Deepak Chopra: The 5 Simple Steps That Will Make Your Mind Limitless! | E241

we've created a world that's very dangerous right now I think we are on the brink of a possible Extinction deep October right here one of the world's biggest experts on health Wellness Time magazine's one of the top 100 icons of the centuries also written 93 books when you look at the direction of travel as a civilization what advice do we need now what agree stress Humanities problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing you're always doing doing doing we have human doings we're not human beings anymore take some time every day to be unoccupied ask yourself who am I what do I want and what is my purpose people don't ask these questions they only know that they suffer and they want an immediate solution which is you know something like a antidepressant and that's what we've created every experience shapes our biology when you look at the situation do you see an adversity or an opportunity how is this determined by your childhood if your parents were complaining condemning criticizing playing the victim you will see every situation as an adversity can be changed yes how there are actually many studies on what is called the happiness equation number one is this is your 93rd book if you were to write one last book what would be the Top Line message I hate to use this word it's misinterpreted but the title would be before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode [Music] as I was reading through your work a certain word came up over and over again and it was the word purpose um so I wanted to start this really by asking you what is your purpose what mission are you on you've written I'm hearing this is your 93rd book if there is an umbrella that one could call your purpose what would it be for the last uh 35 years I've used our non-profit Foundation Chopra foundation with the the mission statement of reaching a critical mass of people in my mind a billion people per personal and social transformation for a more peaceful just sustainable healthier and joyful world so those words are very carefully chosen peaceful sustainable healthier just and joyful so everything is under that umbrella going back to the start of your story um what do I need to you know that profound purpose that mission you've been on for the last 30 plus years where does that stem from what's the earliest sort of domino that fell to put you on course to to pursue that as your life's work i s I trained in Internal Medicine and then Endocrinology which is a study of hormones and then I went on to study neuroscience and neuroendocrinology I saw the relationship between what happens in our consciousness and particularly emotions and how that affects our biology as a physician I was always impressed by how giving information to a patient affected their metabolism you know if I told somebody you had cancer just the word cancer you could see immediately their blood pressure go up the heart rate speed up their platelets get sticky and you know a whole Cascade of events in their biology which was essentially inflammation and propensity to disease just hearing bad news and interpreting it and having an emotional response to it I remember giving that nurse to a patient and then immediately realizing that I'd made a mistake I was reading the wrong chart so I immediately apologized and I saw his biology changed in a moment and now you know 40 years later we realized that every experience you have every experience doesn't matter what the experiences could be emotional but it could be food it could be sleep it could be exercise it could be breathing or yoga but right now this conversation you know we're having this conversation and you and I are exchanging information in our frontal cortex of the brain and genes are going on to facilitate the neural networks that make this happen but then there are people listening to us maybe hundreds of thousands their brains are being activated so I realized that you know you couldn't localize the mind you know if you ask a neuroscientist conventional neuroscientists where is the mind they'll point to their brain but the brain only has the neural correlates of the Mind the Mind itself you can't localize it's both embodied it's a relational and embodied process so you know the mind doesn't exist by itself it exists in relationship to other Minds so it's relational and embodied in the brain but in your biology and it regulates the flow of energy and information in our bodies and in the ecosystem of relationships now if our identity fundamental identity which is that of the separate self is which is a socially induced hallucination in my opinion because the separate self doesn't exist period but that hallucination or that idea of the separate self creates anxiety it also creates anger because of trauma in the past so anger is nothing but remembering the memory of trauma hostility is the desire to get even anxieties the anticipation of trauma again in the future blaming yourself is guilt and guilt leads to humiliation humiliation and the combination of everything I've said leads to depression which is the number one pandemic of our time not kovid depression stress hostility resentment that causes inflammation so you know suddenly I had this idea that if we went back to some of the wisdom traditions of the world that said our essential nature is as the Buddhists say inter beingness we are you know famous statement of technotron we are inter beings that interrise in the inter isness there's no isolated self and but that isolated fearful self has created the trauma that we see in the world that that actually manifests as War terrorism ego destruction greed leaders who are only interested in power mongering influence peddling cronyism corruption and their own self-interest so we've created a world that's that's actually um pretty dangerous right now and I thought in my naive Day about 35 40 years ago if we had something that could actually collectively shift Consciousness and actually I was one of the founders of an association called Alliance for a new Humanity and we had people from Civil Society lawyers attorneys people from the United Nations with this idea that we could reach a critical mass of people for a more peaceful just sustainable healthier and joyful world but even the organization faltered because there was Schism within the organization you know people again power mongering and fighting within the organization for dominance or or you know leadership in a very selfish way so the organization folded it didn't go anywhere I decided to continue on my own so when you talk about this separated self you're referring to Identity I'm referring to identity identity which is you know I did our crisis today and has been of identity an identity on a personal level is this the person you know this story that I tell myself about who I am and that I accept about myself correct and for a country they have their own identity they accept that they are the United States of America and we are this and this is who we are correct and then that causes separation and a disconnectedness you talked about how you created an organization to try and combat this and get to that critical mass and then the organization itself failed which makes me think is this not just innate in humans that we are greedy selfish powermongering corrupt at our core it's been our Evolution since hunter-gatherer times and it got worse in the Industrial Age and then I think um it got even worse with within the wars you know the first world war second world war but if you read history the history is one of violence ever since human beings have existed other species are violin too but not not in the way we are for power or for money or for um this idea of uh you know extreme nationalism which is a form of tribalism in my opinion or the whole history of colonialism is just that and now we've reached a point with the information age where you know it's kind of nothing is secret anymore and yet um the intensity of what's happening in the world look what's happening in Ukraine or right now what's happening in Pakistan or what's happening in India or what's happening in Korea look at any place in the world maybe you live a few places like New Zealand or you know Bali or a couple of places like that the rest of the world is is actually in extreme turmoil so we have medieval Minds and modern capacities now that is not a good combination a medieval mind restricted to a little area in medieval times caused Havoc there but now globally that medieval mind that tribal mind and our modern capacities it's a terrible combination everybody everybody