopamine oxytocin. Yeah. Uh opiates.
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But that was we were just discovering molecules of molecules of emotion.
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And so that got me hooked to the so-called mind-body connection.
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And at the same time I was besides the research I was also seeing patients.
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And I was very perplexed as to why two patients who had the same illness could see the same doctor, get the same treatment, and have completely different outcomes.
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One could die, the other one could recover.
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So, I started writing down the stories of my patients just to see if I could learn something from them.
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And I then started submitting these to medical journals.
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But nobody would accept them.
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So, then what happened is um And they wouldn't accept them before because?
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Because uh they're too anecdotal, there's not enough research.
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So, then I thought maybe I'll publish them for the general public, and the publishers wouldn't accept that either. It was too new age.
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So, one day I saw um an ad in the New York Times about this big.
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It said if you want to get your book published, uh we can do it for $5,000. It was a vanity press.
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And so, I didn't know what that was about.
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I paid 5,000, which is a lot of money for me.
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We used to get $202 salary a month.
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So, I borrowed the money.
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I got a hundred books, very shabbily produced.
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I didn't know what to do with them, but now at this time, because of all my you know, what I was learning, I'd given up alcohol, and I'd given up every experiment. I was meditating.
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And uh one day I was giving a lecture uh to the students at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge.
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And there was a young woman, a student there in Divinity School.
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She said, "Hey, can you give me a bunch of those books that you're talking about?" I had a hundred.
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And she took 12, and she put them in the window of the Harvard uh Coop, which is now Barnes & Noble in Cambridge.
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And uh the book was picked up by some kid who gave it to his mother on Mother's Day.
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She happened to be a literary agent.
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She called me and she said, "Why do you not have a regular publisher?" I said, "I tried."
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And she said, she said, "How much did you pay for this?" I said, "5,000."
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She said, "I'll get you 5,000 advance."
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Next thing I know, the book is a national bestseller.
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I'm getting calls from Jackie Onassis and from major publishers all over the country.
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And I didn't know my life transformed.
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So, then I actually got in very deeply involved in mind-body medicine.
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I knew that my colleagues in Boston were little embarrassed about me because they didn't believe what I was doing.
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I went to California and uh to give grand rounds at a hospital and somebody convinced me to come to California and they'd open a center for me.
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So, that's when I went to California.
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In the meanwhile, I also had also met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
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And uh you know, he was as popularly known those days as the guru of the Beatles and uh actually misunderstood by the world because he was so popular.
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Happens when you get popular.
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But, he was uh a very profound being.
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And he asked me uh to study or get involved with first Ayurveda and then Vedanta and consciousness.
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So, that was how it happened.
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I told him about the molecules of emotion and he said they're not real.
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So, that's when I really understood that mind-body medicine was a good start for integrative health and well-being, but it wasn't what um these great luminaries were talking about that as we said, you're not your body, you're not the mind.
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You're not even in this world and somehow you're creating the experience of the body, the mind, and the world.
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So, that happened almost um I was I would say 36.
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Um when I started to shift into the world of consciousness and trying to figure out ultimate reality.
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Uh before that, I was a mind-body integrative doctor, and I still am.
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I keep my license in California and Massachusetts.
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We have a medical practice, but my interest right now is unveiling fundamental reality.
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What gave you that inclination at that time because it was so early on in all of these themes, beliefs, philosophies kind of coming to the west with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, etc.
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It was It was such an early time for terms like consciousness and reality and illusion.
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Like those weren't themes that were spoken about in such a broad way as they are now.
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What gave you the conviction at that time that that's the direction you wanted to go in and that there was some reality there as opposed to everything you'd studied?
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I um I spent a lot of time with people that Maharishi introduced me to. There were seers.
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There were um Ayurvedic healers. There were philosophers.
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There were other adepts in the realm of Kashmir Shaivism, Vedanta, and the perennial wisdom traditions.
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So, I immersed myself into that environment.
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I also got very familiar with the terminology, you know, that they were using.
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And it made intellectual sense, but still didn't make experiential sense.
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So, that's when I really got deeply involved in not only mantra meditation, but in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, especially the chapter on the Siddhis.
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and then I also uh uh um got involved in various other uh disciplines, tantra, Kashmir Shaivism um self-inquiry, self-um self-um uh reflection, transcendence, but also got into the habit of being a witness of my mental space my body, what's happening inside my body and also of perceptual experience and you know, once you get um so deeply experientially involved, there's no going back.
