The Chris Cuomo Project - Deepak Chopra, M.D.

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

In this week’s episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, Deepak Chopra, M.D. (founder, The Chopra Foundation, and co-author, “Living in the Light”) joins Chris for an extensive conversation about why joy must be one’s measure of wellbeing and success, how he’s come to believe humans are an insane species and modern culture is at the peak of its insanity, why everybody in the world is a narcissist, how the world would be better if politicians expressed a sense of humor, why artists are the conscience of society, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

one of the greatest gurus in the world, talking about what he's worried about, what he doesn't like, and how maybe we're all crazy. Deepak Chopra. I'm Chris Cuomo. How you doing? Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project.

Subscribe, follow the YouTube page. You can get the merch right there and wear your independence. Be a free agent. Be a critical thinker. Gotta get away from these parties, man. But we also have to get on the same page head and heart. And that takes us to Deepak Chopra. You don't need me to introduce you to him. He's got 90 plus books. He's got institutes all

over the world. But this is an interesting conversation that we had. Kind of surprised, to be honest. Why? Because Deepak wasn't just trying to lift me up the whole time. He wasn't just trying to give me some sense that everything's better than I think it is. In fact, he sees a couple of things as pretty bleak. What? Yes. That's what I said to myself during the conversation, which is an entirely different problem. So you take a listen or a watch for yourself, one of the best known people in the world, especially on message about the nature of humanity, Deepak Chopra. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth.

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CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care.

Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever. And it's up to like 95% cheaper. And there are options as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP.

H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. Prescriptions, you need an online consultation with a healthcare provider, and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, the price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Deepak, thank you so much for making time to talk to me. I appreciate you. Thank you, Chris. I'm a fan of yours, too.

You have been very good to me for a very long time. And I remember, just to get this out of the way, because I love telling people this story when you're not around, so I might as well tell it when you are around. We're at ABC News. You're coming on. You're starting to get wide acceptance. And that's why the anchors were so interested

in having you there. You and I are together in the back room. You have on this like beautiful purple strawberry jacket and glasses that match. And I'm sitting next to you. I'm listening to you talk to somebody in the green room. And you say to me, do you like my glasses? And I say, yes, I do like your glasses. And I say, I like the whole matchy-matchy and the glitter in the glasses. I said, and it kind of plays against type because you're such a serious guy. And you're talking about such serious things. And you just laughed and said to me, presentation is also important.

And I said, yes, yes, it is. And it always has stuck with me that, you know, somebody who is about the surface as little as you are in terms of what you talk about and what you ask others to consider, that for you to say say that I always found very funny. So thank you for being a resource and a guide for so long. And it's great to have you on the project. Thank you, Chris. So let me ask you this, with all the success as most would measure it, and I hope the impact that you feel from people that you've helped through the center and with your work all over the world. What keeps you wanting to do more?

Well, it's a kind of a convoluted answer, but I'll answer it anyway. You know, I grew up in a very traditional spiritual family in India. And then I was subject to Western influences, medical school training, everything that happened in my life. Because after the age of 23, I was a medic. Before that, I was Indian. I went to medical school, but then emergency rooms, staffs, Harvard, BU, academia, criticism, doctors, this, that, the other, that I still maintained a sense of meaning and purpose in my life. And in the tradition I come from, there are four stages of life, and they're called ashramas. Ashram means, you know, the common word for ashram is the spiritual retreat. But the four stages of life are also spiritual retreats.

They anchor you. The first stage of life is first 25 years, and the ashram is education. The second 25 years of life between the age of 25 and 50 is the ashram called Building a Family, Fame and Fortune, including making a lot of money. The third ashram, which is from the age of 50 to 75, is you start giving back what you've got from the world. And so philanthropy, charity, non-profit activities, and I've been there too, been there, done that. So last year, I entered the fourth ashram, which theoretically is from 75 to 100. Now, if you live the ideal life, which I think more or less I have,

now if you live the ideal life which i think more or less i have then you should die at the age of 100 by choice and you should die having made the statement been there done that i finally woke up it's called the fourth stage the fourth ashram is called self-realization. So I actually now spend a lot of my time thinking of my life as a dream. I look at my childhood. I recall it. I even recall moments of my childhood sitting on my mother's lap. I can smell her skin. I can hear her singing songs to me. So I said, what would happen to that? Well, it's a dream. Then I look at my teenage years, what happened? It's a dream. Look at last year, COVID-19, which started all this, another dream. But how about last night? How about this morning? How about five minutes ago? How about the time, by the time you hear my words, they don't exist. The whole thing

