The Universe is an Activity in Consciousness

so this afternoon we have now two hours with them take a five-minute breathing break in between but we're going to go very deeply into understanding what I can only call reality okay so I want to show you this month the book you are the universe which is my last book with the quantum physicist cosmologist that was featured on PBS I don't know if anyone saw that you saw some of you and it's going to be showing again there there might be 10 part series on that later from Amazon or one of the entertainment companies so I want to show you a three minute trailer of that and then we'll go with our discussion I'm dr. Deepak Chopra in the next 60 minutes I hope we can all together with a little help and insight from me help solve the mystery of our existence I was traveling to the country in one of the places and that was part of my tour was Los Angeles I was picked up at the airport by my son Gautham and my grandson Christian Christian as we call him who was then five years old he's a very smart little mind very smart and fellow so as we got out of the airport he looks at me and he says Dada now does the Indian word for grandfather on the father's side said Dada what is dark energy interesting question to come from a five-year-old and I said what do you know about dark energy and he said it flows through the night sky very poetic very beautiful I said what else do you know about it he said it's 70% of the universe I'm thinking to myself how does me know all this we get out of the airport and we're driving in the car driving in Santa Monica I roll down the window and we can smell the ocean we can see the ocean he looks at me again he says how did they make that I said Bank watch he says how did they make the ocean I said how did who make the ocean and he said they I said that's not a precise question you have to tell me what you mean by day and so I can see him thinking for a bit and he reframed the question he said how did the ocean get made so I said the ocean got made the same way as the earth got made a giant star exploded them that was the solar system where a planet amongst many the ocean is part of the elements of this planet and then I kind of turned to him and I said them do you know how many planets there are in the solar system and he said well if you count Pluto there are nine but if you don't come closer because some people don't take you Joseph planet then there are eight I said in red the solar system come from he said that galaxy I said where did the galaxy come from he said the universe and I asked him I said and where did the universe come from and without batting an eyelid he said from another dimension so you know I'm Indian I'm thinking who's this kid you know we believe in reincarnation and all that sighs thinking to myself Galileo Copernicus maybe even Einstein it's a question how do you know all this he said it's on my Pokemon [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that should begin our conversation if you go on Google or Wikipedia or wherever on the internet and you look at what are the open questions and science open means science at the moment has no answer you know when you talk to scientists they say we don't know but at some point we know and there are about a hundred and twenty five open questions and science today the first the list was first published in science magazine in the year 2006 so we are now in 2017 in the ensuing eleven years nothing has changed we still have the same 150 or so open questions in science but we want to talk today only about two the first open question in science is what is the universe made home the second open question in science is what's the biological basis of consciousness so let's just talk about those two questions today this afternoon what's the universe made of so I'm going to give you the current science and what everybody says you know people like Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox and Lawrence Krauss and all the big guys you know the window bell prizes and the work at CERN and they do science and good science you know in science is based on three three principles all science is based on three principles first scientists come up with a theory these days most theories about physical reality are mathematical theories so mathematics is the basis of all physics and there's quantum mechanics which is very mathematical and as regular physics and there's chemistry biology all these different disciplines but most theories of physical reality are based on that so scientists first come up with theories they publish them these is actually on the Internet everybody has a open access then they see if other people agree with the theories so theory is the first thing the second thing is observation and so this observation these days especially when it comes to the universe is through big telescopes that are out there in the sky in space you heard of these telescopes Hubble telescope James Watson telescope etc so that's how they look at the big picture and then they also look at the micro nature of the universe particle subatomic particles and that they do through very sophisticated technology at CERN as the biggest place in the world Switzerland next to Geneva they have something called the Hadron Collider where they smash particles into smaller particles into smaller particles again to discover the nature of reality both at the big level and at the microscopic level so theory is first observation is second and observation leads to new experiments that lead to new observations that's the loop theory observation experiment observation and if everyone kind of agrees on the theories the experiments and if they can repeat them they can validate them then they come to the conclusion that this is how it must be so okay that's the scientific method and very reliable there's there's two things that scientists all understand a theory must be falsifiable which means you must be able to prove that it's wrong and it should be subject to that and it should be validated by others so it's a very good methodology for understanding what we call reality so with that kind of experimentation observation right now scientists have come to the conclusion where's the the clicker