The Nature of Reality, Exploring Metahuman with Deepak Chopra, MD | Salesforce

Good morning, Dreamforce. Good morning. Thank you, lt. Thank you. All right. You did it. You made it to day four. All right. Did you get inspired this week? Did you have fun this week? Are you completely and totally exhausted? Yes. You have landed in the right spot. My friends. My name is Jodi Kohner. I am senior vice President of Employee Engagement. This is my ninth Dreamforce. Yes. Thank you. And I have to say that every year, this is truly my very favorite day. This day is our gift to you. All week, you've been running around trying to revolutionize your industries and move your companies forward and connect with your customers and advance your careers and solve the sustainable development goals. And today, this is just an oasis of calm. This is just for you. So I'm going to give you permission right now to go ahead and turn off your phones. You do not want to be the person whose phone goes off in the monastic meditation. Not at all. No. Whatever's waiting for you out there in the interwebs, it can wait. Because you cannot take care of that big to do list you now have if you do not first take care of yourself.

Okay?

So we're going to be present. We're going to breathe. Would anyone like to breathe right now? Let's do that. Let's all just take a deep breath. Okay. I have not been doing enough of that this week. Okay. So when it comes to well being, I think we often default to narratives around nutrition or sleep, sleep or physical activity. But quite frankly, if you do not have good brain health, all of the rest of that is sort of a luxury item. And so today what we've done is gathered a few luminaries to speak with you about brain health and resiliency. We have Deepak Chopra. We have Kat Graham. We have. Yes. It's okay. You can. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Bring it, bring it. They love you. We have Dr. Bennett. Amalu. We have Amelia. Clark. Clark. Yeah. And we, of course, have the monastics from Plum Village. So are you ready for this?

Yes.

Okay, so let me introduce you to your first speaker, Dr. Deepak Chopra. Okay, so Dr. Deepak Chopra, he started exploring the intersection of mind, body and spirit when he was six years old. That took him into a career in medicine, a career as a monk. He has been regarded as one of the most influential speakers in the world. He is a 25 time New York Times bestselling author, and he is here with us today to discuss his new book, Metahuman Unlocking the Infinite Potential. A little bit further into his presentation, he is going to be joined on stage by Kat Graham. Kat Graham fans? Yes. You know her from the Vampire Diaries. So she is a friend of Dr. Chopra's and they are collaborating on a new initiative together, a podcast called the Conscious Collective. So let's give a warm welcome to Dreamforce veteran and Salesforce friend Deepak Chopra.

Thank you. Thank you, Jodi. Thank you. Thank you, Mark, wherever you are. And thank you, Salesforce, Dreamforce, all of you. It's a great pleasure for me to share some ideas. So we have, with Cats participation, about one hour to solve the mystery of our existence. So I won't waste any time. Your journey into what we call existence. Present existence began about at the moment of conception, when you were a fertilized egg. And at that moment, you acquired 25,000 genes. A gene is a stretch of DNA that codes for a protein. So you got half your genes from your father, half from your mother, and that one cell then multiplied about 50 times approximately to create the 50 to 100 trillion cells that it takes to make a human baby. DNA, as I said, stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, which is four chemicals, and they're usually abbreviated as the letters of the Alphabet. Adenine, A, T, C, G. You don't have to remember this, but these are the four letters of life. DNA is the letter of life. And genes are like words. And your body is a story, and your body is a story of the universe. Why do I say that? Well, those chemicals, atcg, the Alphabet of life, they of course, made of atoms like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and these four. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. If you want the acronym, it's CHON. These four atoms are about 96% of all the atoms in your body. The remaining 4% are other things like iron, which is in your hemoglobin, and on and on. Everything in the periodic table. Where did these atoms come from? These atoms that are now in your body were forged in the crucible of burning stars called supernova. So when a giant star exhausts its thermonuclear energy and starts to burn itself into the heat death of absolute zero, which we call a singularity. Or now we know. Black holes. You've seen pictures of black holes. At that moment, there's a process called nuclear fusion. And hydrogen and helium, which were first created at the moment of The Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, they start to fuse, making the heavier elements that are now present in your body. We now know that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. There are 700 sextillion stars, which is 700. With so many zeros added on, it would take you a lifetime to just write down the number of zeros, if you actually had to write them down individually. And there are uncountable trillions of planets. In fact, scientists now believe that there