is the dream. It's a lucid dream in a vivid now, and we are all asleep. So what keeps me going now is actually looking forward to the final chapters and looking forward to the transition that we call death. I'm experimenting in my consciousness at this moment, the mystery of death. I had contracts for three more books. You know, last book was 93rd book. I actually canceled them. I'm doing one more book and that book won't be done till I've actually, to my own satisfaction, actually surrendered to this mystery, which is very, very interesting. It's almost as mysterious as birth.

I mean, you're born, there's a fertilized egg. And now this is this old man, 76 years, a few years, this guy will have disappeared. So the whole thing is a dream. And I want to wake up and I want to help other people understand that waking up is not a bad idea. So first, do you really want to be 100? I don't know.

I said, you know, I'm in very good health right now. My biomarkers are normal. I do two hours of yoga i meditate i walk 10 000 steps i love new york city and yeah i don't mind as long as i'm in the shape you buy into the 10 000 step thing with all of you you believe that that's the right metric i think 10 000 steps is easy in new york so i buy into anything that's the right metric? I think 10,000 steps is easy in New York, so I buy into anything that's easy. You know, I use the subway. I don't take taxis or Uber or no drive anymore.

I walk a lot. So yeah, I said, why not 10,000 steps along with the meditation too? I don't know that taking the subway in New York is going to correlate well with your wanting to live to 100. When you look back in this phase that you say you're entering now,

this fourth phase, regret. I know about being present. I know what you think about regret. I am a student of what you put out as well as a colleague and a friend. But does regret sneak in? And if so, how does that look, sound and feel? Regret sneaks in very occasionally.

And that occasional regret is, why was I so defensive about my points of view? And I have, you know, I've been in amazing controversial debates. I've been attacked. I've been vilified. I've been, of course, I've received lots of accolades, too. But at my age, when I look back, I think a lot of what I did was totally immature, immature, egocentric, trying to prove my point, which was a waste of my time. You have kids. For me, that is a big source of regret. Not that I have kids, but when I think about parenting,

I see my parenting as like such a series of, I wish I had done differently, better, less, more. How do you avoid that? I think every parent goes through that experience. My parents went through that experience. Every generation thinks that the previous generation doesn't know what they're doing. And that includes, you know, my kids, they don't trust my judgments on anything. And, you know, when I start speaking about things that are not of interest to them, they roll their eyes up and they think, there he goes again.

He's going cosmic on us. So that's normal. Yes, normal. So you have people all over the world. You probably, whether you want to or not, you'll probably wind up with at least 100 published volumes. But at home, you get no audience. Well, I like that. I think if you really want to know who a person is, just talk to their wife or their kids. Forget it. I would never have a job. But that is so interesting. How do you explain that to yourself

that there's so many tough nuts to crack, you know, there's so many tough nuts to crack in this world. There's so much cynicism. There's so much hardness, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate, and that it's so hard to get through to the people who matter most to you, you know, your wife, and of course your own kids. I think there's a lot of humor in that. There's a lot of fun in that. And if everybody took you seriously, including your wife and your kids, you'd actually become, you wouldn't have the imposter syndrome anymore,

which we all have to some extent. So I think it's very good that they keep you grounded. They also make certain assumptions, by the way, because they're so familiar with you that sometimes they miss out on some of the wisdom that's coming out. But that's also okay. You know, it's life. I mean, every generation thinks they're smarter than the previous generation.

And they are, to some extent. I would like to be present in your home when one of your kids, like you catch them reading like some pop self-help book or something like that and them looking at you and saying, this is really good stuff in here. And you're like, that's what you like when you have me here at home. So when we were deciding to come and beg you to come on the project and on the News Nation show, my team was saying, oh, well, we know you love him. You have his books all over the place, but what's going on

with him? I said, well, first of all, everything around us right now in America is expressed as a negative. Everything's bad. Everyone's angry. everything's tribal. And I wonder what effect that has on you and how you see that. Do you accept that on any level? Do you believe it's manufactured? I mean, you live in New York City. How do you process what's happening in America? Actually, Chris, I process everything with one conviction now. And that conviction is Homo sapiens. I process everything with one conviction now.

