Deepak Chopra on the Power of Meditation to Unlock Infinite Possibilities | Impact Theory

[Music] when you start that reflective self-inquiry ask yourself Who am I what do I want what is my purpose what am i grateful for going to the stillness of meditation you have what wisdom traditions have called revelation revealed truth now you know that sounds very grand I would say just call it Insight Meditation mindfulness awareness of body awareness of mind awareness of mental space awareness of the web of relationship awareness with that which we call the universe it leads you ultimately to the awareness of awareness and when you discover that that's nirvana [Music] [Music] hey everyone hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at Peak tea everybody welcome to impact Theory today's guest is a multiple time New York Times bestselling author practicing medical doctor and world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation one of the most widely recognized luminaries in the field of human spirituality he has written an absolutely staggering 90 books and he shows no signs of stopping often working on multiple books at the same time he's the founder of the incredibly active nonprofit the Chopra foundation which conducts wide scale research into human wellbeing and he's the founder of Chopra global a modern day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality he's also a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of San Diego and he teaches meditation all over the world including at his own Meditation Center demonstrating his unprecedented reach he's created meditation retreats with Oprah and shared the stage with the Dalai Lama and countless other eminent leaders in the space Oprah said of him that he is a man who invites you to see deeper into your own soul so please help me in welcoming the man that Time magazine named as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century the author of the national bestseller meta-human unleashing your infinite potential the one and I assure you only Deepak Chopra it is so good to have you thank you thank you thanks so thank you so much for joining me I've had the good fortune of actually sitting in the audience when you were doing one of your guided meditations okay meditation is something that completely changed my life what I love about your story though is that you took a pretty weird route to getting where you are now and I'd love to walk through some of that because you started as a pretty straightforward medical doctor what was that like when did you begin to think that there might be something more so I took my training in internal medicine the cardboard certified and it then I went on to train in something called endocrinology which is the study of hormones and then in neuroendocrinology which is actually brain chemistry and when I was training this is in the 70s in the mid 70s we had a new technique called radio immunoassay just been discovered the people who actually created the technique won Nobel Prize in medicine Rosalyn Yalow was the scientist I remember you could measure for the first time chemicals they're called peptides in the brain and what I immediately recognized with the help of my colleagues was that brain chemistry was the clue to the connection between what was happening in your inner life and what was happening in nearby body these chemicals called neuro peptides neuro means in the brain peptides they're proteins and they're actually the molecules of emotion serotonin dopamine oxytocin opiates people are addicted to opiates these days but you make your own opiates too and so in fact once we started looking at these chemicals we realized that they were also immunomodulators the modulated the immune system fine-tuned it if you have a very aggressive immune system you get things like autoimmune illness allergies if you have a very sleepy immune system you're more prone to infections and cancer but these peptides are neuro immunomodulators and that they modulate the activity to fine tune the activity of the immune system so suddenly I saw the connection between mind body and spirit but then I was also actually intrigued by the fact that you could have two patients who had the same illness saw the same doctor got the same treatment and had completely different outcomes one could survive one could die and in between there was a wide range of outcomes so that led me to mind-body medicine ultimately to integrate so when you first start looking at that what was that sort of process of discovery I know that you were a child of the 60s I know that you did LSD like how much of this is showing you that there's something beyond traditional medicine and and how do you begin to piece those pieces together well I did that Steve when I was in medical school and twice I was not even twenty at that time and it did give me the insight that our normal everyday experience of what we call reality is the hypnosis of social conditioning they're actually reality shifts as your consciousness shifts so to put it metaphorically I had my first glimpse of the matrix and I decided that I wanted to not know what we know but what is the source of knowing okay it's not what you know you know what you know these days you can look it up go google it so who it's not important what to know anybody can find out anything about anything these days you know I can look up how many galaxies there are in the universe or how does epigenetics work how does the brain function that's not the key to creativity the kree to creativity and higher consciousness is how do you know what you know what is the source of knowing and experience what is it that knows the experience of the body what is it that knows the experience of the mind what is it that knows the experience called the color red and where is that experience happening a lot of people will tell you it's in the brain but I can assure you there's