The One You Feed - How to Live in the Light with Deepak Chopra

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

In this episode, Deepak and Eric discuss his new book, Living in the Light: Yoga for Self-Realization. How awareness can be defined by what it is and what it isn't The purpose of meditation and the value it can bring to your life Why it's important to understand that there is no good or bad meditation The ancient teachings of yoga and how the different yoga poses are shifts in awareness Defining the different types of yoga and their meanings To learn more about Deepak Chopra, click here See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The water is there in the ocean, it is there in the wave, it is there in the raindrop, it is there in the river, it is there in the puddle, it is there in the rainbow, but it is all water. So awareness is the essential ingredient that we call life. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

but I do have a long introduction. It's Deepak Chopra, the founder of the Chopra Foundation, which is a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, along with Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. Deepak is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He's board certified in internal medicine, endocrinology, and metabolism, and a fellow of the American College of Physicians. In addition, he's a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. He serves as clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and hosts the podcast Daily Breath. The World Post and the Huffington Post Global Internet Survey ranks Deepak Chopra number 17 of the most influential thinkers in the world and number

one in medicine. He's the author of over 90 books translated into 43 languages, including the book discussed here, Living in the Light, Yoga for Self-Realization. Hi, Deepak. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you, Eric. Living in the Light, Yoga for Self-Realization. Hi Deepak, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you, Eric. It's an honor to have you on. We're going to be discussing your latest book, Living in the Light, Yoga for Self-Realization. But before we do that, we'll start the show like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents

things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Every experience is not just what you just said, but every experience by definition is through contrast. You can't have an up without a down. You can't have a hot without a cold. You can't have good without bad. You wouldn't know the difference. You can't have pleasure without pain. So experience by definition is by contrast.

The more self-aware you are, and that's a very important point, the more you reflect on questions like, who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? Then you automatically choose the evolutionary direction instead of the destructive direction. I don't even use words like good and bad. I just see evolution or entropy. Yeah, in the Buddhist tradition, the term is often skillful and less skillful. Correct. Or, you know, bad is ignorance and good is enlightenment. Yep, exactly. So, you just mentioned something there about awareness.

And you say in the book that yoga teaches that awareness is the ultimate healer, no matter at what level it occurs. Say more about the role of awareness in healing, in moving towards the light, and just living a better life. So first of all, we have to define what awareness is. And a lot of people actually, if you ask them, what is awareness? They confuse it with the mind. Awareness is not the mind, because if you have awareness of the mind, then it can't be the mind. Whatever you're aware of is separate from that which you're aware of. So the awareness of the mind is not the mind. The awareness of the body is not the body. The mind and body and the world are objects of experience.

Awareness is the ultimate subject of experience. To go even further, awareness and consciousness are synonymous. So what is that? Awareness or consciousness is that in which all experience occurs, number one. Number two, awareness or consciousness is that in which all experience occurs, number one. Number two, awareness or consciousness is that in which all experience is known. And number three, which most people find it hard to understand, awareness is that out of which all experience is made. So the mind is a modified form of awareness. The intellect is a modified form of awareness. Our ego identity is a

modified form of awareness. Our energy is a modified form of awareness. The body, which is a perceptual experience, is a modified form of awareness. And the world, which is also a perceptual experience, is a modified form of awareness. So once we understand the definition of awareness, then say, what is it? And how do we find it? Can we find awareness objectively? The answer is not. How can you find something

that is the subject of all experience? Objectively. So just as the eyes cannot see themselves and the teeth cannot bite themselves, awareness cannot be observed objectively. It is an experience we have in all experience, which is fluctuations of awareness that we call body, mind and the world. They are fluctuations in the form of sensations, sense perceptions, images, feelings and and thoughts, when these

quieten down to a point where the mind becomes totally silent, there's no experience of sensation, perception, or anything. What's left is awareness. When you take away everything you're not, what's left is awareness. Now, when we look at its properties and we only look at it and understand it through experience, not objectively, then awareness is a field of infinite possibilities. Awareness is something that is synchronistic. It organizes everything simultaneously. For example, a human body or any biological organism can think thoughts, play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, in the case of a female, make a baby, all at the same time. It doesn't operate through cause and effect. It operates synchronistically. We call that non-local correlation. It's A, infinite possibilities,