25:34
It's like a new child who's been born.
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You can't return to the womb anymore. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
25:40
It's It's a bit which was a period.
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It was 10-15 years of that. That's incredible. I love this, by the way. This is amazing.
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For anyone who's listening or watching right now who hasn't heard Deepak's full story before from him, this is this is amazing.
25:53
And you also we were talking about this the other day, that you also ended up spending some time as a monk, too.
25:58
Yeah, that was actually recently. Oh, wow. Oh, okay.
26:01
Oh, I thought it was okay.
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No, I mean, being with Maharishi was like being in a monk environment. Yes.
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But then a few years ago, I thought to myself I needed a break from um break from being so much in the public eye.
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I wanted to experience anonymity.
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So actually I instead of going to a an ashram in India, I went to um uh the north of uh the forest in uh Korea in South Korea at the border of um um North and South Korea and I went into a Buddhist monastery and uh spent some time as a monk.
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We shaved our head, shaved our eyebrows uh put on robes, uh went with a begging bowl every morning through the streets uh or the streets of the village nearby the monastery.
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Um I had a couple of um um apprentice monks with me.
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Um there was of course the senior monk at uh monastery.
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And we kept silence uh throughout the day.
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But then and we had one meal and you know and in these Buddhist countries there's a tradition that if a monk goes by the street you offer food.
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It's considered a a benefit. Yes, yeah. You know auspicious.
27:30
auspicious and you get rewards, karmic rewards for feeding the monks. Yeah.
27:33
So we used to end up returning to the monastery with so much food you'd think we'd gone to Whole Foods or something.
27:42
And the monks would keep filling it up and there was one meal.
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And then and the night they would chant all night. Mhm. Um and we would listen.
27:53
So it was a good experience, anonymity.
27:55
And also the freedom that comes from uh not being uh beholden to the world in a sense. Yes.
28:03
Uh it was good experience.
28:03
Yeah, why was anonymity so Why do you think anonymity is so important for all of us in our life to experience?
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Why is it such a fascinating experience?
28:14
Because uh when you uh uh go past your ego identity, Mhm.
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there's a bigger identity that is uh so huge, it's incomprehensible.
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It can't even be described and there's a freedom and a joy that comes from that and uh I had had glimpses of that, but this period of intense stillness and by the way, since then I've kept a week of silence uh every year. Sometimes I do more.
28:47
and uh that week of silence usually in September I do every year just to go back to the taste of timeless being instead of you know our ego identity which we keep polishing every day now especially these days with social media and books and promotions and you name it.
29:05
What's something that people can do daily to access that experience because like you said our days are just busy with work and family and commitments and events.
29:16
What's something people can do daily that helps them access their true identity their self going beyond the ego and the mind and the body?
29:25
I think the basic of it is to still the mind as much as possible.
29:31
And just become a silent witness um to that which is happening on the screen of your consciousness.
29:42
So if you close your eyes and take a few deep breaths and then you know I usually start with a little reflection who am I who wants to know the answer what is it that wants to know the answers to the question who am I? What is my purpose?
30:02
What do I want for me and the world? What am I grateful for? That's how I start.
30:08
Then I go into a little bit of breathing and then mantra meditation and then what I do is I witness what's happening on the screen of my consciousness just becoming aware.
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And sooner or later you realize that what's happening on the screen of consciousness is not who you are you're the one who's watching that.
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And then what's happening on the screen of your consciousness ultimately leads to deep insights about mind and body and the physical world which actually doesn't really exist but we can get into that when we talk about metahuman.
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But I think if people just ask these four questions every day before they start their day even without a prolonged meditation process, who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? What am I grateful for?
30:57
Suddenly the windows to the bigger reality starts start to open. Absolutely.
31:02
This is such a beautiful point that Deepak's making right now for everyone listening and watching is just such a simple way of starting to transcend the noise and the clutter that we feel every morning when we wake up and the first thing we do is look at our phones.
31:16
All you have to do is just switch that habit for asking yourself these questions.
31:20
And you don't need to know the answers because you know there are no fixed answers.
31:23
These answers keep changing.
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All you have to do is live the questions and then life keeps moving you into answers that you need at that moment in your life.
