THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Change Your Reality w/ Dr. Deepak Chopra

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

“Life and death are not opposites. Birth and death are opposites.”This week's episode with DR. DEEPAK CHOPRA is going CHANGE the way you think about EVERYTHING in life.It's an HONOR to have DR. CHOPRA join me for a wide-ranging chat about the MIND & BODY relationship. We discussed how you can INTEGRATE all of these things to help you live a better life.Dr. Chopra’s work has had a PROFOUND IMPACT on my life, and although I’ve followed his work for a long time, I still had so many questions I wanted him to answer...We cover…🙏🏽 TRANSCENDENCE and the source of all story experiences🙏🏽 MINDFULNESS and HOW SENSORY EXPERIENCES impact our lives🙏🏽 IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICTS, the best use of HUMAN IMAGINATION, LEARNING FROM CHILDREN, and CREATIVITY🙏🏽 Dr. Chopra’s experiments with PSYCHEDELICS🙏🏽 the nature of the relationship between your MIND / BODY and why it matters🙏🏽 a PRACTICAL EXERCISE you can use to CALM your HEART and your BRAIN🙏🏽 how LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTS EXPERIENCE and the 4 QUESTIONS you should ask before you speak🙏🏽 a frank discussion about BIRTH, DEATH, and why we FEAR DEATHI TOLD YOU THIS WEEK WAS DEEP!It was also one of the GREATEST CONVERSATIONS of my life!Like me, you’ll need to go back and listen to this episode two or three times. There are dozens of thought-provoking ideas you should not only hear but take time to think about.I guarantee you’ll find greater PEACE and CHALLENGE YOUR BELIEFS about the world and yourself as you listen. DR. CHOPRA will make you think about the relationship between your mind and body for weeks to come. 

This is the end my let's show. Welcome back everybody. It's an honor for me. It's rare that you get to have a conversation with an icon. But not only an icon, somebody who's made a massive, makes me emotional. Massive impact on my life. And I know that I've impacted a lot of your lives and without this man's work. I don't believe I would have been able to do that.

And I was telling him off camera, he made a huge difference in my father's life, which by extension means he's impacted my family. By the way, he's also written 93 books, which is not a bad start to his career. magazine named him one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century. So I think it's safe in calling him an icon. And I cannot wait to share this beautiful man with all of you today. So Deepak Chopra, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's a privilege. My honor, my friend. I we're going to get into this book. He's got out right now.

It's called Living in the Light Yoga for Self Realization. I want to get into the book, but I also want to make sure we leave enough on the bones that everybody goes and buys the book as well. But there's been a few things I've always wanted to ask you before we go to this book. And it's just, it's something you said, and it's stuck with me because I've used it in my own work. And I never heard it said this way before,

but you said every thought you have is actually a magical lie. What in the world do you mean when you say that? See our thoughts are interpretations of our perceptions, which means how we experience the world. And our perceptions are the real magical lies because they hide the truth of reality. So your perception tells you, the other is flat, nobody believes that anymore. Your perception tells you that the ground you are sitting on is stationary, spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space a thousand miles or not. Your perception tells you have a body which is three-dimensional, existence, space, and time, where it is actually proportionately

as void as intergalactic space. So everything you see can't be believed, and then on top of that, then you make assumptions which are called thoughts. So the thoughts extend the magicalize. The point is if you can see it, if you can touch it, if you can perceive it, if you can think about it, if you can imagine it, if you can experience it in any way, it's not real. What is real is the invisible you that makes this seem real. But it's a play of consciousness, It's a magical light and the play of

consciousness in my Eastern traditions of you guys called Lila, the divine playing as the universe. So where do the thoughts come from? Are they somehow old thoughts that are, were they reincarnated thoughts? Are they just perceptions that they are patterns in our experience? They're recycled from our collective culture. So every generation inherits the thoughts of the previous culture, recycles them. And then once in a while there's a creative leap, there's a Einstein or a Beethoven or a Michelangelo or you know, something, a genius like Shakespeare, they break the mold and that's called a leap in consciousness, a new story, a new context, a new meaning and a new reality. And that's how the universe evolves. Oh my goodness.