2, non-locally correlated or synchronistic, 3, unpredictable, four, creative, five, self-organizing, six, self-regulating, and seven, self-evolving. Because awareness doesn't have any properties that we can identify perceptually or cognitively, then awareness is also transcendence. It's when everything goes away, that's what's left. And also, it's not in time. Every experience is in time, but awareness is not in time. So when, you know, the commonest phrase we use to describe awareness is, I. I was five years old. I was 10 years old. I was a teenager. I was happy. I was sad. I'm a mature adult. I'm afraid of death. So every experience is preceded by I. The experience is in time, but awareness is not in time. I was there when you were a five-year-old with a different body, a different

mind, different emotions, and different experiences. The experiences come and go. In fact, the experiences are perceptual snapshots or cognitive snapshots. Awareness is the spaceless, timeless factor in every experience. Well, we dove into the deep end of the pool right out of the gate, didn't we? You asked me what is awareness. I know, I did. I did. So, I think what we're saying is awareness in its, you used the word modified, so in its unmodified state is, you can correct this, but it's not exactly a container, but we could think of it as that in which everything else occurs and arises from. Correct. That in which everything else occurs and arises from. Correct. That in which everything occurs and arises. In fact, the experience of the whole universe arises and subsides in awareness in the form of perceptual activities. Every perception

is a snapshot of experience. And then the continuity that we have of existence is because there's a storyline between every snapshot. So I'm watching a movie, for example, the old fashioned movies, you know, you had 24 frames a second or 28 frames a second. And remember the time when you may or may not, I'm old enough to remember Charlie Chaplin movies. They were very jerky because the reel wasn't moving fast enough. Today we have digital movies. And so they go at the speed of light. But even then,

between every digital on, there's a digital off. Awareness is in the off, but it's also in the on simultaneously. And right now, you know, you're looking at me, this is a digital framework that we're looking at. But I think the whole universe ultimately is a digital workshop in an undivided, formless, eternal, infinite awareness. Awareness doesn't have a form. So if it doesn't have a form, it has to be infinite by definition. Anything that has a form is finite. And so we are that at our fundamental level, we are infinite awareness. It's modified forms, a body, mind, and the world. So, you know, just like a wave occurs in the ocean, occurs, it rises, subsides

into the ocean. The ocean is always there. Just say it's the wateriness of the ocean occurs, it rises, subsides into the ocean. The ocean is always there. Just say it's the wateriness of the ocean. The water is there in the ocean. It is there in the wave. It is there in the raindrop. It is there in the river. It is there in the puddle. It is there in the rainbow, but it is all water. So awareness is the essential ingredient that we call life. Another analogy I've heard, and again, as you mentioned, these are all ways of describing something that we can't describe. It's ineffable. Another way I've heard it described is that awareness is sort of like, if you think of the TV, right? Awareness is the screen. Beautiful. Then everything else that's happening gets projected onto that screen, but the screen changes temporarily.

But the screen remains what it is. It's not like if I watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that now my screen is forever colored by Willy Wonka, right? Not in the ultimate sense. Now, we know that in the mind sense, right, the mind does get conditioned, but this awareness remains unconditioned. So, right now, it's actually a modified form of the screen. The screen has the software, the electrons and the photons that are coming on and off. Now, once this program is finished, actually, the seeds of this experience will still

be in the computer hardwire. So awareness, even the experience doesn't die. The memory of the experience remains in the, let's say, the seeds in the screen, because I can retrieve it. Let's take a simple example. Can you remember what you had for dinner last night? I can. Okay. So what was it? A delicious baked salmon and a salad that my partner Ginny made. Now, may I ask you, can you remember any experience from your childhood or your adolescence? Not many, but some, sure. Yeah. So where was that memory before I asked you the question? Most people, you know, when I talk to scientists,

they say it's in the brain, but that's where I have a problem with neuroscience. Where in the brain is that thing that you ate last night? There's nothing you will find. But when I ask you the question, many neural networks go into action and suddenly you retrieve the memory. The memory is in awareness, not in the brain. Yep. Because awareness is not in time. Being consistent with your habits is the engine that drives your transformation and growth.

