Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Exploring Our Limited Understanding of Reality | Deepak Chopra

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Deepak Chopra, a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation.Deepak is the founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spiritualityTIME magazine has described Deepak as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers.His 90th book and national bestseller, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities.Deepak also has a new short form podcast called - Now for Tomorrow. I had the chance to be a guest and we stitched it onto the end of this conversation so I hope you enjoy it.In this conversation, we explore big questions -- about the nature of reality and consciousness.We discuss why it's so challenging to use language and sensory information to try to makes sense of the true nature of what is.How can we understand reality when what we see and hear and feel is not complete?My hope is that you'll leave this conversation with a different perspective on the way you think about what is real. _________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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What am I grateful for? Live the question. Don't worry about the answer. All right. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I am Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And I just got to say that I love our community.

I love what we're doing. I love the honesty of what we're trying to sort out and figure out and just how real that we are using what we're learning, the vulnerabilities to be able to express what we don't understand, and then taking the actions to be able to put them in play. And the whole idea behind this conversation, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts towards mastery, either mastery of self or mastery of craft or potentially both. And we want to dig to understand what is the narrative that they hold, that they've grown?

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Now, this week's conversation is with Deepak Chopra, and he is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He's written many books. He is on the world stage when it comes to consciousness and reality and just really understanding what the nature of life is about. And so he founded the Chopra Foundation. That's a nonprofit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism. And then, you know, Chopra Global, it's a modern day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, which is really his intersection. A Harvard MD,

and then his deep commitment to spirituality. Time Magazine has described Deepak as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century. And then with over 89 books translated into 43 languages, I mean, think about that for a minute, 89 books. It's awesome. And he's got numerous New York Times bestsellers that he knows how to take these ideas, complicated ideas about becoming, and then put them into ways that not only grab people's attention, but really is focused on helping humans. And now he's got a new national bestseller right now that's out, MetaHuman, Unleashing Your Infinite Potential. And really what he's doing, he's unlocking the insights and helping people move beyond present limitations to access something deeper, something richer in possibility.

And then, so we get into the thick of it in this conversation. We talk about some concepts that might at first pass be difficult to wrap your head around, and we rip through it. I've been thinking and studying about consciousness and reality and spirituality for a long time, certainly as it lays over on to philosophy and psychology. So, because of that, there's going to be some stuff. And I want to prime you a little bit on a couple of concepts that are tricky. And as we get into these big, big exploratory ideas and big questions, like the concepts about the nature of reality and consciousness, I mean, those are not easy concepts to grapple with. And we explore why it's so hard and so challenging to use language

and sensory information to try to make sense of the true nature of what is. And that's why some of these conversations with people, and certainly in this conversation, can feel really tricky because it's like, wait, where's the handle? Where are we going? What is this thing of consciousness? You know, what is that? And how can we understand it? How can we understand reality when what we see and hear and feel, it's not complete? Our sensory information is limited. There are more colors in the world than we can see. There's more sounds in the world than we can hear.

And so it's muted. And our limitations mute the understanding of reality. And so those limitations come from sensory, mental, and neurological processing. And my hope in this conversation is that you might just recalibrate that the way that we are gathering information is muted. And that muted sense warps and changes the reality of what truly is. And then, so Deepak has gone on this path for a long time. The difference between what we see and feel and hear and understand mapped up against what really is. And it's awesome. It's complicated. It's good. So, okay. What I hope is that through the conversation is that maybe you just have this

slight little pivot, a different perspective about how you think about what you think is real. And, you know, that's not a, that's not for the faint of heart. So I hope that you'll be open and you'll get past us riffing in some of the stumbling areas that we kind of trip around and laugh about. It's really fun to me at least. And there's one section that we get into that I think for some of us might need a little context. It's the bottom-up versus top-down processing. And we shorthand it in the conversation. But bottom-up processing, it's referring to the stimulation information demands.

What demands our attention for survival. And it's called bottom up because it's like, it comes, it grabs the brain's resources and like avoiding threats or toxins. Right. And it triggers that part of our brain and brain stem and neurological system that must be alive for survival. And that's available to most organisms, right? That bottom-up processing. And then the difference though is in top-down processing. And this is unique to being human. This has become a main differentiation between humans and other animals in which we have the ability, properly conditioned, you know, from a mental standpoint, to drive our attention and not just being at the whips

end of environmental demands, but we're able to drive our attention from a top-down processing, you know, and what that really means is that we have the ability and the agency of being goal-directed so we can gate out noise and stimulus and distractions to stay true and committed to a now time goal versus a short time and a long time goal. So this conversation, it's heavy. It's rich. And it might require a couple passes, but maybe if you jot down some notes in it and then you have conversations with other folks in your life that you, and you wrestle with some of these concepts with them, that ought to be a significant application of this podcast. And I hope you do it. So

pull up your bootstraps because we're getting into the thick of it. And I love every part of this. And I love every part of all of these conversations where people are off access, challenging what we know to be true and living their life accordingly. It's awesome. And he's certainly done it. So Deepak also has a new short form podcast. It's called Now for Tomorrow. And I just had the chance to be a guest on his show. And we stitched that episode into the end of this conversation. So I hope you enjoy it as well. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with the legend, Dr. Deepak Chopra. Deepak, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

I am living well. And this is a really challenging time that we're all in. That being said, I'm really looking forward to understanding your framework, how you're looking at, I don't know, the crisis, the pandemic that we're in, but also uncertainty. And so I can't wait to have that part of the conversation with you. Sure, Michael. Yeah, before we get started, really, what is happening in your life today? What's the daily rhythm look like for you? Well, this morning I got up at 5. I stayed in bed for about half an hour doing nothing, just downloading some answers to some questions that I asked myself before I went to sleep. And then I did yoga for an hour. Then I meditated for an hour.

