UNLOCK Your LIMITLESS Mind with Dr. Deepak Chopra

There's a mind body connection. I made that idea very popular. Yes, but I regret it because there's no mind body connection.

Every thought you have is actually a magical lie. What in the world do you mean when you say that?

If you close your eyes and do nothing, in a minute or so or less, you'll become aware that you are having a conversation with yourself? We call it thought. Thought is conversation with ourselves. Awareness of the mind can't be the mind, Right? If you're aware of your thoughts, then you can't be your thoughts. That awareness is a fundamental experience of existence. When a child is born, it has no idea that there's something called Planet Earth. The mind and body are the same experience. One experience subjectively, the other objectively, they are the same thing. So wherever a thought goes, the. A molecule. Wherever a molecule goes, there's a thought. But you needed the molecule, nor the thought. You're the source of both.

All right, welcome back, everybody. Today's an honor for me. It's rare that you get to have a conversation with an icon, but not only an icon. Somebody who's made a massive. Makes me emotional, massive impact on my life. And I know that I've impacted a lot of your lives. And without this man's work, I don't believe I would have been able to do that. And I was telling him off camera, he made a huge difference in my father's life, which by extension means he's impacted my family. By the way, he's also written 93 books, which is not a bad start to his career. Time magazine named him one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century. So I think it's safe in calling him an icon. And I cannot wait to share this beautiful man with all of you today. So, Deepak Chopra, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's a privilege, my honor, my friend. All right, we're gonna get into this book he's got out right now. It's called Living in the Light. Yoga for Self Realization. I want to get into the book, but I also want to make sure we leave enough on the bone so everybody goes and buys the book as well. But there's been a few things I've always wanted to ask you before we go to this book. And it's just. It's something you said, and it stuck with me because I've used it in my own work and I never heard it said this way before. But you said every thought you have is actually a magical lie. What in the world do you mean?

When you say that, see, our thoughts are interpretations of our perceptions, which means how we experience the world. And our perceptions are the real magical lies because they hide the truth of reality. So your perception tells you the Earth is flat. Nobody believes that anymore. Your perception tells you that the ground you're sitting on is stationary. It's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. Your perception tells you have a body which is three dimensional, exists in space and time, but it's actually proportionately as void as intergalactic space. So everything you see can't be believed. And then on top of that, then you make assumptions which are called thoughts. So the thoughts extend the magical eyes. The point is, if you can see it, if you can touch it, if you can perceive it, if you can think about it, if you can imagine it, if you can experience it in any way, it's not real. What is real is the invisible you that makes this seem real. But it's a play of consciousness. It's a magical lie. And the play of consciousness in my Eastern traditions of yoga is called Leela, the divine playing as the universe.

So where do the thoughts come from? Are they somehow old thoughts that are. Were they reincarnated thoughts? Are they just perceptions that our patterns.

And our experience, they're recycled from our collective culture. So every. Every generation inherits the thoughts of the previous culture, recycles them, and then once in a while, there's a creative leap. There's an Einstein or a Beethoven or a Michelangelo or. Or, you know, something a genius like Shakespeare. They break the mold, and that's called a leap in consciousness. A new story, a new context, a new meaning and a new reality. And that's how the universe evolves.

Oh, my goodness. Okay, guys, I told you it's going to be good. We're three minutes in and you're already rewinding to hear that again. A lot of Deepak's work, by the way. I find myself, because of my limited brain capacity, I usually read each chapter once or twice just so I get the full understanding of it. But speaking of stories, you let me where I want to go with your new book, Living in the Light, Yoga for Self Realization. It's about royal yoga. And I want you to tell us a little bit about what that means, because, you know, one of the things you claim and you state rather, is that it could really change your entire existence in your entire life. And you start out in the book talking about stories. Chapter one is about upgrading your own story. And I'M not even sure that most people are aware they're telling themselves a story about themselves or that one even exists. So why don't you help us dive in a little bit about how Royal Yoga works, the different chakra centers. And what about upgrading your story in.