Think about it. You can't feed your good wolf one big meal a year and expect it to thrive. Consistent, steady bits of food fuel a good, healthy wolf. But it's hard to create consistency. You might listen to this podcast on a Thursday, feel really inspired, but then life takes over, and by Saturday night, you've forgotten all about it. That's why I'm hosting a free live Q&A town hall Zoom meeting on Thursday, February 23rd, where I'll be answering your questions about how to take what you know and turn it into what you consistently do. Head to oneufeed.net slash

townhall to register for this free live session with me. During this townhall, you'll ask me your specific question and I'll answer it. It's that simple. So if you would like my help creating some tools to deal with real life when it gets in the way of your best intentions, let me help you. If changing habits feels overwhelming, if you struggle to make time for things because life is so busy, if it's easy to get caught up with your to-do list, you feel consistently behind and taking time for yourself feels selfish, then let's talk. The things we do consistently are more important than the things we do once in a while. In this free town hall session, you'll ask me your questions and I'll help you find what works for you, how you

might look at things differently and create the structure to help you do the thing you really want to do. And if you don't have a specific question, just come listen to the conversation. A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. Truth is, you can make a lot of progress by doing just a little bit. To register for this free Zoom session on February 23rd, go to oneufeed.net slash townhall. That's oneufeed.net slash townhall. I hope I get the chance to meet you there. Thank you. We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake-up from the autopilot we fall into in our day-to-day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts help you stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. They periodically prompt you to pause for

a second and become more present and mindful and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics in a bite-sized, short, and simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the busyness of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche, which I thought was cool. So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed.net slash text and sign up for free. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's change direction a little bit and talk about meditation for a minute. You frequently run meditation programs. I think you and Oprah have one. It's something you've taught about for a long time. Share with me why, to you, meditation is so important. First of all, on a very basic level, meditation allows you to experience awareness, go beyond thought. So I have always realized that no system of thought can give you access to awareness. You have to go beyond all thought,

and you got to go beyond the conditioned mind, you know, the secret passages, the so called dark alleys, the ghost filled attics of your conditioned mind, which goes back 1000s of years. Right now, you have conditioning as a result of your ancestors. In fact, they're all alive in your body as genetic activity in your body, an epigenetic activity. And this conditioning goes back to your childhood. It even goes back to the womb. But actually, the conditioning goes back historically to the economics

and the stories of your ancestors, culture, economics, religion, all kinds of things. The body, in fact, is the conditioned mind according to spiritual traditions. So meditation helps you go beyond all this and allows you to enter this realm of possibilities, all this and allows you to enter this realm of possibilities, which is self-regulating, self-evolving, creative, etc. So meditation. Now on a very fundamental level, therefore, and now there's enough science. 30 years ago, people kind of poo-pooed meditation a little bit in the West, not understanding that it has thousands of years of history. But meditation, even on a very superficial level, things like blood pressure, heart rate variability, heart rate, immune function, endocrine function, inflammatory

proteins, all quiet down. So meditation allows self-regulation, self-healing, both of body, mind, emotions, and relationships on a very simple level. On a deeper level, it allows you access to higher states of consciousness beyond waking, sleeping, and dreaming. There are other states of consciousness that spiritual traditions talk about. So there's waking, which is the obvious state in which we are presumably now. But these spiritual traditions call the waking state a lucid dream in a vivid now. Because again, just bear with me for a moment.