no colors in the brain there's no color red when you look at the red color there's no color here in the brain or if you imagine the color or if you imagine a beautiful sunset or if you imagine what your experiences with your mother or anybody emotions the brain only shows chemical activity that's the hard problem of consciousness so what is the source define that for us there's some sort of leap that is not understood between how these there's some threshold event of all of these atoms clustering and this thing that we call a human and this thing that we call a human brain but there's still an unknown moment at which we become conscious is that what you're talking about no the hard problem of consciousness is simply stated in one sentence how do chemicals and atoms and neuro chemistry or neuro electricity produce this experience there's no explanation for this you're looking at me right now all that's coming to your eyes are invisible photons there's no red waves coming to your eyes okay invisible photons they have no color they have no shape they don't even have units of mass okay so they're not then they don't have any dimensionality the photons that you use you're exposed to right now that are giving you the experience of your own body of me and this room that's all that's coming to use electrical information all that's going to your brain is an electrical current it's called an action potential but you're experiencing this room you're experiencing your own body you're experiencing thoughts in fact you're experience thing what we call reality everyday reality believe it or not know that no neuroscientists can tell you how that happens they can look at what they call neural correlates a correlation is not a causation as we know if the rooster crows in the morning and the Sun rises at the same time we don't assume that the rooster caused the Sun to rise but they are correlated so your mind your brain and the physical world are correlated experiences in a deeper realm of existence which is not in space or time okay so I want to drill deeper on that so what is the thing that drives you is it to end human suffering what's that like if you had to put that in a nutshell yes the purpose of healers and ultimately of all physicians should be to alleviate suffering now we've done a pretty good job with alleviating what we call suffering that occurs from acute illness you break your leg you get an orthopedic surgeon to fix it you get pneumonia you take an antibiotic so we've done a good job on what we call the physicalist level for acute illness but then there's something called chronic illness diabetes type 2 inflammation cancer heart disease autoimmune illness accelerated aging propensity to infections and we haven't done a good job there because what we are realizing right now that only 5% of disease related gene mutations fully penetrant which means they guarantee the disease gene mutation is a genetic mistake so good example Angelina Jolie had baraka gene and she had a mastectomy as a prevention double mastectomy because that gene predicts that she would have gotten breast cancer for that by the way there are new technologies that are emerging including gene editing so even now that's possible not for cancer but for things like sickle-cell anemia you can cut and paste a gene talking about CRISPR yeah CRISPR you can cut a pasted gene just like you do an email you read the bar chord delete the gene and insert the healthy one it'll affect 5% of people 95% of gene mutations that cause illness are related to lifestyle sleep managing stress and whether you meditate or not you exercise or not maybe you do yoga not breathing techniques the quality of your emotions nutrition personal relationships social interactions environment connection with nature influence your gene activity we call it epigenetics so we've beginning to do a good job there but we are not there let's say you got rid of all chronic illness and acute illness would humans still suffer and the answer is yes because unlike other species we have something which is actually quite bizarre it's called existential suffering we wonder why we exist we wonder why we get old and can we prevent that we wonder why we get infirm and lose our memories as we get old can we prevent that but we also are afraid of death okay can we prevent that and answer is biological death is based on a false premise which is you are your biology and you are your body and you are a mind where I'm going with the hard problem of consciousness is you're not your body you're not your mind you're not the experience of the world you're the consciousness in which all this experience occurs to observe a thought is to know that you're not a thought to observe an emotion is to know that you're not the emotion to observe the body is to know that you're not this bundle of sensations and perceptions so who are you what is it that knows a thought what is it that knows the perception the color red is there a color red anywhere in the physical universe or is it just an experience I guarantee you no scientists can tell you that the color red exists as a physical entity in the universe it's an experience in human consciousness not in the consciousness of a bat who doesn't see colors but experiences the echo of ultrasound so what is the color red to a bag I think this is a good place to go back to your LSD experience yeah so looking at psychedelics and the impact that they have on people's existential dread over dying so I know they um they've done studies giving it to terminal cancer patients and from what I understand it has a pretty radical shift in people's level of fear as somebody who's never done psyckadeli what what is that experience of the dissolution of the ego like where is it taking people what like is there a way for you to sort of metaphorically explain what's happening there yes when you realize that everything you thought was real