And that conviction is Homo sapiens, the human species, is insane. Period. We are an insane species. I mean, which other species would create nuclear weapons, cyber warfare, mechanized death, extinction of species, climate change, social injustice, racial injustice, and irresponsible health, addictive behavior, and suicidal thinking. We're sleepwalking to extinction, and we have gangsters as our national leaders globally. I don't think there's any exception. Some are more gangster-like and some are more polite, but they're all gangsters. This is an insane world. And if you don't agree with that,

then you're declaring your insanity as well. So I struggled against this for a long time, trying to think, can I identify one person in the world who's sane? And actually, I did identify. in the world who's sane. And actually, I did identify. There was people like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. And, you know, that nice lady from New Zealand who's become the prime minister,

but now she finds it too insane to be prime minister, etc. There's hardly anybody who's sane anymore. So what do you do? You just actually accept the insanity and you accept the idea that the human species was a very interesting evolutionary experiment

that did not work. And maybe, you know, we sleepwalk to extinction through this insane behavior. Maybe there'll be another species that will be more empathetic, compassionate, loving, graceful, aesthetic, and creative, and loving. I mean, the worst use of our imagination is what we've done to this world. And yet we have the creativity to send probes into interstellar

space. I'm reading this thing called Return to a Mirror Universe, which says there's maybe parallel universes going backwards in time. I think I would choose one of those. No. That's a fairly dour assessment from a man who's known for lifting us all up. But I think the whole thing is a joke. Then the only sane response to existence is to laugh. But it's so hard for people to laugh, especially in America right now. First of all, you got to be careful what you laugh at. Yeah. Cancel culture is so robust, even though I really still believe, even though people might argue that my brother was a victim of it or a perpetrator of it or whatever,

a victim of it or a perpetrator of it or whatever, that it well is well intended that people want things to be more fair, more equal, that there is an appetite for sweetness as strength versus, and compassion versus just harshness. But maybe I'm just wrong or that's what I would like to be true, but it's not even true in me or in anything that I see around me. It just seems that sweetness is weakness these days. And if you're not against something and harshly so, you will lose. Yeah, on the other hand, what people call morality is just cunning hypocrisy.

I think morality is just jealousy with a halo. All these people who have all these causes that they come out with, you know, in their own closet, there are skeletons. And to be human is to have light and shadow. What's the big deal? I mean, if reality is infinite,

then there is a place for infinite variables in that humanity. The sacred and the profane, the divine and the diabolical are all aspects of infinite manifestations of something very mysterious. We don't know what it is. We take the universe for granted.

We take ourselves for granted. I'm actually perpetually surprised that we exist and not only perpetually surprised that we exist. And not only perpetually surprised that we exist, that we have awareness of existence. And furthermore, we take it for granted. The whole thing is so bizarre that in the end, you have to surrender to mystery.

That's the only thing. You have to surrender to mystery. You have to be less judgmental. You have to be loving and empathetic and forgiving and not morally righteous because that's the domain of cunning hypocrites as far as I'm concerned. You do your best and you will realize that if you cast stones, you probably live in a glass house yourself. When you look, because you say that you don't shelter yourself from things, you process it as the rest of us do,

just the social media magnification of malice, not to be alliterative about it, but just how our bad tendencies seem to be exponentially on display there. Does it ever make you think, what am I trying to do here? How am I going to try to, I can't help. Look what is winning.

Look what people want. Look how they want to be. My work is done here. Chris, I have only three criteria when I do something. Am I having fun? If I'm not having fun, if I don't have joy, then I've missed my life. If joy is not the measure of well-being or success, then your life is wasted.

So first question, am I having fun? Second question, am I hanging out with people who are fun to be with? Otherwise, I'm not going to have fun myself. And the third question is, even to some extent, am I alleviating suffering? Even minor suffering, you know, doesn't matter.

If I can say yes to all three, then life is good. If I'm doing something that's not fun or hanging out with people who are unpleasant or not in some shape and form alleviating somebody's suffering, I'm wasting my time. How often are you wasting your time? And don't say right now.