Okay, guys, I totally is going to be good. We're three minutes in and you're already rewinding to hear that again. A lot of the epochs work by the way. I find myself because of my limited brain capacity. I usually read each chapter once or twice just so I get the full understanding of it. But speaking of stories, you let me where I want to go

with your new book, living in the light yoga for self realization. It's about royal yoga. And I want you to tell us a little bit about that means because you're one of the things you claim, and you state, rather, is that it could really change your entire existence your entire life. And you start out in the book, talking about stories. Chapter one is about upgrading your own story. And I'm not even sure that most people are aware they're telling themselves a story about themselves, or that one even exists,

so why don't you help us dive in a little bit about how real Ugooga works, the different shocker centers, and what about upgrading your story in Chapter 1? If you close your eyes, anyone, and do nothing, in a minute or so or less, you will become aware that you are having a conversation with yourself. We call it thought, thought is conversation with ourselves. And there are two kinds of thoughts we have. One, you know, pleasant memories of the past past and one unpleasant memories of the past. There are only two kinds of thoughts. And there are stories, you know, the past is a story that you hold to be true.

So as I said, there are two kinds of stories, pleasant and unpleasant. And your body is a projection of that. It's not real. Your body is also perceptual magical life. If you say, I have a body, then you have to tell me which one. You started as a fertilized egg, then you were as I got. You were an embryo, you were a baby, you were a toddler, you were a pater, old, and then you were a teenager, a young adult, old adult, all the way to dusty death.

So if you say, I have a body, then please tell me which one. There's no such thing. The body is also a magical lie. It's a perceptual activity that you identify with. This is mine. And so yoga says that your body is your story, the word they use is the karmic body, the conceptual body. So, if you know, want to know what your karma means, your stories are in the past and how you interpret them, all you have to do is look at your

body. And if you want to know what your body will be like in the future, all you have to look at your stories right now. Your stories are you, but that's not the real you, that's the condition you, is the cultural conditioning you received, the economic conditioning, the education, your parents, your ancestors, every one of them is alive, new right now, as genetic activity. So you can't move your hands, you can't speak to me, you can't do anything, unless all your ancestors are alive in you as your genetic activity right now. Every single one of them, not only human ancestors, but animal

ancestors, going all the way back to the beginning of life without a single chain, without a single break in the chain. You know, all the way to microbial ancestors called Kimolitho, autotrophic hyperthermophiles, which were the first life forms on the rims of volcanoes. They are alive in you right now. You are that story, but behind that story is a field of consciousness which is not contaminated, which is not blemished, which is not even participating in this story. That is the real you. We call it the true self or in spiritual traditions they can call it the soul. Soul or awareness. It's the only thing that's real about you. We call it I. You say I was three years old. I was 16 years old. Different body, different mind. I was eight years old.

And unfortunately most young men these days they think if you want to run for president or go for office then you should praise your story at eight years of emotional development. That should be a requirement for running for office. and for running for office. Unless you transcend your story, you will always be afraid of concepts like old age, infirmity, death,

birth, you know, all these things are concepts. They don't actually apply to your true self, which is timeless, which is a field of infinite possibilities, which is creative, which is unpredictable, and which is the source of the stories, but is independent of the stories. So, Raja Yoga is this eightfold path, which includes everything from its called Raja Yoga, and the Zen traditions of it, and the word yoga means

Yudh, Sanskrit word, which means union with your true self. So when you go past all the dark alleys and the ghostful addicts and the stories of your mind, there's a field of absolute creativity which is timeless, which is not subject to birth and death. And once you get in touch with that part of your being, you're free of all these concepts, you're free to create whatever you want. You're not bamboozled by the stories of your ancestors. You talk about, thank you, by by the way for your work. I just as you're speaking I just think about how grateful I am for you because of the

difference it's made in my own life and I just I'm sitting here at gratitude knowing that millions of people are now for some of my audience getting to experience you this way for the first time. It's one thing to read a book. It's a different thing to to hear you live, and I'm very grateful for it. And one of the things that you talk about, and even in the first chapter, is this block between accessing that field or accessing the real us, and you talk about a social self also. And you seem to talk an awful lot about awareness, almost like, one of your work, you say, like, who is watching? So, is awareness, is awareness the key to removing these blocks,

at least in the very beginning of the work in the book? Yes, awareness is the key. Now, here's something very interesting. What is this awareness? Right. Awareness of the mind can't be the mind, right? Right. You're aware of your thoughts that mind can't be the mind, right? If you're aware of your thoughts, then you can't be your thoughts. You are independent of your thoughts. Awareness of the body

is independent of the body. Awareness of your story is also independent of your story. So that awareness is a fundamental experience of existence. When a child is born, it has no idea that there is something called planet Earth. It has no idea that there is something called even an object. So if I hold this object in front of a child, it doesn't know this on iPhone. If I hold my hand in front of a child, it doesn't know that that's called a hand. What is it aware of then? It is aware of colours, shapes, textures, tastes, smells, but without a story.