Chapter one, if you close your eyes, anyone, and do nothing, in a minute or so or less, you'll become aware that you are having a conversation with yourself. We call it thought. Thought is conversation with ourselves. And there are two kinds of thoughts. We have one, you know, pleasant memories of the past, and one, unpleasant memories of the past. There are only two kinds of thoughts and they're stories. You know, the past is a story that you hold to be true. So as I said, there are two kinds of stories, pleasant and unpleasant. And your body is a projection of that. It's not real. Your body is also perceptual. Magical lie. If you say I have a body, then you have to tell me which one. You started as a fertilized egg, then you were a zygote, you were an embryo, you were a baby, you were a toddler, you were a 8 year old and then you were a teenager, a young adult, old adult all the way to dusty death. So if you say I have a body, then please tell me which one. There's no such thing. The body is also a magical lie. It's a perceptual activity that you identify with. This is mine. And so yoga says that your body is your story. The word they use is the karmic body, the conceptual body. So if you want to know what your karma, karma means your stories are in the past and how you interpret them. All you have to do is look at your body. And if you want to know what your body will be like in the future, all you have to look at your stories right now. Your stories are you. But that's not the real you. That's the conditioned you. It's the cultural conditioning you received, the economic conditioning, the education, your parents, your ancestors, every one of them is alive new right now as genetic activity. So you can't move your hands, you can't speak to me, you can't do anything unless all your ancestors are alive in you as your genetic activity right now, Every single one of them. Not only human ancestors, but animal ancestors going all the way back to the beginning of life without a single chain, without a single break in the chain, you know, all the way to microbial ancestors called chemolithoautotrophic hyperthermophiles, which were the first life forms on the rims of volcanoes. They are alive in you right now. You are that story. But behind that story is a field of consciousness which is not contaminated, which is not blemished, which is not even participating in this story. That is the real you. We call it the true self. Or in spiritual traditions, they can call it the soul. Soul or awareness. It's the only thing that's real about you. We call it I. You say I was three years old, I was 16 years old. Different body, different mind. I was eight years old. And you know, unfortunately, most young men these days, they think if you want to run for president or go for office, then you should freeze your story at eight years of emotional development. That should be a requirement for running for office. So unless you transcend your story, you will always be afraid of concepts like old age, infirmity, death, birth. You know, all these things are concepts. They don't actually apply to your true self, which is timeless, which is a field of infinite possibilities, which is creative, which is unpredictable, and which is the source of the stories, but is independent of the stories. So Rawal Yoga is this Eightfold path which includes everything from. Is called Raja Yoga in the Zim traditions. And the word yoga means Yuj, Sanskrit word which means union with your true self. So when you go past all the dark alleys and the ghost filled attics and the stories of your mind, there's a field of absolute creativity which is timeless, which is not subject to birth and death. And once you get in touch with that part of your being, you're free of all these concepts. You're free to create whatever you want. You're not bamboozled by the stories of your ancestors.

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

Yes, awareness is the key. Now here's something very interesting. What is this awareness?

Right?

Awareness of the mind can't be the mind, right? If you're aware of your thoughts, then you can't be aware your thoughts. You are independent of your thoughts. Awareness of the body is independent of the body. Awareness of your story is also independent of your story. So that awareness is a fundamental experience of existence. When a child is born, it has no idea that there's something called planet Earth. It has no idea that there's something called even an object. So if I, if I hold this object in front of a child, it doesn't know this an iPhone. If I hold my hand in front of a child, it doesn't know that that's called a hand. What is it aware of then? It is aware of colors, shapes, textures, tastes, smells, but without a story. Okay, so what we call objects are actually modes of knowing and experience in awareness. But we call them objects, we give them a material identity, when in fact they're a perceptual activity of our own self in our awareness. So even though I'm holding this iPhone right now, that's a human construct. This is me in disguise. Partial me in disguise. Everything that you see is a partial you in disguise. Why do I say partial? Because your five senses are very narrow bandwidth of experience. The human eye, for example, can see only between 300 and 800nm wavelength. So what does the world look like to an octopus or a bat or an insect with a hundred eyes? What is the real look of the world? And the answer is there's no such thing as the real look. It depends on who's looking and the instruments that we use to look. The instruments are our five senses and they're very faulty. As I just told you, every sense, sensual sense, sensory experience, is a magical lie. And furthermore, it's a fragmented piece of the whole. So with bits of sensory experience, we can never experience the whole. Therefore, you have to go beyond the mind, beyond the intellect, beyond all systems of thought. There's no system of thought, religion, theology, philosophy or science, because science is also a system of thought. No system of thought can give you access to truth with a capital T. The only way to know the truth is to go beyond all systems of thought. That's where Royal Yoga fits in. It's not a system of thought. It's a series of practices which starts with emotional intelligence, social intelligence, of course, body language, and those yoga Postures, understanding your body as a field of awareness, breathing techniques to regulate your autonomic nervous system, interoception, which means learning how to regulate the internal organs of your body, meditation, focused awareness and focused intention. And ultimately what we call transcendence, which means going past all of this to the source of all experience. Not the experience, the source of all the experience. The experience is in time. The source of experience is timeless. And so you are.