Wittgenstein said, life is a dream, we are asleep, but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming. The Buddha's main message was awakening. Awakening from the everyday reality that we call a lucid dream. If I asked you what happened to your childhood, you'd say it's a dream. But if I asked you what happened last night, it's a dream. What happened five minutes ago, it's a dream. What happens to

these words, by the time you hear them, they don't exist. So the whole thing is a dream. And it's the most superficial state the second state is the dream state that we have at night which is more fuzzy and more amorphous and not clear okay that's a higher state of consciousness because you're getting to a the source of fluctuations of awareness that we call the mind deep sleep is still higher because now there's no fluctuation and you're non-local, which means you're not having any experience. Non-local means now you've transcended body and mind. But beyond waking, dreaming, and sleeping, spiritual traditions identify a fourth state. In English, we could call it transcendence. There's a fifth state that spiritual traditions, transcendence means going beyond all perceptual

activity, non-local, everything is correlated, etc. The fifth state in these traditions is called cosmic consciousness, when you're in local and non-local awareness at the same time, which means your body is asleep, but you're aware of the sleep. Your mind is in dream state, but you're aware that it is dreaming. So when you have non-local and local awareness simultaneously, that in these traditions is called cosmic consciousness. It's, you know, in Christian traditions, I'm in the world and not of it.

Beyond cosmic consciousness, there's still another state called divine consciousness. When you become aware of the awareness in every object of experience, okay, this is a very interesting state where you commune without communicating. It's a psychic phenomena, etc., etc., divine consciousness. And beyond that is a state called unity consciousness, which is enlightenment. When you realize that awareness is actually single, it cannot be divided. And the whole universe is a projection of that awareness. Now, you know, if you were religious, you'd actually call it God or you'd call it Allah or Brahman or Ain Sof.

These are words that have been used in different religious traditions. So, these are words that have been used in different religious traditions. So, I think to sort of summarize, you're saying that meditation has very practical benefits to the mind, the body, and it's also the portal to these deeper states of consciousness, to this level of awareness. Eric, it is actually meditation gives you access to the religious experience. Now, these days, it's fashionable to say, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. But actually, if you look at the religious experience, there are only three components to it. First is transcendence, which we just spoke about. Second is the spontaneous emergence of what we call platonic qualities, truth, goodness, beauty, love, compassion, joy, equanimity.

And the third is the loss of the fear of death. This is the experience of Jesus. This is the experience of Buddha. This is the experience of Muhammad, the Sufis, every seer in every tradition. every seer in every tradition. But these poor fellows, men and women, when they try to explain it, nobody understands it because it's so, you know, as you said, ineffable. So it's like, you know, somebody is pointing to the moon, you start worshipping the finger instead of wanting to say, how can I find the moon itself? How can I have that religious experience or spiritual experience? If you don't like the word religious or God, whatever, how do I have that experience myself? Now, imagine that you had that experience,

loss of fear of death, spontaneous compassion, love, joy, equanimity, truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, and transcendence. What's left? You're all set. It's freedom. So it's also freedom, freedom from all conditioning, including the fear of death, because death happens to experience, not to the awareness. Like death happens to the program on the screen, but not to the screen. So you practice meditation every day. I think your yoga and meditation is a two to three hour a day practice. Talk to me a little bit about what type of meditation you are doing. What are you doing when you're meditating? I know that you initially, I think, came into this space through transcendental meditation, maybe is what you were originally taught. I'm just kind of

curious what you do today and maybe how your approach or method to meditation has changed over the years? I first do some body awareness and some breath awareness, which these days is frequently referred to as mindfulness, you know, to be aware of your body, of your breath. Okay. That I do for however long. So I'm very familiar with every sensation in my body. Then I do some reflection and the reflection goes very deep. Who am I? Am I the changing body? Am I the awareness of the changing body? Am I the changing mind? Am I the awareness of the changing mind? Am I the changing emotions? Am I the changing personality, etc, cetera? It takes me quite a bit of time. So I do that reflection inquiry. It's called inquiry.