might be 40 billion habitable planets in just the Milky Way galaxy. But remember, they're now saying that there are 2 trillion galaxies. Why am I saying this to you right now? It took the whole universe to actually have you come here right now. A 14 billion years journey so that you hear this moment. In fact, 50% of the atoms in your body don't even belong to our Milky Way galaxy. They're sucked from the other galaxies through a phenomenon called galactic wind, which is basically gravitational forces. So you are right this moment, a conspiracy of the total universe. And if you're not totally wonderstruck by that, then your humanity is incomplete. We should be perpetually surprised that we exist and yet we're not. And this is because we get distracted. Today my talk is on how the brain and the mind are actually both experiences in consciousness. Consciousness is awareness. It's prior to any experience. And I'll give you a little taste for that before I finish. And your brain and your mind are complementary activities of you. A soul, a spirit, a consciousness, a, a being and brain, mind go together in the same way as space time go together in the same way as mass and energy go together in the same way as everything that we know in existence goes together. Space, time, mass, energy, mind, brain. These are complementary activities of a more fundamental reality, which today I'm calling consciousness. So before we get into the dynamics of how to create a brain, and I'm being literal, you can sculpt your brain in a way that helps you reach higher consciousness. And by higher consciousness I mean ultimately everything that is important. Intuition, insight, imagination, creativity, a higher vision, and ultimately transcendence and the loss of the fear of death. These are all attributes of higher consciousness. And today I'm going to show you how you can do that actually and how we are already doing it, unfortunately, mindlessly instead of mindfully, which is today's theme. So here we go. I always like to start out with this particular slide because it shows us the seven pillars of well being. And I'm not going to concentrate too much on that, except for the last one which is self awareness. In any case, it's important for you to know that only 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant in that they guarantee a disease. I'll Repeat that only 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant in that they guarantee the disease. A gene mutation is a genetic error, a mistake, like a typo. If DNA is the Alphabet and genes are the words and your body is a story, then sometimes there are mistakes made and those are called mutations. But only 5% of them guarantee a disease. It doesn't matter what the disease is. Chronic disease like cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, degenerative disorders, Alzheimer's disease, only 5% of genes mutations actually guarantee. The rest are controlled by these factors that you see on the screen right now. So if somebody has a Baraka gene, for example, for breast cancer, then that's a fully penetrant gene. The most famous story about that gene is Angelina Jolie, who had that mutation. She had to have a preventive mastectomy. The right thing to do in a fully penetrant gene. And for those kinds of disorders, soon we have new technologies like crispr, which is the ability to cut and paste a gene just the way you cut and paste an email. So in the next few years you'll be able to read the barcode of a gene. You'll be able to delete the defective gene and insert the healthy gene, which is an amazing testimony to technology. But I want to remind you that only 5% of diseases are affected by those mutations. The rest depend on these seven pillars of well being that I'm talking to you about. Sleep, which includes dreams, which includes deep sleep, which includes light sleep. But we now know that lack of sleep is the number one risk factor for premature death from cardiovascular disease and other diseases as well as. So it's important that you get eight hours of sleep and that you have restful sleep. During restful sleep, your heart rate goes below baseline and many wonderful things happen. Toxins are removed from your brain, including amyloid, which is flushed out. And during dream sleep we actually have emotional toxicity is released. So both these are very important aspects of sleep. The second thing over there that you see is meditation and stress management. And thanks to Mark Benioff and other supporters, we have done now studies with prestigious institutions including US University of California here in San Francisco, where we have shown that even short practice of meditation are show you something this morning can upregulate your genes. So all the genes that are responsible for well being, they go up. All the genes that are responsible for inflammation, which is a chronic factor in all chronic diseases, they go down. And this has never been shown before. Also it's known that mindfulness and self reflection and meditation can changes the activity of an enzyme called telomerase, which controls the genetic clock, which means how long we live. So this project, which was five years now in the making and originally funded amongst others by Mark and University of California, has now been replicated. Meditation is very helpful in prolonging life, managing stress, changing your genetic clock. Exercise in particular yoga and