And you, you. In yoga, you're using your body, right? And I. This notion of the mind and body connection, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. So I've had some friends whose work you're familiar with that say, well, the. The body is the unconscious mind.

Yeah, it's necessary.

Okay, Okay. I would love to. Okay. I want. I can't wait to hear your opinion about this. What is that? Are the mind and the body separate? Are they one? Does it matter? Because I'm. Now I'm using language to define these two different things. But part of the book that I was so fascinated by, when I've already taken some steps on it, is you are using your body to some extent to create this level of awareness. So what is the connection between the mind and the body? And maybe. And why does that matter?

It matters a lot because first of all, this, even this idea that there's a mind body connection. I made that idea very popular.

Yes.

But I regret it because there's no mind body connection. The mind and body are the same experience. One experience subjectively, the other objectively. So when you close your eyes, you experience thoughts. When you open your eyes and you look at it, you'll experience what we call the physical body. But they are the same thing. So wherever a thought goes, there's a molecule. Wherever a molecule goes, there's a thought. But you are neither the molecule nor the thought. You're the source of both. Mind, body, one experience, and the yoga practice, the physical yoga practice, which is what most people think of yoga as the physical postures. Yes, but the physical postures are meant to actually give you the experience of your body as a field of awareness and actually give you the ability to master it. So all these Eastern martial arts, for example judo, tai chi, qigong, yoga, of course, they are mind body practices where you cultivate your body as a field of awareness. Even the names, Happy, baby, a child, pose, cat, cow, and all these names are actually states of awareness where if you sit into or settle into that posture, you shift your awareness to a whole different domain of existence. That's why yoga should be done slowly, carefully, never in a hurry. It's a form of what we would say, mindfulness today.

It's a form of mindfulness and I think about description and language. So we've talked a little bit about the mind, the spirit, the soul, the body, and then there's language. Right. And you talk about this in the book as well. And then I probably. I'm not going to give away much more of the book, but it's so good for me. And you said something, correct me if I say it incorrectly, but you said language is not just a method of description, but it actually constructs experience. Yes, And I found this in my own life. It just the practical application, because I think my audience is obviously thinking this is theoretical, philosophical, what are the practical applications? And I often listen to the language of people in my life that I believe suffer a great deal unnecessarily and oftentimes their way they use their language. Constructs of a structure around their life, a construct around their life that delivers them suffering and misery unnecessarily, just based on the way they use language in their life. So if I quote you correctly, and how do you feel about that?

Yeah. Language doesn't describe. It constructs experience. And actually, in both the Buddhist and Vedantic and Yogic schools, language is a very important part of what we call reaching enlightenment or the source of all experience, which is also called freedom from suffering. Language is one of the eight things mentioned in yoga, but also in Buddhist philosophy. Before you speak, you should ask yourself, is it necessary? Number one? Number two, is it helpful? Number three, will it create joy? Number four, will it create healing? And if the answer is yes, then go ahead and speak. Otherwise, just shut up. So language is very important. And language is not something we created. It's a part of the experience of human evolution. So up until, say, 40,000 years ago, there were eight different kinds of humans. We call ourselves homo sapiens, which means the Wise Ones. We were humble enough to call ourselves the Wise Ones, but then we gave names to other human beings. We call them hominids, Homo, Homo, Florence, Homo, Neanderthals, etc. Etc. So they all look like you and me, just like in a cat family. You have lions and panthers and cats and tigers and cheetahs. In the human family, you had eight different types of humans and they all had a primitive language, which all animals have. And that language is only about three things. Only three things. Number one, food, number two, sex, and number three, danger, because that's how we survive. And that's how humans were three things. The language was for then one species. You and me, our ancestors, we created a language for telling stories. And the first stories, the most common stories, were gossip. Who's sleeping with whom, who can be trusted, who can be, who's betraying whom, et cetera, who's cheating on whom. And then the second that. So that's still the most common language.

It sure is. I was just thinking that's the common language now.