is not real when you also realize that who you think you are is not real I am NOT Deepak Chopra with this body mind ego identity that this is a very provisional identity if I say I'm my body mind you know I was once a fertilized ovum then I was a zygote an embryo a baby a toddler a young adult and now this and this will disappear but when you realize that all your name your form and everything you see is provisional two things happen to some people they have immediate what we could only metaphorically called the dark night of the soul they go into a deep depression because everything they thought was real is no longer real including their own name form body and mind some people get so scared that they have a bad trip some people cross that threshold when discover nirvana or enlightenment and they say wow I thought I was I was squeezed into the volume of a body in the span of a lifetime but I am a timeless being that can morph myself into any experience including the human experience which is amazing but the human experience is also that which causes exist tential depression so the causes of human suffering since you brought it up are brought up in eastern wisdom traditions as number one you suffer because you don't know who you are you confuse yourself with your body mind experience number two you grasp and cling had experiences which are evanescent and transitory and dreamlike you say what happened to your childhood it's over what happened to yesterday it's over what happened to five minutes ago it's over what happens to these words by the time you hear them they don't exist so you know Wittgenstein the German philosopher said we are asleep a life is a dream but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we are dreaming so what do you wake up to when you cross this threshold you wake up to your true self which is not body or mind but the awareness in which that experience is happening so grasping and clinging at a dream is the second cause of human suffering the third is being afraid of anything that's unpleasant pain abandonment being treated by someone not respectfully so that's you know there's a version to certain experiences third cause of suffering fourth is identifying which is related with your ego identity and fifth is the fear of death now they're all connected they're all the same fear and they are not knowing who you are this is the biggest question that humans or everybody should be asking Who am I what am I am I the changing experience of this body which is a perceptual activity am i the experience of the changing mind or the changing personality because you don't have the same personality when you were a kid or maybe even 10 years ago what is it at the basis of this when you start that reflective self inquiry ask yourself Who am I what do I want what is my purpose what am i grateful for going to the stillness of meditation you have what wisdom traditions have called revelation revealed truth now you know that sounds very grand I would say just call it insight you know meditation mindfulness awareness of body awareness of mind awareness of mental space awareness of the web of relationship awareness with that which we call the universe it leads you ultimately to the awareness of awareness and when you discover that that's Nirvana now are you familiar with the term Pan psychism yes so I had never heard of that before and there's a cop-out but interesting so I was gonna ask if that is so as I understand it Pan psychism is basically the consciousness itself is a force almost like gravity so it is everywhere there is no moment where enough atoms come together that you have enough complexity that consciousness arises that it is truly fundamental and when I was reading that a human that's what I thought you were saying I thought you were saying it is this thing that just is ever-present so if that's not what you're saying no it's not but I'm glad that scientists are going in that direction including some very big and very important thinkers and luminaries in both philosophy and science are going in that direction what they're saying is just what you said that what we call consciousness is organized matter and that wherever there is matter there is consciousness from atom to galaxy okay so mind and matter go together from atom to galaxy that spanned psychism okay and it's got very good adherents proponents luminaries and important minds saying that it's a breakthrough because now you're not saying consciousness is just in the brain you're saying it pervades the universe in the same way as gravity and atoms and electrons but I'm saying actually there are no atoms there are no electrons gravity and force fields are human constructs so matter is a useful construct I'm going beyond pen psychism into what is called non duality which means there's only consciousness it's modifying itself in two sensations perceptions images feelings and thoughts and we give names to that we give we give a name to a shape and a color and a sensation we call it a cup we call it a hand we call it the Milky Way galaxy we call it atoms and force fields very useful constructs otherwise you wouldn't know how to navigate everyday experience if I tell you I'll meet you at the corner of 56th and Broadway you assume that's real but we made up that that notation just like we made up latitude and longitude and Greenwich Mean Time we didn't say Botswana meantime have we made up the galaxies we made up the body we made up gravity and force fields by we I mean a species of consciousness that is called human so now my question becomes if that is the case and all that exists is consciousness is there something behind that like why has consciousness given rise to humans and do you see it going through like an evolutionary thing like how do we get here and maybe more importantly why do we get here I don't know if I can answer why other than entertainment but but but I can tell