Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Deepak Chopra: How To Know God (#124)

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

DEEPAK CHOPRA™ MD, FACP, is the founder of The Chopra Foundation , a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global , a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. He's a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book and national bestseller, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (Harmony Books), unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution and his latest book, Total Meditation (Harmony Book, September 22, 2020) will help to achieve new dimensions of stress-free living and joyful living. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” https://chopra.com/ https://www.deepakchopra.com/ @DeepakChopra 00:00:00: Intro 00:07:15 What do you make of the way science is regarded? 00:08:54 Research on the effect of meditation on aging (telomeres) 00:10:12 Science is not the only way to "know" the world. 00:14:20 Can matter create mind? How is wisdom different than knowledge? 00:16:24 External Vs internal knowledge and the scientific method. 00:19:51 Do you believe that triangles exist? What is the nature of existence? 00:21:29 "God of the Gaps" and the elusive definition of consciousness. 00:23:44 Different ways to think about consciousness from a spiritual perspective 00:30:54 Defending extension of the senses in the service of science. 00:33:09 Deepak explains consciousness. 00:38:37 What is your moral imperative? Why must you be vegan? Related thoughts on the evolution of consciousness. 00:43:04 How do you organize your life? 00:47:44 The #1 thing in Deepak's life. 00:48:58 Deepak on the 4 stages of life and where he is now. 00:51:41 Advice from Deepak on how can we extend our lives? 00:58:07 Strategies on to have a disagreement like an adult. 01:01:02 What would you put in your "ethical will"? Your values to be passed down. 01:01:55 What would you put in your billion-year time capsule? 01:04:57 What advice would you give your younger self? And please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Artwork: Sloan Sobie Research: Nick Daigler Music by: Yeti Tears, Theo Ryan Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to this edition of the Into the Impossible podcast. Today I've got Deepak Chopra. Why would I have Deepak Chopra on the Into the Impossible podcast? Well, you're about to find out. He's been called many things, most of which are not very kind and befitting of him. But I found him to be incredibly intelligent, brilliant even in his explication of what it means to be human and even what he calls metahuman. We talked about a few things today that will really blow your mind as it did for me,

including what his daily routine is, how he, as a chance, such a stunning success materially and otherwise, we'll also talk about what he calls the four phases of life and how that has helped him confront the anxiety of his eventual death. And finally, we'll talk about ways that he believes that are backed by Nobel Prize-led research here in the San Diego area, that life can be extended through some of the tools which he provides on this episode, and that includes ways to think about meditation and contemplation as a practice. And last but not least, you'll get to hear how Deepak upgraded 10xed my previous mantra from TM, Transcendental Meditation, from the original one that I got, which was Schmuck, to a new one.

You'll have to tune into the end to find out what that is. You're going to enjoy this ride with none of them Deepak Chopra. you won't want to miss how he describes how he's perceived by other scientists like me, but he is an incredibly intelligent, cheerful, humble human being. And I greatly enjoyed this episode. I know you will too. Please share comments in the links below. Please subscribe to the end of the Impossible podcast.

And I'm looking forward to having him and his colleague, Don Hoffman and Leonard Miladno on again, as well as Frank Wilcheck, winner of the Nobel Prize. You're a shout out to Frank Wilczek from Deepak. and their collaboration together will convince you. If nothing else will, that Deepak is to be taken seriously, even by so-called serious scientists like myself. Anyway, sit back, enjoy this episode. I know you're going to love it.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishing from magic. Today I want to welcome a very special guest to the Into the Impossible podcast. It's a friend of mine, a friend of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, and it's Deepak Chopra. And you may wonder why, as Brian Keating, a professor of physics, an astrophysicist, talking to Deepak Chopra? I mean, Deepak, do you know what physicists tell me

when I tell them I'm talking to Deepak Chopra? Do you have any idea what they might say? Sudo-scientist, bullshit, what else? Profound crap. That's a butt-skirt. credulous yes exactly but i always tell them i know no one else who has is as intellectually honest as you and i say that from years of knowing you and on observing you that's an observer although you're going to tell me if my observations are biased in any way but to all the people out there all the physicists that

are snarking and turning off this interview uh you're really doing yourself harm because uh what depok has to teach us is incredibly profound. And you might not agree with his conclusions, but I ask you to trust me if I've gleaned any credibility for you and you're still watching this video after 30 seconds of this disclaimer. You will learn a lot about the most important attribute of a scientist, and that's humility. And I think Deepak, we live in a simultaneous superposition of science and scientism, where we sort of worship science, and we all think we know what science means. But as I often point out, we really don't have a universal definition of science, and I call that the hard problem of consciousness, because the awareness of science is at an all-time

low, whereas our technology and our ability to damage other people is at an all-time high. So today, I want to talk to you about the impact that you've had on me, which is really through your written word and also having spoken with you on numerous occasions. I should point out that I'm basically the lowest level of your physics support. There are people by the name of Sir Roger Penrose, who is a big booster of Deepak Chopra. There's a man by the name of Leonard Maladnau, who once challenged Deepak at Caltech with the very same accusations that you just heard him level at himself. And who is one of your closest collaborators these days, Deepak? Right now, Menas Capatos was a physicist.

He used to be at Berkeley, and then he was Chapman. He's from MIT. That's where he trained and got his PhD from MIT. And Maynass is a very interesting man, who, of course, is a proponent of the John Boyntman-Copenaghan interpretation of quantum mechanics, which places them also in the contract. position right now, but he's also very spiritual. And we, we together and go to spiritual retreats.

And the other colleague I was referring to is Leonard Malad now, who not only endorsed this book, You Are the Universe, we'll be talking about this book today, but he also co-wrote a book with you called Two Books, War of the Worldviews and another book about science and God. I found them very duplicative, though, Tepa. Why is that? Why are there two books written by you and Leonard? No, no, there's only one book. I think you're putting the paperback. Yes, I'm joking. It has a different title in the UK, and that's the one that I also read.

