Deepak Chopra

"... realize that you are full of infinite possibilities. Whatever you can imagine, you can accomplish.”

phenomeNEWS: Dr. Chopra is known as a pioneer in the field of mind body medicine and is the prolific author of more than 49 books and 100 audio, video and CD-ROM titles with more than 20 million copies sold worldwide.

Now he adds movie producer to his list of accomplishments. He is someone who walks his talk and is doing wonderful spiritual things on the planet. Hello! We’re glad to be talking to you again.

Deepak Chopra: It’s great to be talking to you as well. Thank you.

We are just blown away by your new DVD, How to Know God. It’s so awesome! What was the inspiration behind this?

You know, I’d written the book, How to Know God and it was a bestseller, but a lot of people said to me that there were lots of sections in it that they did not understand. For example, where do we store memories? How do memories incarnate themselves through our thoughts? You say that the universe is destroyed and recreated every second. How can that be possible? What is the relationship between quantum theory and our experience of God and divinity? When I saw that Twentieth Century Fox had an interest in doing a movie on the subject, I thought we could take some of these complex ideas and give them some visual expression. So that’s what we did. At the time we were producing this, What the Bleep? had come out and that helped inspire the producers at Fox and elsewhere that this was a good idea, and it seems like it was a good idea, because people are responding very positively to the movie and going back to read the book and it’s making a lot more sense to them.

Absolutely. And it’s amazing, Twentieth Century Fox would pick up on an idea like this. There must be some conscious, spiritual thinkers there.

Well, it’s a sign of our times. People want to delve into topics that give us more meaning and the movie addresses the big questions: Who is God? Does God exist? Does God care about us? Do we have a soul? What happens to us after we die? What’s the meaning and purpose of our existence? Is there a dimension that exists beyond space and time? If there is, how do we find it? So it’s very timely.

Oh it sure is! What we liked about the movie is that we had an almost a God-like experience while we were viewing it. Was this your intention?

It was my intention that people should not just understand this intellectually. There are four human activities: being, feeling, thinking and doing. And I think any experience should satisfy all these four aspects of our existence, so it should give you the experience, life experience. It should also make you feel more loving, compassionate, inspired, intuitive. It should also make you think a little more, about metaphysical questions. And then it should make you want to do something that makes a difference in the world. That was my goal, to accomplish those four things.

We believe you have done it, wonderfully, too! Congratulations! Is this your first movie outing?

Yes. We’ve done little things here and there. Now we’re producing another movie. It’s based on The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. This time we have Olivia Newton-John as the lead, playing the role of her own life and how she found The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success to be very transformative in both facing the challenge of cancer and also accomplishing her deepest goals and dreams. She put special music to it. She sings in it as well. We have other Hollywood people in it as well. So it’s a new frontier for us.

How exciting! And will these be offered through the Spiritual Cinema Circle?

Yes. First they’ll be for general release and then through the Spiritual Cinema. And you know, you’re free to do your own screenings and write your friends. It’d be nice if people can be exposed to this.

Oh, absolutely! What do you see happening with people’s consciousness as the larger result of this?

I think we want to go into documentaries. We want to go into big feature films. I’ve just written a screenplay called Sadhu which is based on an Indian superhero who derives his powers from the unmanifest world of consciousness. Nicholas Cage has signed on to do that movie. We also have an Oscar-nominated director for that. This is a whole new way to reach masses of people and start them thinking about deeper questions. I think once they do that, we can look forward to an era where we look at creative solutions to problems, at spiritual solutions to problems, rather than war on terrorism, war on cancer, war on AIDS, war on poverty and so on. We will find creative solutions to conflict in the world, to global warming and planet chaos, to social injustice and poverty.

Do you feel that you’re reaching the general masses that aren’t into spirituality?

We’re extending our influence. I won’t say we’re reaching general masses and mainstream at this moment, but we will.

It will catch on, one person at a time.

Yes.

It’s done in a non-threatening, very open way.

Madonna lent us the opening song and there’s a Pakistani rock star who gave us the closing song and good music throughout. It moves fast. So I think it’s entertaining as well.

Certainly and visually very beautiful. We got caught up in it. We enjoyed it immensely!

Thank you.

In Detroit, we have such a huge unemployment situation with the industries in our area. What can we say to folks to inspire them to learn something from this change?

I think the main thing is that every change is an opportunity in disguise, so people should ask themselves, What is the opportunity? How can I use my creativity? Because in every adversity is the seed of a greater benefit. If they go by that rule and ask those questions, they will find the deeper significance of everything. You only have to ask the question.