Right now, I don't believe in time. I've come to this stage where I realize that we are just a little hiccup in this timeless eternity, which actually has no beginning and no ending. These are human constructs. We've been bamboozled by human constructs, like we have a physical body, there's a physical world, that our culture is the right culture,

our version of God is the right version of God. We're constantly trying to prove that we're right. And you mentioned social media. We've sacrificed ourselves for our selfies. We don't even know who we are. So the selfie gets all the importance, all the likes, all the dislikes, and then we get hurt because we don't know who the self is. We're only confusing ourselves with our selfies. get hurt because we don't know who the self is. We're only confusing ourselves with our selfies. What do you make of one of the interesting, or to me, just mind-boggling disputes and divisions in American society now, which is about identity, where you'll see on social media and all media, on social media and all media, people on the right talking to people on the left and saying,

what is a woman? And can't only women have children? Don't you need a uterus? And people on the left are saying that's an offensive question. And a trans woman can have, trans man can have babies because, you know, that's part of their identity. What do you make of the dispute and how it is being motivated in our society? Well, one thing, Chris, is very clear. No matter what you say, you'll be attacked for it. Doesn't matter what you say. Okay? Because we are in a climate right now where you have to be politically correct about everything, whatever it is.

You have to follow the cultural norms of what you can say, what you can't say, what opinion you can have, what you can't have. You know, things I used to hear jokes 40 years ago, which today would send you to jail, okay? So you have to be culturally appropriate. Number one, if you want to live in this society. Number two, society is very judgmental. And even the people who are attacking you are actually attacking you because they want to be right.

It's about their ego. It's not about what reality really is because we don't know what it really is. And things evolve. You know, I wrote a book on Jesus. I also wrote a book on Muhammad. You know, and when I wrote a book on Muhammad, I was very careful because I know what happens when you write books on somebody by the name of Muhammad. You know, we just need. So I was very careful when I wrote his biography.

I went to the history. I went to the massacre of the Jews, which he overlooked. I went through the historical part where he marries a girl who's six or eight years old. And how do you justify that, right? But when you start to look at the cultural norms of a certain period doesn't matter go back to greece go back to the times of the olympics go back you know this great culture we call greek culture with socrates and plato and parmenides and Pythagoras. At that very time, there was slavery, there was sexism,

people being sacrificed to lions, etc. So I think human beings have always been like this, always been contentious, always been barbaric, always been tribal, and always been very limited in their thinking. We romanticize the past by looking at a few luminaries. So, you know, Greek civilization, we look at the luminaries. We look at Indian spirituality. We look at the luminaries while they're having, you know, all kinds of racist issues in India

right now, you know. issues in India right now. You know, so it is very difficult to judge a culture and the context and the time and the period in which it arises. Frankly speaking, I think culture right now is at the peak of its insanity, period. You know, it's at the peak.

And we have modern capacities and our minds are medieval. Tribal minds, medieval minds, worse than Genghis Khan, on par with Hitler, but we have modern capacities. So it's not a good combination. It's a terrible combination. Why do you think that we have that level of almost demonic perspective in terms of the ambition of a Hitler or of a Genghis Khan? Look at what's happening. I mean, people overlook. India is overlooking what's happening in Ukraine because they want to buy the oil.

Okay. China wants to side with Russia because of their personal issues with America. Nobody is looking out for anybody else. Everybody is looking out for themselves. And, you know, what we call nationalism has gone to the level of extreme tribalism. And we have no clarity whatsoever. The worst use of our imagination is what we've done to this world. And yet we have an imagination that is creative. We have people who are, you know, people like Einstein and Beethoven and Mozart and Shakespeare. What happened? We used imagination

to ruin ourselves, you know. And this is the most precious quality of our spirit. So you think we're at the peak of our cultural insanity. Correct. Does that mean that you believe things get better? Well, one road leads to sleepwalking to extinction. The other road could be a critical mass of people who want to be the change they want to see in the world.