do you have a clicker on the other side of the one yes okay so with that kind of experimentation and theory and validation can we start making sure this works the scientists have come to the following conclusion okay the first is that 70% of the universe is this mysterious entity that my grandson spoke about which is called dark energy so what is dark energy dark energy is a is a mysterious force that is expanding the universe at this moment where we are faster than the speed of light so the universe is think of the universe is like a balloon and the balloon is inflating and it's inflating faster than the speed of light which is supposedly the high speed you can get according to Einstein so according to the same scientist the universe began with something called a Big Bang which incidentally was neither big nor did it bang okay but out of nothing something came into existence it was about the size of a period at the end of a sentence and then it rapidly expanded it's called inflation it tripled in size every billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second till it became the size of football and then the inflation slowed down we don't know why but continued and still is continuing and the universe from where we are the cosmic horizon which is the farthest edge of the universe is 47 billion light-years from where we are 47 billion light years and what is expanding is the space between galaxies so just to give you a visual of this think of the universe's like a big balloon and think of all the galaxies as if you think of the earth like a big balloon then you think of all the continents as the galaxies and then think of all the nations and the continents as the stars and then think of all the stars having planets around them as the states etc cities just giving you a metaphor but what is expanding is the space between galaxies the space between galaxies is expanding faster than the speed of light and it's a mathematical number that I in Stine described it's called the cosmological constant so this constant this mathematical number remains the same but as the distance between galaxies expands because of the space expanding then the expansion accelerates anyway that's the technicality but what is this dark energy no one knows okay the best they can say is it's the opposite of gravity so gravity brings things together this rips things apart and what is ripping apart is space that's 70% of the universe so that leaves 30% of the universe remaining of which 26% is another mysterious entity called dark matter and the reason it's called dark matter is it's invisible he can't see it and the reason you can't see it is that it doesn't interact with light and the reason it doesn't interact with light is it's not atomic it's not made up of atoms so you know your body is made up of atoms mostly your body is carbon hydrogen oxygen nitrogen that's about 96% of your body and the rest of your body is other things sulfur phosphorus all the elements of the periodic table which incidentally were manufactured in stars so the carbon in your fingernails the oxygen going to your brain right now all these come from different stars your body is star stuff it's the dust of stars your physical body but so is everything else this table this microphone anything we can see or perceive is made up of atoms but dark matter is not made up of atoms and it's 26% of the universe so what's it made of and the answer is of course we don't know because that's why it's an open question then why do we call it matter if it's not visible that it's not hard like this why do we call matter because it has the same effect as regular matter in that it produces or is responsible for most of the gravity in a galaxy so we are a planet in the solar system the solar system is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way galaxy if you want you can look at it tonight when you go up you know it's it's a huge strip of stars the Milky Way galaxy has about 100 billion stars each star has its own planets at the moment scientists believe there are two trillion galaxies two trillion galaxies he can't even count that number and there are 716 stars again unfathomable okay and there are trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of uncountable planets so a galaxy we are in I said in the Milky Way galaxy right next door to us is another galaxy called Andromeda the next door is Virgo on and on and on and on these are just given names and numbers to these galaxies when scientists discovered them but most of the gravity most of the gravity that holds the galaxies together is this dark matter if it weren't for this dark matter a galaxy would fall apart the planets would spin off into and get lost into intergalactic space they would disappear you and I would fall apart so whatever this dark matter is it's holding the galaxies together and therefore the solar system the planets you and me so that's tau 96% of the universe which is unaccountable invisible that leaves 4% of the universe which is made up of atoms of that 4% of the universe which is made up of atoms 99.99% is invisible interstellar dust so we can't see that either the visible universe with two trillion galaxies 769 stars and trillions of planets is point zero one percent so everything we can see or we can infer through all these experiments is point zero one percent the rest is unknown possibly unknowable if it doesn't if it's not atomic your body is made of atoms how can we ever know it so what we have is a great mystery point zero one percent of the universe is visible now here's the situation when you look at the atomic universe I don't know how many of you are interested in science but atoms as you know are made up of particles electrons protons neutrons these days many other different kinds of particles bosons gluons quarks so when you look at these particles you find that they have a dual nature if you're looking for them if you're looking at them and if they're interacting with other particles if they are in relationship with other particles then they appear as material entities they're physical entities they have units of mass and energy very small but still units of mass and energy that's what they do it at CERN look at these subatomic particles through