31:34
And it all happens spontaneously, synchronistically.
31:38
Such a great point because these answers are revealed and received.
31:39
They're not they're not found.
31:42
And they're pertinent for that moment in your life.
31:44
Not necessarily the answers. I love that.
31:46
I think that's such a good point because so often we put this pressure when we ask a question that we must find the answer now.
31:54
It's like the education system has drilled us into believing that you have the right or wrong answer within moments.
31:59
You know, what was that poet who said live the questions and life will move you to the answers when you need them.
32:07
Because if you got them right now you may not be even prepared for them. Wow.
32:12
Yeah, that's a good point.
32:12
I know life has done that to me a lot of times. That's it. Yeah.
32:15
Yeah, when you ask questions and you think you want the answer now, but then when you actually receive it you realize yes, I wasn't prepared. That's right. Absolutely.
32:23
Wow, what a profound what a profound way of thinking about it. I love that.
32:26
That's that's made a huge shift in my mind.
32:28
Not even to want to answer the questions now.
32:29
Just ask them and let your day And let them go.
32:32
They come in the form of insight, intuition, inspiration, creative um creativity, but most importantly, they come in the form of meaningful coincidences or what Carl Jung called synchronicity or what religious people say grace. Yes. That's it. Yeah.
32:53
Yeah, meaningful coincidences. Absolutely.
32:55
Yeah, how beautifully said. I love that.
32:57
So, this is what I love about your journey, Deepak, is just that at every point it seems that you've been a seeker for more.
33:05
Like you've continually gone in the direction of more learning, more growth, never settling.
33:12
How have you seen the medical industry shift?
33:15
How have you seen other things around you shift with time?
33:19
Because you've really gone all the way.
33:21
Do you think that we are seeing shifts in the medical world?
33:24
Yeah, we are seeing shifts.
33:24
When I started, I felt like a loner. Yeah, I can imagine.
33:29
But now integrative medicine is part of every institution, including academia.
33:36
And in the last 15, 20 years, our foundation has done a lot of research.
33:42
So, we've made it pretty mainstream right now.
33:46
So, to summarize very shortly what has taken 30 years to learn or more, 40 years to learn, is that only 5% of disease-related gene mutations are fully penetrant.
34:00
So, let me explain this for those uh uh for a lay audience.
34:04
So, a genetic a genetic mutation is a is a mistake.
34:11
It's an error in the gene.
34:14
Genes are stretches of DNA that code for proteins.
34:20
So, DNA is uh stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, and there are four of these uh named after alphabets, adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, ATCG.
34:30
So, ATCG are the four letters of life.
34:34
In English, we have 26 letters.
34:39
And most languages, human languages, we have more than 20 letters, but the language of life, DNA, has only four letters, ATCG.
34:48
And these spell out words that we call genes.
34:51
And the body is a story spelt out by those genes.
34:55
So, when people say first there was the word, word was made in the image of flesh, in a way it's very literal, actually, when you start to look at the biological mechanism.
35:06
Now, once in a while, or more than once in a while, there are genetic mistakes.
35:10
So, you might think of them again, we're speaking metaphorically, but a spelling mistake.
35:17
So, instead of the word being spelt correctly, maybe one of the letters, ATCG, is missing, or it's in the wrong place, or it's upside down, or you have redundant two letters instead of one.
35:31
That mistake, genetic variation, is called a mutation.
35:35
Now, only 5% of these genetic mutations that are associated with disease, cancer, heart disease, um arthritis, strokes, um you name it, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's, only 5% actually guarantee the disease, which means if you have one of those mutations, you're going to get the disease, like Angelina Jolie had a gene called the BRCA gene, which predicts breast cancer, 100%.
36:06
So, she had a mastectomy to prevent the cancer. Rightly so.
36:12
For those 5%, there are new technologies that are being developed right now.
36:18
And CRISPR is one of them, which means you can cut and paste the gene the way you would an email.
36:23
So, you would take the defective gene, you'd read the barcode with the molecular scissors, you delete it, and then you'll insert the right gene.
36:32
It's not happening right now, but it'll happen in the near future.
36:37
But, what people don't understand is that's 5% of illness. Wow.
36:41
The rest, even the genetic mistakes that are associated with disease, depends on how you live your life.
36:46
And very simple things like sleep, meditation and stress management, movement, yoga and pranayama.