So I'm just joking about that. But the other person who's become a very close associate of Deepak, so much so that he asked Deepak to endorse his book is none other than this man, former guest on The Into the Impossible Podcast, Frank Wiltshire. And if anyone wants to call Frank Wilcheck full of, you know what, I think they've got their work cut out for them. So Deepak said of this book, for a century, science has invalidated soft questions about truth, beauty, and transcendence. It took some considerable courage for Frank Wilchek to declare such questions or within the

framework of hard science. And that's sort of what you do. I see you as a bridge between the notion of science and scientism as sort of a cure-all and as Arthur C. Clark, the patron namesake of our organization. here at UC San Diego, he said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And what is technology, if not applied science? And so, therefore, I think we live in an age where science is almost worship. And what do you make of that, Deepak, is their opening question? What do you think of the esteem that science is held in? You're an MD. You're not a traditional

research scientist the way that, say, I am, or Frank Wilcheck is. But what do you make of the pedestal which science finds itself these days? I think science is the biggest adventure that human beings have taken ever. And the scientific revolution is only 500 years old, which is nothing compared to our life on this planet, which is over 200,000 years is homo sapiens. and of course compared to life on our planet other than human. And the agricultural revolution occurred 12,000 years ago. The so-called cognitive revolution when humans started making up stories.

And the first stories were gossip, basically, which are still the most dominant stories of humankind. But that led to other stories, mythology, religion. And then an explanation of those stories, theology, philosophy. And now we have science. And science, as I said, only 500 years of that, the major breakthroughs in science, maybe since Newton and Descartes at that time, the so-called European Enlightenment. But in the last 100 years, science has actually made such breakthroughs

that make this conversation possible, right? make it possible for us to send probes into intergalactic space. It makes it possible for us through biological sciences to understand the workings of the human body. That's what I am, a physician. And by the way, we do do research at UCSD. We are looking at the biological correlates of consciousness. And we published a lot of papers,

including some in nature, on the effects of reflective cell, inquiry and meditation on things like telomeres. That work was done in collaboration with Elizabeth Blackmun, who is a Nobel laureate also in biology and physics. And she had never heard of what I do. And I convinced her to do the study. And once the study was completed over one week of a reflective, mindfulness, transcendent experience,

the level of telomerase went up by 40%. that had never been seen. Gene expression changed. That had never been seen. We've come a long way through science. My only question is, and life, as we know it, wouldn't be possible without science. If we didn't have a vaccine right now,

maybe the whole human population would be at risk of a pandemic. And that's happened in the past. So science is the biggest, best adventure we've taken, as human beings, it's part of our revolution. But is it the only way of knowing what we call truth of fundamental reality? That's a whole different question. You know, so you made the distinction earlier

between science, which is a methodology, theory, experiment, observation, validation, falsification, and it progresses. Every day, we learn, something new and we realized that something we thought was we knew is not new.

So, you know, the science is that way the best story also because it's willing to change. It's not so dogmatic. But scientism becomes a religion. It says this is the only way to know the truth, including

myself. This is the only way to understand why we suffer, why we grow old, why we die, why we fear debt. why we fall in love, why we have longing, aspiration, creativity, vision, insight, inspiration. You know, until I know that the dance of molecules and particles and force fields and gravity can do this, I also rely on my inner practice and reflections, who am I that wants to understand science? What am I that wants to understand the brain?

what am I that wants to understand the cosmos? Now you can say I'm a cosmologist, but that's your train. Who are you before you were a cosmologist? Why did you even choose to go into cosmology? So, you know, there's a part of us that is full of mystery, full of wonder, full of awe, full of questions, full of doubts, full of fears,

full of aspirations, full of longings. I want to know what that is. And then I want to see how that corresponds. to the experience of science, which is what's going on? What's out there? And I'm asking, yes, but who's asking a question?

Who wants to know and why? I think about science as even the hard sciences, as social science, in that science is done by people. We have some hopes and actually some progress in artificial intelligence. And as you and I and Frank Wilczek and Leonard Milano talked about last week, I'm most interested not in artificial intelligence.

I think intelligence is overrated sometimes, and I'll give some examples of that, if you like, but really wisdom is in short supply, and wisdom is the pinnacle of science. I think of, you know, my computer has a lot of knowledge, and in fact, science itself means knowledge, but I think of actual practical science where it impacts daily life as a process, and that is wisdom-based, and wisdom is very different from knowledge. So science being a social enterprise, that means that it's done by human beings. And human beings have fallacies, flaws, biases, and prejudices, some of which are inherent, some of which are invidious that they are poisonous to the human population.

I can think of several scientists, including James Watson, William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor. These people were incredibly brilliant, both Nobel laureates. and both advocated in some form or another for philosophies that are eugenic in nature or discriminatory, prejudice, bias. And still to this day, in the case of Watson, it's really kind of outrageous that he's still making such statements. But anyway, science is done by human beings. We have flaws. But I want to ask you a question that's really been plaguing me since I read several of your books. But in particular, You Are the Universe asserts that effectively consciousness is a distributed,

property and it is the result of matter as you asked Frank Wilczek. You said, can matter create mind? What is your answer to that question? Does matter create mind or does mind create matter or something completely different? Something completely different. And since you asked about wisdom, let me tell you how I think about wisdom. I think of wisdom being very different from knowledge, knowledge being very different from information and information being very different from data. So today, the data would be maybe it's 65 degrees, 10 degrees Fahrenheit in San Diego. The information would be, well, it's a pleasant day and such and such activities are

possible. The knowledge would be, what should I choose to do with this weather? And the wisdom would be, does this nurture the experience of sentience or life? And that is, in my mind, the hierarchy. Wisdom is the top of the pinnacle. If you have knowledge without wisdom, knowledge can be diabolical. As you just said, we have atom bombs, we have climate change, we have extinction of species, we have mechanized death, we have cyber warfare, etc., etc., etc.