Then I did my daily Facebook Live. I did one interview and now I'm with you. And after I finish with you, I have one more media event and then I will go alone for a walk in the village here, which is pretty lonely right now, but gorgeous by the ocean. Then I'll do a short meditation in the evening and then I will watch the news only for half an hour once just to keep myself updated. And then around 8.39, I'll reflect a little bit on who am I? What do I want?

What's my purpose? What am I grateful for? Ask myself a few other questions and then go to sleep again. It's pretty boring from a regular person's point of view but it's very peaceful fulfilling and enjoyable from my point of view okay so um this is fantastic because it's super tangible and it's very clear what you're doing and the first half hour i kind of missed what you're doing the first half hour is you wake up and you're reviewing some of the questions that you were yeah you know i have a practice at night that is a combination of what is known in the yoga traditions as self-inquiry and that i follow with another practice called yoga nidra. So self-inquiry is any question that I have an issue with

that I'm trying to figure out. For example, last night was what is not necessarily something that I haven't tried to reflect on before, could be a variation. So last night, my question is, what is the mechanics of creativity? That's part of my self-inquiry. But then I have another practice called Yoga Nidra, where I feel every part of my body, sensations, and then do some interoception, which means I go inside my body and have some sense of what's happening to my organs, my heart, my stomach, my intestines.

It's a regular practice. And then after that, what I do is I slowly, progressively cut off sensory experience. So I close my eyes and visual experience is gone. Then I focus on sounds. But then after I focus on sounds, I turn my attention to sensations. So the sound is gone. Then the sensations are dominating my awareness. And after a while, I take my attention away from the sensations and focus on any images

that come across the screen of my consciousness, any thoughts. And finally, I allow my awareness to detach from thoughts and images and sensations and experiences, I just settle into what I would call awareness without experience, which is sleep. And miraculously, when I wake up in the morning and I'm lying in bed doing nothing, staring at the ceiling, some of the answers start to come. And that becomes the basis of my daily Facebook post or social media. I do only one social media post. The rest is kind of peripherally drawn from that one post.

So today's post was about creativity, which came to me in the morning when I woke up because I'd asked the question beautiful so your life by the way that's the mechanics of my books everything is just that there's nothing else I do and I enjoy it and I'm used to it and when I stop that stops I'll stop writing and I'll stop communicating. Goodness. Because I'll have nothing useful to say. Well, it's been a long time that you've had a lot to say.

How many books in total? 90. Major Human is my 90th book, yeah. Yeah. I was exposed to your work, I think it was in probably about 92, yeah, about 1992. And I thought, whoa, what is this? So, you know, I was very much a Western thinker and influenced by the culture of, you know, Western traditions, you know, including religion and sport and

politics and just being a kind of a beach kid, you know, growing up. And so I said, what is this? And at first I had two experiences. One was this makes kind of sense in a weird way that I don't understand. And at the other frame was like, no, I don't get it. And then, but I was so intrigued that I spent more time and more time investigating how you came to understand the insights and whether the insights are right or wrong, but how you came to get the insights. When I say right or wrong, I mean right or wrong for me at that time. And I tell you that the more time I've spent understanding

your insights, it's beautiful, brilliant. And I would like to do two things. I'd like to understand where you've been wrong at some point, because you are, you know, for so many, the leader of a spiritual wellness life. And so I'd like to know where you might've made the moral mistakes in your life. But before we get to all that, and I don't want any traps embedded in this conversation, but I'd like to know how, if you had chapters of your life, right? And there was titles to each one of those chapters. Like, I really do not know well enough how it started for you. What was chapter one?

What was chapter two? What, you know, what were the phases of your life that you've been through? And if you could give a broad stroke and, you know, brief understanding of each one, it'd be a brilliant frame for myself, but also for our community. Okay. Some of the earliest chapters in my life, something that comes very easily to me as a very early memory is when I was six years of age and my parents were in England. My father was training to be a cardiologist. I was living with my grandparents and uncle in an apartment in Mumbai today. It's called Bombay. It used to be called Bombay then. And one day we got a telegram from England that my father had passed all his exams and he was now a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, which in post-colonial India was

a big deal. We were brainwashed into thinking that the British knew everything. Not realizing it was the accent that impressed most of us, not the content of their thinking, but in any case. My grandfather was very happy. He was an old army sergeant from the British Army days. And he went to the roof of the apartment and actually emptied his rifle out with a few rounds in the sky as celebration. He took my brother and me to see a film, a movie called Alibaba and the 40 Thieves.

Then we went to a carnival and then we went to a fancy restaurant and came home late for us, about 10 p.m. Two o'clock, I woke up to the sound of wailing. He had died. He suddenly had a heart attack, maybe out of the excitement, and he was dead. They took him to cremation, and next day, they brought his ashes back in a bowl about this big.

And one of my uncles said, what is life? Yesterday, he was taking kids to the carnival and movies. Where is he now? A bunch of ashes in a bowl. My brother, who later became the chief of the dean of Harvard Medical School, continuing medical education. He was then four years of age, and his skin started to peel. And my uncle took him to every doctor that we could imagine, and nobody could diagnose him until some healer said he's feeling vulnerable, and that's a sign of his skin is shedding because he's feeling raw and vulnerable. When his parents come back, he'll be healed. So sure enough, when my parents returned,

my brother's symptoms disappeared. But I was still experiencing existential anxiety. What is the meaning of death? Why do we take life for granted? Six years of age. Well, that was my reason for going to medical school. But, you know, medical school, you don't study life, you study death. And you look at a corpse as the first experience is a corpse. So that started my journey. That was really my childhood was my existential anxiety around one episode. And then I read.

I read Shakespeare. I read philosophy. I read Western philosophy. I read Eastern philosophy. I read science. I went to medical school. I became an intern. I became an internist.

I then took training in endocrinology, neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, brain science. And at the same time, I was treating patients in Boston. And I recognized that, which any physician will tell you, by the way, it's not a big secret, that you can have two patients who have the same illness, they're the same doctor, get the same treatment, and have different outcomes. One person dies, the other one recovers, and in between there's a whole range of responses. So I realized that medicine as we knew it is not complete.