Yes, that's. But once we created a language with stories, then we created other stories. For example, after gossip, the second most common language was money. There was no such thing. You know, I'll cut your hair and you fix my shoes. Became too inconvenient. So we said, okay, let's give each other this shell. I owe you this much. And then a copper coin, and then paper, and now digital, digital money. It's all story Wall Street. What do we call Wal? It's exchange. Exchange of ideas, values. And everybody who buys those ideas, they make money out of this. You know, what's the stock market? How people are feeling about themselves right now and how anxious they are about their future. That's what the stock market, it's a story. But everything that we call colonialism, nation states, empires, latitude, longitude, Greenwich meantime, it's not Botswana meantime, it's Greenwich meantime. It's a story. And it's an arbitrary story, but we all hold it to be true, and it constructs our everyday reality. Even the universe is a story. There's no such thing as a universe because what you call stars and galaxies, how do you know they exist? Well, they're perceptual activities in that narrow band of activity that we have the five senses. And we have a story around that. We call it the Milky Way galaxy or, you know, next door, the Virgo galaxy. But if you wiped out the human nervous system and human stories, there would still be experiences, but there wouldn't be human experiences and there wouldn't be any galaxies or telescopes or hadron colliders or all an extension of our stories.

You know, it's interesting, people used is the wrong word. But I just. The application of your work and your thinking is so. It can be so broad because like, for me, I have a word every year that I choose for the year. And it's ironic that God delivered you to me today because my word for this year is peace.

I would love it.

So I love the word. And. And it's ironic that my first conversation of the year, even though this will come out A little bit later in the year is with you, and what a blessing that is for me. But the same time I do your application, your work, you know, when I'm. When you're dealing in business, everybody. When you're dealing with folks and you listen to the story them tell, they're telling themselves, or you find a difficult time in connecting. Oftentimes, what Deepak said earlier about just deciding whether you should be talking, listening to people's stories will help you connect with them, or even though it may not be a real story they're telling themselves, they're living this story, and in order to connect with them, you have to meet them somewhere in their story. That's why we have this division politically. We have all these different things. No one's listening. Everyone's telling their version of reality and perception in their story. But you did say something that I've had friends that knew you were coming on. Everybody was excited and. And there were so many different questions people wanted to have me ask you. But one of them you just touched on, which is that there is. There seems to me to be more than ever, and I, you know, more than ever in my time here, more anxiety, more strife, more stress, more worry, more concern. Even at the time we're recording this debug, you know, with all the political divisiveness and real things where you got climate change, you've got the Ukraine, you've got a nuclear threat, you've got the economy, you've got all these things. And then there's just. In people's lives, on social media, watching other people's stories and then feeling inadequate about their story, and then they use the language to describe it in a way that magnifies it and makes it worse. What is a common exercise or practice you could give us, we could apply. It would just calm our spirit, calm our hearts. Is there something we could do that's easy to access for a layman who's not done extensive yoga work in their life? Maybe they haven't even meditated in the first time. Today they're listening to you, thinking, I'm going to begin to learn mindfulness or meditation or pour myself into Deepak's work. Is there an exercise to calm our hearts and our spirit?

First of all, what you say is very important, because all conflict in the world, all conflict is ideological conflict. It's about ideas, it's about stories. Whether it's communism versus capitalism or socialism. They were all, by the way, good stories. Communism was a good story. Let's make it equal for everyone. Socialism was a good story. Let's make justice for everyone. Capitalism, great story. Let's make people wealthy and rich if they are creative and they have good ideas. But none of these things succeeded because people get greedy, they get corrupt. They, they are interested more in power mongering, influence peddling, cronyism, corruption and amassing wealth only for themselves. So, you know, the idea was very attractive, but it didn't work because humans have been bamboozled by their stories and they believe their stories are right and everybody else thinks their story is right. So that's first thing. Secondly, the fact that we are now in the 21st century and we have created things like the atomic bomb, we have split the atom, we have deciphered the human genome, we have, we have put people on the moon, we have navigated interstellar space, but we haven't used our imagination to create a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world.

So true.