breathing practices also stimulate a part of our body called the vagus nerve, which is the healing nerve in our body. So this nerve is the 10th cranial nerve. It goes from your brain and regulates the tone of your voice, your facial expressions, your heart rate variability, it pierces the diaphragm and it regulates the activity of every organ in our bodies. So yoga, tai chi, qigong, martial arts, these have specific benefit which is way beyond exercise in that you stimulate the healing nerve in your body. Emotions like love, compassion, joy, empathy, they're all equanimity, peace of mind, they all regulate your biology in a direction of self regulation or homeostasis or healing. But when you're experiencing anger or hostility or guilt or shame or depression, then the other thing happens, inflammation in your body goes up, leading to likelihood of chronic illness as well. The fourth thing you see on this slide is nourishment. Because we now know that even though you have 25,000 human genes, you have approximately 2 million bacterial genes and these are in your gut. So when you put food in your body, the first thing that the food interacts with is bacterial genes in your gut. And if your food is inflamed, which means if it's manufactured, refined, processed, has chemicals, antibiotics, steroids, petroleum products, which happens to be, unfortunately, oil factory produced food, then it'll cause inflammation in your body as well. So you can dramatically change that by looking at your microbiome, the gene expressions of your microbiome, but also introducing food that comes to you directly from the farm, to the table, to the body, without the intervention of a factory. And you now know that there are these farmers markets all over the place, because we are recognizing that food can immediately change the gene expression of your body, including the microbiome. The fifth pillar that you see there is biological rhythms. So we have four rhythms in our body, circadian rhythm, which is as the earth spins on its axis. If you have jet lag, that's a disruption of circadian rhythm. We also have seasonal rhythms in our body as the earth goes around the sun, we have gravitational rhythms as the tides move up and down, because 75% of your body is water and it is exactly the same as the ocean. So we have gravitational rhythms, tidal rhythms, lunar rhythms, circadian rhythms. In other words, our body is part of a cosmic symphony, and it's constantly trying to dance with that constant symphony and music that the universe is producing. Even though you can't hear the tune, your body is dancing to it. So when you connect with nature, when you walk barefoot on the ground or on the beach, or even hug a tree, or you are in nature, then negative ions come from the earth into your body. They neutralize the excess free radicals, they decrease inflammation, and they reset your biological rhythms so you're once again tuned in to the cosmic symphony. And so being in nature is an aspect of healing as well. For the last part of this presentation, I have this seventh item, which is what I'm going to talk about. The neuroscience of what we call self awareness. So today, after I finish, you're going to hear about neuroplasticity, you're going to hear about mindfulness, and you probably have already heard a lot about this. Mark is a big fan of mindful living. I'm going to show you some data of how mindfulness, self reflection, self inquiry, awareness of your body, awareness of your mental space, which is your feelings and thoughts, but also awareness of your body, what's happening inside your body, awareness of your breath, awareness of your heart, awareness of the web of relationship, and ultimately awareness of our relationship with the universe, how that can dramatically change the activity of our brain and how that can actually take us to higher consciousness. So for the remainder of my talk, I'm going to talk about this only. How do we rewire the brain for higher consciousness and ultimately for transcendence and self actualization? The mind and the brain are complementary activities, which means they go together. So when people ask, does the brain create the mind or does the mind create the brain? I think the best answer is that they co create each other and they are complementary aspects of a deeper and more fundamental reality, which in spiritual traditions we call the soul. But in today's contemporary environment, cognitive science, neuroscience, the word soul is not used, the word conscious agent is used, but it means the same thing. It means the fundamental aspect of your existence, which is awareness. Awareness makes the experience both of the brain and the mind possible. And so today we have this new science where we can look at everything that happens in the brain as a result of experience. So you don't have to. This is very technical, you don't have to go into this. But right now, as I'm speaking to you, this part of your brain is activated because this part of Your brain, which is the frontal cortex, the frontal lobe that you see there. This is the intellectual aspect of our brain, which is trying to comprehend and understand my lecture at the moment. And then there are other parts of the brain that are listed there. The emotional brain is called the limbic brain. Brain, the survival brain, is called the reptilian brain, which is the brain stem here in this chart. So if you were to look at my