listening to this now in some way is suffering yes in some way yes everyone's suffering is slightly different but if you zoom out far enough it's pretty much all the same to some to some degree yeah um if you had a you know a young person come to you and they were I don't know they don't even have to be young 16 years old maybe 30 maybe 45 and you had to give them some broad advice on how to suffer less for the remainder of their life what advice would you give them you know we've reached a stage in our Evolution where people don't ask these questions they only know that they suffer and they want an immediate solution which is you know something like an antidepressant or whatever and that's what we've created with the materialistic interpretation of the universe wisdom Traditions tell us we suffer because in that fact in the Eastern wisdom tradition we serve five causes not knowing who we are number one not knowing the nature of reality no isolated self clinging and grasping at experience which is ephemeral you know experiences ephemeral it's transient it you can't catch it like regret or it's experience you know if I ask you you can't hold on to this experience if I asked you what happened to your childhood you say it's a dream but if I asked you what happened to last night it's a dream what happened to this morning is a dream what happens to these words by the time you hear them they don't exist and me trying to cling on to that so let me try juggling on that then we also recoil from that if it's unpleasant we confuse ourselves with our ego identity which is socially induced and we fear death those are the five causes of suffering so wisdom Traditions say you have to figure out what is reality and when you figure out what is reality and you can't do that at 16 unless you're being groomed you know in in wisdom Traditions you were groomed for wisdom and that started what we call self-education which is what yoga is by the way yoga means Union with the self misinterpretation of yoga as this is just the physical postures but the eight limbs of yoga are all intended to find your true self so there are principles of social intelligence emotional intelligence physical posture breathing techniques withdrawal of the senses focused awareness meditation Transcendence once you get to these last three aspects of yoga Transcendence is the key you find out who you really are the self which knows the self not Bamboozled by social constructs so let's go through those five things number one not doing reality reality is not local it's infinite so so what do I need to understand then to avoid that form of suffering I need to understand that it's not localized and therefore that means that you are infinite you're at one level I'm everything and nothing and everything and nothing and actually you experience love love not as a sentiment but the in ineffable interconnectedness with all that exists people have those experiences with psychedelics these days or you can actually give somebody an experience like that with even VR because we are already in a VR number two number two clinging grasping that which is ungraspable every experience is ungraspable so the awareness of an experience is not the experience the awareness of a thought is not a thought the awareness of a thought is independent of the thought if you identify with the awareness instead of the thought which is like a cloud going through the sky you don't either attach yourself to it or you don't identify with it takes training so you know and in the rig Veda let Noble thoughts come to me from every side because your thoughts are not your production your thoughts are socially constructed and there's there's recycle through you and yet we identify with them so number two is identifying with that which is ephemeral transient ungraspable number three on number two we so we need to not attach not associate with thoughts not associate with experiences in order to be free you can associate with them but you're not attached or identified to them you can associate with thoughts so if you've had a trauma in your early life or something or you've been through something not so good or you've been dumped by your boyfriend and then we would identify with that and actually that epigenetically by the way that's intergenerational now we know that you know in the Holocaust for example during the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany there were a lot of there was famine amongst the Jews and now three generations four generations after that the people's descendants who were traumatized they have diabetes because somewhere in their body there's a memory of famine so they're holding on to carbohydrates they have insulin resistance Etc if you take a mouse and you expose it to a smell that it likes for example lavender and then you give it to my electrical shock for Seven Generations the mice will be fearful of that particular smell I've been to a cow Farm in Hawaii where they used to have electrical wires as fences mild electrical shocks now they don't have the wires but the descendants of those cows that were traumatized they won't cross over that fence or they won't cross over where the Border was so it's it's this is another mystery where is memory most people if you ask them where is memory they'll point to the brain if I ask you what did you have for breakfast today what did you have for breakfast uh that's a really good question I had a salad okay with some chicken so no where was that memory before I asked you the question there's nowhere in the brain you can point out that memory was but as soon as I ask you the question the neural networks go fire but where is the memory Retreat from the only places Consciousness but Consciousness can't be localized you know when people get brain injuries car crashes they lose their memory sometimes yeah so radios damaged you don't listen to the music doesn't that prove that it's in the brain somewhere is is the is Shakespeare in in on your movie screen or your television set is is actually anything you read in the book is the author in the book it's that you know you're confused the instrument with the user of the instrument the fault of the instrument is not a reflection on the user of the instrument Shakespeare nice would live on like the the CD or like these that's really okay yeah but where is that mind that localized in the CD in the brain somewhere isn't it no the brain is just like your CD said okay what happens in the brain is called the neural correlates of experience nce this as I said earlier there's no experience in the brain that's where you can put a knife through it the brain has no self-awareness when you think about some of these um neurological diseases like dementia Alzheimer's what does that present evidence for in terms of I mean I guess a lot of people aren't really clear at the moment where where Alzheimer's and Dementia starts or what's called Alzheimer's now we know is due to accumulation of a substance called amyloid in the brain so about there are 40 genes that predispose you to force Alzheimer's or which three are probably fully penetrant which means they predict the disease because that's genetic determinism the rest are related to things like lack of sleep or inflammation or stress or a diet that causes inflammation or lack of unregulated biological rhythms Etc so there are identifiable causes for Alzheimer's but again Alzheimer's is and these neurological diseases all diseases like that we're talking about two different things we're talking about Consciousness is a fundamental reality and then we're talking about the instrument that we call the brain now I should say to you though that what I'm saying is not necessarily accepted by mainstream science but mainstream science cannot answer the hard problem of Consciousness or where experience happens and is not interested you know right now the two most promising things in medical science well there are three or four are you know one is what we call Gene editing crispr so you'll be able to cut in base genes soon the way you cut and paste emails but that'll affect maybe five six percent of genetic determinism the rest is lifestyle epigenetics so that's where we are in medical science and with machine learning in artificial intelligence I think we'll be able to predict disease and make it more everything will be more personalized predictable preventable in the future but we are talking about two different things right now we're talking about biology and we're talking about the heart problem of Consciousness we'll get on to the pillars of well-being um wanted to finish those five points of suffering yes we can call the five