That's also an aspect of knowledge, but it's not an aspect of wisdom for certain. With the same knowledge, we could actually create more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful work. Same knowledge, same information, same data, but a different awareness, a different consciousness. So wisdom is the totality of consciousness that supports what I call evolution. But when I call evolution, I mean evolution of consciousness

into expansion of awareness into how we know what we know or what are our modes of knowing. So when I go in that direction, then I begin to say that we need a conversation between those who are looking out there and those who are asking questions of themselves. Because the scientific method only gives us knowledge of a species-specific perception and cognition. Species-specific perception and cognition. Now, when we spoke to Frank Wilcheck, he says, don't underestimate the properties of money.

matter. So you just ask me, does matter create mind? Now, where I'm coming from, Brian, and this is where I get in trouble with the scientists, I don't believe in the existence of matter. I think matter is a human construct for a species-specific perception and its interpretation. Now, it's a very useful construct, right? Because we we are experiencing what we call matter all the time, including our own bodies, okay? Including our own bodies. But then as we look into the deeper nature of matter, as even Frank said, don't underestimate matter. It becomes more and more and more effemarant. It becomes more and more transient. It becomes more and more ungrascible. You need a hadron collider to observe a Higgs-Bor.

on which has a life of 10 to the bar minus 22 seconds. So you need all this technology to see something, which by the time you observe it, it doesn't even exist. And then we say this gives mass to the universe, and it does. Now here is the interesting thing. It doesn't matter what you call it, this mysterious entity. You can call it matter. But if we believe that matter does all the things that Frank said,

Frank said, it does include creating models of matter, then matter is God. I mean, if matter can think, visualize, long, aspire, then matter is God. And it's fine. Call it matter. Doesn't matter. You can call it Einsoff. Somebody else can call it whatever. But this is the mystery that matter ultimately turns out to be non-material. And what about the experiences of other species? What about the experience of an insect with a hundred eyes or a snake that navigates through infrared or a butterfly that senses ultraviolet or a chameleon whose eyeballs swiveled on two different axes?

What does the world look like to a chameleon? I can't even remotely imagine that experience. So why is the human experience absolute and human constructs absolute when we made them up? We made up the story of money. We made Wall Street. We made latitude.

We made up Greenwich meantime. Why not Botswana meantime? So, you know, we have all these constructs. We embed ourselves in these constructs. And then we say that's reality. But no, that's not reality. It's partial reality. I want to dig deeper into that because I think it's incredibly succinct in a way.

And it's open to many different interpretations. And I hate when people misinterpret me and my guest. I want to ask you a question. and we maybe have discussed this in the past, do you believe that triangles exist? Do triangles have the same status as matter in Deepak's mind? So in my mind, existence is a better word for reality, existence. By the way, that I didn't make that up.

It comes from my tradition of contemplative inquiry. So existence means any thing, that exists. This phone exists. A triangle exists, at least in my experience, okay? A circle exists in my experience. This body exists in my experience. But thoughts exist in my experience.

Feelings exist in my experience. Imagination exists in my experience. Creativity exists in my experience. Emotions exist in my experience. So existence is anything that appears on the screen of consciousness, including triangles and galaxies and atoms and molecules, but also thoughts. So I don't make a distinction between mind and matter. They are complementary aspects of a deeper reality, which is neither mind nor matter.

What is that deeper reality? It's formless. It has no form. So how can I say that? Because if it had a form, I would be able to see if it doesn't have a form, right? I think I'm realizing why you might be controversial to scientists. And the reason why involves, have you ever heard of the concept the God of the Gaps? Yes.

Yes. Yes. So I think that sometimes scientists look at you and what you propose as sort of science of the gaps or consciousness of the gaps. In other words, whatever cannot be explained or defined without ultimate reductionism becomes evidence of experience, consciousness, emotions, however you like. And I once did an exercise, somebody told me, if you go to Wikipedia, the source of all scientific wisdom and knowledge, and you go, even click on Deepak Chopra, I don't care, click on Brian Keating.

And you keep clicking the first word in every Wikipedia page, eventually you will come down the rabbit hall of recursion, and you will get to philosophy. In other words, these concepts exist in the mind. Philosophical means love of wisdom, right? So I think that sometimes you're perceived as being overawed by the power of something that's hard to define. If even Wikipedia can't define what consciousness is, this is a truly hard problem of consciousness. And you and I have spoken along with Nelm Chomsky and Stuart Hammerhoff and Sir Roger Penrose, recent winner of the Nobel Prize. And we talk about consciousness. And it seems to me, the lack of universal definitions for something is a sign that maybe it's not within human

purview to explain. For example, you can talk to somebody about abortion, incredibly complicated, incredibly difficult, emotional subject. And you can say to them, I can make you and I agree on even if I'm pro-life and you're pro-choice, I can say, a baby doesn't exist before the parents met, before the parents were even in the same lifetone. And similarly, a baby exists after it's born and is in the hospital delivery room. Between those two states is a Schrodinger cat-like object, which is in a superposition, but not according to science, but according to perception. And I feel like consciousness is like that as well. And so, you know, it's almost as useless, in some sense to me, and I want you to prove me wrong, to think about consciousness because

we can't even come to a definition that is universally agreed upon. And so therefore, people project their hostility to you and your definition of consciousness. And that's why I think that you're held with some disregard in the scientific community. It's 100% true. On the other hand, the definitions of consciousness in scientific circles are ambiguous, but they're not, and even in philosophical circles, they're ambiguous, but not for those of us who come from spiritual traditions where consciousness is the only reality. So if you want a definition of consciousness, here it is. Consciousness is the knowing element in every experience.