these big experiments but if you're not observing an atom or a particle or if it's not interacting with other particles then it disappears and what does it disappear into it disappears into what science is called waves so particles are things but waves are all over the place and if you are scientists what are these waves made of what are them waves that make physical particles what are they made of because you know every child wants to know what's this made of what is this made of and we are all curious beings we want to know what are the waves that make physical particles made are like when you see the ocean the waves are made of water the air waves that are carrying sound right now from me to you are made of air molecules but what are the waves that make physical particles made of which make atoms which make molecules which make everything from microphones to human bodies to crocodiles and trees what are the waves that make physical matter what are they made of and the best answer where you'll get are they are made of possibilities possibilities the possibility is not a thing right it's a potential so then you are scientists where do these possibility waves exist where do these possibility waves exist and they'll tell you they exist in something called hilbert space I'm trying to simplify it as much as I can okay so then you say what is the hilbert space and you find out that Hilbert is the name of a mathematician so Hilbert space is named after Hilbert you see okay I get it what is Hilbert space it houses the wave functions the possibility waves so the possibility waves exists in this space then you say but where is it and the best answer you'll get from science today is shutup and calculate the science works but we don't know what this Hilbert space is obviously it's a space in mathematical imagination it's a theoretical space and actually it's not even the space because even space time comes from it according to science part of life what's the universe made of best answer made of nothing okay this is the best answer that science can give you what is the universe made of it's made of nothing what is nothing don't know but it seems like it becomes everything okay so what I'm saying to you right now is not is not metaphysics it's not philosophy it's today's science there's a big book out called the universe from nothing by Lawrence Krauss who is a very famous physicist who studies the origins of the universe the universe is made of nothing okay that's science question open question number one the second question in science is what is the biological nature of consciousness why is this such a difficult question in fact it's called the hard problem of consciousness okay again anything I say you can go on these days you can do a library research and find out anything so you can go again on the internet and say hard problem of consciousness so what is the biological basis of consciousness now you can see just in the question there's an assumption and the assumption is consciousness is a product of biology right the question assumes that when you say what is the biological basis of consciousness the question itself assumes that consciousness is produced by biology principally the brain so why do people believe that number one why do scientists believe that number one well if you knock somebody on the head they lose consciousness right if you give somebody anesthesia every day people get anesthesia they get operations apparently they lose consciousness if they're in a coma they lose consciousness if they're dead certainly they're not conscious at least that's what we think there's no evidence that they're conscious so most scientists believe in there's some I met an anesthesiologist yesterday in this course where is she she's where are you stand up please there she is okay so we were talking about this yesterday very briefly so every time she put somebody to sleep they lose consciousness with whatever they do but I think what they lose is conscious experience they don't lose consciousness and that's a different thing but by and large everybody believes that the brain produces consciousness for those reasons I just told you so how does it do that you know first of all you know we know that your gallbladder produces bile your pancreas produces pancreatic juice your stomach produces hydrochloric acid so biology say the brain produces consciousness but we've been talking about consciousness since yesterday and we assume defining consciousness is that in which all experience occurs right that in which all perception occurs thought occurs sensations images I mentioned the acronym SI ft sensations images feelings thoughts which is what we experience all the time so how does the brain produce that because all that stares in the brain is if you look inside the brain all there is is electricity and chemicals what we see inside the brain are electro chemical electrochemical activity so let's try and take that a little bit deeper into our understanding we yesterday I spoke to you about where are you having the experience of seeing me right remember okay so photons are coming to your eyes they're going into your retina they're causing chemical reactions that's sending an electrical impulse it's called an action potential to your brain in your brain there are neurochemical activities but you don't experience any of that what do you experience your experience does you experience this room you experience these lights you experience color experience shape your experience solidity and liquidity and all kinds of sounds pretty mushy experience the universe you know sounds and sensations and images and feelings and thoughts and tastes and smells how do chemicals produce that so you are scientists how did they do that how do chemicals produce this experience and the best answer you'll get from scientists we don't know but we'll figure it out because you know that's the history of science we keep looking for answers to questions by doing experiments but we don't know how chemicals or atoms produce experience any experience it does matter what the experience when you're listening to music what's going to your brain is an electrical current when you're tasting a banana what's going to your brain is an electrical