Self Realization is the Highest Healing - Deepak Chopra Best Speech

It's very important to understand that your body is a process. It's not a thing. There's in fact, I told you yesterday that there's no such thing as a thing. There are no nouns in the universe, only verbs. Okay? Your thought is an activity, emotions are an activity. By activity means they come and. And then they disappear. Okay? Thoughts are an activity. Your emotions are an activity, and perception is an activity. You know, what you're perceiving right now, you won't be perceiving in the next minute, okay? Not exactly the same thing. And then, of course, when you walk out of here, there'll be something different. So thought is an activity, emotions are an activity, perceptions are an activity, and our body is a perceptual experience. You don't have the same body today that you had when you were a baby or a teenager or that even had a year ago. 98% of all the atoms in your body that were there a year ago aren't there today. Okay? So people identify with their body, but it's an experience, just like a thought is an experience. And even the universe is an experience. And it's not the same today as it was 13.8 billion years ago. Actually. Dig out the George Harrison song, okay? That'll summarize everything in the end, okay? So your body is a process, and you cannot identify with an experience because no experience lasts even a microsecond. When I came on the stage, that's gone, right? A minute ago is gone. A second ago is gone. By the time you hear my sentence, the beginning of my sentence is gone. So this is what Rishis call the mistake of the intellect. That the intellect makes a mistake, it confuses reality with the experience in reality. Reality is eternal, timeless. But the experience in reality, actually, you can't catch it. You can't catch the past, you can't catch the future, and you can't even catch the present. Because as soon as the present occurs as an experience, it's over. So the German philosopher Wittgenstein, he said, our life is a dream. We are asleep. But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming. So what do we wake up to? We wake up to reality. And what is reality? It's the consciousness that is doing that is dreaming. It's projecting the dream. Now, last night you all had dreams, and most of you don't even remember them, right? Begone. So it's so true. This is a dream. And you know how many people remember their what happened when they were between 8 and 9, or between 5 and 6. Or how many people remember when they learned to speak the English language or any language but you did. So just because you don't remember doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Okay? Now there are people who remember other lifetimes. But if you ask them what they had on Tuesday for lunch, they won't be able to tell you. And why is that? Because we only remember things that we pay attention to or give significance to. Especially emotional significance. So you may not remember what happened three weeks ago on at 5pm unless you were maybe with your sweetheart and he or she said, will you marry me? This is a diamond ring. And opened a bottle of champagne. Then you'll remember, right? So memory is very fickle, okay? It's not who we are. Now, in the understanding of Vedanta, the memory, the seeds of memory are called karma. Karma is the seed of memory which is called samskara. And the seed of memory, Saskara, creates vasanas, which are subtle desires which take our soul through a cosmic journey until enlightenment. So I'm going to cover that in the. Even though time is a construct, we'll try and finish it in one hour. Okay? So your body is a process. It's a process. You cannot identify with your body or your mind because they're both processes or with the perceptual experience of the world. At a more fundamental level, it is energy and information. Your gene expression is influenced by your thoughts, emotions, relationships, social interactions, environment, which is the whole science of epigenetics, which is overtaking genetics. You can change the neural networks of your brain to optimize physical, emotional and spiritual well being. The new science of neuroplasticity. Only 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant. You can change your relationship to time because what do we mean by that? Time is how we measure experience. So we say, I had a good time, time flew, I was in love, time didn't exist. I was at the dentist. Time dragged, okay? I have so many deadlines to meet. I'm running out of time. That's the most dangerous internal dialogue, okay? Because when you keep saying I'm running out of time, it shows the quality of your awareness. And so you know, your biological clock speeds up, your heart rate speeds up, your blood pressure goes high, your. Your platelets get sticky, your body gets inflamed. If you have a heart attack and you die, then you have run out of time. So experience is in time, but the experiencer, which is you as consciousness, is not in time. Let me go back. You as the conscious being is not a time. So when you remember your past and you remember your childhood, you remember your adolescence, who's that that remembers you? Say I remember. I is timeless. I is what we call the one, the awareness that is having the experience. So I is that which knows the experience, remembers the experience. All experience occurs in I. And then all experience disappears in I. Only I remains with threads of memory and wisps of desire or karma. And this is karma, which is recycling as this and all this, everything you're experiencing, is karma. So when people hear about this, they say, then we have no free will. That's not true. The past created the