you what the thinking behind this is is there anything behind consciousness no you can't get behind that is base level that's it yeah but that's called pure consciousness okay now everyday experience is modified consciousness so right now what you're experiencing is what we call the waking state of consciousness okay what do you mean by that the awareness that I'm aware no the awareness that is experiencing a physical body and a physical world with eyes open is called waking state of consciousness okay okay so awareness is modifying itself every time you open your eyes into this experience right and you call it the physical world now if you close your eyes you have another state of consciousness where you don't actually experience the physical world you experience sensations images thoughts emotions stories it's like a dream as soon as you close your eyes you're experiencing you might call it daydreaming but there's no difference between a dream and what you dream at night the physical world has disappeared there's only a mental world then you go deeper at night even the mental world disappears in what we call deep deep sleep now that is the highest intelligence by the way because in deep sleep there's unconscious processing going on there's creativity going on there correlations being made there toxins being removed there's a whole resetting of your memories and consolidation of that so in deep sleep even though there is no experience of a physical or a mental world it's a very intelligent highly highly correlated state in which unconscious processing is occurring memories are being consolidated imagination is being refined etc even though you have no conscious experience so think of these three states metaphorically like you would think of water becoming ice as the physical world okay water as water fluid dreamy water as vapour even more dreamy and fluctuating and ambiguous and contradictory and difficult to grasp but if you want little bit beyond that I'm speaking metaphorically you'd end up with what is called the quantum vacuum which is the fundamental ground of existence according to science okay but you can do that subjectively you can move from the physical world to the dream world to the sleep world and beyond to what is called fundamental consciousness which is the source of all knowing all experience in wisdom traditions it's called undifferentiated consciousness how's that differ from non duality it is non dual ok it's all buds of knowing all Knorr and all things no it is fundamental ground of existence of the total universe ok so non duality is to put it really simplistic aliy that there is no subject object it's just all one thing which I'm assume you would say is pure conscious the subject object division is artificial reality is one wholeness includes all subjects all objects and all modes of knowing what we have access to is a human mode of knowing you know in my book met a human I talked about the butterfly the Painted Lady who smells the world through her antennae okay chase the world through her feet sees the world with 30,000 lenses that move like a kaleidoscope okay here's the world through her wings what is reality to that little species some insects see the world 360 degrees okay because they have these what we call complex eyes with multiple lenses you can only see within a certain range but there are insects that can see 360 degrees so what is reality reality what we call reality what today's science calls reality comes under the heading of naive realism Einstein was a naive realist and I'm not saying this in a derogatory fashion it's it's it's a word in the science of philosophy naive realism means that the physical world exists exactly as perceived by the five human senses now obviously that's not true other species experience the world through different modes of sensory perception the second aspect of naive realism is that the physical world as perceived by the five human senses would exist even if no one was observing it well how do you prove that and firstly it's naive because we know that the world is more than what is perceived by the five human senses so this leads us to a solution actually of the hard problem of consciousness which is get rid of the idea that the world is physical what we call of the world as physical even your physical body is a perceptual activity and that perceptual activity for you and me is a human perceptual activity through human consciousness not through bad consciousness not through mosquito consciousness not through plant consciousness which would fit in with band psychism but non-dualism says go beyond that there is only one consciousness that is differentiating you know undifferentiated consciousness differentiating into these different species of consciousness that form a matrix of conscious beings that are collectively projecting this universe now I know that you said that you can't answer the question why be do you ever contemplate why like why we would come into all these manifestations why they would have such a different idea if you say that consciousness is fundamental then it must have a desire and the desire must be I need to experience myself and consciousness being undifferentiated timeless spaceless boundless can only know itself through experience so it modulates itself into these different varieties of experience almost infinite and we call it the universe universe one song but in that one consciousness lets reground this now so you do some really interesting personal practices so I get it this is all an illusion but you do monastic retreats you shave your head you shave your eyebrows you do a week on yes so walk me through what's the power in that the power in that is to suddenly start to become comfortable with questioning your habitual certainties if I ask you what is this you'd say it's a cup right well if you were a baby you wouldn't know this is a cup this is a shape