We are having that experience right now because we are conscious beings, okay? It's the knowing element. It's not just that I know, I know that I know. So consciousness also is self-aware. Consciousness is that in which all experience occurs. I think you'll agree that this experience is occurring in consciousness. Consciousness is that in which all experience is known. I think you will agree that we know that we are having this experience.

And the last part is difficult. Consciousness is that out of which all experience is made. So sound is a perception which is a modified form of consciousness. So is seeing, so is hearing, so it's tasting, so is smelling, so is thinking, so it's feeling, so is imagining. So it's all perceptual activity in consciousness that allows us to create the constructs of mind and matter. And consciousness itself is in the gap. Right now, if I wasn't going to see, if I closed my eyes, imagine the Empire State Building, then I close, keep my eyes closed, imagine the face of my mother.

Okay, now imagine Wall Street. Now imagine listening to John Lennon's imagine. How did you do that? Explain to me scientifically how did you create the image of the Milky Way galaxy just by thinking about it? Or you think of a rose. You have to return to the formless, to the gap in you in order to have that experience. So between every thought, there's a gap. If there wasn't, this would be br-uh.

Okay, the fact that there's syntax, grammar, sequential, unfoldment of ideas means that between every idea there's a gap. Between every perception, there's a gap. Between every sensation, there's a gap. Between every thought, there's a gap. Between every image, there's a gap, and the gap is where all the action is. Now, if I wanted to give you an explanation of the gap in scientific terms and risk myself, because that's what I get, really cute.

The gap is potential. It's before your father looked at your mother with a gleam in his eyes. Okay, that was in the gap. The potential for Brian to emerge. Nine months later, after your dad looked at your mother with that longing. That's what I called my personal Big Bang.

Your personal Big Bang. So you existed as potential in your father and your mother. And like that, everything exists in potential. There's the form and there's formless. There's the manifest, there's the unmanifest. There's the perceived, there's the unperceived. And there are complementarities.

Reductionism lets me look at the particular, but holism lets me understand what is actually going on. Even if I look at my own body, look at my own body, my blood pressure, my heart rate, my heart rate, immune system, my endocrine system, they're all instantly correlated. There's no explanation for by feedback loops correlate with other feedback loops. It seems to me non-local. Now, of course, if I say that, again, I get ridicule.

What does the gap contain? It contains infinite possibilities. Unpredictable. It makes quantum leaps of creativity and imagination. When I asked you to think of John Lennon's song and think of your mother and then think of the rainbow, you took quantum leaps between one image and another. You didn't travel from one to the other. It is indeterminate.

It is the source of attention and intention, and it is creative. So where consciousness is fundamental is the creative impulse of evolution that gives rise to perceptions and interpretations of perceptions through which we create models of reality. I think we need to understand both the formless and that which has formed. Without the gap, you can't have the space-time event. Space-time events are punctuations and syntax of the gap.

As I told you when we were setting this up and talking with your assistant, who I love, I said, I want to call this episode the Deepak of The Into the Impossible podcast with yours truly, Dr. Brian Keating, and Dr. Deepak Chopra, who's a real doctor, not like me, but I want to call it censors and sensibility, because the famous book, Sense and Sensibility is sort of reminiscent of what we do as human beings, but I'm an experimental physicist. I think, I don't know how many experimental physicists you've had in contact with. You've certainly known a lot of theoretical physicists like Frank Wilchek's or Roger Penrose,

you even knew Stephen Hawking, you know Leonard Mladen now, and you know many other people, and you've debated people because you have a extremely rare gift, which is that you're eloquent and courageous. And your eloquence will often be found most noticeably when you are being humble, as you were on the stage at Caltech, when you first were confronted by this, by this, you know, somewhat, somewhat obsteperous Leonard Mlad now. telling you that you don't know about quantum mechanics, and I'll teach you about quantum mechanics, and you were humble enough to accept that challenge. Deepak to say, would you like to have a short course in quantum mechanics sometimes so that we can straighten out your slightly misuse of quantum notation? I would be honored, sir, and I accept your offer with great gratitude,

and I would like to be educated so I can be clearer in my dialogue. And we'll talk later about how Arthur C. Clark said the only way to know the limits of what is possible is to venture beyond those limits into the impossible. And that's the name of this podcast. But anyway, I want to defend the sensor community. So I am an experimental physicist. I build senses because they augment the reality that I perceive in that they transmutate things that are in principle, unobservable, like voltage. Voltage is not a sensor. We don't have a sensory organ for voltage. Sharks do. But there are also sensors that no animal has a sensor for, such as neutrinos that experimental colleagues of mine have detected as they propagate from the bowels of

a supernova explosion, literally millions of light years away, to our telescopes here on Earth. we use those to augment. The first thing that Frank said on our live stream, and I'll have a link to it up here, or maybe I'll put it over here when you're all watching this video, the first thing that Frank said, I noticed he was slightly defensive when we got on the call last week, and he's, yeah, he's an exceptional human being. And I've noticed this with all my conversations with Nobel prize winners, that they, except for Sir Roger Penrose. He's, he's extremely, you know, risk, risk philic. He loves to take on new risky projects. But let me just say with Frank, the first thing he said is, well, you know, consciousness doesn't have this role and spirituality doesn't

have this role because there's no detector that you have to tell the operator thereof that, oh, I was thinking about God at this moment, or I was thinking about this. Are there things that are extrasensory in that we believe that they are operative in the universe from your perspective, consciousness potentially, that have an effect, and could they be measured using tools in a laboratory? Because I think that would go a very long way towards proving, to whatever extent, such a thing as possible, but more accurately, as you mentioned, falsifying. Maybe even Deepak, the mark of a good scientist that you are would be to accept the falsification that consciousness can't be measured. Do you think consciousness is susceptible to the measurement technologies that

my students and I employ in our laboratories? No, because consciousness is what measures. Consciousness is what measures. Consciousness conceives, governs, constructs, and becomes what it measures. So let me explain that for a moment. Consciousness is

not measurable because it is not observable. It is actually the basis of observing. When you do science, experiments are conceived in consciousness. They're designed in consciousness.