situation, circumstances, events of this, what is happening now. Okay, but what you do right now is up to you. So is there free will? Or is the universe determined? And it's simultaneously both. If you're asleep, then there's no free will. And if you're awake, then there's infinite free will. It's all up to how aware we are. But expanding our awareness allows us to actually reinvent the experience that we call the body. What does change your relationship to time means? It means to be present. That's all. So as you're listening to me right now, just be aware of that which is listening. As you're listening to me, be aware of that which is listening. And that which is listening is a presence that. That is not in time. It's the same presence that was when you were a baby, same presence when you were a teenager. Now, tomorrow, everything experience will keep transforming, but the presence in which the experience is happening is always the same. So the ultimate goal of what is called enlightenment is called self realization. Not even self awareness, self realization, which means you realize who you are, okay? You're not the experience. You're that in which experience arises and subsides in every now. We can't even say moment of now because the moment is over as soon as it arises in every now. Now is the ticket to timeless being, which means eternity. In that sense, I is immortal, okay? Not I stretching for endless time, but I, which is not in time altogether. Okay? So I is immortal now. It so happens that's the commonest word we use, right? I is the commonest word we use. I went to the movies, I was in love, or I'm in love, or I like Chinese food, or I don't like Trump. You know, I is the commonest expression in any language. And this is astonishing because even though we have an intimate experience of I, most people don't know who or what I is. Okay? That's why they say who am I? Is the most important question of existence. Because I is existence itself. Now, if I asked you right now, where are you? Let's say I was here and said, where are you, Rene? Where are you, Rene? So he says I'm here, which means I is somewhere here and not I is somewhere there. For you, I is somewhere here and the other is somewhere there. That's our common experience. Now that's a programmed hallucination, okay? Because if you go inside your brain or your body, there's nobody there. Okay? People keep saying, you know, I had an out of body experience. And how was that? The real mystery is how do we get an in body experience without being in it? I is not in your body. Your body is an I. Your body is an experience in I. And what's the experience? Sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, perceptions. What are these? These are modified forms of I. What's a thought? Okay, just. Let's try an experiment. Think of your home where you live, right now. You see a picture? Well, there's no picture in your brain. Your brain has something called neural correlates of consciousness. But there's no picture of of your home in your brain. So what are you experiencing now? All I had to say is think of your home and you had an experience. Think of tasting an apple. Have an experience. All you had is a thought, right? So what happened is. Or think of your favorite song, any song. You hear it. There's no sound in your brain. Okay, look at this statue. Where are you having that experience? In I. I is having that experience. But where is it happening? It's not happening here because you're there, right? This experience is happening in I. So all experience is a modification of I. I modifies itself into a thought, it modifies itself into an emotion, it modifies itself into a perception, even the sound. It modifies itself into the experience which we call mind, body, universe. Is this clear? Yes. No. So in the ultimate, there's only I, there's only I, modifying itself into the experience that we call mind, body and universe. I is modifying itself into the experience which we call me and other. But me then refers to that which we call body mind, and other refers to the other body mind, or to this or this. So, and of course, you and I may have slightly different experiences because karma, Karma is the conditioned mind through which the movie is being projected. So your present life is a movie and there are many characters in it. There's that which you call Me and that which you call everybody else, okay, which are all part of the movie. Just like last night, if you had a dream, you were there in the dream and there were other people in the dream, right? And there was a location. I had a dream that I was with Clint Eastwood. We were playing golf in pebble beach and, you know, we won the trophy. And this morning I said, oh, it was all happening in I and it's gone. But this is also happening in I and it'll be gone. That's why this is a more convincing hallucination, okay? And we call it everyday reality. Now, of course, for some people, the hallucination is. Causes a lot of suffering, okay? Child abuse, war, pestilence, starvation, violence. And for some people, the dream is a nightmare. And for other people, it's heaven. And the key is self realization. You know, you can't tell that to somebody who's poor and struggling for. For food, because at that moment they can't even be ready for that kind of understanding. But you're here for a particular reason. Karma brought you here, so you're ready to kind of embrace this, right? You can't take somebody to this place of awareness till they have evolved to a certain extent, fulfilling more fundamental needs like survival of the body, mind, safety for a lot of people, money and achievement and goals for a lot of people still struggling with relationships and love. And then once