You can't create peace if you don't have peace in your life, period. I know a lot of Nobel laureates, they won Nobel Prize in peace, but they're not peaceful. What's the point? You know, you get a Nobel Prize for peace and your family life and your life in general is a mess. So unless there's a critical mass of people who are in their own lives, peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful, you will not see a sane world. I had a guy in Ukraine say to me, joking, he was talking about America's disposition towards the battle there and why there was any division of opinion. I was listening and talking, and he said, you know, you guys are

spending time, you're fighting about what's a woman, what's a man. He said, as long as they can hold a weapon and point it at the people who are trying to take my country right now, that's the only question you should be asking. It was funny on one level, but I get why that's all he would care about. Because when you have an existential threat, you don't have to make up problems for yourself. And in America, we have a great way of distracting ourselves from real problems that need action by just fighting over what the problem is and defining new ones. And I see that in identity. And I've seen this manifested in many different things, whether it's, you know, gay marriage or lots of equal protection issues

and social justice issues where people are against things that don't affect them. And I guess that's where the identity thing falls into it for me. I mean, we all know that, you know, every human being, almost every human being that comes out of a woman is going to be male or female, that there are differences when it comes to what sex you are. But beyond that, why does it bother people, you think, so much, what somebody decides to see themselves as?

I don't know, because historically, throughout history, there have been transgenders, there have been people who have changed sex. In India, there's a whole class of people who are hermaphrodites, and then legally a part of our society. In fact, when you have big weddings and religious ceremonies, you invite everyone, the hermaphrodites, the transgenders. It's a celebration of diversity. And so it depends on the cultural mindset and what you grew up with. That's ultimately what happens, whether it's your religious beliefs or scientific models or cultural models. We're all victims of the hypnosis of

cultural conditioning. And we forget that actually these are human constructs that go back to medieval times and we're not even questioning them. Now, the new front on the war is, no, no, no, I don't have a problem with anything that you just said, Deepak. I don't like that kids are being destroyed by these new definitions and that they're becoming more depressed and more suicidal because they're being coaxed into this false notion of not being what they are. Yeah, but what to do? You know, the only way this would change is we add a new leadership

and maybe our kids are right. Maybe, you know, all the kids who are questioning everything we're doing today, maybe they are the future leaders of our world, you know, because they're questioning everything that we're doing right now, which is basically, if you think about what we're doing right now, it is total narcissism. Everybody in the world is a narcissist. How so? What can I say? Some are more narcissistic than others. That's it. Because everybody is looking at things through the lens or the prism of their own advantage and their own and their own identity whatever that identity is and identity is a very confusing thing

you know identify which identity you know i said who is deepak chopra well he was a fertilized egg once upon a time then he was an embryo now he's this soon he'll be dead. And, you know, I can guarantee you, no matter how famous I become, half my friends won't have time to attend my memorial, which I'm not intending to have. They'll probably meet on Zoom and talk about me for five minutes. One month, they'll have another celebration or talk. In one year, they'll remember me for two minutes. In five years, it's as if you never existed. So what's the point of taking all this seriously? What does worry you? What is Deepak Chopra worried about, scared of? I'm not scared about anything and I'm not worried. I'm frustrated, though, that we cannot use our collective imagination for a more peaceful, just,

sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. We have the technology to reverse climate change. We have the technology to bring about social and economic justice. We have the technology to prevent these mass pandemics. We have the technology to engineer even our genes and our brains. We have the technology to go to outer space and create colonies in specks of dust somewhere far away from this junkyard of infinity. But we are not using it for our collective well-being.

We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right

from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever, and it's up to like 95% cheaper. And their options are as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS dot com slash C-C-P. H-I-M-S dot com slash C-C-P. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS dot com slash C-C-P. Prescriptions, you need an online consultation with a healthcare provider, and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Look, no shame in my game.

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So make it. Go to drinkag1.com slash ccp. Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. What lesson did you draw from the pandemic experience here? I wrote three books. I saw that climate change was reversible. As soon as we were confined to our cages, you know, people were breathing better in Bangalore. Fish were returning to dead lakes. You could see the Himalayas from 500 miles away.

Birds were singing and nature was celebrating. You humans go back to your cages. We are resetting ourselves. But we didn't learn the lesson. Did you see the pictures of the canals in Venice at the end of the pandemic? I saw some pictures. I mean, Venice was celebrating.

