interview with dr deepak chopra

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  • 7/23/2019 Interview With Dr Deepak Chopra

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    Interview with Dr Deepak Chopra

    An interview with Dr. Deepak Chopra about the key role of spiritual awareness

    in the healing process

    Dr Deepak Chopra is an India-born, US-trained medical doctor. An endocrinologist byspecialty, he is a former chief of staff of New ngland !emorial "ospital. #$t Chopra,a long-time %ranscendental !editator, is also a practitioner of the ancient Indiansystem of healing, Ay$r&eda, and is c$rrently the Chief of Staff of the !aharishiAy$r&eda "ealth Center in 'ancaster, !assach$setts.

    In his (spare( time, Chopra is a best-selling a$thor - fi&e well-recei&ed books writtenin the past fi&e years. "is latest, Unconditional 'ife, has stim$lated great p$blicinterest. "e is also a m$ch so$ght-after lect$rer. In the last year, Dr Chopra has beenin&ited to speak at se&eral prestigio$s medical establishments, incl$ding "ar&ard

    !edical School in the US, to say nothing of the myriad New Age fairs at which he is afeat$red g$est. In his books and lect$res, Chopra draws on not only the latestfindings of )estern medical science, and the ancient tr$ths of Ay$r&eda, b$t also theesoteric area of *$ant$m physics to e+plore the increasingly acceptable field of #ody-!ind-Spirit !edicine.

    SI: A basic theme of your books and public talks is that spiritual awareness - a person coming into the knowledge of who they are - is one of the keys to the healing process. Could you discuss that a bit?

    Dr Deepak Chopra Spirit$al awareness is not only one of the keys to the healingprocess. Spirit$al awareness is the only way that healing can occ$r. If I may take therisk of defining what a spirit$al e+perience is, it is one in which p$re awarenessre&eals itself to yo$ as the maker of reality - where yo$ s$ddenly disco&er thro$ghinsight or meditation or a freak accident that yo$r essential nat$re is spirit$al, non-material.

    SI: Are there ways to help foster this spiritual awareness?

    DC #y teaching a person the ability to ha&e a *$iet mind, to stand back and witnessthe whole tho$ght process. )ith that ability comes a ma or insight I am the thinkerand not the tho$ght. %hat insight, at a deep le&el of awareness, is eno$gh to ca$se achange in one(s conscio$sness, and a spontaneo$s change in one(s biology.

    SI: When a patient comes to you from a traditional medical perspecti e! identifyingthemsel es with the body! or the emotions! or the mind! which most of us do! how doyou help them go beyond that?

    DC It(s possible these days to talk in medical terminology and con&ince people thatthe shelf life of molec$les is &ery short. Ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in mybody are gone by ne+t year. %he physical body that I(m $sing to speak with yo$ rightnow is not the one I had last year. If I identify myself as my body, then I certainlyha&e a dilemma. )hich one am I talking abo$t %he shelf life of emotions is a little

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    longer. #$t if I identify myself with my emotions, again I ha&e a dilemma. )hich oneam I talking abo$t %he shelf life of my psychological make-$p is e&en longer. #$tthat is changing all the time, hopef$lly in an e&ol$tionary direction. #$t I(m none ofthose things beca$se it is ob&io$s that I am o$tli&ing those things. %hat I am not my

    e+periences is &ery ob&io$s. I am the one who is ha&ing those e+periences.

    Spirit$ality has nothing to do with e+perience. It is to disco&er the timeless factor ine&ery e+perience, which is (the e+periencer(. !y attention is $s$ally on a partic$lare+perience, b$t how abo$t the one who is ha&ing those e+periences, the silentwitness who is going thro$gh all this %here is a poem from %.S. liot, /)e shall notcease from e+ploration. %he end of o$r e+ploring will be to arri&e where we startedfrom and know the place for the first time./

    SI: "ou talk as someone who has e#perienced this.

    DC I hope so. )e go thro$gh these dilemmas where we wonder am I $stintellect$ally enamo$red of the whole concept #eca$se, if I am, then ob&io$sly I amdel$ding myself. 0r am I e+perientially gro$nded in it I think all of $s to some e+tentha&e had the e+perience of that silent witness. )hen we were children, there was asilent part of $s watching the child. )hen we were adolescents, there was that samewitness watching the adolescent. !iddle age, and so on. &ery one, now and again,has disco&ered the self, the one who is watching. %here are periods in life when it is&ery intense. %here are periods in life where it is not, when yo$ get ca$ght $p in thewhole field of relati&ity and lose yo$r moorings with the absol$te.