Second, then I ask myself, what do I want without looking for the answer? Noticing sensations, images, feelings, thoughts. I notice them, let them go. But because they arise and subside in the same way as breath or any other fluctuation, then I ask myself, what is my purpose? Then I ask myself, what am I grateful for? Then I do mantra practice, similar to transcendental meditation. And finally, when I transcend, which because I've been doing this for 40 years, I can go to that state of pure consciousness, where there is deep stillness, or transcendence, I rest in that awareness.

So that becomes my identity, my identity is not my mind, not my body, not my personality, not the fluctuations of the changing world, but the awareness. And I can anchor myself in that identity any moment I want. Like right now, I could do that. I could be anchored in that awareness while I'm speaking to you. This whole process takes a little time. And then at night, before I go to sleep, I spend some reflective time on the meaning of death. Because this is my final

chapter. You know, in my tradition, there are four chapters, first 25 years education, second 25 years fame and fortune, I can say been there done that, 25 years giving back, even there, I've been there done that this is my final chapter. So I'm preparing for death. So is that what the final chapter is? Final chapter is called self-realization. Okay. Not self-improvement. To know the self in its infinite dimensions. And is stage two, the fame and fortune,

also the stage where most people are also involved in family? All of that. It's also called householder. Yeah. These are called ashrams. Ashrams are locations in consciousness where you rest, which is your identity. So in the second phase, it's your ambition, your life goals. In this tradition, again, there are four goals in life.

So first goal in life is life purpose, dharma. Second goal in life is fame and fortune, artha. Third goal in life is karma, pleasure, you know, including sexual pleasure. And final goal in life is freedom from all of that. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a floor? We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise

really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to ask you another question about meditation, because you've been teaching meditation for people for a long, long time. Do you think everybody has the ability to get to transcendence in meditation? Is it simply a matter of putting in enough time? What do you think contributes? Because it seems pretty clear that some people naturally settle easier than others into a deeper state. How do you think about everyone's capacity? Do we have different capacities in that? Yeah, we do. You know, I remember teaching Elizabeth Taylor meditation. And after 30 seconds, she said, How long do I have to do this? She was actually upset. Okay. Then I remember teaching

Michael Jackson the same thing. And he transcended like like that it was like he was performing thriller or something like that so there's a wide range some people nothing some people immediate transcendence and some people just relaxation okay now it is true that artists in general actually have a pretty good idea and also sports people because they've had peak experiences you know i taught meditation long time ago to joe namath when he was at the highest level of his peak career and he said well i've experienced this this is what happens to me when i'm playing you know time slows down sounds disappear even though the crowd is cheering and everything is gorgeous and it's effortless.

I didn't know this was meditation. I called it flow. If you read a description of mystical experience and flow states, you see, we may not be talking about the exact same thing, but we're talking about something that shares a lot of characteristics with each other. Correct. Peak performance is momentary. Peak living, it comes through meditation. For someone who has difficulty settling, let's say, you know,

which I think is more and more people today, given the pace of our culture and how bombarded we are with things, there's still value in the process, doing it, even if maybe I'm not getting to transcendence, or even if it's more challenging for me, I'm not one of those people that settle easily. You know, I tried TM, God, how long ago now? 34 years ago. So meditation has been sort of challenging for me, but I found it precisely for that reason to be particularly valuable to me. If you just sit through it and consider, I've done it. There's no such thing as a good or bad meditation. That was the biggest thing for me, I think, was that I was frustrated with what I felt was my inability to do it.