Theories are constructed in consciousness. Observations are made in consciousness. You cannot reify consciousness as an object because the object itself is a perceptual interpretation in consciousness. Do you mean a bias?

Do you mean a bias? Like I'm looking for gravitational waves from inspiring black holes, and therefore that constrains the answers I can get? Or do you mean... Yes, every observation is a selective observation. And in order to observe one thing, you have to ignore everything else. What about serendipitous discoveries? Like the universe is accelerating in its expansion.

That was not the... Actually, that was the opposite of what the observers expected to observe. Where was the serendipity understood? where was the concept of serendipity itself? What is serendipity? What is correlation? These are all human concepts for modes of knowing and experience in consciousness. So you see, this is the problem with the reductionism,

is we are only looking at what's out there. We are never asking what is it that is observing. So consciousness is the observer, the process of observation, and that which is observed simultaneously. You need all three. You need an observer. You need a mode of observation. And then you need something that is known as the observed.

And consciousness is all of those before it modifies itself into experience, which then we construct models of. So even the human body is a model in consciousness. There's no such thing as a human body. in my opinion because when we talk of a human body we think of it as a noun. But actually, the human body is a verb. It started as a fertilized ovum.

It will end in death. So if you say, I am my body, you have to define which one. Am I the fertilized egg? Am I the zygote? Am I the embryo? I'm I the baby? Am I the toddler? I'm at the middle-aged guy worried about impotence?

Am I the old guy worried about debt, which one am I? So you see, as soon as I make a material construct of anything, I have a problem. Every form turns out to be a phenomenon. And the phenomenon is an interpretation of perception and cognition

in human consciousness, not in bacterial consciousness, not in the consciousness of a giraffe. Even the idea of a giraffe is in human consciousness. The giraffe doesn't know it's called a giraffe. A proton doesn't know it's called a proton. The Milky Way Galaxy

He doesn't know it's called Milky Way Galaxy. So when I see an object, and Brian, you have to listen to this carefully. I'm not seeing the object. I'm seeing everything other than what the object is. You know, Immanuel concept, we see only the surface. We don't know the thing in itself. We never know the thing in itself. Now, of course, if you ask Ryan, he'll say it's mass charge and momentum or spin.

Okay, but who came up with that concept? on what basis. You cannot, as Max Plan said, get behind consciousness. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV!

Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, fringe arrow, the 100 NX files,

may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Right. He's just thought. I think so. I think all these things,

and I think consciousness is not alone. I think there are chicken and egg type problems. Oh, by the way, Deepak, my son, one of my sons came up with a solution to determine which came first, the chicken or the egg. Neither, neither. That's their complementarities.

Again, you know, no, no, no, you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong, Deepak. My son went to Amazon.com. He ordered a chicken and he ordered an egg and the egg came first. Okay, good. I get it. Well, I do agree with you that these are incredibly vexing problems. I note, though, that you must have a code in which you live your life.

I know you have a code. I have a code that's very different from yours. I'm a Torah practicing Jew. And it has a very different perspective on life and the meaning and the hierarchy of life. We, as Jews, put human life at the apex. And that is how I believe we can define an absolute sense of morality in the absence of which I don't think you can. Sam Harris has said essentially you could get all the laws of morality and how what is truly right, not the laws of ethics. I think the golden rule, the silver rule, those are kind of universally accepted in some sense.

But morality, you know, who is to say that, you know, eating. a potato is not the same as eating a chicken if, you know, I say they both have eyes. And I know you practice vegetarianism or veganism. I forget which one. But the point is, in Judaism, we are not allowed to eat a person that's explicitly forbidden. And yet we are entitled to eat animals. And so my question to you is, can this notion of consciousness, how does it dovetail, how does it allow one to consume for their purposes living material, maybe even unconscious material, or conscious material rather? And on what basis do you, in your practice, can you justify that?

So human consciousness is the primacle of the evolution of consciousness. is and all biological organisms are conscious agents and each conscious agent you know I'm using terms carefully right now because these are loaded terms when you soul spirit God and soul they're loaded terms so conscious agent is any any sentience that is capable of responding to its environment or even making a choice some So we as humans have the highest expression of that because we are self-aware. And we have what is called explanatory power. You know, we try to explain things.

The Big Bang. Okay, so what caused the Big Bang? What happened in Plank epoch? Are there laws of physics at a plank scale of geomero? Space-time geometry on and on. Why is mathematics so effective? in predicting the behavior of the physical world. It's obvious that human consciousness is at the pinnaker.

Now, as far as violence and in nature is concerned, that's another very interesting thing, because without violence, there wouldn't be the food chain. There would not be anything that we call life. Life is based on biological organisms eating each other up all the time. So, you know, without violence, there's no life. But as we expand our awareness, as we become, and again, I'm being very careful here, how I say this, human consciousness is almost Godlike.

It's divine, it's diabolical, it can create anything that it imagines. It has already created everything it imagines. It can also destroy anything that is there. So we are, as self-aware beings, definitely have divinity. By divinity, I mean creative power, creative power. We can, you know, Frank said the other day, I can, with my thoughts, I can move my arm. But I can't move your arm. But I can.