36:55
Now, yoga and pranayama goes way beyond exercise because with yoga and pranayama, there's a particular nerve in the body called the vagus nerve. It's the 10th nerve.
37:06
And the word vagus is a Latin word, but it's related to the English word vagabond.
37:11
So, this nerve comes from the midbrain.
37:15
It influences your facial expressions, so you can now do microexpressions and see if a person is happy or not.
37:21
It influences the um eye movements.
37:25
It influences the tone of your voice. Are you threatened? Are you stressed? Are you friendly? Are you happy?
37:32
It influences your heart rate activity.
37:35
Then, it pierces the diaphragm, and it influences the activity of every other branch of the vagus nerve that goes to all the organs in the body.
37:46
So, when I discovered this through yoga teachers and masters, I realized that the yoga asanas, you know, we say yoga asana.
37:55
And people usually translate that into as postures. Mhm.
38:00
But, actually the word asana means seat, as you know.
38:02
Seat of awareness, seat of consciousness.
38:04
So, each yoga asana is a particular seat of consciousness that stimulates a particular nerve that is going to organ in your body, and the only reason for that nerve is self-regulation or healing or homeostasis.
38:20
So, when I discovered that, I became fanatic about yoga.
38:25
I haven't missed yoga now for as long as I can remember. Not one day. Wow.
38:32
Okay, not one day of yoga or meditation or um or pranayama. So, it was a long time.
38:39
So, when you put together, you know, yoga, movement, sleep, stress management, healthy relationships and emotions like love, compassion, joy, equanimity, uh food that doesn't kill your microbiome, which is the 2 million extra genes in our body, which are not human.
38:56
So, you only have 25,000 human genes, but you have 2 million bacterial genes in your body.
39:05
This is called the microbial microbiome.
39:08
It is much It's as important as the human genome.
39:10
So, you can change the activity of your microbial genes just by changing your diet.
39:15
So, if you go um not even vegan, but if you go maximum diversity on plant-based foods and foods that are not contaminated with antibiotics or hormones or uh insecticides, um you can change your genetic activity Wow.
39:35
and the population of your genes in less than 6 weeks, and which means then you're reinventing your body because your body is spelt out by your genes. Mhm.
39:42
So, this got me going strongly into how do we reinvent our bodies by resurrecting our souls and going past our minds, and that's what I'm obsessed with now. Wow, I love that.
39:57
I'm so glad you're obsessed with it because the fact that we're so responsible for our own well-being is huge in the sense of belief that there are ways in which we can rewrite that story.
40:08
You can rewrite the genetic structure of your body.
40:10
You can't change the human genes, by the way, because you got them from your parents, but you can change their activity.
40:19
So, here's one of our researchers.
40:22
Um we put one we put people through a one-week retreat where they not only learned mantra meditation, but they also practiced the yoga sutras of Patanjali from the chapter on the cities, particularly transcending the senses.
40:39
In one week, literally, and this is published now in major peer-review journals.
40:44
If people want to check them out, go to choprafoundation.
40:46
org and you'll see all the research.
40:48
And the research was in collaboration with scientists from Harvard, from UCSF, from Duke, from Scripps, of course Chopra Foundation, Mount Sinai in New York. And what did we find?
41:01
We found that in one week of this practice of meditation and the yoga sutras of Patanjali, all the genes that are responsible for healing and self-regulation, they went up some 17-fold over baseline. These are human genes.
41:19
And the genes that cause disease or inflammation went down drastically.
41:21
The enzyme There's an enzyme in our body called telomerase.
41:26
It influences the length of telomeres, which are like little buttons at the end of your chromosomes.
41:31
The the level of the enzyme went up 40% in one week, which means people were reversing their biological age at a genetic level. Wow.
41:40
Okay, now how far does this go? We don't know.
41:46
And that was just one week.
41:47
It's just one week, and you know, the people who are in samadhi for weeks at a time, those traditions are not that prevalent.
41:53
You know, there's a technique in Ayurveda called Kaya Kalpa, where you go into a retreat where it is totally dark, where you have no communication with the world, where you transcend, where you eat minimal um maximum diversity of plant-based foods.
42:15
And in 6 months, you come back a younger person biologically, physiologically. You know, I'm 72 now.
42:23
you're looking very good.