clacias glacias yeah in Sanskrit so that we were number three right recoiling from experiences that we interpret as unpleasant but see once again the awareness of the experience is not the experience so once you can observe the experience you're free of the experience you don't identify with the experience oh that's an interesting thought passing by the screen of my Consciousness like a cloud in the sky I'm not the cloud I'm the sky I'm not this I'm not the play on the screen on the screen so an example would be so the sentence is recoiling from experiences that unpleasant they're unpleasant so give me an example someone in my life someone in my family dies yeah so you obviously are scared right because you identify with the experience but everybody dies I mean trillions of people have died you're not the only one who's going to die and then what dies is another mystery the body dies the seeds of memory recycle because what is memory but it's information and that's recycled through Collective Consciousness as soon as you're born you're already born into an interpreted world a world with memory a world with imagination a world with non-local Consciousness that is now localizing through your brain as this process that you call the body the body mind is a process in consciousness Consciousness itself is not subject to time only you know time is an experience we have as soon as we have subject objects split so as soon as there's subject object split which is artificial in nature is the unified activity then time is Born the experience of time is born so in your life if someone dies God forbid um do you suffer you grieve which is a natural process and it has a life cycle you don't hold on to it in fact you embrace it you embrace the anytime you recoil or deny resistance creates even more stress so what we call stress is resistance to existence in the moment okay if you don't resist experience in the moment you know it's passing by so something really bad happens at work I get a really bad you know my boss tells me I'm fired the mindset required to ever avoid suffering in that case is to take the news it's not a mindset it's a it's a step in awareness the awareness of the mind is not the mind who is it that or what is it that knows a thought that is what you need to shift to okay once you shift from the experience to the awareness in which the experience is happening you're independent of it and that's what actually those eight limbs of yoga are about it's a process a shift in identity we started with that a shift in identity from your assumed self to your fundamental self which is infinite which is without cause which is not subject to birth and death which is spaceless timeless incomprehensible infinite irreducible and fundamental it feels almost like I'm stepping out of myself and looking at myself correct looking at the projection of projection of myself we're looking at the projection of yourself she's really looking at your avatar and it's very hard to do because we we are increasingly becoming avatars especially with things like social media yeah yeah we've been we're being reinforced like you know I have two million followers or a million followers about 500 000 followers they're following my avatar so we don't know who we are you're confused yourself with the Avatar and the battle is all between Avatar's wanting importance how does one resign from that battle and take back my peace actually the opposite of that is creativity the creativity is the opposite of determinism if you don't want to be a biological robot or an algorithm which is what we are now we are biological algorithms biological robots and that's by the way part of our Evolution it's not something all animals but the animals have an advantage they live in the present moment but you and I have an imagination that can see into the future that can even look at death you know as the culmination of this life experience we regret the past we anticipate the future we're never in the present when this is the only place we are right now is the present there is no way to escape it but in our imagination we escape it so the worst use of imagination is stress the best use of imagination is creativity creativity is a disruption in the algorithm it's a discontinuity fundamental creativity not you know usual Innovation like iPhone 13 instead of iPhone 12 with a better camera that's not what creativity is creativity is a death and a resurrection it's a death of context meaning relationship and story and a new meaning relationship and story whether it's that's fundamental creativity that's Einstein coming up with the theory of relativity or the Quantum physicists breaking every rule that we knew in Newtonian physics or a great piece of art Beethoven Swift these are original original creativity is a disruption in the algorithm to to decide to provide Avatar my avatar getting into this sort of Avatar wall with a with other avatars my antidote to that is my own creativity your own creativity you know every moment you have a choice to repeat the past or be a pioneer of creativity of the future and that happens by the way it happens individually it happens collectively we change World Views you know the world is not flat anymore you know the ground is not stationary anymore you know the world is not Material anymore every technology that you use is based on the new idea that the essential nature of the physical world is it's not physical I could see you as you really are I'd see a huge emptiness with a few scattered dots and spots and some random electrical discharges and at the most fundamental level There Are No Boundaries boundaries are perceptual so when we experience the spiritual ecstasy which is ineffable There Are No Boundaries that's why people in near-death experience people with psychedelic experience people with Peak experiences athletes musical performance any any break from ordinary reality is ineffable and healing actually that's why at the recent Resurgence in psychedelics is very interesting because you know it it takes you away from your identity of being squeezed into the volume of a body in the span of a lifetime and point number four the five points of suffering Point number four point number four confusing your selfie with yourself your ego identity we've talked about that and number five is death death but all of them have one solution first one find out who you are how does one find out who they are Transcendence there's no here's another thing there's no system of thought no system of thought religion philosophy or science that will get you into knowing true reality because systems of thought are just that systems of thought what is it that gives rise to thought that is what you won't do no and that's been the Eternal Quest in spiritual Traditions I'm not talking about religious Dogma or ideology but there you know these days is very fashionable for people to say I'm not religious but I'm spiritual it means the same thing when you have a spiritual experience number one Transcendence you find your identity beyond space and time number two emergence of platonic values like truth goodness Beauty Harmony named after Plato or love compassion Joy Equanimity and number three loss of the fear of death that's Jesus that's Muhammad that's Ruby that's Buddha that's every luminary that you have can study since people created systems of thought so how does what's the easiest way to track you know there's someone listening to this right now they are driving up the motorway they're a lorry driver take some time every day to be unoccupied even spiritual Pursuit is an occupation so take a little bit of you know what I think it was Kafka or somebody who said all of human problem Humanities problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing we'd rather electrocute ourselves we're always doing doing doing we have human doings we're not human beings anymore so if I take some I I pull over the the Lorry that I'm driving up the motorway and I said you know what Deepak told me take some time for myself so I sit in the Lorry for 15 minutes every day how is that going to help me to transcend it starts to process we begin to ask yourself who am I reflect on this these questions every day who am I what do I want what is my purpose what am I grateful for and who am I without these constructs it's it's a big mystery right Who You Are ultimately you realize you're the awareness in which all experience happens but you're not the experience the experiences in time you are not in time and that this requires a different kind of education it's not part of our culture it used to be part of cultures you know if you read Plato and the Republic