those needs are met, then slowly the awakening creative expression, and then the awakening intuition, and then the awakening higher consciousness, and ultimately the awakening that we call God or spirit or self. It's all the same thing, self realization. Because the self of the individual is the self of the universe. By the self of the individual, we don't mean body mind, okay? Body mind is just a transient experience. There's no. Actually, in the deeper reality, there's no body, there's no mind, and there's no universe. There's only you. And that you is slightly different from this you. And we call that the soul. Soul being the part of cosmic consciousness that is a journey through cosmic time, ultimately for self realization. So in that sense, self realization is the highest intelligence. Okay? Now, along the way, of course, there are many things that interfere with that. And those are things that are part of our conditioned mind. They create situations, circumstances, events that we have to kind of navigate through till we say, okay, been there, done that, now let's go for it. Let's go for the final, you know, final part of the journey. So what I'd like to do is just put that total, well, Being slide on. We'll come to this song right at the end. Okay, so this is a slide based on some data put together at Gallup. Also, you know, Gallup, they do polls and they're usually very good. Last time they were wrong. Now I happen to be on the board of Gallup and not for the polls, but for looking at data on well being. And this is how Gallup kind of breaks it down. We made the mind map here. So they break down well being in the following segments, hopefully to cover every aspect of well being. Not yet spiritual well being, because you know, it's difficult to measure. Although we are now doing it at the center with help of Paul Mills and UCSD and statisticians, we're beginning to measure well being, spiritual well being as well. So these are the five so called buckets of well being. First is career well being. And basically, do you love what you do every day? Is your job, is your career and your calling in alignment? Okay, so job is what you're doing today and these days. Career is what you do over your lifetime. Calling is a commitment to which is bigger than yourself, which is ultimately a spiritual quest. Okay, if your job, your career calling are in alignment, then you're all set. And here are some data which we can go into, which we don't need to though. But you know, this is Gallup data which is very useful for corporate training, etc. If your boss, if your manager, if your supervisor ignores you, your rate of disengagement goes up by 45% and you fall sick. If your supervisor, your boss, your manager criticizes you, you get better. 20%, 25%, 22%. Why? Because human beings would rather be criticized than ignored. When you're ignored, then you don't exist. When you're criticized, at least you exist. But if your boss or your supervisor notices a single strength that you have, your rate of disengagement is less than 1% and you feel happy and you're healthy. But that, that acknowledgement of your strength is authentic. It's not made up. Okay? So this is very important because now we know that only 20% of people in the American workforce are engaged. The rest are disengaged, which means they come to work, but they have to because they need a job. And then of that a significant number are actively disengaged, which means not only are they unhappy, but they come to work to make other people unhappy. So what would be the ideal career? It would be your job, your career, your higher calling and alignment and, and working with Other people who are also complementing your strengths because they have different strengths that you don't have. Yeah, you can put that on. You would work with people who complement your strengths and then you would also be spiritually and emotionally bonded with them. It's like a good sports team. You know, in sports team they all have the same vision. They complement each other's strengths and they're connected emotionally, if not spiritually. They're connected. That would be the ideal work environment. I think we can say that the Chopra center, if you've experienced the energy here, everybody's complimenting their strengths. Okay. What Roger does or Sheila does or Amanda does or Renee does, I can't do. And what I do, they can do. But maybe they're better at something else. Okay? So. But we are all bonded, right? So that creates a good, good experience for all of you. Okay? If you have a happy friend, then your happiness goes up by 15%. If the happy friend has a happy friend, it'll go back to the big total slide. So the next part is social well being. By the way, just so you know, in all the studies that have been done on people who live long or live even beyond hundred and actually don't get sick, guess what's the number one factor of all the things? Social networks. We shouldn't call them Social networks with social connections. You know, bonding networks implies, oh, you know, I have to go network now. Yes, the people who love you and those that you love, that's the number one thing. Friends and family are colleagues that care about you, okay? That you can trust and they can trust you. That's the number one predictor of longevity and well being. So given that if you have a happy friend, your happiness will go up by 15%. If the happy friend has a happy friend goes up another 10%. If the happy friend's happy friend has a happy friend, it keeps going up to the point where the happiness of people that you don't know is very important for your happiness. Now, if you believe this data, by the way, then the best way to get rid of enemies and terrorists is