hand like this in profile, this is a handy model of the brain, okay? This is the cerebral cortex, which we call the intellectual brain. When I open my hand, where you see my thumb, that is the emotional brain. And. And the brain stem here is the reptilian brain, which is responsible for protecting us, for survival. So, once again, intellectual brain, emotional brain, survival brain. And then the brain is divided into many other parts that correspond to these three aspects of our brain. The prefrontal cortex. Right now, you're using your prefrontal cortex. And neuroplasticity is the understanding that. That mindful awareness and meditation are a form of internal experience that change the brain and activate the brain. And particularly right now, we are seeing the prefrontal cortex. The insula is a little island of tissue between two separate lobes of the brain. It is what records many things, including things like disgust, pride, lust, humiliation. But also it is restricted, responsible for sensing and regulating activity of our internal organs, including our heart and lung and gut. If you're a practitioner of yoga, then you may have heard the word pratyahara. Pratyahara means going within. And this is now in neuroscience, called interoception. Perception is the outside world, and interoception is the inside world. And we can learn to navigate our inside world as well. And then we have the reptilian brain, which evolved about 300 years, 300 million years, which is already always functioning even when the patient is brain dead. This part of our brain can function. And if somebody is on a ventilator or has a pacemaker, but they are unconscious, this part of the brain is already functioning. This part of our brain has something called the startle center In a reptile, if you go very close to a reptile, you make a sudden noise or a sudden, then the reptile will attack you or slither away. And this is called the startled response. And in our bodies, this is called the fight or flight response. So when we are in threatening situation, we either fight or we run. Unfortunately, that has now evolved to what we call stress, because there's no longer the dangerous situation that we had millions of years ago when we were being stalked by a tiger or by a lion who wanted to eat us up for breakfast or lunch or whatever. The limbic brain, as I mentioned, is the emotional brain. It's found only in mammals. Mammal. The word mammal is derived from the word mama, which means mother, which also means mammary, breast, mother material. These are all words that come from the word mother. And the limbic brain is found in all mammals. And all mammals sing to each other. They play with each other. They make emotional bonds through touch and facial expression, tone of voice, eye contact, body language and play. And finally, we have the. These are different aspects of the limbic brain that I'm not going to go through. But here are some parts of the brain that we can learn to actually grow. Neurogenesis means you create new neurons. Synaptogenesis means you create new connections. And we can all do this and improve our ability to learn, to have memory, to increase the experience of compassion, Introspection. And actually this part of the brain, which is called the amygdala, cools down when you listen to somebody with compassion. When you listen to somebody with. Without giving them advice, if you just are present for somebody with compassion and empathy, you will actually begin to cool down their amygdala, which means decrease fear. And when fear is decrease, then healing kicks in as well, because healing is interfered with through fear. And then this is the final part of the brain that I wanted to talk to you about, the neocortex, which is the bulk of our brain, which evolved only 4 million years ago. Only 4 million years ago. And it evolved very fast when we started to use language. So written language is about 15,000, 20,000 years. Sorry, oral language is 15,000 to 20,000 years in human evolution, and written language is only 5,000 years. But as soon as we started to communicate through language and today, through artificial intelligence and robots and VR and augmented reality and all the new technologies, these are rewiring. These new technologies are rewiring our cortical and intellectual brain for higher realms of creativity. So this is the brain that we can rewire instantly through conscious intent, through consciousness of our body, through the monitoring and regulation of our emotions, through being flexible in our responses to the environment. Over here you'll see something called stop. It's something that we don't do pressing the pause button in our lives. So next time you're confronted by a threatening situation, before you react to it, use this formula. STOP STOP stands for four things. S. Stop. T. Take three deep breaths and smile. O observe the sensations in your body and observe the environment and p proceed with awareness and compassion. If you do that, you're starting to rewire both your emotional and your cortical brains. And of course, then there's empathy, interoception, ultimately leading to insight, intuition, and deep ways of learning from the wisdom of the body. Learning from your heart, learning from your gut, Learning not only from your brain, but using your entire body, because your entire body is a brain. Every cell in your body is innervated by nerves that come from your