and you'll see that you know this was part of every culture but it was a few luminaries people romanticize even about this in India's spiritual country well India's been violent forever a few luminaries the sages of the upanishad and we have romance around the Greek culture you know Bob you know the Greeks were the most civilized in the world well yes Socrates and permanent ideas and you know Pythagoras and I can name a few but the rest of the country even in those times you know they had slavery they had sexism they had these the the source of the Olympics where they used to sacrifice humans and you know we're still performing it even in our days we're still repeating that cycle with the what do you call cheerleaders the the Virgin vessels of the past we haven't changed actually much what else in terms of starting your day like daily habits so you talk about sleep as being incredibly important here are the the daily habits um number one is sleep now we know by the way that lack of sleep is the number one predictor of premature death from cardiovascular disease lack of sleep is also predictor of Alzheimer's lack of sleep interferes with their creativity lack of sleep causes inflammation so that's for sure number one number two uh I think is any practice that quietens the Mind meditation reflection contemplation sitting quietly watching your breath ETC number three is exercise number four is Mind Body coordination as in that's different than regular exercise yoga practice and martial arts breathing practices Tai Chi Qigong they actually activate a different part of your nervous system which is the parasympathetic nervous system which it causes self-regulation in the body so it's not just exercise it's you know something that puts mind and body together even gymnastics or things like Judo and I mentioned martial arts but yoga is my practice uh then emotionals your emotional and physical environment your social environment because we live as social beings so you know if you're if you're you have toxic relationships it's going to cause physical toxicity um then nutrition we now know that you know that food that causes inflammation refined manufactured processed food with chemicals antibiotics hormones insecticides pesticides it's poison it's like putting poison day putting Agent Orange in your body so organic food farm to table maximum diversity or plant-based Foods now we know a lot about micronutrients we know about biological rhythms But ultimately I think spiritual experience is very important because no matter what you do no matter what you do no matter how healthy you are there is old age there is infirmity and there is death so unless you face those bright head-on when you are healthy not when you're in a crisis not when somebody dies in your family then everybody panics okay I had a crisis in my life when I was six years old you know my father was in England he was training to be a cardiologist I was living in my grandfather and one day we got a telegram that my father had passed all his exams he was now a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians big deal in those days we got a telegram my grandfather wanted to celebrate so he took me and my little brother to a carnival then to a to a movie I even remembered the movie Alibaba and the 40 thieves and then we went to a fancy restaurant and then in the middle of the night he died and they took him to for cremation brought his ashes back in a little jar about the size of this coffee cup a little bigger and one of my uncles said what happened yesterday he was taking the kids to a carnival and today is a bunch of Ashes my little brother who'd later became the dean of education at Harvard Medical School he was four years old he started to lose his skin his skin started peeling off I went into a panic and you know my uncles took my brother to every position they couldn't find the diagnosis till somebody said you know he's missing his parents he's feeling vulnerable he's losing his skin shedding his skin because he's that's a metaphor for his vulnerability he'll be fine when his parents come back and sure enough as soon as they came my brother was healed so at six years I had a crisis existential crisis went on to become a doctor but what happens you go to medical school the first thing you see is is uh is a corpse you're supposed to understand Life by dissecting a body you know it's the way we are trained you've started off by looking at a human being as an anatomical structure rather than a process in consciousness so it took me a long time you know going through medical school training myself going through crises smoking addictive behavior alcohol I remember um res resuscitating a patient putting a pacemaker putting him on a respirator and then going outside to smoke a cigarette and then you know I was disgusted with myself I threw away my cigarette that evening I threw away the scotch and I decided that I want to understand who am I it's almost like in that moment you observed someone that was so full of life just moments earlier turn into as you said Ash is in a jar scattered in the Wind and you go where is the where is my granddad yeah he's not local no look right which is our essential nature actually to be non-localists to be connected with all that is an Indian poetry and Poets in general John William Blake you know we are led to believe a lie when we see with and not through the eye that was born in the night to perish in the night while the soul slept in beams of light so when we looked through the conditioned mind that's a lie when you look beyond the conditioned mind that is light do you think you'd be doing the work you are today if your granddad hadn't passed away when you were six in their circumstances I think that was a very pivotal moment at six years of age existential crisis most people don't have that at the age of six because it brought you a bunch of questions didn't it really profound questions about the nature of life and existence existence and and love and tigor Indian poet love is not a sentiment it's the ultimate truth at the heart of creation that you and the other are the same being in different uniforms is it do you have a Ponder if some of your beliefs are if that moment really was pivotal that some of your beliefs might have been a way to justify your sadness yeah denial is a way of justifying sadness I don't think belief is belief in many ways is a cover-up for insecurity you know if I say do you believe in electricity he said no I see that device that transistor that TV set electricity gravity is my experience so I don't believe in belief but faith is something else faith is the knowingness of the invisible without which there is nothing visible the invisible is the source of all things visible so when you when your day comes when my day comes when we're no longer I'm preparing for it right now you're preparing for this in my tradition there are four stages of Life first 25 years they're called ashrams ashram is a place to rest or that which you identify as your home first 25 years education second 25 years family children Fame Fortune if you want third 25 years giving back and now I'm fourth self-realization preparation for death how does one prepare for death by knowing and experiencing your non-local self what people would call spirituality or death spiritual but authentic experience I'm not talking about Dogma or self-righteous morality or jealousy with the Halo or cunning hypocrisy we can all pretend to be spiritual but if you've had the experience when you know yourself as non-local then the unknown is the only place to be the known as already happened it's a prison and what do you believe happens once you die I think the dream continues the dream continues in a different frequency domain of Consciousness these days actually if you look at some of the theories of the universe mathematical theories current materialistic view is that the visible universe is about 2 trillion galaxies 706 trillion Stars uncountable trillions of planets based on that current estimate with the James Webb Telescope and all this our planet is not even a spec one grain of sand in all the beaches of the world so the other day I went to a beach picked up a grain of sand and a breeze game he drifted off and the beach didn't notice that one grain was missing that's planet Earth 2 trillion galaxies but I recently interviewed Caltech professor of physics Sean Carroll who sits on the desk of Richard Feynman one of the greatest physicists of all time Einstein sat at that desk for a while Sean Carroll believes there are infinite universes infinite universes it's incomprehensible the idea that there are infinite