Okay. So what we call objects are actually modes of knowing and experience in awareness, but we call them objects. We give them a material identity when in fact there are perceptual activity of our own self in our awareness. So even though I'm holding this iPhone right now, that's a human construct. This is me and this guy's. Partial me and this guy's. Everything that you see is a partial you and this guy's.

I do say partial because your five senses are very narrow bandwidth of an experience. The human eye for example can see only between 300 and 800 nanometers wavelength. So what does the world look like to an octopus or a bat or an insect with a hundred eyes? What is the real look of the world? And the answer is, there's no such thing as the real look, it depends on who's looking and the instruments that we use to look, the instruments are our five senses and they're very faulty as I

just told you every sensual sensory experience is a magical light and furthermore it's a fragmented piece of the whole. So with bits of sensory experience we can never experience the whole. Therefore, you have to go beyond the mind, beyond the intellect, beyond all systems of thought. There is no system of thought, religion, theology, philosophy or science, because science is also a system of thought. No system of thought can give you access to truth with the capital to T. The only way to know the truth is to go beyond all systems of thought. That's where Royal Yoga fits in. It's not a system of thought. It's a series of practices which starts with the emotional intelligence, social

intelligence, of course body language on those yoga pastures that are understanding your body as a field of awareness, reading techniques to regulate your autonomic nervous system, inter-reception which means learning how to regulate the internal organs of your body, meditation, focus awareness and intention, and ultimately what we call transcendence, which means going past all of this to the source of all experience, not the experience, the source of all the experience. The experience is in time, the source of experience is timeless. And so you are.

And you, you, in yoga, you're using your body, right? And I, this notion of the mind and body connection. I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. So I've had some friends who's work you're familiar with that say, well, the body is the unconscious mind. Yeah, it's this a good thing. Okay, okay, I would love to. Okay, one, I can't wait to hear your opinion about this.

What is the mind in the body separate? Are they one? Does it matter? Because I'm now I'm using language to define these two different things. But part of the book that I was so fascinated by when I've already taken some steps on it is you are using your body to some extent to create this level of awareness. So what is the connection

between the mind and the body and maybe and and why does that matter? It matters a lot because first of all this even this idea that there's a mind-body connection. I made that idea very popular, but I regret it because there's no mind-body connection. The mind and body are the same experience, one experience subjectively, the other objectively. So when you close your eyes, you experience thoughts, when you open your eyes and you look at it, you experience what you call the physical body But they are the same thing. So wherever a thought goes there's a molecule wherever a molecule goes there's a thought

You're needed the molecule not the thought to the source of both mind body of an experience and the yoga practice, the physical yoga practice, which is what most people think of yoga as the physical postures. The physical postures are meant to actually give you the experience of your body as a feel of awareness and actually give you the ability to master it. So all these Eastern martial arts, for example, Judo, Tai Chi, Chi Gong, yoga, of course, they are mind-body practices where you cultivate your body as a field of awareness. And even the names, happy baby, a child pose, cat cow, and all these names are actually states of awareness where if you sit into a settle into that posture, you shift your awareness to a whole different domain of existence.

That's why you guys should be done slowly, carefully, never in a hurry. It's a form of what we would say mindfulness today. It's a form of mindfulness and I Think about description and little language. So we've talked a little bit about the mind the spirit the soul the body And then there's language, right? And you talk about this on the book as well And then I probably am not going to give away much more of the book, but it's so good for me about this on the book as well. And then I probably am not going to give away much more of the book, but it's so good for me. And you said something, correct me if I say it incorrectly. You said, language is not just a method of description, but it actually constructs experience. Yes. And I found this in my own life, you're just the practical application, because I think my

audience is obviously thinking, this is theoretical philosophical. What are the practical applications? And I often listen to the language of people in my life that I believe suffer a great deal unnecessarily. And oftentimes, the way they use their language constructs a structure around their life, construct around their life that delivers them suffering and misery unnecessarily, just based on the way they use language in their life.

So, like quote you correctly, and I think you'll about that. Yeah, language doesn't describe the constructs experience. And actually, in both the Buddhist and Vedantic and yogic schools, language is a very important part of what we call reaching enlightenment or the source of all experience which is also called freedom from suffering. Language is one of the eight things mentioned in yoga but also in Buddhist philosophy. Before you speak, you should ask yourself, is it necessary? Number one. Number two, is it helpful? Number three, will it create joy? Number four, will it create healing? And if the answer is yes, then go ahead and speak. Otherwise, just shut down. So language is very important and language is not something we created.