42:24
I'm I you know, I'm not focused on aging anymore.
42:27
Yeah, I've Because I think that's a mistake.
42:30
For anyone who follows Deepak on social media, Instagram or Facebook, if you don't already, I highly recommend it.
42:35
But I've never seen you miss a day of yoga or meditation. I do.
42:40
I see you every time and you inspire me so much because I just think like if you're able at your current body's age to be able to do the things you are with your body and how healthy you are and how healthy your body and mind are, I mean, we have no excuses.
42:53
Like There's biological age, which is the exact biomarkers.
42:56
So, what's blood pressure, bone density, body temperature regulation, fat content, cholesterol, vision, hearing, skin thickness, wrinkles, hormones. That's biological age.
43:10
Then there's chronological age, when you were born, what your birth certificate says.
43:16
Then there's psychological age, how do you feel?
43:17
And then there's spiritual age, which is timeless, which has no age whatsoever.
43:23
So, you know, we have to make these distinctions and see which of these we're talking about. 100% 100%.
43:29
When you said at the end there that you're not thinking about aging anymore, what did you mean by that when you said that?
43:34
It's now um something I talk about in my new book, Metahuman.
43:42
That what we call body, mind, and world, and aging, and birth, and death are actually human constructs. They're not real.
43:55
Now, we can go into that to the extent that you want. Yeah, yeah.
44:01
So, you have it in the book for a bit? We can.
44:03
Yeah, yeah, let's do that.
44:03
If that's what you want to do, let's If you want, yeah.
44:06
Yeah, no, no, I'd love to.
44:06
I've I've got so many questions in the book that that we'd put together for you.
44:08
So, I'm happy to do that.
44:10
So, in one of the things, this is what I was looking at that you start the book by prompting two questions. Right?
44:17
In moments where you feel very happy, do you watch yourself being happy?
44:20
And when you're angry, is someone is some part of you free of anger? Right?
44:25
Why did you start with these two questions?
44:28
So, in all the spiritual traditions, um not necessarily just the Eastern traditions, they speak of two worlds, the imminent and the transcendent.
44:41
So, the imminent is this world that we're in right now, this space-time causality, New York City, the hotel we're in.
44:50
And then the transcendent world is the world of infinite being or consciousness.
44:57
At all times, we're in both these worlds without knowing.
45:03
But, once you become aware, even slightly, that the awareness of a thought is not a thought, right?
45:13
If you're able to observe a thought, then you, the observer, is not that thought, right?
45:17
Similarly, the observer of the emotion, or which is the awareness of an emotion, is not the emotion. Agreed.
45:25
Or a perception, or a color, you know, right now we are perceiving through our five senses, and what we are perceiving is colors, forms, uh shapes, sounds, sensations in our body, maybe emotions, and thoughts, and maybe images.
45:47
That's the raw material of experience. That's all there is. Okay?
45:53
The words body, mind, and world are human constructs based on the interpretation of these raw sensations. Mhm.
46:03
So, once you start to become a witness of experience, you realize that you are intrinsically free of the experience.
46:14
Unless you identify with it.
46:14
Unless you say, "That's me." Yes. It's not you.
46:17
It's an experience you're having, right? Absolutely.
46:20
So, once you bind yourself to the experience, which we call the karmic web Mhm.
46:26
of existence, then you are in that circle of karma, memory, desire.
46:35
Uh you are constantly seeking validation.
46:39
You're afraid of people who criticize you.
46:41
You're flattered by people who flatter you.
46:44
You feel beneath someone or superior to someone.
46:47
It's the melodrama of our daily existence.
46:50
So, when you can observe Yes.
46:55
what's happening in the realm of experience, and instead of reacting to it, you observe the reaction to react, even for a second, instead of reacting to the experience, you observe the reaction to react, you suddenly realize that your range of options or choices right this moment is actually infinite. Mhm.
47:16
And you don't have to be a bundle of conditioned reflexes and nerves that's constantly being triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes.
47:27
So, you become a um you become you're at the mercy of every stranger on the street.
47:32
So, I think it's very important to know that yes, I'm having this experience, but I'm intrinsically free of this experience.
47:41
So, that's how the book starts.
47:42
Yeah, and I absolutely love that because it's an analogy I usually use to share that experience is like when we're in a car and someone hits the car, we say, "Oh, someone hit me." Yes.