It was mechanistic and useful in acute illness, but it wasn't complete. So that led me into, you know, I was doing my research was, by the way, on neuropeptides, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, opiates. In the 70s, not many people knew about these chemicals, but somebody had won a Nobel Prize for actually developing the technique for measuring neurochemicals. And it became obvious that these neuropeptides, to me anyway,

were molecules of emotion and that they also modulated the activity of the immune system. I had no way of proving that. But now 50 years later, actually 40 years later, that's science. That's epigenetics. That's neuroplasticity, that's homeostasis, that's self-regulation, that's the role of inflammation. So, you know, what I was talking 40 years ago was based on personal experience, a little bit of science,

but mostly looking into wisdom traditions, particularly Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism and Buddhism, into what is the nature of reality. Is it physical? Is it mental? Is it both? Is it neither? What is fundamental reality as opposed to this reality? You know, this reality which we're experiencing is a perceptual activity that we call physical

reality. But that's actually not even physical reality. It's the interpretation of perceptual activity as physical reality. But I also realized that the whole Western model was based on the idea that matter is the ontological primitive of the universe, that we begin with atoms and force fields and molecules and particles, and we end up with physical matter and bodies and galaxies and trees and stars and rocks. I realized that that was a useful construct, but it wasn't true.

And so have you adopted more of a teleological approach or have you, like, is there something else? It's teleological in a fundamental sense. It's teleological, but it's more than that. It is what is the fundamental source of what we call everyday experience. So everyday experience is perception. We hear things, see things, smell things, taste things, touch things, see things. What is the basis of that? That's called the heart problem of consciousness in today's science. Nobody knows how neural activity

gives rise to experience. Even this experience you and I are having, nobody knows that. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard.

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I'm going, Ooh, Ooh. Yeah. Oh, I want, there's a question there, a question there. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but the way that you just framed it is that no one knows how the neurological experience creates our reality. That's right. But that begs the question that it is a bottom-up approach, right? is the primary responsibility or the prime mover, if you will, for our experience, as opposed to, you know, a top down, like a, some of the ancient traditions would say, no, you have consciousness because you have spirit and spirit is the invisible and, you know, fill in the blanks from there. And so coming from a medical perspective with a deep appreciation for the hard problem of consciousness, are you more of an embedded approach, meaning that the brain and body, brain and brainstem, give rise to consciousness? Or is consciousness something that is a hand-in-glove experience with the physical form that we have?

It's what you call a top-down approach or downward causation. You begin with nothing and you end up with everything. That's basically the downward causation. Upward causation assumes the existence of matter, which in my opinion is a human construct for a perceptual activity, which in turn is an activity in consciousness. So at the deeper level, there's no such thing as a brain, there's no such thing as a body, and there's no such thing as a physical world. These are human constructs for human experiences in human consciousness to human questions using a human nervous system, which in turn is also perceptual activity in consciousness. So what we call brain activity, whether it's in the cortex or midbrain or whatever, these are neural correlates of experience.

They don't cause the experience. They actually are symbolicates of experience. They don't cause the experience. They actually are symbolic representations of experience. So your body is a symbolic representation of experience. Your mind is a symbolic representation of experience. And the physical world that you see is also symbolic representation of experience. Okay. So you're using, in many respects, Thomas Aquinas' approach, right? When I look macro and micro, I can't explain it, right? I can look in the most incredibly advanced microscope, and I can't explain the origins of life. And when I look to the cosmos, meaning the peptide exchange that takes place, all the way up to the brain and to the body and then to the relationship with matter that we have outside of us.

And you're saying that is a bit of the, oh gosh, how would we say it? It's like the game inside the game. And if you're observing the game while in the game, of course, you're going to say this is the game. But as soon as you observe, if we could zoom out and see that this is actually not the fullness of a game, it's one segment of the game. So what I'm saying is that everything that we call reality is a human construct for an experience which is without construct. So let me show you an example. If I asked you what is this, you'd say this is a statue of probably an archetypal divine feminine goddess. Is that Krishna? But that's actually Tara, the goddess of compassion. I have Krishna too. Here's Krishna. So now if you're a baby and you haven't been exposed to language, this is not an object.

This is an experience. And actually, it's an experience of color, shape, and form, period. The word statue and the word goddess is a human construct for a collection of sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, and sensations. That's all we experience. The rest is a human story, whether it's a mythical story, philosophical story, scientific story, doesn't matter. Scientific stories are more useful because they help us create technology. But they're still stories. They're models of a more fundamental experience,

which perceptually is seeing, touching, feeling, thinking, and as a result of that, memory and imagination and desire and all of that, which is happening in consciousness. And even the construct statue is in consciousness. And it's a human construct. What would this look like to an insect with a hundred eyes? I have no idea. You know, I was reading, when I was doing research on my book,

Metahuman, I was looking at the anatomy of the common butterfly known as the Painted Lady. So the Painted Lady tastes the world, tastes the world through its antenna. Sorry, tastes the world through its legs, smells the world through its antenna, hears the world through its wings, sees the world with 30,000 lenses that move like a kaleidoscope, presumably giving it a shimmering, changing experience of forms and colors. So what is reality?

And I realized there's no such thing. It is how you construct it. Humans constructed reality by giving names to experiences and creating constructs like latitude, longitude, drainage meantime, nation states, money, Wall Street, democracy. And suddenly we took that to be reality when we all made it up. And it's the same way we made the Milky Way galaxy. Because when you look at the Milky Way galaxy, all that's happening is sensations, images,

feelings, thoughts, perceptions that are modified forms of yourself so the milky way galaxy is you just looking like that okay so you took yeah you took a big leap on that last one i want to i want to slow down because okay so i love that and then right before that though there was um the idea that we are um we experience the world through our sense structures, right? And we know that there's more colors than we can see. There's more sounds than we can hear. So we actually are a limited instrument. Bandwidth, narrow bandwidth.