universes but I believe they are and that you and I have a a cosmic Journey that is infinite and infinite means infinite infinite is incomprehensible it never ends you change uniforms you change experiences hopefully you evolve like a spiraled staircase but it's a never-ending Horizon does that mean rank what people call Reincarnation of some sort or is it even people yeah but what is reincarnation see everything recycles matter recycles we agree energy resize because we agree information recycles we agree if Consciousness is what gives rise to Energy Information and matter and energy information matter or human constructs for modes of awareness and consciousness why would Consciousness not recycle why would it be the only exception it wouldn't be the same Consciousness though would it it would be bits of the No it's it's it's a Consciousness with seeds yeah of potential manifestation seeds of Desire and seeds of memory now if you want to be totally you know I want to use the spiritual language which is not fashionable but is fashionable to Karma memory and desire so karma is past experience an interpretation of past experience if you go to Starbucks have a cup of coffee that's karma now depending on your experience you like it or not you decide to go back to Starbucks or not to go to Starbucks you go to whatever the other places and get a cappuccino so memory recycles as desire and desire recycles as karma karma simply means experience don't think of it good bad and this is the software or awareness that recycles and evolves in Cosmic time now this is the theory but you have to experience it so I asked you what did you have for breakfast but then I could ask you do you remember a happy episode from your teenage years or your childhood and immediately the memory comes where was it not in your brain you know I hadn't skated I learned skating when I was eight years ice skating I didn't skate for 30 years at the age of 38 with my two little kids Rockefeller Center Ice there picked up a pair of skates started to skate every cell in my body including my brain had recycled a few million times where was that memory of skating big mystery quick word from one of our sponsors I have to say I've been on a bit of a journey with this brand because when I started my business in new territories when we first moved social chain to the to New York City the first place we went to was wework we moved four of our team members out to New York City and we built the business from there um I have to say there's something magical about weworks I've spent the last two or three weeks in LA in a wee work and as you walk in the front door every day it's almost like that sense of community that sense of magic excitement camaraderie is tangible and you don't get that when you're working at home you don't get that often when you're sat in your bed on your laptop there's something about getting out and getting into a wee work that makes me feel a sense of Entrepreneurship and and creativity and building and the way that we work to design both both in the way that they offer subscriptions so that you can work you know on demand but also the the flexibility of the contracts means that it's just the perfect place for businesses to scale their companies and if you haven't checked out where you work and you want to you can go to we.co CEO and there you can get 50 off at trial Day At wework Close to You over the last couple of how long maybe four months I've been changing my diet shall I say many of you have really been paying attention to this podcast will know why I've sat here with some incredible Health experts and one of the things that's really come through for me which has caused a big change in my life is the need for us to have these superfoods these green Foods these vegetables and then a company I love so much and a company I'm an investor in and then a company that sponsors this podcast and I'm on the board of recently announced a new product which absolutely spoke to exactly where I was in my life and that is heal and they announced Daily Greens Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods nutrients and plant-based ingredients which helps me meet that dietary requirement with the convenience that hewell always offers unfortunately it's only currently available in the US but I hope pray that it'll be with you guys in the UK too so if you're in the US check it out it's an incredible product I've been having it here in La for the last couple of weeks and it's a game changer what is the thing that you believe to be true that most people disagree with you on right now my interpretation of what I call Quantum healing a quantum mechanics I wrote a book called Quantum healing in 1988 it was vilified I reissued it a few years ago because now we have science and I'm doing a book with the quantum physicist at the moment where I believe that our biology like everything else is is quantum mechanical it's it's it goes every experience shapes uh our biology and experience happens in the moment so your body is changing in the moment depending on the experience you're having at a very fundamental level pleasure pain Joy sorrow eating breathing digestion metabolism elimination thinking feeling aspiring fearing all every experience shapes of biology we are the metabolic product of experience and experience doesn't happen in isolation it happens in The Matrix of relationship so what people disagree with me is this whole interpretation I've been attacked by you know mainstream scientists but I had been persistent because I'm a physician and I see people and you know I'm not sitting in a lab dissecting rats or doing designing experiments theoretically but you see people and as you said people suffer and uh you know if you're a physician that should be your job to address suffering not be a technician who can fix everything about the human body know nothing about the human soul or The Human Experience this this morning I was at an event and I had a guy come up to me after and he said I'm 40 years old now Stephen um I'm in a job and I don't like it it really doesn't like his job that he's in um he's I'd say trapped as maybe a strong word but he feels unable to take the leap towards a life that he feels will fulfill him um he referenced being scared of what his friends might say um and he just there was this almost this desperation in his face as he spoke to me he was seeking words of advice from me to him to help him out of that situation of like I'm 40 years old I've got a partner I've built this life but it's not resonating with who I am and I just I could feel the suffering that's a lot of people that are listening to this right now they are that's that's that's so what our social structures have created and yet you know the people like Joseph Campbell oh coined the expression follow your bliss uh follow your joy follow your purpose follow your meaning follow your Dharma you know in Buddhism they said three things will save you one is take refuge in the community of conscious beings take refuge in a higher purpose and take refuge in Transcendence if you do that your life will be meaningful and meaning is what drives us you know there are actually many Studies by the way recent studies on what is called the happiness equation I'll give it to you um H is equal to S Plus C plus b so H stands for happiness is equal to S set point in the brain the set point in the brain is when you look at the situation do you see an adversity or an opportunity how is the set point determined by your childhood if your parents were complaining condemning criticizing playing the victim you will see every problem every situation has an adversity condemn complain criticize and play the victim on the other hand your parents or your caretakers or your ecosystem or relationship when you were growing up first three four years of life they were looking at opportunities there were always you know engaging in compassionate empathetic conversation and joy and laughter and celebration then you'll have a set point for happiness this set point determines 50 of our daily happiness experience can this head point be changed yes by self-awareness by reflective inquiry by mindfulness by actually knowing that you have a problem most people don't even know they have a problem so that's 50 percent so s plus C conditions of living primarily material conditions of living money so if you have if you're extremely poor you will suffer if you're extremely rich that doesn't guarantee that you'll be happy in fact what a lot of rich people do is they confuse their self-worth with their net worth so I I wrote a book before this called abundance that was inspired by