Also, there are a number of us from the Boomer generation, who are moving into different phases of our lives now. We’re wanting to do different kinds of things. What advice would you have for this whole, huge group that’s ready to do something different?

I think it’s important to realize that this can be a very productive phase of our lives and at this stage of our lives, we should be asking questions. Not what’s in it for me, but how can I help? That’s the main thing. If you can find a cause that you can align yourself to and be passionate about it, that makes a difference in the world, then you can be very fulfilled and you’ll be happy and healthy. I have a foundation called Alliance for a New Humanity. The website is www.anhglobal.org, which is trying to create a critical mass of people who are undergoing personal transformation and also want to make a difference in the world and want to connect with each other. So people can check out this website.

Excellent suggestion, because we know a lot of folks who have retired and don’t want to be in a retirement category like their parents were. They want to do something, stay active and get behind something they believe in.

I’ve just written a book on the life of the Buddha, so you can look for it in the near future. It’s just called Buddha, that’s all. A story of enlightenment.

That sounds intriguing. The last time you stopped into the office, you showed us a comic strip that you were working on. How is that going?

It’s going very well. In fact, that’s what gave rise to the movie called Sadhu with Nicholas Cage.

Wow! There are so many diverse things that you’re into! When are they going to have an Academy Award for spiritually enlightened films?

Hopefully soon.

That would be fabulous. We have more people who are willing to stand up and say that spiritual things are important to them.

If there was something you could look at in the world and want it to be different, what would that be?

I think more creativity. Right now we have the collective intelligence and the collective creativity to solve all the problems in the world. We should harness that. Creativity is the best expression of our human spirit and human consciousness.

That’s great! That might be the next project... as if you don’t have enough already!

We’re so grateful that you had time to speak with us today. What last pearl of wisdom would you like to leave with us?

I would say take it easy and realize that you are full of infinite possibilities. Whatever you can imagine, you can accomplish.

Beautiful! Thank you so much. Namasté!

In his remarkable book How To Know God, Chopra shows us how. And along the way we delve into such mysteries as religious awakening, ecstasy, genius, telepathy, multiple personality and clairvoyance – all parts of the “mind field” that quantum physics discovered almost a hundred years ago. This invisible place, although it appears to be an empty void, is actually the womb of creation. Here God is our co-creator in the constant process of self-creation that is life itself. As we come to know God better, we gain direct access to healing, love and miracles.

How To Know God is Deepak Chopra’s writing at its very best, an internationally celebrated blend of philosophy and science applied to the greatest subject of all. This is the quest each of us is on, whether we realize it or not. For, as Chopra writes, “God is our highest instinct to know ourselves.” This book makes a dramatic and enduring contribution to that knowledge.

The following is excerpted from How to Know God published by Harmony Books, NY, 2000, ISBN 0609600788.

The Power Of Intention

The aim of spirituality is to learn to cooperate with God. Most of us have been raised to do the opposite. Our skills and abilities come from first attention and not second. As a result, our issues tend to center on the lower stages, where fear and neediness, however much we deny them, take their toll. In these early stages the ego asserts its needs with great force – money, securities, sex and power make huge claims on everyone in society. It is important to realize that God doesn’t judge against these things – when people feel that they owe their success to God, they are right. When wrongdoing goes unpunished and good deeds are ignored, God smiles on both. There is only one reality, which is spiritual, and nothing lies outside God’s mind. We tap into the source of creativity and intelligence with every thought.
What makes life spiritual, then?

The difference is entirely one of intention. I began this book by saying that two people could be followed around from birth to death with a camera and there would be no external way to show which one believed in God. This fact remains true. Unless you become a recluse or enter a monastery, your social role is irrelevant to how spiritual you are. Everything depends on intention. If someone uses kind words but intends to snub you, the intention cuts through. The most expensive gift cannot make up for lack of love. We know instinctively when intentions come from an honest place or a place of deception.

In spiritual life, intention includes will and purpose, aspiration and highest vision. If you set your intention toward God, spirit grows. If you set your intention toward material existence, that will grow instead. Once you plant the seed of an intention, your soul’s journey unfolds automatically. Here are the basic intentions that mark a spiritual life, stated in terms of what a person wants to achieve:

• I want to feel God’s presence. This intention is rooted in the discomfort of being isolated and separate. When God is absent, the underlying feeling of loneliness cannot be escaped. You can mask it by developing friendships and family ties. Ultimately, however, each of us needs to feel a sense of inner fullness and peace. We want to be satisfied within ourselves, no matter if we are alone or in a crowd.