Right, we're narrow bandwidth. There's a limitation. A little more than 5G, but still 5G. Okay, good. Yeah. And so we actually constrict or choke off the true reality of what is there, right? So that's one way that I think about reality is that, wait a minute, I got to remind myself, there's more colors that are out there.

There's more sounds. There's other stuff that we don't know. So my limited vehicle or instrument is not able to really get in touch with the true nature of what is even on the physical form. And then it sounds like you're taking that one level up and you're saying, but this whole thing is actually, we're all one. And so the matter that we're experiencing through a sense structure is just an emblem. It's an emblem for something that we've given meaning to. So if we apply that same emblem and...

As soon as you give meaning to color and form and shape, it becomes an object. Right. Okay. So we are... Are we sense... No. Are we sensory instruments or are we meaning making instruments

we're both we are actually the meaning making is in consciousness and the mind okay and the sensory sensory experience is just a perceptual modification of consciousness and the meaning is also given by consciousness to the experience and would you ascribe that to deepen our experience or awaken our consciousness or expand it, we need to widen our instrument, we need to gate out, we need to open the aperture so that we can sense more and we can have deeper understandings

from a meaning standpoint. Would you agree with that as an approach to life? As an approach. And ultimately, what is reality without instruments at all? And you know, when you say, when you say, I, you use the, we all use the word I, it's the most common word we use. So if I asked you, who is I, you'd say it's Michael Gervais. ask me whose eye is Deepak Chopra. That is also a construct in eye. The only eye there is, is prior to subject-object split. So once you have subject-object split, then you have separation.

There's you, there's me, and there's the world, and there's everything else, which is necessary in order to have experience. Because without subject-object split, there's no experience. So the transcendent fundamental reality prior to object split, subject-object split, is just a possibility field that wants to know itself through biological activity as this or that or this or that. And by the way, the perceptual activity is totally unreliable anyway. You know, my senses tell me that the Earth is flat, but I know it's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour.

My senses tell me that, you know, the ground is stationary and it's not. My senses tell me this is solid and I know it's proportionately as void as intergalactic space. And yet this misperception of reality is necessary for the survival of my biological organism. That last part is the mind-blowing experience that the limitation, so we are instruments and vessels sensing and meaning making that have limitations and that limitation here's where I get concerned is that the more concrete the thinker and sorry for concrete thinkers right now but people that are only able to grasp the material it becomes a narrow band and that narrow band becomes problematic for the true nature and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why it becomes a real problem because that narrow band also tells you that you have a physical body as a structure when in fact it's perceptual activity that has

been changing from a fertilized egg to a zygote, to an embryo, to an infant, to a baby, to a toddler, to an old person, to finally to death. And so all your anxiety comes from the misperception of the idea that you have a physical body, when in fact it's a process in awareness for a perceptual activity. And furthermore, the perceptual activity is totally inaccurate. So all your fears about old age, infirmity, death, all your existential anxiety, all your suffering

is based on misperception of what is real. Okay, that is maybe why we're so attracted to formal structure and religions that provide an answer for later, you know, or a thought. They don't, they just bamboozle you into another story. Yeah. But my point is that that's comforting, right? It's like, oh, there are the ones, the special anointed ones that tell us how to live now.

And they do say that, like, they do get into the mystic, right? Oh, they do. Yeah, no, no. that like they do get into the mystic right the mystical yeah no no the religious experience includes transcendence ethical values truth goodness beauty love compassion but it also includes loss of the fear of death the religious experience yeah the ideological framework in which it is given uh is uh is basically not based on experience because you have to believe somebody else's experience oh j, Jesus had that experience. And so, you know, he's pointing

the finger in the right direction. I end up worshipping the finger instead of looking at the direction he or she is pointing at. So that's the danger of religious dogma or any ideological process. As I know, I'm 73

years old and, you know, as I now, I'm 73 years old, and, you know, my final chapter is emerging. So, you know, in my tradition, first 25 years is education. Second 25 years is fame and fortune. Third 25 years is giving back. And the fourth 25 years is facing death. So right now, that's part of my practice. Every night, I face my death, my physical death. And right now, that's part of my practice. Every night I face my death,

my physical death. And there are two things that happen. One is a little bit of existential anxiety creeps up, you know, that what I took for real is not real. That, you know, or what I thought Deepak was is not really an entity. It's just a construct. So that's the anxiety. But then it also, in a few glimpses, gives you the experience of liberation. I don't have to worry about this person anymore. Let the person take care of the process that it was meant to take care of. I am free. So, you know, I'm at that, what you call now, in between the light and the dark night of the soul in my own life at this moment. Congratulations. You know, it sounds like you're entering into that trend. You're transitioning into that phase eloquently as

some would hope for you or know to be true. Yeah, getting rid of your provisional identities is not easy because all your life you've identified with what was a totally provisional identity, a changing body, a changing mind, a changing emotion, a changing personality that you can't even grasp. Every experience is ungraspable. It's ephemeral. It's evanescent. It dies before it's born or as soon as it's born. The only continuity comes from the presence of being that actually puts a story around it.

Yeah. That's okay. So that second layer is really fanatically wildly mind expanding is that all are expanding is all that we're doing is putting meanings to things and it's through like a limited instrument. so i've got to invest in totally unreliable yeah but if it was reliable you'd go extinct that's the other thing you know that's a that's a zoroastrian thought that like what you just said like yeah so zoroastrianism by the way you should read a book is after you interview me, I'm going to suggest that you interview Don Hoffman, who is a professor of cognitive. I can connect you to him. He's a professor of cognitive science at UC Irvine.