47:52
But actually, they didn't hit you. They hit the car.
47:53
And you're identifying as the car as yourself. Yes.
47:55
Now, how about if they hit your body? Yeah.
47:57
You know, and and your body perishes, right? Yes.
48:04
So, that's the argument people have against the argument that spiritual people have, which is you're not your body, you're not your mind.
48:16
So, but you know, you remember that famous uh dialogue between Samuel Johnson and um and whoever that idealist was, and he said, you know, the world is a projection of consciousness.
48:29
And I think it was Samuel Johnson who hit his leg on a piece of stone and said, I refute you thus. Mhm.
48:35
Uh saying that, you know, you get hit by a bus, you're going to you're going to break your bones and you might die.
48:44
So, uh why do you say that the physical world is an illusion?
48:47
Now, if you want, we can address that.
48:51
Yeah, let's address that, yeah. Let's address that.
48:52
So, you know, this is of course I take people through the book very slowly, but if you asked a regular person on the street, what is this? Mhm.
49:02
They'd say it's a microphone. Mhm.
49:07
If you asked them, what's this?
49:09
You'd say, this is a watch. What's this? This is my hand. What's this? This is my body.
49:18
Now, if you really start to look at this very carefully, before you call anything by its name, microphone, hand, body, um watch, before you use that those words, it's an experience. Mhm.
49:37
And the experience is actually not a physical experience.
49:40
Color, form, and shape are not physical experiences.
49:43
If I asked you, where in the physical world is the color red located?
49:50
You would say, uh nowhere.
49:50
In fact, there's no color red in the physical world.
49:55
What's coming to your eyes are electromagnetic vibrations which have no color.
49:59
What's happening in your eyes, there's no color.
50:01
And if I asked you to imagine a beautiful red sunset, you have a picture in your consciousness, but there's no picture in your brain.
50:11
There's no picture in your eyes.
50:14
And actually, the sunset is not if you're imagining it, it's not in the physical world.
50:19
Now, what you don't realize is when you're looking at a real sunset, all you're experiencing is color. The rest is a story. Okay, that's a sunset. This is a body.
50:32
Okay, color, shapes, textures, sensations, smells, images, emotions, and thoughts have no location in the physical world.
50:43
And yet, out of this raw material, we create the idea of a physical world.
50:49
So, in Sanskrit, that's called Jagat Mithya, the world appearance.
50:56
On the screen of your consciousness, and your body is part of that world appearance because people, you know, they say, "Where are you?" People say, "I'm here."
51:02
But there's no one inside there.
51:05
Okay, because this is also an experience in consciousness.
51:08
The mind is an experience in consciousness.
51:10
Moreover, it's a shifting experience in consciousness.
51:14
No, you know, a thought is ungraspable. It's ephemeral. It's evanescent.
51:18
You can't You can't catch them, yeah.
51:21
Okay, you can't catch a perception.
51:21
I look here, I look there.
51:23
These are two snapshots of perception, and they're evanescent.
51:27
I look at my body, and by the time I look at it again, it's a different body because it's recycling so fast at the level of atoms and molecules and information and energy.
51:38
So, the fact that we call this a body, it's actually a changing experience of sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts that is a modified form of your own self. And it's changing. It's ungraspable.
51:52
Same thing with the mind. It's ungraspable.
51:53
Same thing which we will call with the world.
51:55
It's a changing experience of shifting what we call qualia in the in the spiritual literature now in the consciousness literature.
52:05
There's this word qualia instead of quantum.
52:07
A quantum is a unit of measurement, but a qualia is a unit of experience.
52:13
So, if I tell you think of your wife right now and you see an image, that's a qualia.
52:17
Now, feel the emotion connected with that. That's a qualia.
52:22
Now, think of what you want to do with her this evening, go out for dinner or movie. That's a qualia.
52:27
So, qualia are units of experience.
52:30
When we string them together, we create the construct of mind, body, and world.
52:37
And once we create that construct, then we're stuck with constructs like birth and death and karma and memory and all the things which make a very fascinating human experience, but it's not reality.
52:51
It's We are already in a virtual reality.
52:56
Okay, so today with VR and immersive augmented experiences and dreamscapes, it is becoming clear that the world that you and I are inhabiting right now is a collective human dreamscape.
53:10
And as body minds, we are fictional characters in that dreamscape.