It's a part of the experience of human evolution. So up until say 40,000 years ago, there were eight different kinds of humans. We call ourselves homo sapiens, which means the wise ones. We were humble enough to call ourselves the wise ones. But then we gave names to other human beings. We called them hominids, homo, homo, floroenssters, homo, neanderthals, etc., etc. So they all look like you and me. Just like in a cat family, you have lions and panthers and cats and tigers and cheetahs. In the human family, you had eight different types of humans.

And they all had a primitive language, which all animals have. And that language is only about three things. Only three things. Number one, food, number two, sex, and number three danger. Because that's how we survive. And that's how humans were. Three things the language was for. Then one species, you and me, are ancestors.

We created a language for telling stories. And the first stories, the most common stories, were gossip, who's sleeping with whom, who can be trusted, who can be, who's betraying whom, etc. Who's cheating on whom, and then the second, so that's still the most common language. And sure is, I was just thinking that's the common language now. Yes, that's still. But once we created a language with stories, then we created other stories. For example, after gossip, the second most common language was money. There was no such thing.

You know, I'll cut your hair and you fix my shoes. We came to inconvenient. So we said, okay, let's give each other the shell. I owe you this much. And then a copper coin. And then paper and now digital money. It's all a story, Wall Street. What do we call Wall Street? It's exchange, exchange of ideas, values and everybody who buys those ideas, they make money out of this.

You know, what's the stock market? how people are feeling about themselves right now and how anxious they are about their future. That's what the stock market. It's a story. But everything that we call colonialism, nation states, empires, latitude, longitude, Greenwich mean time, it's not Botswana mean time, it's Greenwich mean time, it's a story and it's an arbitrary story, but we all hold it to be true and it constructs our everyday reality. Even the universe is a story, there's no such thing. As a universe, because what you call stars and galaxies, how do you know they exist? Well, there are perceptual activities in that narrow band of activity that we have, the five senses,

and we have a story around that. We call it the Milky Way Galaxy or, you know, next door, the Virgo Galaxy. But if you wiped out the human nervous system and human stories, there would still be experiences, but there wouldn't be human experiences and there wouldn't be any galaxies or telescopes or Hadron, coll colliders or an extension of our stories. You know what's interesting? People used this the wrong word, but I just, the application of your work and your thinking is so, it can be so broad because like for me, I have a word every year that I choose for the year.

And it's ironic that God delivered you to me today because my word for this year is peace. I love you. And so I love the word. And it's ironic that my first conversation of the year, even though this will come out a little bit later in the year, is with you. And what a blessing that is for me. But the same time, I do the, your application, your work of, you know, when I'm, when you're dealing in business, everybody, when you're dealing with folks and you listen to their story, them tell, they're telling themselves or you find a difficult time in connecting often times with Deepak Seder earlier about just deciding whether you should

be talking, listening to people's stories will help you connect with them or even though it may not be a real story, they're telling themselves, they're living this story and in order to connect with them, you have to meet them somewhere in their story. That's why we have this division politically. We have all these different things. No one's listening. Everyone's telling their version of reality and perception in their story. But you did say something that I've had friends that knew you were coming on. Everybody was excited. And there were so many different questions people wanted to have me ask you. But one of them you just touched on, which is that there is, there seems to me to be more than ever. And I, you know, more than ever in my time here, more anxiety, more strife, more stress, more worry, more concern, even

at the time we're recording this debug, you know, with all the political divisiveness and real things to worry, you're climate change, you've got the Ukraine, you've got a nuclear threat, you've got the economy, you've got all these things. And then there's just been people's lives on social media watching other people's stories and then feeling inadequate about their story. And then they use the language to describe it in a way that magnifies it and makes it worse. What is a common exercise or practice you could give us? We could apply. We just calm our spirit, calm our hearts. It's us we could apply we just calm our spirit calm our hearts is there something we could do that's easy to access for a layman who's not done extensive

you who go work in their life maybe they haven't even meditated in the first time today they're listening to you thinking I'm going to begin to learn mindfulness or meditation or for myself in a deep box work is there exercise to calm our hearts and our spirit? First of all, what he says is very important because all conflict in the world, all conflict, is ideological conflict. It's about ideas, it's about stories, where there's communism, versus capitalism, or socialism. They were all, by the way, good stories. Communism was a good story, let's make it equal for everyone.