Shame on us because this is a misuse of imagination. The best use of imagination is creative expression to upgrade our stories so we can all live peacefully and in a way that's sustainable and just and healthy and joyful. But we haven't used our imagination for that. We've used our imagination to kill each other. And we are still doing it. It's a total failure of human imagination, number one. Number two, our stories are medieval, they're tribal, they're ethnocentric, they're racist, they're full of bigotry and prejudice. So medieval minds and modern capacities. That's a sleepwalking towards extinction. The last extinction was about 65 million years ago when dinosaurs were wiped out from this planet in a matter of few days, actually, because a meteorite fell on this planet. It was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb and dinosaurs were wiped out. And what emerged was humans. And if we continue to sleepwalk, then evolutionary speaking, human species could be a very interesting experiment that didn't work. It failed. And that's what we're looking at right now. So unless we change our collective story right now, we are all sleepwalking to extinction. I can tell you that's not for one reason. It's not just climate change, its mass migrations, its epidemics, mass pandemics. It is extinction of species. It is destruction of the ecosystem. It is like it is basically destroying our own ecosystem as well our microbial life on this planet, which is necessary to sustain us. So, Ed, I don't want to sound depressing, that's one story though, that could be true, that the Human species was an interesting evolutionary experiment that failed. That's one story. But the other stories, we can use that same imagination that we used to decipher the genome, to split the bomb, to split the atom, to navigate interstellar space. The same imagination can be used to create a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world. So you have to always ask yourself, what is my story? Is it true? Am I sure? If it's true, what is it doing to me? What is holding on to this story doing to me? What is the opposite of this story? Is there a creative expression? The worst use of imagination is stress and violence. The best use of imagination is creativity.

So good. I'm thinking about. I'm so familiar with your work that as you're talking, I have to tell you, I'm going all the way back to super brain. I think you wrote it in, like 2012. Yes, something like that. I'm going back to that word.

And.

And by the way, I've probably stolen a litigious work in my work. Full confession now.

Nothing belongs to anyone.

Okay, well, good, because I have definitely shared a lot of it. Yes, that's right. And one of the things that, in that book that you said, just really where you were going is children, really young children. We can learn a lot from them. And you talked about in the book. And I just. I want you to share this with the audience because I often talk. I wrote my last book, I was talking about, you know, that children. One of the great things about children is they operate out of their imagination and their vision more often than they do their history and their story, because they have a limited history and story. Liberty is to operate out of love, out of peace. They don't see unless they've learned it. They don't see ethnicity or they don't. They don't see these different things that begin to create these tribal stories that you've talked about. So what can we learn from kids? You talked about it in the book. It's just too good not to have.

You say, you know, I was actually recently in Orlando during the pandemic, and I was, you know, in the train that takes you to the baggage claim, and everybody in the train was totally stressed out, you know, and they were, of course, wearing masks. They were angry. They were shouting at each other on their cell phones. And there was a young mother who was also equally stressed, and she had a little baby in her. In her pram. And this baby was looking around, you know, and totally oblivious of all the stress in the train. And then it finally caught my eye. It was trying to catch somebody's eye. And then it gave me the biggest smile in the world. So this is what children are before they've been bamboozled by these human constructs. They're naturally attentive, they're naturally friendly. They're naturally joyful, they are naturally affectionate. So, you know, I think of the four. Attention, appreciation, acceptance and affection. That's what children are. And then we take it away from them. We say, no, no, you are. Your name is so and so. This is the name of your nationality. This is your ethnicity. Not forgetting that everyone comes from Africa anyway. But now, you know, go to war, protect your identity, which is a totally false identity. Constructed identity.

There's so much to learn there. And I. I find myself. It's funny you say that. I find myself in a lot of social settings looking for and watching children. I was out. I was doing. I just told the story. I went and did your Neck of the Woods. I was doing Good Morning America for my book a few weeks ago. And I was in the lobby of a very nice hotel. So everybody there had a pretty good life financially to be in that space. And people were so stressed in this. It was the rest. I'll tell you where I was. I was in the restaurant at the Plaza Hotel. And, man, people were. It was the holidays. It should have been a joyous time. And people were stressed and upset. Someone got their table and they were waiting and their food was latent. I was eating alone and I just. My. My. I was facing the room, and I'm watching all of these people that have these really incredibly blessed lives telling themselves a completely different story, right? Using language to magnify a negative situation, right? And then throughout the restaurant, there was this little girl, I bet she was three years old, running around, having the time of her life just in complete bliss, complete joy, enjoying the moment, being fully present, it seemed to me.