brain. And there's traffic that goes both from your brain to your body and your brain, from your body to the brain. And by being conscious of of actually your choices and experiences in the present moment, you can start to rewire your brain. So these are the three brains that we have. It's called triune brain, reptilian brain for survival, emotional brain for regulation of relationships, and cortical brain for insight, intuition, creativity and higher consciousness. And Charles Darwin was actually the first one to speak about the evolution of the brain. And he said our emotions are the way we regulate our bodies and are also the way we enhance survival. So this is the first actually explanation scientifically for why we have emotions in order to not only survive, but also to enhance the quality of our relationships. And all emotions, including what we call negative emotions, have survival value if they are handled properly. Anger readies the animal for combat. Disgust is the nauseous revulsion that mammals have when they take contaminated food and on and on. I'm not going to go into details because we want to just now see that every emotion that we have has some value if it is regulated. Contempt, pride, guilt, shame, humiliation, inform social mammals with increasing precision about their status in a group. They are part of our culture, but when they get magnified, then they destroy us. On the other hand, love, compassion, empathy are emotions that foster our inter beingness. After I finish later today, you're going to have an experience with Vietnamese monks. And they have a very favorite expression, especially the Vietnamese monks of the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition, that we are actually a set of relationships. We are inter beings that inter arise in the inter is ness, which is the ecosystem of relationships. And as we magnified the aspects of relationship that we call love, empathy, joy, compassion, equanimity and peace that leads to spiritual exaltation. Peak experiences, the thrill of scientific discovery. And this involves every aspect of our brain. Love, compassion and empathy also enhance survival and homeostasis through the regulation of our emotional brain. And as we expand our awareness, they give rise to intuition, to creativity, to vision, to a sense of the sacred. This is what Jonas Salk, the great evolutionary biologist, whom you probably know as the discoverer or inventor of the polio vaccine, he said the next stage of human evolution is not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the wisest. And survival of the wisest will become the new criterion for human evolution. By wisdom we mean a new evolution, a metabollogical evolution, which means our biology will follow the evolution of our brain, which in turn follows the evolution of our consciousness and our capacity for self awareness. So again, very brief summary. We are 14 billion years in the making. Our planet is 4 billion years. Life began about 3.8 billion years ago. And today we humans stand at the pinnacle of evolution. And this is a very short history of our evolution in cosmic times. So now let's get to the heart of why we are here today, or at least this morning. Through emotional bonds and through expansion of our consciousness, we can consciously regulate our moods, our brain networks, rewire our neurophysiology, shift our hormone levels, change our heart rate, modify our immune function, biological rhythms, blood pressure, sleep, wake cycles, dreams, digestive processes, and everything that we call experience. And we can learn to do this very consciously through modifying the activity both of our emotional brain and our cortical brain. So this is what we mean by mindfulness. You've heard this word so many times, it's become part of our culture. It's almost like a cultural meme these days. But what does it mean? It means being aware of experiences, both those that we call external experiences. So external experiences that we have, raw experiences, the five senses, sound, touch, sight, taste, smell. When you put your attention to any of those experiences, and I'll take you through a process slowly at the end of this talk, then you are actually practicing mindful awareness, or what we call the external environment. But you can also have mindful awareness of what we call our internal environment. When you're aware of your body, or when you're aware of your breath, or when you're aware of your heart, which is quite easy to do. Or you can learn to be aware of what's happening inside your body, in the viscera, or when you're aware of sensations, images, feelings, thoughts. This process is called metacognition. Metacognition means to be aware consciously mindfully of experience in the present moment without judging it, and also to be aware of yourself as having that process while you're having that process, and to be aware of the conscious choices that you're making in every moment. So this is the pinnacle of what we call mindful living. Observing ourselves, having a sensory experience. The great Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti said, the highest human intelligence is the ability to observe yourself without judging yourself. So we'll go through that. But metacognition, as I said, is the pinnacle of mindful living. And this leads ultimately to what the great spiritual traditions call enlightenment. Enlightenment or transcendence or self