this is a color this is a form this is a sensation this is a taste and it's noise the rest is a story it's a human story we created just like we created money on Wall Street on nation-states or colonial empires and we take that for reality so when when you have time to be still question your habitual certainties you'll realize that actually we know nothing nothing everything we know is made up it's a human construct and once we are embedded in that human concept we call it reality we don't question what is the source of this experience so taking retreats practicing mindful awareness of body of mind of mental space of the web of relationship the mystery of existence it takes you slowly deeper to your true self which is the orchestrator of everyday experience what's the importance of silence as Rumi said God's language is silence everything else is poor translation so is it listening to the subconscious so for instance part of the reason that meditation has been so powerful for me is and I get we were saying about correlation but as you said it's very strongly correlated so breathing from my diaphragm being quiet takes me out of the sympathetic nervous system and into the parasympathetic allows me to reduce my stress you've done a lot of research into that which is really really fascinating and it creates a quiet in my mind so that I can tap into the subconscious while I'm awake which has been very powerful makes me feel far more creative I'm getting far-flung connections that I wouldn't otherwise get in my mind so it's been very advantageous is that the same experience for you with silence or is there something I'm missing all of that is very important because the moment you start going into the direction of pure consciousness you go also in the direction of homeostasis which is self regulation you go in the direction of healing you activate the parasympathetic nervous system me about some of the science around there that that your your research has bared about cuz it's pretty impressive we had we tested people who are in a one-week retreat we call it the seduction of spirit which is a nice name and at the end of the week and before the week we tested them for gene activity and inflammation and many other things we found that genes that cause self-regulation and healing went up some 17 fold over baseline genes that cause inflammation which is the common background in chronic illness and chronic inflammation is the background genes that cause chronic inflammation went down the level of the enzyme telomerase which influences how we age at a genetic level telomere length went up significantly in some cases 40 percent now this can all be explained through what we call epigenetics and it's a revolution and many people have replicated these findings now our study was done in collaboration with scientists from Duke and Harvard in UCSF and UCSD and Scripps and so on but other people are replicating finding similar data if not exactly identical data so this is a big revolution now for people that don't know epigenetics you give them just a quick breakdown yeah you're born with 25,000 genes from your parents you also have two million to 20 million bacterial genes in your gut these bacterial genes are called the microbiome the human genes are the genes you have they interact with each other to produce all the metabolites in your body and produce what you call a biological organism and maintain its health epigenetics says that daily experience influences the activity of your genes so you're born with a deck of cards but now you know how to learn how to play the deck of cards so you can win the game of life if you want to use that metaphor and the so gene activity is influenced by the things I mentioned sleep managing stress exercise yoga breathing prana introspection mindful awareness emotions nutrition connection with nature we can change our gene activities that ability to change the activity of the genes you can't change the cards you were down to it but you can change their activity but you can also change your microbiome by changing your diet so you can actually change much of your gene not only expression but the genetic information in your body you can change the microbiome the entire gene population by changing your diet and following lifestyle you can change the expression of his genes that's epigenetics epi means above and epigenetics there's the sheet of proteins above the genes that responds to every experience you have mental physical perceptual emotional all right now walk us through some of the things that you do from going around with the begging bowl to daily yoga like give us some prescriptive stuff for winning at the game of life okay but going around with the begging bowl and all that was just to experience myself without my identity Deepak Chopra you shave your eyebrows with the begging bowl amongst other beggars and South Korea right yeah in Korea and you get sorry in Thailand in northern Thailand but there are monasteries and South Korea like that too so it brings you to Who am I without my PR Who am I without this identity that is the purpose of some of these retreats but of course that's once in a while I take a week of silence also once a year but here's what I do every day I start my day with four questions Who am I what do I want who wants to know what is my purpose and what am i grateful for then I go into about a two hour meditation very early in that which is going to stillness now do you answer those questions or that's what the meditation is for that's what the magic you live the questions consciousness moves you into the answers because consciousness is infinite and there's infinite correlations we don't have to worry about the answers you know it's an ancient thing ask and you shall receive the unexamined life is not worth living so you just practice that every day then I do about one and a half hours to two hours of stillness