Bob Marley one of his lyrics where he said some people are so poor all they have is money so happiness when it pertains to money is 10 of your daily experience if you win the lottery you'll be ecstatic in the beginning in six months you'll plateau in one year you'll be back to your set point so even if you win the lottery in five years you might be worse off because now you're worrying about taxes you want to put your money in the wherever you know in the Bahamas or something and you're it's become your identity money if you're you know all billionaires money is their identity they confuse self-worth with uh net worth so that's ten percent now we have 40 remaining that's the choices we make every day there are two kinds of choices we make every day once for personal pleasure sex alcohol entertainment movies shopping shopping is the number one choice for pleasure by the way in the world that's why we call people consumers a very ugly word to describe a stardust being with self-awareness but does pleasure bring you happiness it does but it's transient you know if you're and you have the danger of being addicted to pleasure if you have an addictive personality as I did okay so uh pleasure brings happiness transiently there's another choice you can make that actually is called fulfillment when you have meaning purpose in your life and if you know how to make other people happy by giving them attention which means listening appreciation noticing their uniqueness affection letting them know you care and acceptance radical acceptance you can't change another person so you feel better which is what we're trying to do all the time changing other people so we feel better impossible you can't change yourself even if you try so acceptance what would you what would you say to that guy what should I have said to him in terms of advice because he did really actually have told him let's take a day off and let's go fishing or let's go into you know have a picnic or let's go to see a comedy let's go see it just stick discontinue and try this a little moment of being not doing not thinking not feeling not speaking I take a week of Silence every year now I'm taking even longer so sometimes I'm thinking you know a month in silence but you know I'm 76 so that's my different stages of life too in the hope that that might help him realize that he's playing the wrong game or he's thinking about the wrong in the hope that you know one thing you can do to alleviate anybody's suffering to some extent is fully accept them and listen to them don't give them advice you know people feel better if you just listen to them and there's Neuroscience that their amygdala cools down if you just listen with deep empathy which means you feel what another person feels there's some biology around this you know when you feel what another person feels and you deeply listen there's a phenomenon called limbic resonance your emotional brain resonates with their brain and then if you deeply listen to them and you let them know you care for them there's another thing that happens it's called limbic regulation and then the third step is limbic revision the neural networks rebuyer so acceptance affection appreciation and attention that's what you do don't give them advice people go to therapists to get advice therapists don't do that they listen good therapists listen interesting and in the old traditions you know that's why people went to confession they basically you know revealed their so-called sins to the priest and they felt better one of the things I've read about um I've heard you talk about is this the role that affirmations and positive self-talking um those kinds of things can have on our healing to some extent anything mental is weak this is what I've wondered because a lot of like you know books and like Instagram will say look in the mirror and say nice things yourself or yeah it doesn't work it's mental mind is weak you have to go deeper it's you know to say if you're trying to force yourself to be positive that's exasperating that's very stressful but instead of forcing yourself to be positive observe your thoughts you know observe both negative and positive thoughts and you see that all experiences by contrast you can't have a one without the other you know it's like a pendulum can't swing only in One Direction it has to swing in two directions hot doesn't is meaningless without cold pleasure is meaningless without pain Joy is meaningless without suffering birth and death are actually not even opposites birth and death are opposites life is the Continuum of birth and death you can't have one without the other in biology there's something called apoptosis program cellular death when the cell forgets to die it becomes cancer that's what it is a cancer cell doesn't die when it's supposed to normally our cells are dying constantly so you can be born again that's the literal meaning of Born Again what you think of them what do you think success is then if we're stepping away from this identity which can cause so much suffering what is for me success is the progressive realization of worthy goals number one and where they got that's a subjective measure so for me that's it could be taking care of my dog yes taking care of your dog but if money is your goal for the sake of making money then you'll never be happy but if money is your goal so you can actually make a difference in people's lives including your own and your family but also community in large that that's a really good so it's number one Progressive realization of worthy goals number two the ability to love and have compassion and number three actually which is for me the most important to always go back to your Creative Source once you have this ability to go back to your Creative Source you will be successful no matter what don't be Bamboozled by the hypnosis of social conditioning don't be in a rush to conform you know there's studies that if Gallup I'm on The Advisory Board of Gallup if you have a house that's fifty thousand dollars and you're offered a house that's five hundred thousand dollars but your neighbors have million dollar homes you won't move you're always comparing yourself to the other person this is how we are socially programmed rush to conform comparison with others and you know if your child doesn't conform then he's not a good student and I used to um but my son was growing up he always was reading comic books and you know engaging in games and sports in my was very important mathematics and my wife would constantly complain that he's not good at school I said wait a minute we'll he'll he'll do what he's enjoying let him do what he's enjoying he ended up creating a sports company a comic book company and now he has a very successful business called the religion of sport with Tom Brady won five Emmys wasn't a good student so I said don't focus on your weaknesses focus on your strengths and if you have a child who loves to play tennis it's poor at math get him a tennis coach and one day he might get a mathematician to be his accountant you when you look forward at the direction of travel that we're on as a civilization what advice do we need now the most don't get stuck in melodrama this whole world is full of drama drama everything is that sells his drama news is not news anymore it's opinion and drama and all the violence in the world is drama and you know you read about drama shooting killing incest well crazy stuff and we're addicted to trauma actually and then we complain about it addicted to trauma or drama yeah but and what's the cost of being addicted to trauma and drama suffering because because you sacrifice yourself for the drama or being a conformist does this mean we have we should like you know I'm thinking about really my relationship with technology and social media and news feeds and stuff well technology is neutral you know and it's inescapable it's past part of a revolution if you don't adapt to technology you'll become extinct well so it's part of our Evolution how do we use technology you know in my field AI machine learning Precision diagnosis and even intervention I believe Technologies so it's a great gift but again technology can destroy the world too this is what it means to be human be humans are very interesting species are Fall From Grace is exactly what you know mythical Traditions tell us the knowledge of Good and Evil we ate the fruit it's hard to go through life these days and not be tempted by drama it's even someone who you know it's a process it's a process what is that process growth you know people some people do grow some people do evolve and I think ultimately that is the purpose of our existence is