But there's the clue, okay? The clue is playfulness. See, we. Not. We've forgotten how to play. We call it games now. So who's winning, who's losing? But the play was of the sake of the play. The play was the play. You know, it was theater, it was dance, it was music, and it was sports. But sports in the spirit of playfulness, in the spirit of joy, in the spirit of, you know, okay, we are competing with each other, but in the end, we shake hands, okay? We even embrace each other because it was all a play and we don't know how to play anymore. And if you want to heal the world, you have to return to the state of innocence that we call play for the sake of play.

I think people don't, because they're judged. It's so counterculture now. It's almost like, grow up, be serious, be mature. The other thing too is you're constantly being told, join one of the teams. Are you red or blue? You know, are you. You. Are you rich or poor? And. And so you're constantly being told to join these teams in life. And I was thinking about, you know, on the children part of it, I was reading something where you said, the story I've told myself, I confess, I'm 51. And I found myself using language and telling a story recently where I said, well, I'm getting older. You know, I'm getting older and. And I'm wiser. That's part of the good part of my story of getting older. But the other part of it is I'm not what I was physically. I'm not this. And I read recently where you said, actually, I have no intentions of deteriorating physically or mentally as I age, that that is actually another story we tell ourselves. And I know Dr. Dyer, I know Wayne Dyer talked a little bit about this as well, your dear friend and mine, but is that true for you, too? Was that. Do you think. Do you think. Do you think aging in general, meaning the deterioration of some mental faculties or things like that, are also part of some subconscious story we're telling ourselves?

One of the greatest fears of all time in India, Adi Shankara. Almost thousand years ago, he said, people don't grow old. When they stop growing, they become old. So as long as you're growing, you will not feel old. And you know, I'm. You said you're 50. What? 50?

51.

51. I'm 76. And people ask me, how does it feel to be 76? I say, you know, I haven't yet reached middle nature. I'll tell you when I get there.

And I are.

And do you mean that I haven't had my midlife crisis yet, waiting for, well, spend some.

Spend some time with me. I might be able to help you with that. I got to ask you a couple hard things. They're the heavy stuff. Because friends of mine are like, you got to ask him. So a friend of mine, I talk a lot about the subconscious and unconscious mind. And a very devout Christian friend of mine recently said, so where's that located? And I said, well, there's some data that says it's probably in the Prefrontal cortex of your brain. But, you know, I said, I also believe your body operates that way as well, and from a cellular level. And he goes, well, they can't prove that. And I said, damn. And I'm a person of devout faith too. I said, well, where's the soul located? I said, just because I can't tell you where it's located doesn't mean it exists. So I want to ask Deepak Chopra both questions. Where is the subconscious mind located? And where's the soul located?

Nothing has a location. No object, no physical body, no mind, no soul has a location in space or time. In fact, I go to a lot of conferences on the mind, for example, psychological conferences, psychiatrists, neuropsychiatrists. And they can't even define what the mind is. You say, okay, what is the mind? Tell us what the mind is. Oh, it's thoughts. Where is it? And they point to their brain. Okay, and so where are you having this experience right now? You know, you could. Like right now you're watching me on your computer and you're listening to me. Okay, where is this experience happening right now? Is it happening on your computer screen? No. Right. That's just the. That's the interface. Is it happening in your brain? And I can guarantee you there's no color in your brain, there's no sound in your brain. And what you call the prefrontal cortex and all this stuff, those are called neural correlates of experience. But where exactly is the experience happening? And the only experience thing you can say is, it's happening in my awareness. Because without awareness, there's no experience, right?

Yes.

If you had no awareness, there's no experience. So then where is this awareness? Well, it doesn't have a location in space time. It appears as neural correlates in the brain. But what is it that knows the brain? If I put a knife through your brain, you won't feel any pain. In fact, the brain has zero self awareness. Zero. Just like the tooth can't bite itself, the eyes can't see themselves, the brain can't experience itself.

Wow.

The brain is an instrument that gives you the appearance of locality to something that has no location in space time. So one of the best definitions I've heard of mind comes from a neuropsychiatrist, and his name is Dan Siegel. He's from ucla. He used this definition, which is actually the best definition I've heard of mine. The mind is an embodied. Embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information in an ecosystem of living beings. So let takes that bit by bit. The mind is embodied and relational, which means you can't have a mind by yourself. It is always in relationship to other minds, number one.

So true.