He trained with Crick, Watson and Crick, discovered the DNA. And so after Crick and all got the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA, Crick got very interested in the heart problem of consciousness. And Don Hoffman was his fellow. And, you know, he told Don, I want you to figure out how neural networks create experience. Don spent 30 years trying to figure it out, finally realized that there was no material explanation for any experience. So he actually abandoned, and he says he was sick for almost a year because he spent his entire career with matter

as the fundamental ontological primitive of existence. And now he said his whole life was wasted. Because if he's right, and if what we are saying is true, then Einstein and all these great scientists, grand unified field theories, general relativity, special relativity, quantum physics, all these guys were in a way naive realists. They believed that what you see is what is real,

when in fact what you see is the only thing that's unreal you know if you can see touch it taste it smell it think about it imagine it conceptualize it it's not real and so you should read his book it's called the case against the case against reality and by the way he's getting a lot of attention because unlike me, who's considered a flake, pseudo-scientist, pouting, pseudo-profound bullshit, this guy is a very respected scientist. I love it. I love it. Okay, so Deepak, one of the things I wanted to ask you was I wanted to talk to you about the difference between form and non-form, right? And we're getting into that right now.

Yeah, yeah. There's more non-form than there is form, but we're attracted to the form. There is only non-form, right? And we're getting into that right now. There's more non-form than there is form, but we're attracted to the form. There is only non-form. The form is a minor fragment of form getting excited into what we call perceptual activity. Oh, I would have called it structure. Yeah, I would have called it structure.

You'd call it structure. But structure, all structure, all form is phenomenon. It's phenomenon. All phenomenon is the excitation of something that is inconceivable, unimaginable, irreducible, without form, and therefore infinite. If it's without form, it's infinite. You know, because anything that has a boundary is not infinite. Because you, okay, so on that note, anything that has a boundary is not infinite. Okay, double, double, I like that. Because it makes you, Ben, like, well, okay, what could that be? But you said something like six minutes ago that I want to match

with something you're saying right now, as you you said that our experience happens prior to birth you know you didn't use that word birth but you said like there was this idea that there was an experience that we hold prior to us becoming or being and i want to make sure i heard that because it no i didn't say that this is what but you you are i'll explain what I mean now, because you asked the question. There's conscious experience. Like we are having a conscious experience right now. We are aware of this experience.

Your cells in the body are having an experience, but you're not aware of that. You know, your, your cells are exchanging molecules, chemicals, digesting food, communicating with the heart.

The heart is communicating with the heart, the heart is communicating with the brain. All that is not part of your conscious experience, but it's happening at the cellular level. So we have two kinds of experiences. One is conscious experiences and one is unconscious experiences. And then there are dreamlike experiences, which are in between, which is like amorphous, cloudy, ambiguous, and paradoxical, and contradictory, and not clear like a cloud, you know, and amorphous dreamlike experience. That's the unconscious or subconscious experience. But there's something called unconscious experience. We're not even aware of it.

And, you know, that's what epigenetics is also showing. The experiences of your ancestors. You know, your grandfather was in the Dutch famine during the occupation by Germany of the Netherlands. And you have diabetes because they were starving. Right? So now we go into the nature of experience. There's unconscious experience. There's of experience. There's unconscious experience, there's subconscious experience, there's conscious experience. What is experience? Experience is

consciousness knowing itself as sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and also as nothing. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler

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Thank you. I think I, you know, to your point earlier, it's immaterial really, you know, right? It's a, I want to ask you what happens after death. I'm more interested in... It's a human construct with no basis. There's no such thing. Okay, so there is... The moment you talk about... Birth and death are happening right now.

Your last thought is dead, so you could have the new thought. Okay, so... The last perception is dead when I have this perception. I love it. Birth and death are happening ceaselessly in a timeless now. Ceaselessly.

And your consciousness, your pure consciousness prior to experience is not subject to birth and death. That's what you said. That's what you said. Your pure consciousness prior to experience. Is not subject to birth and death. Because it is unfolding. It to birth and death because it is unfolding not yet it it it witnesses birth and death and it witnesses birth and death eternally and now what is what who is the witnesser who or what is the witnesser is not a person it's the it's the awareness in which the person

is an experience do you call that consciousness? I call that consciousness. Okay. So the consciousness is the watchmaker's watchmaker? If you want to use that metaphor, yes. But actually consciousness is not even the witness. In pure consciousness, even the witness goes away. The witness goes away.

Right. Okay. There's nothing. So in every experience, see the act of seeing the act of seeing, which is an activity in consciousness creates the scenery, which is this and creates the experience of a seer. So in every act of perception, there's a new seer and a new object of seeing.

The only thing that's constant is the principle of seeing. And by seeing, I mean any experience, observing, knowing, sensing, tasting, smelling, measuring, editing. That is the fundamental activity of consciousness as it divides itself into subject and object. My true identity is I'm neither the subject nor the object but the awareness of the subject and the object. Right now,

right now awareness is witnessing this, this, this, all this and all that I'm thinking about all this. It's too complex. The observer is not a person. The person is one of the activities in the observer. And therefore, the observer is not personal. The observer is not personal? No, it can't be. The person is an activity in the observer. So if the... There is a personal observer.

Okay. So if the... There is a personal observer, but there is an observer that actually actualizes the observer in every object, in every experience of perception. It's actually fantastic because then you know that you were never born, so you don't have to worry about that. You know, what we call life. Structurally, your body was, and this is what we freak out because we are... There's no body.

It's a continuing process of perceptual activity that you call a body. Which body? Fertilized egg, zygote, embryo, infant. Which body are you talking about? The one that has all the sun scars and damage. That body, the one I have right now. Yeah, the sun scars are actually very interesting that you mentioned the sun scars.

The sun scars are the seeds of attention and intention and the interpretation of past memory in non-local consciousness. In fact, there's no local experience whatsoever. Even this experience we're having, it's sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. And you say, what is the location of these sensations, images, feelings, thoughts? There's no such thing. The whole idea. A reductionist would say, no, a reductionist would say that they are, yes, there are.