When they had the big jellyfish and they had all these things in the water. There you are. We're so clear. There you are. But you know what? People took that perversely to mean that, you know, all the enthusiasts and advocates

for global and climate change, it's overblown because you see that? We just took a year off and everything was fine. The skies were clear. Everything's going great. You see, we don't really have to correct anything. It's fixable in a very short amount of time. What do you make of that? I've been going to places like the World Economic Forum and listening to all the experts. They apply on their private planes to talk about decreasing fossil fuels. I mean, imagine that, you know, the World Economic Forum talking about solving the problems through their own mess that they have created. So there is technology right now, believe me. If you protect the marshlands, if you resurrect the microbiome,

if you find distributed energy systems, if you give indigenous people their rights back, if you also have better ways of distributing transportation, everything is there to reverse climate change. We are not doing it. And that is because we are asleep. We don't even look at what's happening tomorrow. We only look at the number of selfies on social media. Okay. So let me shift from the macro to the micro. And I come across this in my own life,

so I will put it on to anybody else. But I do hear this from people often. First of all, I never understand why anybody would ask me for advice about anything, but I hear it a lot, I read it a lot, and I feel a lot in myself that, yes, your own perception is very formative of your reality and how you choose to feel and how you choose to react are very powerful and can be dispositive of your feelings and behavior. However, there are realities. You have done things. Things have happened. Good things, but nobody's bothered by good things. Bad things.

And they are real and they are nagging and they'll never go away. And that gives you a very concrete sense of yourself and what it means about you, and it's inescapable. That's such a big part of the human condition, especially once you get, where am I? I'm in the third tranche of life,

the third ashram. What do you say to people about how you deal with these things that are very real about yourself and your past and what it means about you? I can say whatever I want to say, but nobody will listen anyway, and it does not matter in the end. Now, just to put things in perspective, current science tells us there are two trillion galaxies. There are 706 trillion stars. I don't

know how to write that, but that's what current science is saying. There are uncountable trillions of planets, possibly 60 billion habitable planets in just the Milky Way galaxy based on what we call the Goldilocks zone, temperature, biosphere, gravity, et cetera. But 60 billion billion probable almost certain habitable galaxies just in the milky way galaxy so planet earth is not even a speck of dust in the junkyard of infinity which we created anyway and the other day i went to the beach and i picked up one speck of grain of sand it wouldn't stay on my hand. A little breeze and it drifted away. That's planet Earth. If it disappears, the universe won't notice,

just as the beach didn't notice this speck of dust drifting off into the atmosphere. On this planet is one species called Homo sapiens that's been around only for 200,000 years that thinks it can solve the mystery of existence. Now, of course, if you're a Republican, you could just go play golf and you've solved the mystery of existence. That's mystery school for you. But for me right now, the fact that we are not totally flabbergasted or bewildered by existence is our fundamental problem.

If you were bewildered, flabbergasted, humbled, the only response would be love and joy and take it easy. Because, you know, I was at a gravesite a while back where the sign said, where I am, you will be soon. Where you were, I was there recently. Okay, so just remind yourself of your mortality, be humble and create love and peace and joy

and equanimity because soon nobody will even remember that Chris Cuomo or Deepak Chopra or even Genghis Khan or Hitler or Alexander the Great existed. And if they did, they become mythical beings and no relationship to reality. It's all a myth. Is that what you say when someone makes the

mistake of asking you for advice when they have a problem? I don't have issues. I don't have issues with humans because I think we're insane. So accept it and, you know, have a laugh for once in a while. When's the last time you saw a national leader cracking a joke or laughing? It doesn't matter, Biden, Putin, or the Chinese guy or the Indian guy. You know, they have no sense of humor. All they need to do is take their adversary, go have some Chinese food,

and talk about their first kiss and make friends with each other. And the world will be better. They make jokes. They just make them at the expense of other people, usually their adversaries. But look, I agree with what you're saying existentially on a macro level, in terms of like a metaphysical level. That's the only level that matters. But it's hard for people. I think one of the things that draws people like me to your work

is that I want to find a way to better deal with the realities of my own life and not just on the level of, well, none of it matters anyway. It gets you too close to nihilism until you have to build in the constructs of what to do with your time. That's why, Chris, things like meditation and yoga, things that take you beyond systems of thought, are the only things that can give you joy. No system of thought invented by human beings can access reality. Reality is not a system of thought. And so you have to go beyond that. That's where yoga comes in. I feel the joy in my body. And I feel that if I can feel that presence of being, of love, of empathy, then I don't have to do anything. You know, in the yogic traditions, they say, when one is established in peace consciousness or love, then all beings around you feel that love and peace, not by what you say,

what you do, but just by your presence. And that should be our goal. How do you fix them? Let's say you were mean to me once, or you did something that caused a bad outcome once. What are you supposed to just forget it? No, I apologize. I accept the fact that I was doing the best from the state of consciousness I was in. And I can even forgive a guy like Putin for doing the best he can. He's probably bringing out his impotence, his rage. You know, he's probably, if I was a Freudian, I would think he's sexually impotent and he's taking his rage out on the world.