You can't have a mind by yourself. So it's part of the matrix of relationships. And being part of the matrix of relationships, it finds neural correlates in the body, in the brain, but it's not in the brain or in the body. The body and the brain are experiences in the mind. And the mind is an experience in awareness. And none of it is local. None of it has any location in spacetime. Now, this is actually the experience that some people have on psychedelics, okay? Because the psychedelics cool down a part of the brain called the default mode network. DFN Default mode network. And this is the neural network of your ego identity, which is a socially induced hallucination. So once you cool this down, you're in the matrix and that's the reality, the matrix. And the word matrix also is related to the words measurement, matter, time, music, meter. These are all part of the matrix of illusion. The real matrix is infinite, formless and fundamental. Without the formless, there's no form. It is the formless that gives rise to form. So if you can identify, and that's where mindfulness and all these yogic techniques come in, they allow you to get in touch with your formless, eternal self. An Indian poet by the name of Tagore said, in this playhouse of infinite forms, I found the formless. And so my life was blessed. Because the formless is eternal. It is infinite, it is spaceless, it's timeless, is irreducible, it is without cause. Call it what you want, God, awareness, fundamental reality, Ein Sof, Brahman, Allah, doesn't matter. But it is actually so magnificently infinite that it is incomprehensible. That's why I said no system of thought can give you, get you in touch with truth. No system of thought. You have to relinquish all systems of thought and get in touch with your formless self.

Foreign. We're vibrating in a very high frequency here, my friend. Because the next thing that I wanted to ask you, we only have a limited amount of time left, but I have to ask you, because if I don't, I'll have friends that will no longer be my friends if I don't ask you. And you mentioned psychedelics. That's the thing right now, you know this, you're part of. You're in touch with it. A lot of people are using external medicine and to induce these states of euphoria, peace, bliss, awareness, whatever those things are. And by the way, I'm blown away lately by the people I meet that have acquired. People I would just not have thought, probably, like, for you to, like, not have thought were dabbling in these medicines. Right. I just. I was surprised by who it was. And I'm wondering your thoughts on it, because people have asked me, like, should, should I can't I naturally tap into these states by emptying my mind by meditation, by yoga, these other things. So what's your thoughts on these external things we ingest in order to create these states of awareness?

So, you know, and I'll tell you the truth. I was 17 in medical school in India when we had professors from Harvard teaching us, and there were medical students from Harvard. As part of the exchange program that we had, I would just. I just entered medical school. So, you know, my professors. Harvard professor said, we're going to do an experiment with LSD controls. Would you be subject to it? So I said, yeah, of course.

What? What? No way.

Okay, wait a minute. This was. I was 17. Okay.

Okay.

And so my first experience, I had two. Two sessions. My first experience was I panicked. I lost my personal identity, and it was panic. And then the second time, same week, same experiment, I was asked to look at a poster of Mother Teresa. And in those days, the rumor was that Mother Teresa, when she kissed children with leprosy, they would be healed. Now we have epigenetic, actually science to explain how that happens, how extreme love and extreme compassion can heal somebody through what we call changes in genetic activity. But that time, we didn't know anything of that. It was just. Everybody was talking about Mother Teresa healing people by kissing the wounds of children with leprosy. So I was looking at this poster when I had my second session of lsd. And I have had the most extreme feeling of compassion and the extremist feeling of empathy and love. And I decided I was going to be a healer, even though in medical school we were not supposed to use words like healers or, you know, you practice or you. The word is keep practicing or you treat, but you never heal. But I got my first glimpse of what healing was. The return of memory and wholeness and love as the fundamental truth of existence. And I never had the intention again to experiment because these substances are not addictive like alcohol or tobacco. They're not addictive whether it's psilocybin or ayahuasca. Then I did my own research, and I went and explored the hymns of the Rig Veda, which is one of the most ancient texts in spiritual literature. And the hymns are devoted to some substance called soma. We don't know what it is, but I presume it was a psychedelic. Then I actually went and convinced myself that. That when Moses fed manna to his followers, it had fungus in it. And I also now am convinced that when Jesus converted water into wine, the casks had fungus in them. And that was the first religious experience. Manna from heaven, wine from water. All these miracles were actually the first religious experience, but they were done through shamanic rituals, which were very important. When you divorce them from these experts who've done these practices for thousands of years, and you use them only for entertainment, then there's a risk, of course, and you might actually lose yourself instead of finding yourself. But on the other hand, now I have joined forces with experts in this field to see how we can help people going through extreme depression or suicidal ideation, or what is called ptsd.