If I tell you to move your arm, we'll move your arm. Also, as I'm speaking to you right now, I'm moving molecules in your brain. I'm moving networks, neural networks in your brain. I'm moving all kinds of things. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, depending on the conversation. You're moving a lot of viewers to my YouTube channel, and I appreciate it. And all these people are biologically entangled with us. All these people, right at this moment, everybody who's listening to us,

We are entangled in biology, in mind space, in consciousness space. Of course, we're calling it cyberspace, but the cyberspace is the vehicle for our limited bandwidth of experience as human beings. But as you said, we can extend that through scientific technology we are extending. what we call everyday reality, according to spiritual traditions and monistic traditions, monistic idealism or monistic non-dualism, in those traditions, the formless potential is the only reality. Everything else is an evanescent, ephemeral, transient, ungraspable experience. that we codify as mind, matter, and the universe.

There's no such thing. It's a human construct. So I want to take a step from this ethereal plane that we are on to what we in Hebrew call the tachlis, the practical, the mundane, but the important. How do you organize your life? In your early 70s now, you've written dozens of books. I think you're writing a book with your right hand

while we're talking right now. That's how productive Deepak Chopra, with today's guest on the end of the Impossible podcast is, when you were younger and your and your daughter was young and you were starting off in your career, how did you come to make choices on a daily basis? What I mean is between consumption of information and production of new ideas, new creativity, new collaborations, how did you handle the ties that you had, the obligations you have, first of all, to your family first. How do you deal with those constraints and maintain your productivity? So I'm asking two things. Basically, what's your daily ritual like now? And how do you

handle the guilt? I call it producers guilt that we have, when we have to say no to our toddler in order to do something. And we lie and we say, oh, it's to make money. And that's going to help them. But that's a A lot of it's for ourselves and our own gratification of our ego. So what's your daily routine like, number one, and number two, how do you handle saying no to the people you love the most? I can answer those two questions, but I should tell you that right through internship, residency, fellowship, neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, I was a driven person, ambitious, and trying to be successful in my career.

Okay, now in the background, ever since the age of six years of age, I've been mystified and troubled by the fact that existence is so impermanent. So I remember when I was six years of age, I was living with my grandparents, and my father was a cardiologist, and he was training in England. And one day we got a telegram. And the telegram was that my father had become a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians as a cardiologist. In post-colonial India, that was a big deal. So my grandfather, who was a World War I veteran, Indian, went to the roof, fired some rounds into the sky, took me and my little brother, who later became the Dean of Medical Education at Harvard Medical School. My brother was four years.

I was six years. He took us to the carnival. took us to a movie called Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, took us out for dinner, and then in the middle of the night he died. And the next day he was taken to cremation, and one of my uncles said, what is a human being?

Last night, he was celebrating with the kids. His son had become a member of the Royal College of Physicians, and today he's a bunch of ashes in that jar. and I had at the age of six years by first existential crisis. My little brother, who as I said became the dean of education at Harvard, his skin started peeling.

Went to every doctor in the world. Nobody could make a diagnosis. There was a healer who said he's feeling vulnerable. So he's shedding his skin metaphorically. When his parents come back, he'll be fine. And that's exactly what happened. So I think in retrospect, that was my first existential crisis and also my first understanding of mind and body as being inseparable.

I went to medical school for that reason. But we go to medical school, the first lesson is anatomy. You see a dead body, you're supposed to understand life by looking at a dead body. But it gets better, physiology, biochemistry, now mathematics, all understanding biology. So I was very troubled all my life by impermanence. As a doctor, I saw grief. Within one hour, I saw people going through the stages of death in a heart attack. So anger, denial, hostility, and then fear and then helplessness and then resignation and then death.

And I felt deep compassion for human suffering, deep, deep compassion for human suffering. So what is my life right now? The number one thing in my life is all life is sacred. All life is sacred. Even the internet trolls who call you a hack and a... Sacred. They're doing the best they can from the conditioned mind. Even Trump is doing the best he can from where he is in his awareness.

So there is no other pursuit than expanding our awareness in science, in the arts, in sociology, in human relationships, in emotional connections. There is no bigger endeavor. Wisdom is the sanctity of life. Having said that, we have to eat. And therefore, we minimize violence. That's why I'm a vegetarian. I'm minimized violence,

knowing that I'm still violent in my eating habits at some level. I also realize that as a human being, 99.9% of the information in my body is bacterial, it's microbes. I revere the sanctity of life of microbes, including COVID, because without microbes, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.

You know, so this holism makes me feel sacred. Now, what's my daily routine? First, 25 years, my tradition, maximum education. Second, 25 years, maximum success. Third, 25 years, maximum giving back. Now I'm entering my fourth stage. That is preparation for death. And so I very joyfully celebrate impermanence. I ask myself every day, who is it that's going to die?

And I can't answer the question. What is going to die? Because my body, as an embryo is dead already. My body as a teenager is dead already. I don't have the personality of a 15-year-old. What is going to die? What is my identity? I think that's the biggest crisis of existence. What is identity? And this is how I keep myself busy right now. I have no personal motivation in the world.

Honestly, I have no personal ambition in the world. Honestly, my only goal right now is to prepare for the impermanence of existence. as I know it and to be at peace with it and see how I can realize by true nature, independent of science or philosophy or theology or any human construct. Who am I without constructs? That is my own quest. I don't think I've ever heard you say it so succinctly, but I think that that's a very extremely deep and meaningful way to think about life.

And I wonder, yes, in the early stages of life and producing and growing and maximizing the education, there is one trait, which I wonder if you would agree with me on, that you can maintain at all four of those 25-year quarter-century marks, and that is curiosity. And I see that in you. I see that I once heard, you know, somebody, maybe it was Warren Buffett or maybe it was somebody talking about Warren Buffett. They said, you know, I can't have Warren Buffett's I can't have his wealth just by thinking about having wealth, but I can be as satisfied with what I have as what he is satisfied with, with what he has, but also I can be as ethical as he is, as moral as he is, to whatever I don't know him personally, but to whatever extent you think that he is. And then I add to that, you can be as curious as he is or as anybody is. And I think that that is a hallmark of who you are is this relentless passion for curiosity. Do you believe that life is possible to extend, not physically, but through things like transcendental meditation?