And that's probably what he's doing from his state of consciousness. So I can justify in my mind the behavior of others by saying what Jesus said, forgive them, they know not what they do. Everybody is doing the best from their state of consciousness. You know, I read something about a theological construct about Jesus's idea of forgiveness and turning the cheek and why it is a fundamental expression of strength and not weakness because I've often seen it misunderstood as, yeah, well, that was Jesus. I'm not Jesus. And, you know, I have to deal with it with strength. And I read about forgiveness and how the reason that,

and then, you know, this was one of those eureka moments where once I read this, I was like, oh my, yes, I've heard that so many times, where something as terrible has been done to somebody. And they will say, I forgive the person who did it. And you're like, what? How could you? I just had a guy who was wrongfully imprisoned

for 28 years. And he says he forgives the guy who falsely identified him in a lineup. And I said, what? Why would you forgive that guy? And he says, it's not about him. It's about the forgiveness is for me. It's my way of putting that past me and giving him no more power over me, giving that person who victimized me no more power.

The forgiveness is for me. You see it as this magnanimous act. It isn't. And that that is the power of forgiveness is that it's actually freeing for the person doing the forgiving. And that's such an interesting idea to me because I accept it, but I do not see it in our society. Our society is about punishment and consequence.

That is summarized in one sentence. You forgive not because the other person deserves forgiveness. You forgive because you deserve peace, number one. Okay, and there are three moments in the life of Jesus, actually, that are very pivotal. And they all occur as he's going to be crucified.

The first is when Joseph of Arimathea offers to help him. You know, he's falters. He's carrying the cross. And Joseph tries to help him. And he says, No, I will bear my own cross.

Okay? Which is a very important statement. You and I I will bear my own cross. Okay. Which is a very important statement. You and I have to bear our own cross. Second, he has the dark night of the soul. He looks up and he says, why did you betray me? He says to whatever his concept of God is. And the third is his moment of redemption when he says, forgive them, they know not what they do. In those three statements is the journey of our life. We must bear our own cross, number one. We will all go through the torments of our identity, the dark night of our soul,

the heebie-jeebies of facing what we call death, infirmity, old age, Alzheimer's. And then ultimately we will all realize that there's a deeper reality where love is the only truth. There's no such thing as an independent identity. We exist in a matrix of relationships and that's all that matters. As long as you can cultivate relationship

in the direction of empathy, which means feeling what other people feel, compassion, the desire to alleviate suffering, joy, sharing your love and making a difference in people's actions, you will have a relatively sane life. I will say it won't be sane altogether because there's no such thing. But if you focus on those few things, empathy, compassion, love, joy, and helping each other, you will have a more peaceful life for sure. How come no society has ever functioned that way? Well, society because society is bamboozled by the hypnosis of social and cultural conditioning. But, you know, when Mahatma Gandhi was shot, there were three bullets.

Each time the bullet fired, he said, God bless to the assassin. God bless you. Because that is how he lived his life. Okay. And that was his expression of forgiveness, even at the moment of being shot. You know, Nelson Mandela, after he got his redemption, he said, having grievances is like drinking poison and hoping it'll kill your enemy. So there are luminaries like that in the world. And we have much to learn from them. You know, I don't realize every time I watch Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, he was 38, you know. He was a kid in my view,

and, you know, he was such a visionary, and it takes such a little short time for a guest to forget these amazing people. How do you keep from being sad? It's part of life. Why do you not want to experience life? Life is, you wouldn't know what happiness is if you didn't have sadness. All experiences by contrast. You can't have an up without a down. You can't have pleasure without pain. And ultimately, you can't have freedom without knowing all these things that actually hamper your freedom. If you could change anything in your life, what would you change? Take it easy. Life is short. And it's so short, it goes by like a dream. You know, Wittgenstein said, our life is a dream, we are asleep,