• I want God to aid and support me. God’s presence brings with it the qualities of spirit. At the source, every quality – love, intelligence, truth, organizing ability, creativity – becomes infinite. The growth of these things in your life is a sign that you are approaching closer to your soul.

• I want to feel connected to the whole. The soul’s journey takes a person from a fragmented state to a state of wholeness. This is felt as being more connected. Events around you start to weave into a pattern. Small details fit together instead of being scattered and random.

• I want my life to have meaning. Existence feels empty in separation and this gets healed only by moving into unity with God. Instead of turning outward to find your purpose, you feel that just being here, as you are, fulfills the highest purpose in creation.

• I want to be free of restrictions. Inner freedom is greatly compromised when fear is present and fear is a natural outcome of separation. As you move closer to your soul, the old boundaries and defenses start to melt away. Instead of being wary about the future, you flow with the river of life, awaiting the day when no boundaries of any kind hold you back.

If these basic intentions are present inside you, God takes the responsibility for carrying them out. Everything else you do is secondary. Someone who is in the grip of fear, for example, cannot move beyond stage one, despite good deeds, a secure home life and positive thinking. We all attempt to mask our limitations with false attitudes; it is only human nature to try to appear better than we are, especially in our own eyes. But once you set your intention in the right direction, self-deception is rendered irrelevant. You will still have to face your ego needs; you will still continue to play out your personal dramas. This activity takes place on the stage of first attention; offstage, spirit has its own devices – your intention is like a blueprint handed to God, which he carries to completion in his own fashion. Sometimes he uses a miracle; sometimes he just makes sure you don’t miss the plane to New York. The fact that anything can happen is the beauty and surprise of the spiritual life.

Strangely, people who feel extremely powerful and successful often set the worst intentions in motion, as far as spiritual growth is concerned. Here are some typical intentions that have nothing to do with finding God:

I want to win.
I want to prove myself by taking risks.
I want to have power over others.
I want to make the rules.
I want to be in control.
I want to do it all my way.

These intentions should sound very familiar since they are repeated ad nauseam in popular fiction, advertising and the media. They all center on ego needs, and as long as your real intentions come from that level, your life will follow suit. Such is the fate of living in a mirror universe. One meets hundreds of people who mistake their own intentions because their egos have taken complete control. Some of the most powerful figures in the world are spiritually quite naive. If intention is left to the ego, great things can be accomplished, but these are miniscule compared to what can be achieved with infinite intelligence and organizing power at your disposal.

God is on the side of abundance. It is a great misfortune that the spiritual life has earned a reputation for being poor, reclusive and ascetic. God is also on the side of increased happiness. The shadow of the martyr has fallen over spirituality with dire results. In general, to be spiritual in these times means going it alone, far more than in the past. In a society with misguided conceptions of God and no tradition of masters, you are responsible for setting your own intentions.

Here are the ground rules that have proved effective for me personally and which I feel will work for many people.

1. Know your intentions. Look at the list of spiritual intentions above and make sure that you understand how important they are. Your destiny is to move in the direction of your soul, but the fuel that makes destiny move is intention. Intend for yourself that the gap of separation gets closed just a little more each day. Don’t let your false intentions remain masked. Root them out and work on the anger and fear that keep you attached to them. False intentions take the form of guilty desires: I want someone else to fail; I want to get even; I want to see bad people punished; I want to take away something not my own. False intentions can be elusive; you will notice their existence by the feeling tone connected with them, a feeling of fear, greed, rage, hopelessness and weakness. Sense the feeling first, refuse to buy into it and then remain aware until you find the intention lurking beneath.

2. Set your intentions high. Aim to be a saint and a miracle worker. Why not? The same laws of nature operate for everyone. If you know that the goal of inner growth is to acquire mastery, then ask for that mastery as soon as possible. Once you ask, don’t strain to work wonders, but don’t deny them to yourself, either. The beginning of mastery is vision; see the miracles around you and that will make it easier for greater miracles to grow.

3. See yourself in the light. The ego keeps its grip by making us feel needy and powerless. From this sense of lack grows the enormous hunger to acquire everything in sight. Money, power, sex and pleasure are supposed to fill up the lack, but they never do. You can escape this whole package of illusion if you see yourself not in a shadow fighting to get to God but as in the light from the first moment. The only difference between you and a saint is that your light is small and a saint’s great. This difference pales in comparison to the similarity; you are both of the light. The irony of near-death experiences is that when people come back to report how rapturously they felt bathed in a blinding light, they overlook that the light was there all along. It is the self.