to make them your friends, okay? Or at least if not that, increase their capacity for well being and happiness. That's the only way to get rid of a violent ideology. You can kill a person, you can kill a terrorist, but you can't kill their mind, okay? And mind transcends the biology. So lots of data on this. If you hang out with thin people, you will lose weight. If you hang out with people who are extremely heavy, you'll Start to gain weight. Why? Because we mirror each other, right? We mirror each other's thoughts, emotions and also neurons and biology. So that's very interesting. Physical well being. We've covered a lot in the last two days. Community well being. These are three Sanskrit words. Seva, satsang, Simran. So seva means service to dedicate yourself to a cause bigger than yourself, even though it's also benefits you. Okay. Seva satsang means a gathering of people who are on the same journey like this. And simran means spiritual practice. So those would be ideal communities in the world, right? Where people are dedicated to serving a higher vision, a higher cause, where they have some kind of spiritual practice together. That's called simran. The word actually means remembering. Remembering who you are. Satsang means hanging out together. Okay. Being together. But then that translates into is the community safe? Do you feel safe walking at night? It's all measurable, by the way. Okay. In fact, I can tell you this now, but we had gathered data for the last 15 years on how we could. When I say we means at the Gallup Organization, we had gathered data how you could predict the quality of leadership, you could predict a revolution, you could predict a financial crisis, you could predict violence, you could predict restlessness. Just by looking at these different aspects of well being, we, meaning again, Gallup and us, met with the State Department in the George W. Bush department era, you met with them in the Obama era and also in the Clinton years. Nobody actually listened. But when the, when the Middle east crisis started to take place, you know, when, when Libya and Egypt and Tunisia had their problems and we had already predicted that, then we got some attention. So I was at that time teaching a course and I still teach it. This is going to be my last year. Fifteen years I've been doing it at Kellogg Business School. And I was informed by the dean of the medical school, of the business school and by the State Department that one of the students in my class was going to be Gaddafi's son. Because we had predicted that Libya was going to fall. And so, and their wisdom, the government said maybe we can prevent that, you know, maybe we can rebrand Libya. That's all governments think. So I was told he was going to be in my class. The dean knew that he was brought to the class with two other companions, one from the CIA, one from the State Department. They had other positions, professor at Georgetown University, etc. Etc. He introduced himself. My first name is this. Second name is this. Didn't use his last name. I'm an investor And I live in North Africa. And we asked everybody, what are your hobbies? And his was hunting, adventure and horses. Royal kind of family, very articulate, had a British accent, wore the best clothes in the class. And three weeks later, he was dead. You know, because it was moving so fast, the restlessness. Based on these statistics, you know, I was invited to go to Libya, but I got a message that I should wait, and I had to wait three weeks to see. It was disaster. I mean, I'm telling you the story now because I can tell it. Okay, okay, so community well being is very important. Okay, finally, financial well being. And what does the data show about that? The data shows that financial well being is very important, but it's not the most important thing. Okay? Now, if you ask people what's the most important thing in your life right now, they'll say it's money. Because people are struggling in the world, and so their perception is it's money. But when they get the money, they notice that initially they're very happy. Six months, they're back to the baseline, one year for sure. So if somebody wins a lottery and they win $20 million, they'll be ecstatic in the beginning, and then in six months, it'll start to plateau in one year back. Why? Because it doesn't actually change who you are. You know, who you are is how you look at life and how you treat other people. And if you have love and relationships and, you know, people that care about you, those are the most important things. Okay, so financial, the amount of money that you have influences your happiness by about 10 to 12%. Okay. The remaining comes from how you experience everything else in your life. Of course, it's important to feel secure, to have insurance, to have retirement. All these things are very important. When you. When we talk to businesses or, you know, get the data on what is corporate well being, these are the things that. That we mostly talk about. Okay, so, Rene, can you show the happiness formula? In the last few years, social scientists have worked very hard to create what they call the happiness formula. And so this is the happiness formula. H is equal to S plus C plus V. S is the set point for happiness, which determines about 50% of your daily happiness experience. And what is the set point is your attitude to life? Do you see life as an opportunity, as a life, as an opportunity to grow, to love, to experience relationship and love? Or do you see life, life as a problem? How is this set point determined? It's determined in the first three years of life by parents, siblings and caretakers. And what's the mechanism? The mechanism is mirror neurons. Your neurons