Socialism was a good story, Let's make it equal for everyone. Socialism was a good story. Let's make justice for everyone. Capitalism, great story. Let's make people wealthy and rich if they are creative and they have good ideas. But none of these things succeeded because people get greedy, they get corrupt, they are interested more in power, mongering, influence, peddling, cronism, corruption and amassing wealth only for themselves. So, you know, the idea was very attractive, but it didn't work because humans have been bamboozled by their stories and and they believe that stories are right, and everybody else thinks their story is right. So that's first thing.

Secondly, the fact that we are now in the 21st century, and we have created things like the atomic bomb. We have split the atom. We have deciphered the human genome, we have put people on the moon, we have navigated interstellar space, but we haven't used our imagination to create a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world. So true. Shame on us, because this is a misuse of imagination.

because this is a misuse of imagination. So the best use of imagination is creative expression to upgrade our stories so we can all live peacefully and in a way that's sustainable and just and healthy and joyful. But we haven't used our imagination for that. We've used our imagination to kill each other and we're still doing it. It's a total failure of human imagination, number one. Number two are stories of medieval, they're tribal, they're ethnocentric, they're racist,

they're full of bigotry and prejudice. So medieval minds and modern capacities, that's a sleepwalking towards extinction. The last extinction was about 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs who wiped out from this planet in a matter of few days actually, because a meteorite fell on this planet, it was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, and dinosaurs who wiped out and what emerged was humans. And if we continue to sleepwalk, then evolutionary speaking, human species could be a very interesting experiment that didn't work. It failed. And that's what we're looking at right now. So unless we change our collective story right now,

we are all sleepwalking to extinction. I can tell you, that's not for one reason. It's not just climate change. It's mass migrations, it's epidemics, mass pandemics. It is extinction of species. It is destruction of the ecosystem, it is like, it is basically destroying our own ecosystem as well, our microbial life on this planet, which is necessary to sustain us.

So Ed, I don't want to sound depressing. That's one story though, that could be true. That the human species was an interesting evolutionary experiment that failed. That's one story. But the other stories, we can use that same imagination that we used to decipher the genome, to split the bomb, to split the atom, right? To navigate interstellar space, the same imagination can be used to create a more peaceful justice, sustainable health here in the joyful world. So you have to always ask yourself, what is my story?

Is it true? Am I sure if it's true? What is it doing to me? What is holding on to this story, doing to me? What is the opposite of this story? Is there a creative expression? The worst use of imagination is stress and violence. The best use of imagination is creativity. I'm so glad. I'm thinking about, I'm so familiar with your work that as you're talking, I have to tell you, I think that's so good. I'm thinking about, I'm so familiar with your work that as you're talking, I have to tell you,

I'm going all the way back to Super Brain. I think you wrote it like 2012. Yes. Something like that. I'm going back to that work. And in my other way, I probably stone a little of your work in my work, folk confession. No, nothing belongs to anyone.

Okay, well good, because I have, I was definitely shared a lot of it. And one of the things, yes, that's right. And one of the things that in that book that you said, just really where you were going is, is children, really young children. We can learn a lot from them.

And you talked about it in the book, and I just, I want you to share this with the audience because I often talk, I wrote my last book, I was talking about, you know, that children, one of the great things about children is they operate out of their imagination and their vision more often than they do their history and their story because they have a limited history and story.

The different clivity is to operate out of love, out of peace. They don't see, unless they've learned it, they don't see ethnicity or they don't see these different things that begin to create these tribal stories that you've talked about. So what can we learn from kids? You talked about it in the book.

It's just too good not to have you say. I was actually recently in Orlando during the pandemic and I was, know in the train that takes you to the baggage claim and everybody in the train was totally stressed out you know and they were of course wearing a bus they were angry they were shouting at each other on their cell phones. And there was a young mother who was also equally stressed and shared a little baby in her pram. And this baby was looking around, you know, and totally oblivious of all the stress in the train.

And then it finally caught my eye. It was trying to catch somebody's eye. And then it gave me the biggest smile in the world. So this is what children are. Before they've been bamboozled by these human constructs, they're naturally attentive. They're naturally friendly. They're naturally joyful.

They are naturally affectionate. So, you know, I think of the four-way is attention, appreciation, acceptance, and affection. That's what children are. And then we take it away from them. We say, no, no, your name is so-and-so. This is the name of your nationality. This is your ethnicity, not forgetting that everyone comes from Africa anyway.