Ptsd.

PTSD and soldiers, and also suicidal ideation. But here's the most interesting thing. There's a condition that neurologists know about. When I wrote Super Brain, I asked my friend Rudy Tansey, who was the professor of neuroscience at Harvard, but we didn't put it in the book, of course. I asked him about this thing called terminal lucidity. And so there are some patients who have Alzheimer's or who have a stroke or who have otherwise not there mentally. And a few hours, sometimes, or a few minutes, or sometimes even a few days, sometimes even a few weeks before they die, they're suddenly totally clear. They claim to see the other side. They claim to see other relatives. They even see pets. They are welcomed by relatives who have passed on to the other side. So now, is this a hallucination? Is this a dream? And I came to the conclusion the whole thing is a hallucination. What you and I are experiencing right now is our collective hallucination that we call reality. It's a VR reality. It's a virtual reality constructed in human consciousness by the stories we tell ourselves. And so you move from one dream to another dream. The dream never ends. And so recently, about less than six months ago, my literary agent, who I had been with for the last 40 years, she was dying of cancer, brain cancer. And I sat with her and with a neuropsychiatrist, and we took her through an experience with psilocybin. And this is two weeks before she died. She had terminal lucidity, and she was actually looking forward to her Transition. So now I've actually asked my neuroscience friends, is this real? And they all say, yes, it's real, but it happens only in a few patients. So I think that might be a next frontier look at how to ease people in their terminal phases of death. When they have panic about dying, you can ease them into a different experience.

Oh, my gosh. This has been one of the most fascinating conversations of my life. I mean that. And I. I only wish I was sitting in your presence physically, because I. I knew. I thought that it could be. But by the way, to learn that one of the great healers of our time, it started off, there's no physical me. I know. As I said that out loud, I was waiting for you to sort of amend my statement. But I have to tell you, the.

Fact that is a socially induced hallucination.

I understand. I'm working on it. I'm getting there. I have to tell you to know that one of the great healers of our times, it started on lsd. Like, I just got to tell you, I'll be processing that now for. For several weeks. This hero of my last thing. Because we are out of time, I want to make sure everybody gets living in the light Yoga for self realization. Go get it right now. You can tell Deepak's work is not stuff where you read it and you go, oh, that didn't apply to anything. You read his work and you want to continue, read. Like I said, I usually read most chapters multiple times, but we're on such a great vibration. Your last question has to do with the ending of your physical body. One of the things that I've repeated many times out loud is that you talk about existence being timeless and that one of the highest levels of elevated consciousness is you lose the fear of death. And so you were just talking about this with your literary agent. I just want to know, do you fear death? Are you at that stage where you no longer fear death? And is that also a construct in our mind that we've defined with language? Because existence is timeless. Like, when I'm at the most happy, I'm going to play golf with my son today. It's his birthday. I know. I'll say. At some point, we lost track of time because I was in such a blissful state. So I'm just curious about. Is Deepak Chopra afraid to die? And just finish up with about existence.

Let's talk about life and death are not opposites. Okay, Birth and death are opposites, but life is the continuum of birth and death. It's like the on off switch in your light bulb. You can't have an on without an off. You can't have enough without an on. So death is the off between ons, and birth is the on between offs. And therefore, you have to go beyond this construct at all. In the yogic tradition, we say you should die when you are ready to say, been there, done that, number one. And you should die in meditation. In mahasamadhi, it's called the big meditation. So you have a party, you say goodbye to everyone. You might even want a glass of champagne. And then you close your eyes and you don't open them the next time.

That's so beautiful. Oh, my goodness. I don't want this to end. But since existence is timeless, it really hasn't ended yet. So I'm so grateful. By the way, one thing I wanted to mention that I didn't is this new site that Deepak has called Neveralone Love. I want to make sure you guys all check that out as well. This has been one of the great conversations of my life, and I was sort of hoping that it would be in my imagination. It would be. And we even exceeded my imagination. So, Deepak Chopra, thank you so much for blessing us today, and you are welcome back here any time you would honor us with your presence. So thank you for being in here today.

Thank you for having me. Pleasure.

All right. All right, everybody. God bless you. Share this. I have a feeling that the Internet is breaking right now, and millions of people are sharing this conversation. So God bless you all. Max out. Take care.