And the first time I met you, I had a lot of temerity. I said, Deepak, I need a mantra. I've tried transcendental meditation. I can't do it. I've tried mindful meditation. I can't do it. Can you give me a mantra that will stick? and you said, you schmuck.

So I've been doing that. I've been saying, you schmuck. I do it. No, I'm just kidding. I don't do that. But if you had to guess at the actual way that life can be extended, I happen to think I know the answer to how one can extend one's life to whatever way we have of teleporting our physical and mental nature into the future, I have a proposal for that.

But I'm more interested in your proposal. How can I extend my life on a daily basis and add more. meaning to my life through a daily practice, through meditation. What do you recommend for those of us who live a lot up here and find it hard to get out of our doubting kind of monkey mind perspective? From a spiritual perspective, you extend life by number of, by the way, curiosity, of course, is a trait of all sentient beings, not just humans. You look at a baby, you look at a mouse, you look at a cat.

They're all curious. humans go a little bit beyond that. They want explanations for their curiosity. That's a human, and without that explanatory part, there wouldn't be human civilization. That is a trait of consciousness itself. Curiosity and explanatory power, and modeling is a trait of human consciousness.

Now, extension of life, from a spiritual perspective, number one, eat less. number two breathe slowly take your time to breathe number three speak less and number four quieten your mind

so it's at all levels material emotional physiological and ultimately at the level of pure self-awareness or transcendence now our studies which we are just

mentioned with Elizabeth Blackburn and others showed that actually these practices extend life. Telomerase level went up by 40%. All the genes that are responsible for homeostasis of self-regulation went up, some 17-fold over baseline. All the genes that were responsible for inflammation and chronic illness, including heart disease and diabetes, went down. So one of our collaborators in the study was from Mount Sinai in New York. And he was presenting the study. He was showing this slide. And he was showing, you know, telomerase went up,

gene expression went in the direction of focusases and away from inflammation. So somebody in the audience, he said, Dr. Schott, his name is Eric Scha. He said, do you meditate? He said, no. He said, are you planning to? He said, no. He said, why not? You just showed us the data.

He said, yeah, I'm going to figure out how to make drugs out of this. So, actually, he left Mount Sinai. He's now using the IPs of the studies to actually develop drugs out of the experience of meditation. So, you know, there's room for everyone here. There's room for the technologists. There's room for the... I don't think there's any drug that could create a synchronistic, holistic, correlated symphony of events in the body other than consciousness. No drug can do that.

Because the drug is one element in the whole framework of inseparable coherence, you might call it creativity, you might call it entanglement, you might call it superposition of ideas, whatever you want to call it. There's a deep mystery at the heart of creation, and that mystery is the mystery of who am I? So if I have ended up in another galaxy or another planet, my first question would be, what am I doing here and why am I here? and is what I'm perceiving a construct in my mind, an experience of perceptual activity, did awareness travel? Awareness ever travels.

Awareness is just is. It creates models and stories and constructs and perceptions and sensations and images and feelings and thoughts. But that's who I am. I am the mystery. And without knowing my mystery, there's no other mystery. Right.

That's as Walt Whitman said, do I contradict myself? Yes, very well, then. I contain multitudes. And I think you have a great deal of multitudes in you, not just the microbes that you spoke about earlier, but a refreshing breath of creative ideas and curiosity. And not only, you know, just as a sideline, highlight, rather,

what you said about curiosity. Yeah, cats have it. and the most mendacious or, you know, an unfortunate aspect of associating cats in curiosity, especially with children, as Nobel Prize winning physicist Barry Barrow said on the podcast, I'll put it up here. He said that curiosity killed the cat sends an awful message to young children, that you shouldn't be curious, that you should suppress it. And actually, one of your fellow MDs and practitioners of meditation, Dr. Judson Brewer,

at my alma mater, Brown University, he actually believes, that curiosity can be responsible for things like addiction, breaking addictions, smoking, even drug use, even reducing food and cravings for food. So I like to say, thanks to him and curiosity, I was able to drop five pounds from my double chin to my belly. So that's been very helpful to me. I thank him. I want to conclude with a very brief take from you about this article that was,

presented by the New York Times back in October. And it was about the title is how to disagree like an adult, according to Deepak Chopra. They call you a new age celebrity, which I think is kind of nonsense. I do love the pictures, which depict Torrey Pines Gliderport and you and your sandals. Perched precariously, I'll put a link to that in the show notes below. But I really enjoyed this piece. And I think that we want to have more conversations with other. scientist using this framework that you lay out. And I'm just going to put them on there and say,

if you only could apply one of these principles that you put out there, ranging from choose if you want to engage. Engage. First, you have to listen. Three, learn about the other person's values. Four, try awareness and pause. Five, don't engage in black and light thinking. And when confronted, stop, take a deep breath, smile, and then make a choice. Which of those, if you only could choose, one or maybe it's impossible to only choose one. What is the most important of Deepak's seven commandments here, or eight commandments? Maybe they're nine, nine commandments. There's only one, actually, before you react, press the pause button, step into the gap and watch your reaction to react. That will break the circus. Instead of being reactive, pause and observe your reaction

to react. That will break the circuit. And by the way, curiosity. didn't kill the cat. Your curiosity allowed you to determine whether it was dead or alive. I say Marie Curie killed the cat because the Geiger counter goes off because of her laws. Okay, the last segment that we have on the End of the Impossible podcast is the final three questions. If you have just a couple more minutes, Deepak, I would love to ask you these questions. I enjoyed this very much, Brian. And thank you for not ridiculing it.