    SI: Was there one particular e#perience that helped you reali$e this awareness of theself! or is it there sometimes! and sometimes not?

    DC It(s always there. #$t sometimes it is not so dominant in the awareness. #asicallyit has to do with the *$ality of yo$r attention.

    SI: It reminds me of something you said in one of your books. "ou mention%rishnamurti talking about the process of self-obser ation.

    DC 1rishnam$rti(s term, /self-obser&ation/, is good. I(d like to refer to it asawareness. 0bser&ation still implies 2altho$gh I don(t think 1rishnam$rti meant it thatway3 a kind of obser&ing from a sensory le&el, whereas awareness is non-sensory, anawareness of the self.

    SI: &a e you had success in presenting this information to traditional medicalaudiences?

    DC I(m finding myself &ery comfortable talking to medical a$diences, and pro&ing tothem that $nderlying the material fields of the $ni&erse are force fields. #$t they arenot $st force fields. %hey are not $st gra&ity, strong and weak interactions, orelectromagnetism. &ery force field is sim$ltaneo$sly a field of information beca$see&en physics now acknowledges that an atom is not only a hierarchy of differentstates of energy, or different states of force fields. An atom is a hierarchy of differentstates of information that define the statistical likelihood of finding a particle here or

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    there at the time of obser&ation. instein said that a field is not really an act$almodel for space-time e&ents, b$t the /contin$$m of probability distrib$tions ofpossible meas$rements as a f$nction of time./

    In other words, the field 2which is what spirit is, a field of p$re potentiality3 is acontin$$m of all possible energy and information states that will s$bse*$entlymanifest themsel&es as space-time e&ents. !atter is a space-time e&ent. 4o$ and I inphysical bodies are space-time e&ents. )e conf$se o$rsel&es with these space-timee&ents, when in fact we are the ones who generate these space-time e&ents.Somewhere inside $s we know that we o$tli&e these e+pressions of space-timee+perience. %o be gro$nded e+perientially in the knowledge of immortality is to losefear once and for all, to $nderstand that the flow of linear time is a psychologicale&ent, that we do not e+ist in time, b$t that eternity e+ists in $s. %his awarenessgi&es $s freedom from both the memories of the past and anticipation of the f$t$re.)e e+perience o$rsel&es as the field, the eternal possibility, the immeas$rablepotential of all that was, is, and will be.

    %here is a nice poem from 5$mi, /0$t beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doingthere is a field. I(ll meet yo$ there./ %o know oneself as the field has become aspirit$al *$est, b$t also a scientific *$est these days. All o$r technology today -whether we $se fa+ machines or comp$ters or speak on phones or watch programson tele&ision - is based on the premise that the essential nat$re of the material worldis non-material. All of these technologies are based on the o&erthrow of thes$perstition of materialism in the world of technology.

    %he ne+t step is to reali6e that these so-called fields of force, or information, areact$ally fields of intelligence and knowledge. #eca$se when information is self-referring, in that it has a feedback loop that infl$ences its own e+pression, then yo$cannot $st call it p$re information. &erybody $nderstands information in today(s

    information age. #$t the ne+t step in the e&ol$tion of this knowledge is to $nderstandthat it is not $st information, it is intelligence, it is knowledge, it is conscio$sness.%he force fields of nat$re are force fields of conscio$sness. %hey are force fields ofknowledge. %hey are fields of #rahman.

    SI: Any final comments?

    DC %here is a 7edic saying, /All yo$r life yo$(&e paid attention to yo$r e+periences,b$t ne&er to yo$rself./ 8ay attention to yo$r self o$tside the realm of yo$re+periences and yo$(ll disco&er that there is a light there, there is a lo&e there. 'o&eof one, lo&e of all, merge into lo&e, p$re and simple. It radiates from yo$ like lightfrom the s$n. %his lo&e is not sentiment, b$t the tr$th at the heart of all creation. It

    can sol&e not only o$r own problems, b$t the problems of h$manity.