Because I thought, well, my brain should be stopping. But it wasn't. When I learned to just relax and be like, yeah, let it go. Just sit here, relax, relax. By the way, now that you bring it up, these days, people get that experience with psychedelics like psilocybin and mushrooms and ketamine. What it does is it loosens the neural networks of the conditioned mind. But I'm not recommending that that's the way to start meditation, but people do have those experiences. All right, let's talk about your latest book, Living in the Light, Yoga for Self-Realization. You're talking about yoga more broadly than the

way most people in the West would think of it, which is a series of poses that we go through, which are called asanas. But you're talking about something called Raja Yoga, which is also, I think you say is translated as royal. So, talk to me about royal yoga. So, you know, in my room where I'm sitting right now, which is my library, I have about numerous books on yoga. And all yoga books that are well written are actually derived from the original teachings of a great seer. We don't even know how long he lived. Some people say, you know, a few hundred years BC, but we don't know. I mean, he's a mythical figure, but his teachings have been recycled over thousands of years. His name is Patanjali, and Patanjali's yoga is what yoga is, and it has eight limbs. And the third limb is the asanas of

the posture. Patanjali starts in the first chapter with two aphorisms. First aphorism says, with two aphorisms. First aphorism says, now the teaching of yoga begins. And the word yoga, by the way, is related to a Sanskrit word called yuj, which means union, union with the self beyond all conditioning. So he says, now the teaching of yoga begins. And then he says the second sentence in the whole teaching is yoga is the settling down of the fluctuations of the mind into pure awareness. What we just spoke about, transcendence. Then in the remaining text, he describes eight limbs. The first limb in Sanskrit is called Yama.

In the book, I use the word social intelligence because that's what they are. Okay. They're rules, not even rules, principles of social intelligence based on awareness or conscious living. The second limb is called Niyama, which is emotional intelligence, the rules. And there are five principles in each. So, so you know instead of using those words yama and nayama i call them social and emotional intelligence but then patanjali jumps right into what we call the asanas or the physical postures because he says the physical postures are meant to shift your experience of your body from a physical object to a field of awareness, which is true. I mean, how do you know you have a body? You're aware of it, right?

So, and then when you look at all the yoga asanas, the postures, child pose, happy baby, pigeon pose, cobra, etc. These are actually shifts in awareness. awareness so you're actually shifting in awareness by becoming aware of your body into a different state of consciousness so you know he doesn't minimize the importance of the postures but bear in mind that the postures are about 5% of his writing of yoga. That's the third principle. The fourth principle, now he starts with physical. First, rules of social and emotional intelligence. Third principle, immediately physical,

because that's the most obvious. But then the fourth principle is pranayama, which is breath and how to use breath to control your autonomic nervous system. These days, we are very familiar with stress as sympathetic overdrive. But actually, if you read Patanjali, he shows you how to use breath to induce different states of energy, hyper excitement, vigilance, energy, decreased energy, cooling the body, warming the body controlling blood pressure all of that

is there just through breath that's the fourth the fifth principle which is very interesting also is called pratyahara but in english we can call it interoceptive awareness so perception is when you look at the outside world interoceptive is when you get to know what's happening inside your body now we all actually train in interoceptive awareness when we are babies. We call it toilet training. You know, we can even train our animals and pets. You know, you take your dog out, dog knows can only pee outside the house or whatever. So that's interoceptive awareness.

But Patanjali doesn't stop there. He says, why do you only stop after training your bowels and bladder? You can actually control your heart rate. You can do that with your breath. You can do that with every organ in your body. That now is picking up actually a lot of interest in the scientific world because interoceptive awareness stimulates a part of our nervous system in English called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is self-regulating nerve. It counteracts the

sympathetic overdrive from stress. So that's the fifth limb of yoga. And then he says, once you've done all these, now you're ready for transcendence. And he then identifies the sixth, seventh, and eighth. Sixth is focused attention, which he calls dharana, how to concentrate on anything. Then dhyan, which is meditation, which we just spoke about. So he comes very late into the meditation process. Seventh limb. And then the eighth is samadhi, transcendence. And then you have been