mirror the neurons of your parents or your caretakers and your siblings. So if your parents were constantly complaining, condemning, criticizing, playing the victim, that's what you grow up to be. If your parents were always happy, and I was very lucky with that, as I told you about my parents yesterday, a little bit. Then, you know, you grow up with these amazing attitude that life is a place for service, for satsang, for Simran, etc. Can the set point be changed? Yes, it can be changed, but that's why we're here. Set point changes very significantly through practices that have in one way or another to do with meditation, spiritual practice. They change our set point. That's 50% of daily happiness experience. C is conditions of living. We're talking about financial conditions. I already told you 10 to 12% of our daily happiness. Main thing to remember about money, it should not be a source of stress or anxiety. So if you're extremely poor, then it is a source of stress and anxiety. Extremely rich. It depends, you know, it depends on what you do with the money. It also depends on how you earn the money. Okay, so you feel good about the way you earn the money and you spend the money. But there are people who are extremely rich who are also extremely unhappy because money is their identity and that's all they think about. So in that sense, the extremely poor and the extremely rich share one thing in common. They think about money all the time. So if you're thinking about money all the time, then you're poor, period. Doesn't matter how much money you have, because it's become your identity. Okay, that leads us to the third part of the formula, which is a big chunk of happiness, 40% or more. And that's the choices that you make every day. So if your choices are about personal pleasures, then those choices will lead to happiness, but it will be transient. In the United States, the number one choice for personal pleasure is shopping. The number two choice for personal pleasure is entertainment, food, alcohol. The third choice is sex. Americans don't have time for sex or even enjoyment of sex because they're too busy shopping. Do these choices make you happy? They do, but the, the, the happiness lasts a few days or maybe a few months. If you buy a new automobile, you buy a new device, iPhone, you'll be happy for a while. But after a while, it's something that you don't even think about, okay? It doesn't add to your happiness. And that's true for anything that you Buy bhaj the way, a house, a yacht, a private plane. After six months, it's not a source of joy anymore. So happy people tend to spend more money on experience and less money on product. Okay. Experiences like going on a vacation with your family or even going out and for entertainment with other people, okay, that you share a bond with. Then you have something to look forward to that makes you happy. You enjoy the experience that makes you happy. You have good memories that makes you happy. So experience is more important than a thing. And then, of course, if you spend money on other people, that is also a source of happiness. But the fastest way to happiness is not to spend money on other people, but to give them attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. So attention means you're a good listener. Appreciation, you notice good qualities in others and acknowledge them authentically. Affection means you care, you love. And acceptance means you don't try to change another person. It's hard enough for you to change when you're trying to change yourself. To expect another person to change because you want them to change is delusion. Okay, so that's the happiness formula. And now in the remaining time that I have, let's talk about what's really important, which is self realization or enlightenment as the ultimate expression of healing. The word healing, the word whole, the word wholeness are the same word. So healing, holy, wholeness, health are the same word. Healing is the return of the memory, or holiness is the return of the memory of who we really are. Okay, you have these slides on neuroscience. Okay, so I'm going to put this frame this today in a way that is kind of scientific. It's kind of what I've done all my life. I make a living by saying these things. But just know that you don't need science to be enlightened. Okay? That would be very difficult. And only. And it so happens that scientists are the least enlightened. So. But nevertheless, I'm going to show you what we can call the neuroscience of well being. Can you put that here too? Okay. Okay. So this is called rewiring the brain for higher consciousness. And we'll talk what that means, higher consciousness. Now remember that your brain is not who you are. You, your brain is an instrument that you use to experience this, this means all this and this as well. But the brain itself is also an experience. How do you know that you have a brain? Well, people have seen brains on dissection tables and CAT scans and so on. But even the neural correlates of higher consciousness are neural correlates. They're not who you are in any case. Now it's possible to map the brain with every experience that you have. Mental, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, it doesn't matter because we can look inside the brain. And right now we have a big project coming up in the next couple of months where we are going to look at and Sheila and Paul Mills and I and many others, we're actually getting the protocol and we'll be mapping the brain in higher consciousness and particularly with the techniques that you are learning. And so if you want to look at all the research that's current, go to choprafoundation.org and that's our research. If