but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we are dreaming. The Buddha said, this lifetime of ours, as transient as autumn clouds, to watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning

in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain. So whenever I'm serious, I see that flash of light. It's like, there goes Deepak Chopra. Who do you see in American society that you think could be part of a better future? I don't see any current leaders. You know, I work with a bunch of former gangsters

in New York City. We call them the urban yogis. And they are making a big difference in Queens right now by teaching people hip-hop music and how to dance and how to create poetry and how to breathe and how to move. I think, you know, probably hip-hop is the only answer we have. Hold on a second. Deepak Chopra says the best chance that American society has to get to the right place is hip-hop.

It's street poetry. Poetry is the language of the soul. Every poet is tormented and also seeking for transcendence. Boy, oh boy. Look, I grew up, you know, my generation is really the generation of what became hip-hop. In the beginning, it was rap, and rap did not like being called hip-hop because it was seen as a pejorative and a commercial label. But now it certainly is more than music, it's culture, because my kids, who did not grow up the way I did, they're not what I believe was a blessing of my upbringing.

I think it's the only tool that helps me to this day, which is in Queens, where I grew up, in Hollis. There were so many different kinds of people forced into the same areas, the same church, the same schools, that we didn't see the definitions. I mean, they were there. And you had your ethnic problems, especially me me i was in an italian american community and there's a lot of you know prejudice and fear and xenophobia uh within that group but what you run dmc and the sugar hill gang and public enemy chuck d tribe called quest and you know there's just gone and on all these different uh progenitors of hip-hop were so influential and important to me in my upbringing, even though that wasn't my experience, right?

It wasn't a black experience for me, obviously. But my kids today embrace it, the music, the ideas, fashion, even more ephemeral things. Why do you believe that hip-hop is so powerful? I think artists in general, in general, artists are the conscience of a society, of a culture. When you have tyrant regimes in the world, when you have all these dictators, they're not afraid of scientists or technologists. They can hire them, but they're afraid of artists. They're afraid of poets.

They're afraid of songwriters. They're afraid of dancers. They're afraid of musicians, because these are the conscience of our society. When a society attacks art, it has lost its soul. The hip-hop movement was the tortured soul of our society speaking out against injustice. And it was a very vital movement in the world of art, not only in America. It started in America, but there's hip-hop now in Latin America. There's hip-hop in India. There's hip-hop in Afghanistan. Latin America. There's hip-hop in India. There's hip-hop in Afghanistan. I speak to the hip-hop artists who are speaking with the rebels' voice in Afghanistan right now, in Pakistan right now. In Iran right now. I mean, those are the people. It's funny you say that. The regime is targeting

the artists. I mean, they'll imprison anybody over there, but they are going very hard at rappers, and they're threatening to sentence them to death. Those are the guys who will create revolutions and they do. So if there's anything we can do as a society, we have to celebrate our artists because they are both tortured, but they also have the longing

and the yearning for joy. You say hip-hop, but could the same thing be true for country music or country western music? Yeah, I think music in all its forms. You know, Shakespeare said, the man that hath no music in himself is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Let no such man be trusted. Deepak Chopra, I love talking to you. I love reading your work and I appreciate your example.

And the only thing I disagree with is I do not think that you will be forgotten in my time or in any period of time because your work will live on as will your influence. Thank you for your friendship and your guidance. Thank you for taking time with me. I appreciate it. Good fictional characters are never forgotten. You're for your friendship and your guidance. Thank you for taking time with me. I appreciate it. Good fictional characters

are never forgotten. You're not fictional. You're real. I've touched your glasses. I'll talk to you again soon and thank you. Thank you. Man, he's kind of funny.

He's kind of like the rest of us, but he's also kind of out there. And it is always nice to hear from somebody who spent so much time researching, thinking, and practicing some of the deepest truths and metaphysical realities of the world as we understand it. Deepak Chopra. Thank you so much for being with me today. Subscribe, follow.

If you're on the YouTube vibe, you can get your merch right there and wear your independence, show you're a critical thinker and a free agent. I will see you next time. And don't forget, News Nation, News Nation,

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