4. See everyone else in the light. The cheapest way to feel good about yourself is by feeling superior to others. From this dark seed grows every manner of judgment. Getting out of judgment is vital and to plant that seed, you have to stop dividing others into categories of good and bad. Everyone lives in the same light. A simple formula may help here. When you are tempted to judge another person, no matter how obviously they deserve it, remind yourself that everyone is doing the best he can from his own level of consciousness.

5. Reinforce your intentions every day. On the surface, the obstacles against spirit are enormous. Everyday life is a kind of swirling chaos and the ego is entrenched in its demands. You cannot rely on one good intention to carry you through. It takes discipline to remind yourself, day in and day out, of your own spiritual purpose. For some people it helps to write down their intentions; for others periods of regular meditation and prayer are useful. It isn’t good enough to repeat your intentions to yourself on the run. Find your center, look closely at yourself and do not let go of your intention until it feels centered inside yourself.

6. Learn to forgive yourself. The ego has a way of co-opting spirit and pretending that everything is going well. Thus we all fall into traps of selfishness and delusion when least expected. The chance remark that wounds someone else, the careless lie, the irresistible urge to cheat are universal. Forgive yourself for being where you are. To be honestly a creature of stage two, driven by ambition and haunted by guilt, is more spiritual than pretending to be a saint. Apply to yourself the same dictum as to others: You are doing the best you can from your own level of consciousness. (I like to remember one master’s definition of the perfect disciple: “One who is always stumbling but never falls.”)

7. Learn to let go. The paradox of being spiritual is that you are always wrong and always right at the same time. You are right to try to know God in every way you can, but are wrong to think that things won’t change tomorrow. Life is change; you must be prepared to let go of today’s beliefs, thoughts and actions no matter how spiritual they make you feel. Every stage of inner growth is a good life. Each is nurtured by God. Only your second attention will know when it is time to move one and when you know, don’t hesitate to let go of the past.

8. Revere what is holy. Our society teaches us to be skeptical of the sacred. The usual attitude toward miracles is a bemused caution; few people spend much time delving into the world’s great wealth of scriptures. But every saint is your future and every master is reaching over his shoulder to look at you, waiting for you to join him. The human representatives of God constitute an infinite treasure. Dipping into this treasure will help to open your heart. At just the moment when your soul wants to blossom, the words of a saint or sage may be the right fertilizer.

9. Allow God to take over. When all is said and done, either spirit has power or it doesn’t. If there is only one reality, nothing in the material world stands outside God; this means that if you want something, spirit can provide it. Deciding what part you need to do and what part God will do is delicate. It also changes from stage to stage. You have to know yourself in this regard; no one else can tell you what to do. Most people are addicted to worry, control, over-management and lack of faith. On a daily basis, resist the temptation to follow these tendencies. don’t listen to the voice that says you have to be in charge, that things aren’t going to work out, that constant vigilance is the only way to get anything done. This voice is right because you listen to it too much. It won’t be right if you let spirit try a new way. Be willing to experiment. Your intention is the most powerful tool at your disposal. Intend that everything will work out as it should, then let go and see if clues come your way. Let opportunities and openings come your way. Your deepest intelligence knows much more about what is good for you than you do. See if its voice is speaking to you. Maybe the outcome you are trying to force so hard isn’t ultimately as good for you as the outcome that naturally comes your way. If you could give one percent of your life over to God every day, you would be the most enlightened person in the world in three months – keep that in mind and surrender something, anything, on a daily basis.

10. Embrace the unknown. You are not who you think you are. Since birth your identity has depended on very limited experience. Over the years you formed likes and dislikes; you learned to accept certain limits. A hoard of objects acquired over time serves to prop up a fragile sense of fulfillment. None of this is the real you. Yet no one can instantly substitute the real for the false. It takes a process of discovery. Because it is painful to strip away so many layers of illusion, you have to let the unwinding of the soul take place according to its own rhythm and timing. Your overall attitude should be that the unknown is awaiting you, an unknown that has nothing to do with the “I” you already know. Some people reach the edge of illusion only at the moment of death and then with a long look backward, one lifetime seems incredibly short and transient.

Around 1890 a Blackfoot Indian chief was dying. His name was Isapwo Muksika Crowfoot and he whispered these words into the ear of a missionary father:

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night,
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time,
It is the little shadow that runs across the grass
And loses itself in the sunset.

The part of us that we know already is the part that flickers out all too fast. Far better to seize this time and become timeless. When you feel a new impulse, an uplifting thought, an insight that you have never acted upon before, embrace the unknown. Cherish it as tenderly as a newborn baby. The unknown is the only thing that truly cares about the fate of your soul; therefore it would be good to revere it as much as you revere holiness. God lives in the unknown and when you can embrace it fully, you will be home free.