But now, you know, go to war, protect your identity, which is a totally false identity. Construct an identity. There's so much to learn there and I find myself myself to say that I find myself in a lot of social settings looking for and watching children. I was out I was doing a I just told the story I went on did I was in your neck of the woods I was doing good morning America for my book a few weeks ago and I was in the lobby of a very nice hotels or everybody there's about a pretty good life financially to be in that space. And people were so stressed in this, it was the rest, I'll tell you where I was, I was in the restaurant at the Plaza Hotel. And man, people were, it was the holidays, it should have been a

joyous time. People were stressed and upset someone got their table and they were waiting and their food was latent. I was eating alone and I just, my, my, I was facing the room. And I'm watching all of these people that have these really incredibly blessed lives, telling themselves a completely different story, right? Using language to magnify a negative situation, right? And then throughout the restaurant, there was this little girl

that she was three years old, running around having the time of her life. Just in complete bliss, complete joy, enjoying the moment, being fully present, it seemed to me. But there's the clue. Okay, get to us. The clue is playfulness. See, we forgot how to play. We call it games now. So who's winning? Who's losing? But the play was the sake of the play. But the play was the sake of the play. The play was the play. You know, it was theatre.

It was dance. It was music. And it was sports. But sports in the spirit of playfulness, in the spirit of joy, in the spirit of... You know, okay, we are competing with each other, but in the end we shake hands. Okay, we even embrace each other because it was all a play. And we don't know how to play anymore.

And if you want to heal the world, you have to return to the state of innocence that we call play, for the sake of play. I think people don't because they're judged. It's so counter-c culture now. It's almost like grow up, be serious, be mature. The other thing too is you're constantly being told, join one of the teams. Are you red or blue? You know, are you rich or poor? And so you're constantly being told to join these teams in life. And I was thinking about, you know, on the children part of it, I was reading something where you said, but the story I've told myself, I was confess, I'm 51, and I

found myself using language and telling a story recently where I said, well, I'm getting older, you know, I'm getting older, and I'm wiser. That's part of the good part of my story of getting older, but the other part of it is, I'm not what I was physically, I'm not this, and I've read recently recently said, actually, I have no intentions of deteriorating physically or mentally as I age that that is actually another story we tell ourselves. I know Dr. Dyer and I know Wayne Dyer talked a little bit about this as well, your dear friend and mine.

But is that true for you too? Do you think you think aging in general, meaning the deterioration of some mental faculties or things like that are also part of some subconscious story we're telling ourselves? One of the greatest fears of all time in India, Adi Shankara, almost a thousand years ago, he said, people don't grow old when they stop growing, they become old. So as long as you grow your ink you will not feel old and you know I'm your said your 50 what 50? 51. 51 I'm 76 and people ask me how does it feel to be 76? I say you know I haven't yet Middle Asia. I'll tell you when I get them.

And I should, and you mean that? I haven't had my midlife crisis yet. Well, spend some time with me. I might be able to help you with that. I, uh, I got to ask you a couple hard things. They're the heavy stuff, because friends of mine are like, you got to ask them. So a friend of mine, I talk a lot about the subconscious and unconscious mind and a very devout Christian friend of mine recently said, so where's that located?

And I said, well, there's some data that says, it's probably in the prefrontal cortex of your brain, but I said, I also believe your body operates that way as well. And I like from a cellular level, and he goes, well, they can't prove that. And I said to him, and I'm a person of the devout faith, he said, well, where's the soul located? I said, just because I can't tell you where it's located doesn't mean it exists. So I want to ask Deepak Chopra, both questions.

Where is the subconscious mind located and where's the soul located? Nothing has a location. No object, no physical conferences on the mind, for example, psychological, conferences, psychiatrists, neuro-s psychiatrists, and they can't even define what the mind is. You say, okay, what is the mind? Tell us what the mind is. Oh, it starts. Where is it? And they point to their brain. Okay? And so, where are you having this experience right now? You know, you could like right now, you're watching me on your computer and you're listening to me. Where is this experience happening right now?

Is it happening on your computer screen? No, right? That's just the interface. Is it happening in your brain? And I can guarantee you there's no colour in your brain, there's no sound in your brain, and what you call the prefrontal cortex, then all this stuff. Those are called neural correlates of experience, but where exactly is the experience happening? And the only thing you can say is it's happening in my awareness because without awareness there's no experience, right? Yes. If you had no awareness, there's no experience. So then where is this awareness? Well, it doesn't have a location in space time. It appears as neural correlates in the brain. But what is it that knows the brain? If I put a knife through your brain, you won't feel any pain. In fact,

the brain has zero self-awareness, zero. Just like the tooth can't bite itself, the eyes can't see themselves, the brain can't experience itself. The brain is an instrument that gives you the appearance of locality to something that has no location and space time. So one of the best definitions of herd of mind, I'm from a neuropsychiatrist and his name is Dan Siegel, he's from UCLA. He used this definition, which is actually the best definition I've heard of mine. The mind is an embodied, embodied, and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information

in an ecosystem of living beings. So, let's take that bit by bit. The mind is embodied and relational, which means you can't have a mind by yourself. It is always in relationship to other minds. So true. You can't have a mind by yourself. It's part of the matrix of relationships, It's part of the matrix of relationships. And being part of the matrix of relationships, it finds neural correlates in the body, in the brain, but it's not in the brain or in the body. The body and the brain are experiences in the mind.