you want to look at research throughout the world, go to I S h a r online.org ishar ishar stands for integrative Studies, Historical Archive and Repository. It's an initiative of the Chopra Foundation. But so ISHAR not only keeps track of all the research we do, but all the research being done all over the world. So please visit it. And you can also go to Chopra Foundation. You can go to Ishar. And then we have an app that I should tell you about. It's called Jayo J I Y O and you can download it anytime. Please do. Because you have a faculty of people who are teaching every day, whether it's meditation or yoga or nutrition or love or anything that's important. You'll find it in Jaya. Okay? So do download the app. 95% of the content is all free. Okay. It has many. It's a whole library of meditation as well. So once again, that's Jayo Ishar Chopra Foundation. Those are the three sources. Okay. So your frontal cortex is this part of the brain, right. Right in front, right behind your forehead. And we now know that you can actually grow connections. And not only grow connections in the frontal cortex, but equin, even grow neurons. This pretty wild. Nobody thought you could grow neurons, but now we know. So that's called neurogenesis. And than synapse genesis. Hundred billion neurons with tens of thousands of connections which are originally created by genes but are now sculpted by your mental and perceptual experiences. And now we know that meditation and mindful awareness actually promote this and also reflection. And we'll go into these techniques in a moment. I mentioned the three brains the other day, so we won't go into this. Okay. But we have three brains. The reptilian brain, we call the instinctive brain, the limbic brain, which is emotional brain, and then the cortical brain, which is the intellectual brain. They're all important. Okay. The reptilian brain protects you in times of danger. The emotional brain helps you to connect with people. When it's dysfunctional, then you have anger, hostility, fear, guilt, shame, depression, and it causes inflammation. And then the intellectual brain lets you embark on a journey of self reflection and creativity. Okay, so they're all important. But the emotional brain is found in all mammals. And all mammals have groups, we call them as humans, families and social engagement. And all mammals nurse their young. They play and they don't lay eggs. They make babies and they coo and they cuddle and they have fun. And these are all the different parts of the brain. I don't think we need to go into this today. This could be a one week course. And main thing is that these three brains have different ages. So the reptilian brain is 300 million years old in evolution. The emotional brain is 100 million years old and the cortical brain is only 4 million years old. So while we all pretend to be creatures of rationality, we are not ruled by rationality. We are ruled by emotions and instinct. Okay. And they're more useful as anyway. Okay. Because the intellect makes the mistake of think it's so smart that it can solve all the problems. And many times the intellect is the problem. So here are all the techniques that will can help you. Conscious choice making. I don't think I need to explain this. So when you're confronted with a choice, you should ask yourself, is this going to make me happy? Is this going to make other people happy? If the answer to both is yes, then then do it. If the answer to both is or one is no, don't know it and you don't need to think too much about it. Right. Also, there's a difference between instant gratification and long term fulfillment. So is going to have a double cheeseburger going to make me happy? Actually maybe when I'm doing it because I'm so used to it, but in an hour, how am I going to feel? Okay, so every choice should be a conscious choice to the extent that you can. Consciousness of the experience. We call the body body awareness. Okay? Being grounded in the body and connecting to our larger body, which is the earth. Monitoring and regulation of emotions. Now this is a whole topic in itself, so I'm not going to talk about it today. But I think you have enough knowledge to know that love, compassion, joy, peace are the most important things. Okay. And that's what you focus on. Now of course a lot of people have emotional distress because of emotional trauma. Past experiences. And there are ways to get rid of that emotional trauma. And that involves first bringing awareness, localizing the emotions. Because all repressed emotions are in one of the seven chakras, which are junction points of consciousness and biology. And also I think we have many programs here, but also I have lots of material online if you want to look up. Seven steps to emotional release. Responsibility, awareness, labeling, expressing, sharing, releasing, celebration. To the point where you never need to feel emotional distress at any time. Now, ever since I did a program on Oprah, the STOP formula became very popular. So STOP stands for exactly that. Stop when you're in distress or you're being reactive, stop S t take three deep breaths and smile. O Observe what's happening in your body and keep your awareness on the discomfort till it goes away. Just by putting awareness and p. Proceed with awareness and compassion. Make it a habit. Then you. That's called response flexibility. The more flexible you are in your responses, the more you will decouple automatic behavior. The more flexible you are in your responses, the less you'll be a biological robot. Biological robot means you're triggered into situations, circumstances and events by the same patterns of behavior. So you become a bundle of conditioned reflexes and nerves