actualization. Abraham Maslow, the great transpersonal psychologist, spoke about this. And these are the very elements of that experience that we call enlightenment. So the first element is non reactivity, which means before you react to anything, you observe your reaction to reaction. You use the stop formula. You stop, you take three deep breaths, you observe, you proceed with awareness, love, kindness. The next aspect of this whole process is what we call activation of divine emotions. And I mentioned these. Gratitude, loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, because they connect us with each other and they foster emotional well being. Interoception is being aware of what's happening inside your body. Transcendence is going to the source of thought. Ultimately not thought, but the source of thought. If you look at the literature on yoga, it says yoga is the ability to go to the source of all experience and knowing, which is your own being. Okay? And yoga is frequently translated as Raj yoga, which includes the practices of meditation and, and self reflection. Hatha yoga, the postures which are seats of awareness, breathing exercises and self reflection. These all ultimately lead to what is called transcendence, which leads to the awareness of our soul, Soul consciousness. And when we become aware of this aspect of our being, it ultimately leads to something called cosmic consciousness. So I'll give you an experience of soul consciousness in a few moments. But from that we embark on a bigger journey called cosmic consciousness, which is the activity of our collective soul and ultimately divine consciousness, the connection to the source of all existence and ultimately unity, consciousness. Knowing ourselves as the awareness in which all experiences arises and subsides. Mental experience, emotional experience, experience of the physical body, experience of the universe are all happening in our own consciousness. So this is what great spiritual traditions mean when they say we are spiritual beings having a human experience, or we are non local beings having a local experience. So this is what I actually wanted to share with you because as we move into these higher states of consciousness, our experience of reality changes. Reality is different in different states of consciousness. And thanks to all the friendships we have in these academic institutions, for the first time we have the ability to explore this scientifically. So what happens when we move to higher states of consciousness? There's a shift in our identity from personal self in the direction of cosmic self. There's a shift in our cognitive mechanisms, which means our ability to access intuition and creativity and knowledge and imagination and ultimately higher vision. There's a shift in our perception. It is more in the present moment, and it is more luminous and lively. There's a better use in our memory. And then we start to experience what is called synchronicity. Meaningful coincidences, lucky encounters, being at the right place at the right time, because we begin to access that domain of experience where we are inseparably connected to everything that is happening. Creativity and the organizing power of our own intentions. So these are some of the experiences that people are already beginning to happen as they access what I call meta reality, which is awareness prior to social conditioning. Awareness prior to social conditioning is infinite. It's a field of infinite possibilities, and that's our fundamental identity. Awareness prior to conditioning is without form. It is irreducible, it is infinite, and it is who you are. Awareness is unpredictable, and therefore it is creative. Awareness unfolds through synchronicity or meaningful coincidences. Awareness is the source of our attention and intention. Awareness is self organizing, self regulating, self evolving, and it is rooted in this feeling. I exist, I am. And our early research is showing some of these milestones of people who are embarking on the journey of self awareness or metahuman. There's a shift in sense of self from mind body to the awareness in which mind and body are in experience. There's a shift in our emotions in the direction of divine emotions, a shift in our perception to being fully present in the present moment, and it becomes luminous as a result. As a result, there's insight, a shift in memory, a shift in vision, a shift in creativity, an experience of what we call flow, ecstasy, transcendence, peak experiences that people are talking about, these, especially in sports and through even deep learning through VR and augmented reality. And ultimately it's the loss of the fear of death. Because this part of our being, and it's not mind, it's not brain, it's not body, it's the awareness in which body, mind and the world are an experience. This part of our being, as you will see very shortly when we do this little meditation, is not in time, it is not subject to birth or death. And so it is ultimate liberation, which is the ability to create our reality and experience the loss of the fear of death, because death happens to ongoing experiences and not to you. So with that and the remaining six minutes we have, I'm going to invite Kat Graham to join me. She's going to ask me a few questions, and then we are going to do a little bit of experience. If you're ready. Is that good? Okay, Kat, please join me. Hi, everyone.