And the mind is an experience in awareness. And none of it is local. None of it has any locations, based. Now this is actually the experience that some people have on psychedelics. Because the psychedelics cooled down a part of the brain called the default mode network. DFN default mode network. And this is the neural network of your ego identity, which is a socially induced hallucination. So once you cool this down, you're in the matrix. And that's the reality, the matrix. And the word matrix also is related to the words measurement, matter, time, music, meter. These are all part of the matrix of illusion. The real matrix is infinite, formless and fundamental. Without the formless, there's no form.

It is the formless that gives rise to form. So if you can identify and that's where mindfulness and all these yogic techniques come in, they allow you to get in touch with your formless eternal self, an Indian poet by the name of the God, said in this playhouse of infinite forms, I found the formless and so my life was blessed. Because the formless is eternal. It is infinite. It is baseless. It is timeless. It is irreducible. It is without cause.

Call it what you want. God, awareness, fundamental reality, are in sof, Brahman, Allah, doesn't matter. But it is actually so magnificently infinite that it is incomprehensible. That's why I said, no system of thought can give you, get you in touch with truth, no system of thought. You have to relinquish all systems of thought and get in touch with your formless self. We're vibrating in a very high frequency here, my friend, because the next thing that I wanted to ask you, really have a limited amount of time left, but I have to ask you, because if I don't, I'll have friends that will no longer be my friends, but I don't ask you. And you mentioned psychedelics.

That's the thing right now. You know this. You're part of, you're in touch with, a lot of people are using external medicine and to induce these states of euphoria, peace, bliss, awareness, whatever those things are. And by the way, I'm blown away lately by the people I meet that have acquired, people that would just not have thought, probably like for you to like, not have thought we're down,

bubbling in these medicines, right? I just I was surprised by who it was. And I'm wondering your thoughts on it because people have asked me like, shouldn't should I can't I naturally tap into these states by emptying my mind, by meditation, by yoga, these other things. So what's your thoughts on these external things we ingest in order to create these states of awareness? external things we ingest in order to create these states of awareness. So, you know, I tell you the truth.

I was sort of in teen in medical school in India when we had professors from Harvard teaching us and there were medical students from Harvard as part of the exchange program that we had. I would just entered medical school. So, you know, my professors, the Harvard professors said, we're going to do an experiment with LSD controls. Would you be subject to it? So I said, yeah, of course. What? No way. Okay, wait a minute. This was I was 17, okay? Okay. Okay. And so my first experience, I had two sessions. My first experience was at

Panic. I lost my personal identity and it was Panic. And then the second time, same week, same experiment, I was asked to look at a poster of Mother Teresa, and in those days, the rumor was that Mother Teresa, when she kissed children with leprosy, they would be healed. Now, we have epigenetic actually science to explain how that happens, how extreme love and extreme compassion can heal somebody through what we call changes in genetic activity, but that time we didn't know anything of that. It was just that

everybody was talking about mother to resahealing people by kissing the wounds of children with leprosy. So I was looking at this poster when I had my second session of LSD and I had the extremist feeling of empathy and love. And I decided I was going to be a healer. Even though in medical school, we were not supposed to use words like healers or you know, you practice or you're sure you what is keep practicing. Okay, or you treat, but you never heal. But I got my first glimpse of what healing was the return of memory and wholeness and love as the fundamental truth of existence. And I never had the intention again to experiment because you know these substances are not not addictive. Like alcohol or tobacco, they're not addictive. Whether it's silo, cyber, or I've worse come.

Then I did my own research and I went and explored the hymns of the Rigveda, which is one of the most ancient texts in spiritual literature. And the hymns are devoted to some substance called soma. We don't know what it is, but I presume it was a psychedelic. Then I actually went and convinced myself that when Moses fed Mana to his followers, it had fungus in it. And I also now am convinced that when Jesus inverted water into wine, the cast had fungus. And that was the first religious experience. Mana from heaven, wine from water, all these miracles were actually the first religious experience.