meditation it includes mindful awareness of body mind and all that then I do yoga so it takes me about three hours to do my morning routine I normally don't start my day till 11 today is an exception for you thank you and then I normally don't work after 5:00 then when I'm giving a talk or on a tour or doing media but normally 11:00 to 5:00 and on weekends I write and reflect and I enjoy my life so what are you doing if you're working from 11:00 to 5:00 one what is work and then to when you're enjoying your life what does that look like when I'm in New York I walk the streets and I taste and smell and experience the colors and flavors of every country by walking on Broadway I can go through Koreatown India town china town hit Little Italy little Spain little Portugal and savor the sensuality of the experience and I spend a lot of time doing that by work I actually don't have any work right now other than I write books and give speeches which is how I learn myself you know I'm whatever I'm struggling with and trying to solve I write it down and then you know if I see some clarity then I publish it that's work but it's I don't think of it as work I think of it as play now you've said that you no longer think about aging you think that the pursuit of that whole line of inquiry is a mistake what did you mean by that now I don't not think of aging I'm 73 in my next chapter is death so oh so I think about aging I am NOT bamboozled by the construct okay because I don't think consciousness being formless and infinite subject to either birth or death this is a vacation we are having and on planet Earth right now and so might as well enjoy it but death is not the end of consciousness is the end of a certain storyline in consciousness a certain interpretation of perceptions images feelings and thoughts and the storyline is of course the conditioned mind as soon as you're born you say oh you're in you and you're male or you come from a wealthy or poor family this is your religion and now you're bamboozled from your true self into this provisional identity so I don't it's not that I don't think about that I ask myself what is beyond my provisional identity and I dwell in that and that has a very interesting outcome which is the outcome in every spiritual tradition there are only three things that happen by the way in a religious or traditional experience one is transcendence you know that you are not an entity in space in time that your true self is formless infinite unbounded borderless unfettered free consciousness number one number two you have the emergence of what usually I referred to as Platonic truth goodness beauty harmony love compassion joy equanimity and number three loss the fear of death there's nothing more important than having those three experiences and they've been part of every wisdom tradition for thousands of years talk to me about love it's interesting for somebody that started with neuro chemistry who could probably give me a very detailed breakdown of the neuro chemicals involved with love what's oxytocin and serotonin but those are models again there are constructs love is not a sentiment love is not an emotion love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation which is unity consciousness one consciousness differentiating into infinite modes of experience infinite NORs infinite modes of knowing infinite phenomena known all generated within the one self just like when you were just a fertilized ovum you are one steps out stem cell flurry potential self it became eyes became know as it became fingernails it became heart it became brain so that one cell differentiated into all these different cells each with its own modality of experience like that the one mind of the one consciousness differentiates itself into what we call the universe with every species of consciousness knowing the universe in its own unique way because ultimately there's no universe it's another construct when you're meditating are you seeing images so love love is the ultimate truth but what is that like that help me differentiate between consciousness being sort of the floor and love being the floor are they wanting the same like pure love pure consciousness pure knowing pure creativity or the same thing interesting because I think of and look I get it this is me trapped and sort of the human experience but I think of love as a as a molecule of emotion I think of it as an experience it's hard for me to wrap my head around it's the source of those molecules of well molecules of emotion our human constructs but is the source of the feeling that you get so I think of my mother right now who's long gone and as soon as I think the word mother I see her image and it's not in my brain there's only chemistry in my brain the image is in my consciousness as soon as I think of her actually I can hear her voice there's no sound in my brain but I can hear her voice in my consciousness as soon as I think of her I feel an emotion then maybe there's oxytocin in my brain but I'm not experiencing oxytocin I'm feeling this immense emotion of joy just by thinking of her I can even smell her skin when I was a baby where did all this come from just by thinking of the word mother okay the word mother in pure consciousness created this whole Gestalt of experiences I call this qualia entanglement instead of quantum entanglement qualia means quality of experience sensations images perceptions feelings thoughts ultimately that's all there is qualia or qualities of experience we're AFI them we objectify them and we call the molecules what's your mom like she was the most amazing storyteller and every day she would tell us a magnificent story before we went to bed but she would stop at what is called a cliffhanger and then she said tomorrow I want you to end this story for me make sure it's a love story with a happy ending that's interesting and that's what influenced my entire life I