Good morning. Thank you, Deepak.

So she's taking this conversation to a whole new demographic, people that we call millennials. And I see a lot of you here. Somebody has to take the torch and spread this idea of awakening, right? Well, we've.

My generation. I know that we do have an obsession about the unknown, more than maybe we feel comfortable talking about. And what the Consciousness collective is, is the exploration of consciousness from every point of view, from a musician's point of view to a cosmologist's point of view, to astrophysicists, to your point of view. My point of view. But what's been so amazing about being here is meeting all the trailblazers. Are you guys all. And what I want to ask you, Dr. Deepak, is what is what you just talked, what you just spoke about, how does that relate to manifestation of reality?

So we are constantly manifesting reality and what we call everyday reality. Like this experience you're having. This is everyday reality. You manifested it by being here. Right. So we are constantly projecting our mind as the experience of everyday reality. But our mind is conditioned. It's conditioned by culture, it's conditioned by religion, it's conditioned by philosophy, it's conditioned by economics, it's conditioned by our parents, it's conditioned by childhood, it's conditioned by history. And this reality is a projection of that. But what we're talking about is a meta reality which is modifying itself into the conditioned mind. So once we recognize, we should give everyone an experience, that in the deeper reality, we are neither body nor mind, nor the experience of the world, but the creator of that, that is manifestation.

Can you give them the exercise of. Are you here right now?

So she wants me to give you a little experience. We'll do that right now. She reminded me. And then we'll do a short meditation after that. Is that okay? So let me ask you a question right now. Are you present right now? Yes. Little more enthusiasm, please. So are you present right now? Yes. Cheers. Who did you consult? So you had to answer that question. Who did you consult? And somebody said me. Correct? So who is the me that you consulted? Let's explore that. I'm going to ask you the same question, but don't answer it till I raise my hand. Is everybody clear on that instruction? Okay, so same question. Are you present right now answer is yes. But don't answer it till I raise my hand. Are you present right now? So, are you present? The question is a thought. The answer yes is a thought. You are not the thought, you are. The awareness in which the thought comes is experienced and then it disappears. And that's true of every experience. You look here, you look there. In between is you who decides to look here or to look there? Okay? So between every experience, between every sensation, between every image, between every feeling, between every emotion, between every choice, between every experience that we call thought is you. Somebody said me. Yes. So now I'm going to ask you the same question. But don't answer it at all. As I ask you the question, be aware of that which is listening. Okay? So instead of listening to me, just slip into that which is listening. Right now. You can keep your eyes open. Are you present right now? This presence is your soul. It's not difficult to find. It's always there. Without this presence, there's no experience. Okay? So hold on to this for a moment. Okay, as I'm speaking to you, as I'm saying, are you present? Hold on to this presence. This presence was there when you were a baby. Different body, different mind, different experience of the world. This presence was there when you were a teenager. It's there now. It'll be there when you're an old person. And the most important thing to realize is this presence is not in time. Your body is in time. Your mind is in time. The experience of the world is in time. But you, the real you, is not in time. Therefore, it is not subject to birth or death. Right? This is what spiritual traditions call the soul or presence or being or awareness or conscious agent. And this is the real purpose of mindfulness. Because you're not a human thinking, you're not a human doing. You're a human being. And this human being is eternal. In the great spiritual traditions of the east, they say water cannot wet it, wind cannot, cannot dry it, weapons cannot shatter it, fire cannot burn it. It's unborn, and it is not subject to death. This presence is also the source of your insight, of your imagination, of your creativity, and your vision to not only transform yourself, but ultimately transform the world. And this is what they say in spiritual traditions. What good does it do a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? And this is what is happening in our world today. We have lost our soul. So hold on to this presence. It's the only thing that is permanent.