that's constantly being triggered into the same responses and that you have no freedom. So the more you observe. This is Krishnamurti's highest teaching. He said the highest intelligence is the ability to observe yourself without judging yourself. Just observe yourself. Of course, observing yourself has different components. Your body, your mind, your emotions, your perceptual experiences, and the world. Empathy and interoception. Interoception Perception means I'm aware of the outside world. Interoception means I'm aware of the inside world, not only of the body, but what that which we call mental space. You can modulate your emotions, but once you have to become aware of them. That's an interesting word. Gaba goo. Gaba stands for gamma aminobutyric acid. And goo is when you're experiencing healthy emotions. Then there's a lot of this gamma goo in your neurons that prevents inflammation, emotional modulation, insight, and then linking. There's a part of your brain that's called the insula. Insula means island. That connects your heart, lungs, intestines, and. You know, in yoga, there's something called pratyahara, the seven, eight limbs of yoga. So you remember them. Yama, niyama, pratyahara, Dhyan, dharana, samadhi, pranayam, yogasana. I didn't say them in order. So Roger will correct me afterwards. But that's okay. So one of them is Pratyahara. It's, you know, that you can learn to regulate your heart rate, your. The, the. The behavior of the internal organs. And yesterday we covered a little bit of that when I spoke about the vagus nerve. Okay, so all that is possible. These are the three brains. I'm not going to go into evolution right now. But other than all emotions, even negative emotions, have, have biological reasons. Okay, so this was first pointed out by no other than Charles Darwin himself. He said fear readies the animal for flight. Anger readies the animal for combat. Jealousy alerts the mammal to the loss of reproductive chances. Disgust is the nauseous revulsion and the invisible likelihood of contamination from rotting foods. He's a smart guy, huh? Contemporary pride, guilt, shame, humiliation, are only found in social mammals like primates, chimpanzees, and of course humans. And then humans now are embarking on a new journey. Love, compassion, empathy, and higher consciousness. So when we experience these, when we have experiences of what are called flow, spiritual exaltation, scientific discovery, just the delight of exploration, then, you know, we move into higher consciousness and then that results. It starts with intuition, creativity, vision, and ultimately connection with that which we call sacred. Okay, skip all the science for now. Although it's very interesting, by the way. Through emotions, we regulate our entire biology on an everyday basis. Our emotions, our moods, our neural networks, heart rate, immune function, sleep, wake cycles, blood pressure, dreams, digestive processes are all regulated by emotions. Okay? We experience the external environment through sound, touch, sight, taste and smell. And also we experience what we call the inner environment. And part of our brain, limbic brain, is doing a lot of that. The internal environment we can learn to experience through yoga, pratyahara, pranayama, and through all these aspects. Body awareness, breath awareness, heart awareness, visceral awareness, sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, and the highest intelligence is what can be called metacognition. Metacognition. So what is metacognition? It is the awareness of self, including the awareness of conscious choices, but also the awareness of experience when you're having the experience, what is called silent witnessing, awareness. So yeah, that's metacognition. Observing ourselves having a sensory experience, intentional perceptual experience and self observation activates the prefrontal cortex. Now that was shown by Dan Siegel, who's a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA and very good friend of ours. And we do a lot of work together. Okay, so enlightenment happens as we take the journey of non reactivity. We cultivate divine attitudes, such as gratitude, loving kindness, compassion, equanimity. When we have non judgmental awareness of the external and internal environment. When we go deeper into yoga through understanding what's happening inside our body through the Kriyas, the Bandhas, Yoga nidra, When we transcend through primordial sound meditation. When we experience metacognition. And this leads to the progressive awakening of self ultimately, till it leads to self realization. And this progressive awakening is through waking up from the waking state, which is the lucid dream we are having right now, and then waking up to the dream state and then waking up even to the sleep state. Those are the three states that everybody experiences every day, but they think it's life. Okay? Waking, dreaming, sleeping is most people's life, but not yours anymore. Okay? The next step is soul consciousness and then cosmic consciousness, then divine consciousness and then unity consciousness, which is also called Brahman consciousness. So all these have Sanskrit words. The waking state is Jagrit Chetna. Chetna means consciousness. The deep sleep is sushupti. And then for each of these states there are words, okay? But they're very well defined in the Vedic literature. And what I thought is my afternoon, you know, I have one hour for Q and A. Maybe I should devote a little bit to this, this last part, states of consciousness. Because in order to keep everything going, we have to respect everyone's time. So even though I said never say I've run out of time, this experience is over. Okay, see you in the afternoon.