Look at the peptides. idea a reductionist would say no a reductionist would say that they yes there are there look at the peptides that's the peptides is a human construct for another perceptual experience you know how do you observe a peptide in the same way as you do observe this and the same way as you observe the brain i love it yeah and so so if the if the thing that you're pointing to, which is the statue, if that's an emblem for something, what are we an emblem for? We are an emblem for the infinite creativity, which is inherent in pure consciousness. And we as a species are the only ones who can access that infinite creativity. Because every other biological organism is basically fixed. It has no self-reflection.

It has no self-awareness in the sense we are talking about, awareness of being aware. Because first there's existence, or what we call existence. Second, there's awareness of existence. If there was no awareness of existence, then there's no knowing of existence. So awareness of existence and awareness of existence if there was no awareness of existence then there's no knowing of existence so awareness of existence and knowing of existence and existence are synonymous the gift of being a tree is that you are not aware that you are a tree and not self-evaluating right the gift of being a yeah a dog or whatever is that there's not that meta kind of you know i think so

deepak i'd love for you to by the way just because you brought up the tree, let me, and then I'll shut up. Oh, no, no, no. Why was the Buddha enlightened under a tree? You know, people ask that question. And he was asked that, you know, and he's very famous for what is called the silent sermon. When he came out of his cave and he

held a flower and nobody knew what he was talking about. And he just looked at it and then Ananda, his favorite disciple, he smiled and people went to Ananda and said, he didn't say anything. What did you guys see? All we saw is the flower. What Ananda said afterwards, you know, he said, you saw a flower, we saw a flower, what was the difference? He said, I saw the flower, but I saw rainbows and sunshine and earth and water. I saw the wind.

I saw the stars. I saw the galaxies. I saw the infinite void all in that flower. He was the first ecologist. Yeah, first ecologist. It's a beautiful meditation that i was exposed to from uh tick not han one of his teachings sure which is uh when you look at the flower see the dirt right see the sun that made that happen you know like it's a beautiful like get to the nature

of what is you know and and and i'm. Of course, I'm still limited by my sensory experience and I get caught in the loop about, but I am still limited as Michael, but I am not limited as I am. There you go. Okay. So, um, God, what was that question I had loaded? Um, because you just, you keep saying things. I want to jump right through them with you is that, let me do this last one. I'm not limited by I am. When I've said this, I said, I had this idea and I got chin checked maybe about six months ago that I was wrong on the idea. And that Jesus, when asked, who are you, says, I am the I am. And I was like, I thought that I read that.

And the correction was he, he didn't say that. That's not how it went down. No, he didn't say that. And I was like, I thought that I read that. And the correction was he, he didn't say that. That's not how it went down. Yeah. That is Moses. Moses was asked the burning bush. Right. Who are you? And the answer was, I am that I am. Jesus did say before Abraham was, I am. That's a very profound statement. Okay. So pull on that insight for us. Before Abraham was, I am. So Abraham is a person, a process in I am. Also, when you read the Gospel of John, everybody translates it as, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the light, right? Something like that. I am the way, I'm the truth, and I'm the light, right? Something like that. I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the light. Take a minute to go into the Aramaic, and it says, I am is the way, is the truth, is the light.

So I am is not a person. I am is that in which the experience of a person is happening, including that of Abraham. Okay. experience of a person is happening, including that of Abraham. I, okay. So now I, it like, I've been on this thought for a long time, which is the, and you know, I'm again, let me go back to the limitations that I have. But the, when I say I am Mike, it's the eye that I'm much more interested in than the mic, right? Because you have identified yourself with those symbols. Yeah, that's exactly right. So what is this? So let's go back to that first part of it is that

what are we an emblem for? And I think you answered it, but it didn't stick. So if the answer is we are an emblem for the infinite creativity of fundamental reality if you want to call it god that's fine but as soon as people say god then they have an image and that's not fine because as soon as you define god or have an image of god or conceptualize god or imagine god you're putting limitations okay the infinite cannot be conceptualized period the infinite cannot right that's the borderless experience yeah the infinite the formless cannot be conceptualized but it knows itself by experiencing itself as formed okay that and therein lies one of the hard the hard problem of consciousness correct okay so what is so what is the hard problem? It's hard only, by the way, Michael, if you assume that matter is real.

It's not hard otherwise. Okay. It's not hard otherwise. Only consciousness, the invisible, unimaginable, ineffable, irreducible, causeless, timeless, unreduced is real. Everything else is a symbolic expression of that and an impermanent finite expression of that only the infinite is timeless irreducible without cause and formless and fundamental only the invisible is real so it's definitely a theological approach you got there. No, no, no. Listen, it's experiential. Every night I experience myself in deep sleep as formless being.

We all do. Every night. We all do. You experience yourself. That's right. As formless being. Okay. And then you start to wake up with a little bit of dreams and then, you know, it becomes sensations and images and feelings and amorphous things and then suddenly the world.

That world is a congealment or what should I say, reification of the abstract, but it's not real. When I was really young, I had this thought that I somehow could walk through walls. As consciousness, you do. I visit my home in Delhi every night. I not only walk through walls, I go across continents. Every leap in imagination

is through the invisible matrix of reality. Every leap in imagination, what you call a physical obstruction is basically two perceptual activities colliding. You know, you touch something, you touch something, electrons bumping into electrons. Actually, you don't even touch it.

I'm sitting on a chair. I'm not sitting. I'm floating on the chair. Right now. Electrons bumping in electrons give me the sensation it's not solid to your point right it's not solid because the electrons are moving to create the um uh durable experience that it's solid but when you look underneath it's actually not right it's more uh black you're sitting on this chair you're levitating right now

yeah but you know what my chair is not very comfortable you're levitating right now. Yeah, but you know what? My chair is not very comfortable and it kind of hurts right now. Well, the electrons are not having a good time with each other. That's all. Okay. So what is the hard problem for life for you? As a second skin to the hard problem of consciousness, what is your purpose? What are you doing?

As a person. That's correct. As a person, my purpose right now is to get rid of the person and experience my infinite being. You see, as soon as I get rid of the person, I'm an infinite being. And then how often are you an infinite being? These days, a lot.