decided that all stories are provisional and the best stories are love stories that's really interesting is that something that you continued with your kids or is that something that no no I continued it with my kids for sure do you think that that brings an awareness to storytelling in and of itself or is it most powerful because it Prime's you to focus on something beautiful it actually does all of the above you know humans are different in that we're storytellers so they we until about 30 40 thousand years ago when we had rudimentary language there were eight different types of humans some maybe more we are Homo sapiens which means the wise ones we gave ourselves that name my son but there's Homo erectus Homo Neanderthals Homo Florence's on and on they all had a rudimentary language for danger calls mating calls food but then we created a language force telling stories and we decimated every other species because with stories we created money we created empires we created colonial States we created Wall Street we created technology we created cyber hacking whatever else mechanized that this all the result of our ability to take raw experience which is perceptions and make a story out of it so once you realize that you also realize that all stories are provisional you're not your stories you're the the author of the stories and that includes all stories including the story that you are a biological organism in a theater of space-time and causality and this is real that's a story why is it so important to tell yourself a story about gratitude I know you tell people to focus on that gratitude opens the door to abundance consciousness when I'm feeling grateful for what I already have I feel fulfilled and joyful and if you have gratitude you can't experience hostility at the same time what do you think the future of medicine is I think the future of medicine is self-regulation we mean meditating and yoga and practices that stimulate the vagus nerve and create mind-body coordination so meditation yoga tai chi chi-gong martial arts knowing how to regulate your mind and body as one unit but in addition to that we are artificial intelligence and the most amazing technology that can enhance that experience of self-regulation there's already data that you can help children with autism through VR by changing their facial expressions and giving them feedback - you know what an emotional wholeness could be or you can change the image and anorexic person has when they look at a mirror or you can get rid of a phobia through VR or burns if somebody has burns you excrete an environment where they experience cold you're in snow and so on all through VR it's more effective than any burn treatment and so I see as we create more excursions into AI I have a ai version of myself already that I talk to so I can continue what I'm doing after I'm gone and then I also very engaged in VR and immersive experiences in virtual reality because I believe that we are already in a virtual reality and we can modify it through extending virtual reality so I think the future of medicine is the most amazing technology with the most amazing understanding of consciousness that's incredible where can people find your massive library of books I think better to go to Deepak Chopra calm or piss go online and you can find my library I do have a library called Chopra library and if you want to find it it's also called I SH a are online dot org and this is the most comprehensive library on everything to do with integrative studies or integrative medicine or integrative cultures it's I would say there's nothing like this it's the Wikipedia of Integrative Medicine it's called the Chopra library it doesn't have just my work it has the work of everybody in the field of Integrative studies whether they're scientists philosophers humanitarians or there's people like me who shoot the breeze what's the impact that you want to have on the world I just want people to say there was this guy he's gone now let's pick up from where he left and see how we can continue this exploration exit you know the journey has no ending the point of arrival as always now like that all right guys it is a vast world that this man creates I won't even say inhabits that he creates he's written on so many topics and has extended this notion of non-duality to so many people and really helped reach countless lives and get people to think in new ways you can think of him as a human dose of LSD so I highly encourage you guys to check it out to change your consciousness and yeah hopefully and human suffering if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey everyone you all know how much what you eat and drink matters literally what you consume affects you on a cellular level and dramatically influences your overall health teas been shown to naturally boost energy levels and provide immune system and gut health support and given what lisa has been through I can tell you firsthand that focusing on your gut health is critical so you can also contribute to mental performance and may even help longevity you had me at hello with mental performance and longevity peak tea 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they have not suffering life they think they are suffering like they are not suffering life they are suffering the two most fantastic faculties that human beings alone have a vivid sense of memory and a fantastic sense of imagination

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 578,582

Rating: 4.8484197 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Deepak Chopra, IT, non-duality, panpsychism, consciousness, existential suffering, neuroscience, chronic illness, nondualism, inflammation, meditation, epigenetics, silence, introspection, microbiome, LSD, gratitude, integrative medicine, virtual reality

Id: Fm29bAYaJoQ

Length: 53min 1sec (3181 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020