53:17
And it's an illusion that we can upgrade or we can downgrade.
53:20
Uh you know, we can create heaven out of it or hell, but it's still not fundamental reality.
53:27
And now with the new technologies, this is becoming very clear.
53:32
Once you realize that the world is a construct, yes, the construct has been evolving through mythology, through religion, through economics, through history, through society, through culture, but it's still a construct.
53:48
And what these great seers, these great rishis were able to do is they were able to deconstruct it.
53:54
Once you deconstruct it, what are you left with?
53:56
You know, when you left you've heard that expression neti neti neti, I'm not the mind, I'm not the body, I'm not the intellect, I'm I'm the observer. What are you left with?
54:09
Once you deconstruct everything, what you're left with is formless, infinite, dynamic field of infinite possibilities, infinite creativity, infinite love, and the source of intention.
54:29
So, that's what yoga originally was and should be.
54:33
Yoga means union, union with the self, which is also the self of the universe.
54:39
And this is where, you know, I got totally seduced.
54:45
That human suffering, as the Vedanta says, comes from not knowing true reality, fundamental reality, confusing perceptual reality with fundamental reality, grasping and clinging that which you cannot grasp or cling, the fear of impermanence, the construct of the ego and the fear of death.
55:05
These are all the same thing, not knowing what is real and what is a projection.
55:11
And even the projection can be changed. Absolutely.
55:13
Wow, what a class in what a masterclass in in in reality and illusion.
55:21
How does then one function within the world, but then still understand?
55:24
Because I think the challenge people have on a day-to-day basis, as you probably heard for decades, is this well, if it if if what I'm experiencing is not complete reality, then where do I go from there? Like what do I do? Do I get married? Do I fall in love? Do I not? Do I work?
55:41
go to the movies every you know, I used to go to a lot of movies.
55:43
I don't that much anymore because what we call everyday reality is a more interesting movie than most movies.
55:50
Don't have that imagination to capture the what is happening in what we call everyday reality. So we're in it.
55:59
We might as well enjoy it and upgrade it and that's what the expression is to be in the world and not of this world.
56:08
Okay, or we are spiritual beings having a human experience or non-local beings having a local experience timeless but in time.
56:20
Once you understand that and once you also get into the habit of self-reflection, self-inquiry observing perceptual experiences without necessarily judging them.
56:32
So I'm right now having the experience of colors and forms and tastes and smells and sounds.
56:39
I don't necessarily have to qualify this experience and transcendence where you know, you go to that place where there is no mantra and no thought and just deep stillness then the shift starts to occur that you're not identifying with your body mind or experiences of the world and yet you're enjoying them or not enjoying them.
57:02
And now you want to do something to shift.
57:07
And since you're in the world, you know, about 25 years ago I wrote this book how to make that practical and I don't know how but basically I came up with the idea of the seven spiritual laws of success.
57:20
The law of pure potentiality, the law of giving and receiving, karma, intention, desire um least effort um and detachment, and Dharma, those seven principles guided me into a new idea of what success is.
57:39
Uh, the progressive realization of worthy goals, the ability to love, have compassion, but most importantly, to identify with your creative center instead of the projection that's coming from that center, because most of the time our experience of is coming from identifying with a projection that has been created by the conditioned or ego mind.
58:05
Now, the ego mind is not going to disappear uh, as long as you're in this body, or actually, you're not in the body, the body is in you, but whatever.
58:15
So, it's not going to disappear.
58:15
But, if you keep it in the background and you're aware of it, and you ask yourself, what am I motivated by?
58:23
And I have these little tricks in my mind, pursue excellence, ignore success, and then everything happens, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, the state of grace, effortless being, spontaneous fulfillment of desire.
58:38
These are little things over the years that I've gleaned as my little catchphrases to remind myself Yes, of reality.
58:46
that I must live a life that is based on love. Mhm.
58:51
And if it's not based on love at the highest level, you know, as the Vedantas say, love should radiate from you like light from a bonfire. Yeah.
59:01
Not focused on anyone and not denied to anyone.
59:04
It's just the light of the sun. Yeah.
59:06
If you start, and it takes time, you know, remember I'm Of course it takes time.
59:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
59:11
So, I it took me And and and I think that's the most beautiful thing is that what we're having to do on a daily practical level is just continuing to realign That's and just being able to recognize that all your exper- you are not your experiences, you are not the result of an external result.