I would never do that. I have respect for you, not only because I know you personally, but I respect your humility. I think you are a scientist in the way that you approach these things and the research that you're doing, as you point out as well. I could spend all day with you, but I know you're extremely busy. So I'm just going to finish up by asking these questions that I ask all my guests. I'm in the office of Jeff Burbage, who is one of the greatest astrophysicists of the previous millennium century.

and he was a close colleague of Giant Narla Kar, who is in India to this day in Pune, and he started their cosmology center. I asked him this question. I want to ask you this question now, Deepak, in your ethical will, in your Zava'a, what you want to communicate to future generations, not in material form, not in tangible physical form,

because we know that impermanence of that. What would you put in your ethical will that you want to communicate to your biological offspring, but also your ideological offspring. So I would say on the level of feeling, the ethics is empathy, compassion, love, joy, equanimity, and kindness, and alleviation of suffering on the emotional level. On the intellectual level,

the seeking always of truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, curiosity, wonder and humility. And before you say, what's going on, always asking, who's asking? Very good. The next question is also about the future. And it connects to the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey by Kubrick. And this movie, have you seen the movie 2001? Yes.

So the opening scene features these hominids, and they're on the plains of the savannah of Africa. and they're exploring and they come upon this huge monolith and they don't know what to do with it, they hit it with their bones and they try to do stuff to it, nothing happens. Then later, thousands, millions of years later, we come up to find that human beings have encountered the same monolith structure, but on the surface of the moon.

So now they've developed technology, maybe far in advance of the hominids, certainly, but maybe far short of what the aliens, wanted us to encode. My question for you is, if you had a time capsule like these monoliths that would last for a billion years, what would you inscribe upon it? What would you put within it, knowing that it would last for essentially the remainder of existence? So, Brian, across the seas of both outer space, which you explore, and inner space, which I explore, across the seas of space, inner and outer,

are the raw materials of a new imagination. We have a future that even Homer never imagined. We have a future that no one ever imagined. I can just tell you that I can see in a few less than a millennium, less than a century, seeding intergalactic space and planets with human life and life of all kinds, with just information technology, using information, DNA sequential codes,

teleportation to create biospheres in exoplanets. I see adventures that will understand what we understand theoretically right now, whether it's teleportation or extrasensory perception, which we are already doing right now. This is extrasency perception, you know, through Zoom or whatever. So I see adventures of imagination actualizing into reality that are at the moment unimaginable. You know, Rumi, the poet said,

when I die, I will soar with angels, but when I die to the angels, what I shall become, you cannot imagine. So for us to see the future in the distance, we don't even have the imagination yet. Very good. We can't even conceive upon it. We're like those alleged tribes in South America when they come upon a boat.

They can't visualize what it means and they don't process it because their awareness has not yet advanced, but that doesn't necessarily impute superiority, of course. So the last question that I ask all my guest, Deepak, now involves going to the past. and it involves essentially life advice to your former self when you were getting maximum education, maximum success, maybe in your 20s or so, the life advice you'd give, and it's encapsulated

in the name of this podcast. So Arthur Clark had many different maxims. I already said one of them is any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that's actually read in his own voice at the opening of each of one. of the Into the Impossible podcast. His second law was that for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. And his third law is the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. That's how I got the name of this podcast. So I want to ask you, when you were a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old, what life advice would you most benefit from knowing to allow you to have the courage to go into the impossible.

See, if I had given myself that advice to my 20-year-old, I wouldn't have listened to myself. As 20-year-old, I was smoking cigarettes, enjoying alcohol, dating girls, getting stressed about my exams, wondering where I would get my internship. No advice would have helped me. At every stage of life, there is what you do. is what you do. Now in hindsight, I don't regret it all. You know, every stage is a learning stage.

The only thing I would say is the impossible is just a word for something that hasn't happened yet. That's it. And in fact, the impossible is the field of all possibilities. The impossible is the infinite. The impossible is whatever is not possible today is going to be possible

tomorrow. I may not live to see it, but creativity and consciousness and awareness have no limitations. That's the definition of infinity. Infinity is not a number. It just means no limits. Reminds me of what I believe Eleanor Roosevelt said. The word impossible really means I'm possible. That's very good. I love that. Well, Deepak, I love what you do. I love your spirit. I love your courage. I love your curious and mercurious nature that just acts as an inspiration, not just for me, but for millions of people around the world that you've helped, you've healed. You've done tremendous good in the world. And I only hope to do a fraction of that with your guidance as an inspiration to me.

And I've certainly benefited from it. So thank you so much for going into the impossible. Stay well and stay in touch. Thank you, Brian. I hope we meet soon after this madness is over. and have some fun together. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishing from magic. Hello, I'm Stuart Volko, producer of Into the Impossible.

If you enjoyed this episode with Professor Brian Keating, please let us know by subscribing, commenting, sharing, and most importantly, reading and leaving reviews. It really helps keep our universe expanding. We appreciate hearing from you and read every review and comment. We're always open to your suggestions for future episodes. episodes. Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating, DR. Brian Keating, and join our premieres every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time for live chats. Follow Brian on Twitter,

medium, and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. That's DR. Brian Keating. For free access to exclusive content, please visit Professor Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at Brian Keating.com. Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Viri, director, Brian Keating, co-director,

Patrick Coleman, associate director, produced by Stuart Valco and Brian Keating. For more information on the Arthur C. Clark Center, go to imagination.ucsd.edu. Shalom is the perfect mantra to transcend. Not schmuck. Okay. Now you heard it here. Nobody else can use that out there. It's only private, personal for Brian Keating.