You know, I love it because I see that all our suffering is based on misperception of reality. How much do you have to practice? Including the fear of death. How much do you have to practice for that? I don't know. It's like a fruit that is ripening for a long time, and then one day it falls. And I don't know how that happens. But, you know, I've been obsessed with this since I was six years old.

You know, only when I got to where I am now that I'm really actually realizing what I think or I feel could be the truth without worrying about its scientific validation. So you are the half of the half percenters of people that are pursuing consciousness and living it. Do you hope that for the rest? I do, I do. If we do, it could be a more peaceful, safe, just, sustainable, healthier, joyful, wonderful matrix of conscious beings projecting what we could only call heaven on earth. Because heaven, hell, purgatory, these are states of consciousness, nothing else. If you fast forward, if we played the game 10 years from now what do you imagine that our world looks

like being a realist i think we are insane as soon as this pandemic is over and we're let out of our cages which is where we are right now we're in our cages and nature is repairing ourselves. The skies are clearer, the oceans are bluer, the air is fresher, the fish are returning to the lakes of Venice. You can see the Himalayas from 100 miles away and life is coming back, I realized. And you can talk to any evolutionary biologist, they'll tell you if bacteria and bugs and insects and viruses disappeared, there would be no life in five years on this planet. If humans disappeared, life would resurrect in five years. This would be back to the Garden of Eden in five years.

So I am now questioning, how come we took our existence for granted? You know, Tagore, the great Indian poet, he said that I exist is a perpetual surprise. And I think if you were bewildered, surprised, confused, and absolutely awestruck with wonderment, with nothing other than you exist, it would set you on the goal to liberation. And as a realist...

So what am I thinking? The vast majority of people, once they're let out of their cages, will go back to what we were doing, make it worse till the next crisis. Yeah. How has the current condition, the current crisis that we're under, in any way has it knocked you sideways? Have you had any challenge that's come from this current condition? Actually, no.

I found this as an opportunity. I think it's a waste to not take advantage of an adversity for a better life for yourself and others so i've had a time to reflect and as i like to say reinvent my body resurrect my soul so i'm enjoying this period of whatever you want to call it physical distancing, quarantine, whatever. In fact, I do take a week or two of silence every year. So when this quarantine started, I did that again, took a week of silence. So it's been very restful for me.

And you are very practiced. You're very skilled at embracing uncertainty. And I imagine you might even say that's kind of the nature of all things, right? It's an unfolding... It is, it is. Yeah, it is. One of my favorite earlier books

was Freedom from the Known by J. Krishnamurti. And I realized that the uncertain, the unpredictable, and the unknown is where we live, pretending all the time that it's predictable, known. But all that's predictable, known is the past. Anything henceforth is unpredictable. And embracing the wisdom of uncertainty is actually the doorway to creativity. If everything was fixed, there's no creativity.

Brilliant. It's hard for people. It's a hard thing to embrace. It's programming. Yeah. So when people, the programming is I need a job to feed my family and I need a job to be able to whatever, survive in this world. And now that that is uncertain from an economic standpoint, what would you hope for people? What would you want them to? First of all, not take anything for granted, not take their existence for granted. Second, be grateful. Third, this is the time to ask those questions. What am I? What do I want?

What's my purpose? What am I grateful for? And fourth, put some love into action. Love without action is meaningless. Action without love is irrelevant. Love without action is meaningless. Action without love is irrelevant. Love in action. However, through the internet, donate some money to a good cause. Right now, a lot of people are suffering, maybe to a food camp or to frontline workers, first responders, if you can. Otherwise, offer other kinds of voluntary help listen to people tell them your you care about them show them your affection your appreciation your exception and start to bond physical emotionally and spiritually and at some point this will be over and hopefully you'll come out stronger and say no

because right now everything we do is totally insane and we call it normal everything we do is insane totally normal so this is biological warfare internet hacking cyber warfare terrorism war war eco-destruction, extinction of species, rape, pillage, murder. We call it normal. It's the psychopathology of the average that we call normal and we get so bamboozled by it that this we take for granted. Now, don't take anything for granted. Make a difference. Love in action, whatever that means to you. Brilliant. We have talked about things that are hard for any human to get their arms around. And if we could put handles on it,

what would you hope somebody could do on a regular basis to increase their ability to flourish? To live in the most awestruck way that you described earlier. And by the way, just as a little fun note, I measure daily success by how many times I can get my hair to stand up, meaning that like you can't try. It's like the moments of awe. And so, you know, I'm trying to be as present I can with the grandness of something and tied into the uniqueness of this present moment as it unfolds. And when I get that combination of those three, boom, you know, it's like I get a hit of it.

It's beautiful. You know, it's beautiful what you said, you know, Rumi, the great Sufi poet said, exchange your cleverness for bewilderment. And once you do that, you're struck with awe. I love it. Okay, so put some handles on something very tangible that you would hope people could do. Because you've got knowledge about Ayurvedic medicine, Western medicine, nutrition as a form of both. More Ayurvedic, I i think from your perspective about meditation and mindfulness and the practices if you were just to maybe maybe one is too too much of a

reductionist but if there was three things that people could do well i i'll tell you what i've done for the last 45 50 years is every morning I set four intentions. Joyful, energetic body. Loving, compassionate heart. Reflective, quiet, alert mind. And lightness of being.

And then I ask those four intentions to guide my choices for the day. That's it. And then I also decide that I'm going to cultivate stillness. That's it. And then, of course, I have now over the years, you know, developed, read and developed and practiced all forms of esoteric yoga and mindfulness and reflection and diving into the abstract, navigating these, what

the Buddhists call different lokas or different worlds, which are nothing other than frequency domains of consciousness. We call them locations in space-time, but that's another human construct. So I've done everything, but I say, if you have the right intention, and you want to know answers to very simple questions, then ask the question, who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? What am I grateful for? Live the question. Don't worry about the answer. Ask the question, live the question. Don't worry about the answer. Because if you ask the question, life will move you into the

answers. There is no answer in the absence of a question. And there's no question without an answer. It's all made up by human beings. And you would say that the most important question is Who am I? Or even better, what am I because who implies a person? You know, what am I? Because who implies a person? You know, what am I is better. Yeah, it's one of the most, you're going in the right direction. No, yeah. Okay, good. I'm going to reframe. You know, I've been asking the question, you know, who am I for meditating mindfully for 20 plus years, you know, on a regular practice?