to keep evolving do you ever get tempted by drama or distracted not anymore I used to I used to I used to engage in debates it was like you know big high for me to win a debate how long ago well I started in school and I left debating only recently I was just five years ago I was debating Richard Dawkins in in Mexico and I felt foolish after that you know so you made the decision not to debate anymore not to engage in debate anymore no because nobody changes the Mind The Debaters don't change their mind the audience doesn't change their mind they in fact they get reinforced by the opinions they came with so if we do want to try and change people's mind because see the change if you want peace in your life be peaceful if you want love in your life Give Love whatever you want engage in that I think that's the only thing you can't uh you have to be the change that you want to see in others and then people respond not what do I just say not by what you do but just by your presence you've written 93 books as I said earlier I think this is your 93rd I've been told this book about living in the light new book yoga for self-realization I guess my question you know I I can't comprehend the concept of writing so many books I've like I wrote my first one and then I'm currently writing my second one and I've been it's just consuming all of my time and I'm I went off to Bali if I spent a month there writing it in I'm sure you enjoyed that I love it I always get there to write um it's amazing but my question to you you know I think this book is fantastic and I think that we'll talk a little bit about you're gonna SEC but your 94th book it's coming this year it's called Quantum body with the quantum physicists so I feel kind of uh good about that because I've been talking about that for now since 1988 that's 12 plus 23 that's over 30 years I've been vilified attacked everything about that and I realized that people are territorial you know the physicists say who the heck is he talking about quantum physics the biologists say he's not trained in biology he's a physician who the heck is he talking about biology and yet my experience tells me that your body is non-local it follows the principles of quantum mechanics and now found some some supporters who know the math and you know even the body can be understood mathematically now I don't know if you're familiar with this theorem called girdle's theorem which says it's very famous theorem and you know girdle was a German mathematician who was Einstein's favorite colleague when they they're both immigrants to America at Princeton but he came up with the theorem which says there are theorems in math that are true but you can't prove them and their disruptions their their basically mathematics is platonic truth describes everything in the universe and yet there are theorems that don't follow algorithms when a mathematician thinks of them he said where did this come from they don't know they can't even prove it but it seems intuitively true and if they follow the theorem it leads to new creativity so I think creativity is inherent in the universe where aspects of that creativity and with self-awareness we have sourced to that creativity but that creativity will never happen if you don't take time to actually incubate in discontinuity in my life I figured it out nine steps intended outcome number one information gathering number two information analysis number three incubation taking time off go to Bali play golf if you're a republican that's mystery school for Republicans or whatever so incubation and that is a time you settle with uncertainty and then there's that Eureka experience Insight so incubation leads to Insight which is a disruption it's something totally new new context new relationship new story and then if the Insight is accurate then you're inspired not motivated motivation is mental inspiration as the word says in spirit then you implement it then you integrate it and then you are a death and a resurrection these are my nine steps to creativity I just made them up some information for intended analysis information gathering information analysis incubation Insight inspiration implementation integration incarnation I use that for writing my books I can tell yeah and if you so if you were to write one last book if I said Deepak you could write one more book that's it you can only write one it's going to be your last ever book which subject matter would you think was the most important subject matter to write that last book about and what would be the Top Line message of that book I hate to use this word it's misinterpreted but the title would be enlightenment explain what do you mean like why would why enlightenment what would the book be about the only solution ultimately to know truth with the capital T you're not your body you're not your mind you're not your emotions they're all um like clouds passing through the sky you know when when I read some of the great luminaries which can shine our life is a dream we are asleep but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we were sleeping Buddha when he died he said this lifetime of us as transient as Autumn clouds to watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance a lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky rushing by like a torrent down a steep Mountain as I look back now my life 76 years it's a dream but it's been a good dream with a few nightmares here and there but it's been a dream and I feel the only solution is to wake up now you know when the Buddha was dying people asked him who are you are you a messiah are you God your messenger he said none of the above he said who are you he said I'm awake finally I think that's our ultimate Destiny to wake up what do we need to do to wake up we need to question our everyday reality and human constructs they're useful money is a useful construct latitude longitude are useful constructs but there's still constructs they're not reality what is the source of these constructs when you get to the source you realize that your capacity for creativity is infinite your capacity for love is infinite your capacity for compassion is infinite your capacity for healing is infinite and ultimately you are infinite having a dream right now if I made you prime minister or president of the world you know if there was one significant change you could make to lead us more towards that better future of Enlightenment I would say an education that does not sacrifice self-awareness we have information overload right now I don't need information overload I can Google it or now go to chat GPT or something like that what I need to know is who am I how do you feel about chat GTP chat it's good I think it's very good and I think it's unavoidable also I actually went to a demonstration recently by Microsoft on something that's coming soon it's called Prometheus it's Way Beyond chat GPT it'll put most of us Physicians out of business here because it makes the best diagnosis gives the best information what happens then in terms of your purpose and your meaning well we have more time for creativity fundamental creativity to create joy in the world I think the essential messages if you're not joyful you wasted your life I you know I see entrepreneurs all the time young guys coming up to me with amazing ideas but they're talking about exit strategy before they've started the business it's like you know dividing the loot before there's a train to Rob but they're already talking and we're living in a hustle culture you know I have five exits you keep exiting exiting exiting and you're still hustling and you're dying and that's the Final Exit you're still a hustler so I say make Joy and self-understanding self-awareness the fundamental purpose of existence and everything else will follow where's your joy what is that where do you drive it from the fact that I exist and I'm aware of existence that's a Perpetual surprise to me I was looking at emotions and what's the healthiest emotion you can have it's not love it's not compassion it's not even Joy it's all it's Wonder why do we exist and why do we have the awareness that we exist if you're perpetually surprised and full of wonder and joy you return to innocence and what we've lost to this world today is the loss of Innocence how do I get my innocence back are you married I'm in love okay if well when you have a child you'll see it you'll see it you know a child is spontaneous is in the moment is joyful unless it's way too hungry but that's a different situation but it's joyful it is looking I was the other day I was in a in a train you know from Orlando Airport to baggage claim everybody was