liberated from the conditioned mind, you're living in the light, so to speak. So those are the eight limbs called Raja Yoga, in English, Royal Yoga. But that's not all of yoga. There's Karma Yoga, there's Bhakti Yoga, there's Jnana Yoga. It's a complete science of the self. And so is Patanjali associated only with the royal yoga? Yeah, you're right. Actually, he's associated with the royal yoga more than anything else. The other Upanishads, including, you know, the most famous of them, the Bhagavad Gita, which is like a Bible, is all the yogas. And that is also a very interesting text the bhagavad gita starts with a battlefield the battlefield is a kuruk shetra and there's a war going on between the forces of good and evil and so there are two characters that are there in the bhagavad gita one

is arjuna the warrior and then there's krishna who's the unconditioned awareness and Arjuna is the conditioned mind. So you know most commentaries in the Bhagavad Gita don't go into this unfortunately even the ones that are written by some really good scholars. So the battlefield is on you know their forces are ready to fire at each other the bug bugles are blowing, the people have drawn up these arrows, and Arjuna looks across, and he has a panic attack. He says, you know, to Krishna, he says, how can I kill these people? They're my cousins, they're my brothers and sisters. And Krishna, then, for the 18 chapters of the Gita, actually shows him how to vanquish the demons that are his own shadows. They're not enemies. They're his own shadows. And the battlefield of good and evil is within the

conditioned mind. And then he teaches all the four yogas, the royal yoga included. So 18 chapters, actually, even though the metaphor sometimes suggests there's a lot of violence, there isn't. The whole teaching is yoga. That's a fascinating interpretation, which I had not heard of. Thank you for that. Maybe it's helpful to go through the other types of yoga real quick, because I think this is important, right? There's the royal yoga, there's bhakti yoga, which I believe is sort of considered the path of love. Perfect. Yeah. Love as the means to enlightenment. Rejoice based on love. And then karma yoga, I believe is service as a path. Service, selfless service.

And then what's the fourth? Jnana yoga. It is to correct the mistakes of the intellect. So, what is the mistake of the intellect. So what is the mistake of the intellect as I am separate from the world. And, you know, the intellect creates what we call subject object split. So the Gyan Yoga is also called the razor's edge. Actually, you know, Somerset Maugham, the great novelist wrote a book called the razor's edge. And it starts with that beware of the razor's edge, the path to enlightenment is like the razor's edge, you could fall either way. Because the more intellectual you become, the more smart you become, the more ego driven you become. So that's the riskiest part of yoga is yana yoga, you have to be a little sophisticated through the other forms of yoga

to engage in the yoga of the intellect. Now, I've often heard that those different types of yoga are particularly helpful because a person may find that they are better suited to one of them. Do you find that that's how it goes for a lot of people as they pick one and they go deep? Or are most people who are really practicing, sort of practicing across all of those? I think people find the yoga of love the most fulfilling. It doesn't require discipline and love actually makes you feel good. Yeah, there is a center here and, you know, I think they're primarily bhakti. Bhakti yoga also includes singing and chanting.

The word enchantment actually comes from that, enchant, how to become one with the divine within through chanting. And now we find that actually when you chant or sing, you're stimulating the vagus nerve. That's also very interesting. Very joyous. We've only got a couple minutes here. I know you have a hard stop. I want to ask you kind of one final question, and it would be, what lesson do you think has been hardest for you personally to learn in life? Not to be easily offended by criticism, you know, but one day I realized a long time ago, actually now, that if I was offended by criticism, then I had no choice other than to be offended for the rest

of my life. Yeah, or be silent, right? Well, thank you so much for your time. It has been a pleasure to have you on. I feel like I could have done this for a long time. But I appreciate it. As I mentioned earlier, the book is called Living in the Light Yoga for Self-Realization. And it's kind of in ways a two-part book that you write the first part, and then one of your yoga teachers, Sarah Platt Finger, writes the second part, which is more focused on the asanas themselves. So, wonderful book. And Deepak, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Eric. Really a joy to talk to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do

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