Who am I is based on the idea of being a person and God being a dead white male, basically. That's the wrong question. It's propaganda. What am I? Okay, I'm going to play. All right, that being said, thank you for your time, your wisdom.

Thank you, Michael. Your insights. They've been a dramatic awakening for so many people and you're early in my path that set me down uh this creative uh curiosity and so um i want to make sure that we understand better how to follow you i know you've you've got a podcast so can you tell us i have three podcasts one is Potential, which is I do conversations like you and I are doing with thought leaders. Then I have something called Daily Breath, which is exploring the abstract. And now I have a new one, thanks to Gautam, called Now for Tomorrow,

which is very practical. I'm not a practical guy, but my son said I have to new one, thanks to Gautam, called Now for Tomorrow, which is very practical. I'm not a practical guy, but my son said I have to do it, so I'm doing it. You're a legend. Also, you can check me out. Just go to DeepakShopra.com if you want. Okay. And last little bit here. You've got a new book.

Is that right? My current book is Metahuman, which I just showed you. But yeah, I'm writing a new book right now called Total Meditation, How to Live the Awakened Life, which is what we're talking about right now. Yeah, there you go. Beautiful. Okay. I hope my hope from this conversation is people are inspired and bewildered by the, the, the, the concepts that are difficult to put words to. And at the same time, understanding that the pursuit will help others settle in to a sense of stillness and connectivity, both to themselves, to mother nature, to others. And in that pursuit, we become better as humans at being and the doing will flow from there.

And so, you know, thank you, Deepak. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. What a beautiful moment for me. So appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Very grateful for this.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much for being part of this conversation with Deepak. He's amazing. And I'm including my guest appearance on Deepak's new podcast now for tomorrow. It's about five and a half minutes in length. I'm going to talk about a morning mindset training to wake up in a very particular way to prime your brain and prime your mind for a great start of the day. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it. One of the amazing aspects of being human is that we have choices. Choices on what we think about, the actions that we take. And right now, if we're not thoughtful, it can feel like

our choices and our freedoms are becoming restricted. There's a high volume of news and information that is flooding our minds with what is wrong, what could go wrong. Both of those can easily slip into a state of anxiousness, that we're in unprecedented times with high uncertainty. And life has always had a floor of uncertainty. We never really knew exactly how our next moments in life would unfold. And we embraced that and we figured it out. To this point, we have figured it out. That's what we do. We do our very best to figure it out to our best abilities. Humans are amazing. And only at the edges of our abilities can we fully realize what we are truly capable of. So what's different now? Structurally, so much is changing that it can start to feel overwhelming,

possibly too big. And in return, we begin to feel small, unable to work in concert with the unfolding, unpredictable unknown. And while there are scores of really smart actions that we can take at the moment we recognize that our stress levels are too high, or we feel overwhelmed and anxious, like breathing or connecting to friends and family, or being of service, or exercising, or meditation, or prayer, I want to take a moment to talk about a very concrete approach to get ahead of anxiousness and stress, to go upstream, if you will. One of the reasons that we get knocked sideways with chronic stress and anxiousness is that we start to feel like our ability to influence how we function in life is becoming compromised. So the main choice that I want to anchor to is the

choice in which you wake up in the morning. Before you pull your sheets off in the bed, before your body wakes up, you want to also wake up your mind. So this is called a morning mindset routine. It's a four-step process that takes anywhere from 60 seconds on upward to six minutes, if you like. Here are the four steps, and I'll explain them in detail later. Step one, one breath. Step two, one thought of gratitude. Step three, one intention. And step four, be right where your feet are.

So the first step is about one deep breath. That's it. Just take one deep breath before you check your phone, your email, social media, or connect to the outside world. This takes anywhere from about 16 to 20 seconds. It's a very small action that creates a moment to be before engaging with the stressors of the world. And it really just starts your day with a focus on a very simple task that is 100% under your control. So this isn't check the box, do a breath. This is a complete connection to your inhale and then the same type of intense connection to your exhale. So the second step is to be connected to

one thing that you're grateful for right now. Again, this is not check the box. This is feel and experience at least one thing that you're grateful for. And if you want to continue with two or three or 12 things that you're grateful for, that's great as well. The third step, one clear intention. This is not about what you're going to do today, but rather how you're going to be you in particular parts of your day. So this is using your imagination to create a quick snap and the integrated feeling of what it feels like when you're going to do something today that you want to do. Again, it's not what you're doing, but how. The intention behind the what that you're going to do.

The fourth step, just take off your sheets, put your feet on the ground, and just take a moment to be in the same place as your body. Allowing your mind and your body to be in the same place. In essence, you're taking a moment to be in the same place as your body, allowing your mind and your body to be in the same place. In essence, you're taking a moment to be present. These four steps, the morning mindset routine, opens up particular networks in your brain to support a calm focus, gratitude, the imagination of what's good, and then just a quick moment to be fully present. This is a great way to wake up your body, your brain, and your mind before you engage in the activities of your day. And starting new habits can be tricky. And one of the ways to do that is to keep a log, just to keep a little checklist of how you're able to do this. And maybe you just set a small

little goal for three days, and then double that to six days to do this. And maybe you just set a small little goal for three days and then double that to six days and 12 days. And before you know it, you're up into the 24 and the 48 days in a row. And I'm wishing you the very best as you're making choices and owning those choices to create habits that will fuel you to absolutely explore your potential on a day-to-day basis. is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday.

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