stressed in the train bearing masks Panic to mother on the phone and full of anxiety and she had a little baby in the crib and this baby was looking around in total amazement finally it caught my eyes and it gave the most amazing smile and the whole the whole room lighted up just looking at that innocence we have lost our innocence and we we take it away from our children so you know when children love laughter they love stories they love surprises you know they love to play peek-a-boo when's the last time you were surprised I can't recall being surprised so when I feel when I feel I want some Joy I just look at children playing is there a way to bring that Joy back into our lives as a practice that innocence yes play um play not drama as adults play is seen as a waste of time no please is when you find creativity and joy I'm not talking about drama I'm talking about play for the sake of play now even Sports has become competitive but when you played because you were playing when a musician is playing they're not thinking of the end when you're singing a song you're not thinking of the ending of the song you're in the song when you become the song when you become that which you're playing when the music and the musician become one when the nor and the known become one when the Observer and the Observer come on when the lover and the Beloved become one that's Transcendence that's Joy let's play living in the light yoga for self-realization this is your fourth phase of life and you're into your self-realization phase do you know the book The Body holds the score there's a lot of similarities between obviously your philosophy and that yes that that book about how and I was Rick because you know I've I start I think everything as a skeptic so breath work and a lot of spiritual things I start as an ultimate skeptic I need science I need evidence I need proof and as I read through that book and watched some videos of that one of the things that it's proven is phenomenal for your mental well-being is things like acting yoga they talk about psychedelics and things like that as well but one wouldn't assume that there's a profound amount of scientific evidence that yoga and acting have really positive mental health implications correct why is Yoga so good for us as humans yoga means Union Union with yourself and yoga has eight limbs as they're talking about in this book and ultimately all those book eight limbs are meant to give you only one Insight you and the universe are made of awareness you're not made of energy you're not made of matter you're not made of information you're made of awareness awareness is non-local fundamental not subject to birth and death infinite and formless so befriend your non-local formless self you know again I go back to poetry acting is great poetry is even better rabindranath tagore one of my favorite poets said in this Playhouse of infinite forms I got sight of the formless and so my life was blessed befriend the formless and then the forms will be seen as expressions of the formless without the form list there is no form is the morphing of the formless into space-time and causality this theater of space time and causality where we are playing as avatars that is something for me to think about tonight um it's become abundantly clear to me over the last I don't know um over the last couple of years in particular as um more people know who I am because of this podcast and I do teach them to stuff on TV that you can cause yourself such a tremendous amount of suffering by getting more and more attached to your avatar and like your avatar becoming more of a defined thing and I think I've spent a lot of my definitely the last two and a half years trying to resist as much as I can this temptation of becoming my avatar and doing that on a practical level I thought you know well resist labels Steve so don't be anything don't like in terms of your bio you know your your professional bio don't be those things just you're 32 right 30 30. wow but that's pretty young to have that awareness yeah because I could see how I could cause myself a ton of suffering and build a life which wasn't really Who I Am by being a social media CEO for example success at an early age yeah you confuse your celebrity with yourself yeah outside of me just like saying to myself okay I'm gonna write books and I'm gonna do this theater and we do this music show and I DJ Now and I do all these other bits and pieces I was in psychedelics for a while with um a Thai Life Sciences as a creative director and an investor and outside of me doing just doing lots of stuff which is I thought was the antidote to not to resisting my label you're telling me that the real antidote to resisting my label is like a higher sense of Enlightenment right I would suggest a book for you yeah at your stage you're trying to be useful it's called the wisdom of insecurity interesting by Alan Watts the more you embraced in security and unpredictability the more access you'll have to the unknown and the unknown is the source of all creativity the known as the prison of the past we have a closing tradition on this it's funny we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest because what the question is I'll show you you're the first person to ever see that question can you see it what is my biggest insecurity I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw of a grave site and there was a sign on the grave site and said to whoever was standing by the gravesite where you are I was where I am you will be so embrace the idea of death and if you do it you'll see it's death that makes life possible because death is creativity have you struggled with the idea of death all my life since six years and that reared its head to some degree when your parents passed yes and now I'm a stage where I'm embracing it totally how did that impact you losing your parents as someone that's been sensitive and insecure about it I would say grief sadness longing but our longing can be the way too how long ago was that that you lost your parents oh my parents only in the last 20 years but grandfather with whom I lived in the first few years of my life he was like a parent my grandparents were my parents because my my parents were in England at that time and I was I and my brother were left with our grandparents who brought us up and that by the way was a big that fear of Abandonment also is a driver the fear of Abandonment is a driver and there is no cure for that other than don't think about yourself all the time anytime you by the way you are suffering ask yourself who am I thinking about if you're thinking about your avatar it's very true Deepak thank you so much thank you for having me this was one of the best conversations I've had oh thank you so much that's a huge honor you you really are um you've been a someone that I followed from from afar but have had tremendous admiration for and everyone that I've encountered that's encountered you well has been so you know we have mutual friends with yeah we're sort of in business together in many respects through the healing actually they're lovely people yeah um and it's been an honor that you would come here and spend some time with me today and it's been my privilege thank you thank you so much Deepak thank you as you might know the show's now sponsored by Airbnb absolutely love Airbnb always have always been a you know saved my life on so many occasions and my team when we first got in touch with Airbnb were talking about how most people don't realize that their place where they currently live could become an Airbnb and I guess the second question there is how much could your place be worth and it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing it some people Airbnb their entire homes when they're away that's what I did in New York whenever I left New York my place was on Airbnb and people rented it out sometimes for a day sometimes for two days sometimes for a week and it's a great way to cover some of the bills while you're away so whether you're looking to go on holiday or you just want some extra cash for bills or you want to buy something nice for a valentine that you love whatever it might be head over to airbnb.com UK host and you can find out how much your current property where you live can earn while you're not there I suspect it might blow your mind because it certainly blew mine [Music] oh [Music] foreign

Channel: The Diary Of A CEO

Views: 492,740

Keywords: The Diary Of A CEO, steven bartlett steve bartlett, podcast, the diary of a CEO podcast, life lessons, CEO

Id: t_pZ2D_nlD0

Length: 90min 33sec (5433 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023