59:27
You know, you don't have to take on that burden.
59:32
Just like layers of clothes, we've just been wearing all these emotions like layers of clothes.
59:36
You can just take them off and let go. They're not you. you said. Yeah.
59:40
But you see, this is also very interesting because awareness is never as free and creative when it's not tethered to an experience. Correct.
59:57
Whether the experiences that which we call the body, that which we call the world, or that which we call the mind.
1:00:02
When awareness is untethered, which we call pure awareness, it's infinite, formless but infinite.
1:00:10
You know, Tagore had a beautiful poem.
1:00:12
He said, "In this playhouse of infinite forms, I caught sight of the formless, and so my life was blessed."
1:00:17
The formless is the real you, and it's infinite.
1:00:22
The form is a phenomenon, and as the phenomenon, it's you as that phenomenon.
1:00:29
So, when you see yourself in an object, we call that beauty.
1:00:32
When you see yourself in another person, we call that love.
1:00:36
Because ultimately, there is only the self as both the subject and the object of experience. Absolutely.
1:00:43
Absolutely incredible, Deepak.
1:00:43
Every time I sit down with you, I always get another revelation and then and another thing to focus on.
1:00:48
Genuinely, I'm not just saying that.
1:00:49
I can just sit and listen to you because yeah, I'm just starting to piece things together, and I really hope that when the book comes out, we can sit down again I'd love to.
1:00:57
and go deeply into just the book.
1:00:59
comes out, maybe we go into the steps to awaken. so.
1:01:02
I think that would be amazing when the book comes out.
1:01:04
go into um living the awakened life?
1:01:08
Absolutely, I'd love that. I'd love that. Let's do that.
1:01:10
Yeah, because today I feel like we've really been able to capture your story and your background and your journey.
1:01:14
And when the book comes out in October, I believe, Living the awakened life.
1:01:16
that's when we'll go into that world.
1:01:17
So, Deepak, we end every interview with a final five.
1:01:22
This is a rapid-fire quick-fire round.
1:01:24
Uh answers have to be one word or one sentence.
1:01:26
So, the first question is, "What's your favorite principle in a book you've written?"
1:01:32
What's one of the number one principles or How can I serve? How can I serve? Beautiful. Thank you. Wonderful answer.
1:01:39
Second question, "If you could get everyone in the world to start doing one thing every day, what would it be?"
1:01:46
If you could toss the world and they could take on one practice, what would be that one Ask yourself Who am I? What am I? And see what happens. Okay, awesome.
1:01:56
Number three, "If you could define the human experience in one word, what would it be?" Sacred and profane. Okay, amazing.
1:02:05
Number four, "What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?"
1:02:09
These days I would like to say my grandkids. Ah, beautiful.
1:02:11
And question number five, "What is one thing you're looking forward to accomplishing this year?" Or learning this year.
1:02:20
Sharing my revelations with the world. Amazing.
1:02:24
Deepak, thank you so much for being a living example of everything you speak about.
1:02:28
If you already don't follow Deepak on Instagram and Facebook and all the other platforms, Twitter, etc.
1:02:32
, please go and follow him.
1:02:33
He is uh a real example of everything he shared today.
1:02:37
His practice of yoga, his practice of meditation, everything he speaks, it's just emanating from you all the time.
1:02:43
Uh being with Deepak for a few moments, you you get to experience that too.
1:02:48
So, please please please go and follow him.
1:02:49
His book Metahuman is coming out in October.
1:02:52
We will do another interview for that book because I believe there's so much to dive into.
1:02:57
And today we've been able to uncover Deepak's incredible life.
1:02:58
I didn't know all of that.
1:03:01
I'm sure all of you didn't as well.
1:03:02
So, please go ahead, grab the uh Seven uh Spiritual Laws of Success as well.
1:03:07
It's a phenomenal book, one of my favorite ones.
1:03:09
So, highly recommend that reading before Metahuman when it comes out later this year.
1:03:12
But, Deepak, thank you again Thank you. Thank you.
1:03:15
It was a thank you and thank you for being such a supporter of my work and such an encourager. Means the world. Thank you so much. Thank you.
1:03:23
If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
1:03:29
I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklikeamonkbook. com.
1:03:37
Check below in the description to make sure you order today.