But they were done through shamanic rituals, which were very important. When you diverse them from these experts who've done these practices for thousands of years, and you use them only for entertainment, then there's a risk, of course, and you might actually lose yourself instead of finding yourself. But on the other hand, now, I have joined forces with experts in this field to see how we can help people going through extreme depression or suicidal ideation or what is called BTSD, and also suicidal ideation. But here's the most interesting thing. There's a condition that neurologists know about.

You know, when I wrote Superbrain, I asked my friend, Rudy Tanzi, who was the professor of neuroscience at Harvard, but we didn't put it in the book, of course. I asked him about this thing called, terminal dosity. And so there are some patients who have Alzheimer's or who have a stroke or who have otherwise not there mentally. And a few hours sometimes, or a few minutes,

or sometimes even a few days, or sometimes even a few weeks before they die, they're certainly totally clear. They claim to see the other side. They claim to see other relatives. They even see pets. They are welcomed by relatives who are passed on to the other side. So now, is this hallucination, is this a dream? And I came to the conclusion, the whole thing is a hallucination. What you and I are experiencing right now, is our collective hallucination that we call reality. It's a VR reality. It's a virtual reality constructed

in human consciousness by the stories we tell ourselves. And so you move from one dream to another dream. The dream never ends. And so recently, about less than six months ago, my literary agent who I had been with for the last 40 years, she was dying of cancer, brain cancer. And I sat with her and with a neuropsychiatrist, and we took her through an experience with Psylocybin. And this is a two weeks before she died.

She had terminal elasticity and she was actually looking forward to her transition. So now I've actually asked my neuroscience friends, is this real? And they all say, yes, it's real, but it happens only in a few patients. So I think that might be an extra frontier. Look at how to ease people in the terminal phases of death. When they have panic about dying, you can ease them into a different experience. Oh my gosh. This has been one of the most fascinating conversations of my life. I mean, that and I only wish I was sitting in your presence physically because I knew I thought that it could be. But by the way, to learn that one of the great healers of our time

it started out. There's no physical me. I know. I know. I said that out loud. I was waiting for you to sort of amend my statement, but I have to tell you the fact that is a socially induced hallucination. I understand. I'm working on it. I'm getting there. I have to tell you the fact is is a socially induced hallucination. I understand. I'm working on it. I'm getting there I have to tell you to know that one of the great healers of our times it started on LSD like I just got to tell you I'll be processing that now for for several weeks this hero of mine last thing because we are out of time I want to make sure everybody gets living in the light yoga for self realization go get it right now you tell Deepox work is not stuff where you read it and you go, oh, that didn't apply to anything. You read his work and you want to continue to read. Like I said, I usually read most chapters multiple times, but we're on such a great

vibration. Your last question has to do with the ending of your physical body. One of the things that I have repeated many times out loud is that you talk about existence being timeless and that one of the highest levels of elevated consciousness is you lose the fear of death. And so you were just talking about this with your literary agent. I just want to know, do you fear death? Are you at that stage where you no longer fear death? And is that also a construct in our mind that we define with language because existence is timeless?

Like when I'm at the most happy, I'm going to play golf with my son today. It's his birthday. I know I'll say at most happy, I'm gonna play golf with my son today. It's his birthday. I know I'll say at some point, we'll all strack a time because I was in such a blissful state. So I'm just curious about, is Deepak Chopra afraid to die and just finish up with about existence? So let's talk about life and death are not opposites, okay?

Birth and death are opposites, but life is the continuum of birth and death. It's like the on-off switch in your light bulb. You can't have an on without an on-off, you can't have an off without an on. So death is the off between on's and birth is the on between on's. And therefore you have to go beyond this constructed all. In the yogic tradition, we say you should die when you are ready to say Binda, none that, number one. And you should die in meditation, in Mahasamadis, called the big meditation. So you have a party, you say goodbye to everyone,

you might even want a glass of champagne, and then you close your eyes, and you don't open them. I will, man. The next time. That's so beautiful. Oh my goodness, I don't want this to end, but since existence is timeless, it really hasn't ended yet. So I'm so grateful. By the way, one thing I wanted to mention that I didn't

is this new site that Deepak has called NeverAlone.Love. I want to make sure you guys all check that out as well. This has been one of the great conversations of my life, and I was sort of hoping that it would be in my imagination. It would be it. We even exceeded my imagination. So, Deepak Chopra, thank you so much for blessing us today and you are welcome back here any time you would honor us with your presence. So thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me. All right. All right. Everybody, God bless you. I'll share this. I have a feeling that the internet is breaking right now and millions of people are sharing this conversation. So God bless you all, max out, take care.

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