You spoke briefly, So grateful for you and everything you've contributed to this generation. So you spoke briefly about meta. And you have a book called Metahuman. And as a young person who's obsessed with manifestation and visualization and, you know, the journey to our individual successes, can you go into what it means to be metahuman and what your book talks about a bit?

Metahuman simply means waking up to your true self. The human mind is a conditioned mind. We agree. It's conditioned by education, by religion, upbringing, by even science, okay, by technology. But metahuman is before the conditioned mind. It's what I showed in the last two slides. It's what they experience right now when they became aware of themselves. But. But if we want. And we have still 7 minutes and 35 seconds left, we can. Even though, by the way, time doesn't exist. It's another human construct. It's a human construct. We can actually give you a little experience more if you want. Should we do that? Do you want that? Okay, so put your feet firmly in the ground, on the ground. Keep your hands open on your lap. Use the backrest so you can keep your body relatively erect. Close your eyes, and for the next couple of a few seconds, we'll just observe the breath. Please observe the breath without manipulating it. So breath is like any other experience. It's like it's a sensation. It arises, you experience it, then it subsides. But you are present even before you become aware of the breath in the arising, in the knowing and the subsiding. Just be aware of breath. Now. Be aware of sound. The sound of my voice, the occasional cough, maybe the humming of the air conditioner. And notice, just like the breath, sound is an intermittent experience. It arises, it's known, it subsides. But you are present before the arising in the knowing, and after it subsides. Now we'll go a little deeper, but I'm sure you'll be able to have this experience. Become aware of your heartbeat right now by putting your attention on your heart. See if you can experience your heartbeat either as a sound or a sensation or a throbbing or something. And now move your awareness to your fingertips, open hands, fingertips pointing upwards, and feel your heartbeat in your fingertips. And you should be able to feel something, some sensations, some throbbing something. You should be able to feel your heartbeat in your fingertips. Now bring your awareness to your whole body all at once, just with the knowing that the same throbbing of life which we call the heartbeat, it's the throbbing of our consciousness as life is happening in every cell of your body right now. So be aware of your body all at once. With just that. Knowing that life is throbbing in every cell. And now we'll go a little deeper. So bring your awareness back to your heart and mentally ask the question. Who am I? Am I the changing body? Or am I the awareness in which the body is a changing experience? Am I the changing mind? Or am I the awareness in which the mind is a changing experience? Just ask that question. Don't worry about the answer. You know the answer. Who am I? What am I? Am I a changing experience? Or am I the awareness in which there is changing experience, including that which I call body, mind and the physical world? And now ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want from my life? Just that simple question and let it go. What do I want? Allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to spontaneously come to you or not come. Don't worry. Ask and receive. What do I want? Third question. What is my purpose? What is my calling? What is my vision for myself and the world? Allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to spontaneously come to you. Final question. What am I grateful for? Gratitude will open the door to your soul. What am I grateful for? Allowing any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought to spontaneously come to you. What am I grateful for? When we ask these questions and we live these questions and we settle into the presence of our soul, then life spontaneously moves us into the answers. So before we come out, just be aware of being aware. Just be aware of your own self as a being. Not as a thought, not as a perception, but as a being. Be present here and now. And now, please open your eyes. So to conclude, God's language is silence. Everything else is poor translation. Thank you for listening to this poor translation. And thank you.