current when you have any other emotional experience you fall in love with creeps your brain is an electrical current and what's happening in your brain is a chemical reaction so how does that produce experience and as I told you scientists say we don't know that's why it's called the hard problem of consciousness that's the phrase when you have time google it hard problem of consciousness now I'm talking not only about perceptual experience I'm talking about even mental experience so just now think of a beautiful sunset on the mountains you do you have an experience you can see something some picture well there's no picture in your brain all there is is chemicals think of the sound of the voice of your mother can you hear it you have an experience right there's no sound in the brain all there is is a chemical reaction think of your favorite song John Lennon imagines you hear it there is no sound in the brain think of anything all there is in the brain is a chemical reaction so that's why we call it the hard problem of consciousness we cannot explain how we experience anything including our own body because our body is an experience right now having the experience that you have a body I have a body or your mind can't explain it now there is something called the easy problem of consciousness and that has been solved the easy problem is that when you have an experience there is a chemical reaction or a electrochemical reaction to that experience in your brain so when you're seeing there's a electrochemical reaction in your occipital cortex when you're hearing there's an electrochemical reaction in your auditory cortex etc so these electrochemical reactions in the body they are called the neural correlates of consciousness and si si so every every experience we have there's a neural correlate which you can see on a cat scan or a brain scan these days there's lots of amazing technology that allows you to look at the brain when somebody's having a thought or an emotion or a perceptual experience these are called neural correlates of consciousness correlates they are not called neural causes of consciousness because we don't know if these chemical reactions produce consciousness or experience we don't know all we know there's some correspondence but just for a moment think about this even the neural correlate is an experience right even the brain is an experience when you're looking at the brain that's an experience so it all gets very mysterious but the fact is we do not know the origins of consciousness just as we do not know how the universe came out of nothing we do not know the origins of consciousness and since yesterday we've been exploring consciousness in different ways and we've come to one conclusion that consciousness is not a thing it's formless remember so consciousness like the universe is made of nothing the universe is made of nothing and consciousness is made of nothing could there be a connection that nothing interacting with nothing produces everything and I say nothing interacting with nothing and light two different kinds of nothing could they be the same nothing in other words nothing interacting with nothing produces everything and by nothing just break down the word no things no thing that's what nothing means no thing becomes all things okay so this is where we are today in science now let's backtrack and see how human beings have thought about this mystery for ever since they started thinking okay now just to give you a little background because you know everyday these days everything is kind of scientific then all kinds of scientists biologists evolutionary biologists anthropologists cosmologists physicists mathematicians etc so of course science is the latest way in which we try to understand reality but human beings have thought about reality from for a long time and this has been kind of the sequence divine universe God created the universe who or what is God well most people think of God as some kind of a dead white male somewhere in the sky with a beard sitting there in judgment but in any case in every religion there's been a God and God has been imagined as some kind of a superhuman some kind of a supernatural entity for most of humanity or for most of let's say humanity's history that's been how human beings have thought of the universe by the way there's something very interesting I want to share with you which anyone read the book sapiens you read the book very good book is really deep historian from Oxford now lives in Israel so deep historians going too deep history all the way back and according to the deepest torrents up until say twenty thirty thousand years ago there were eight different kinds of humans so that there were eight different types of human species but they all came from the human family just like a cat and a lion and a panther and a cheetah and what else your house catch a lion lion cheetah tiger' Leopard they're all the same family but they're different species okay and now do you define the species of species mates only with its own kind so you won't see a panther mating with a tiger but it's still the same family so up until twenty thirty thousand years ago there were eight different kinds of humans we are Homo sapiens which means the Wise Ones it's a name we gave to ourselves but we gave names to other humans and such as homo erectus homo Neanderthal is homo Florence's I forget all the others but there are many kinds and they all had a very rudimentary language you know how did language first come about you know because before language there were only sounds that's the sound that's a sound this is a sound sound and nature is full of sounds birds are making sound animals we say growl etc the cry of a wolf all the sounds and sounds are basically what the alphabet sounds like Gregor turn and then a vowel sounds ooh II oh um but you hear them in nature these sounds so all organisms particularly humans and primates elephant another animal started to communicate through some even dolphins communicate through some different kinds of sounds in the case of the case of whales infrasonic etc and you know some species here ultrasound things like that but they started to communicate through sound humans had a very primitive language and the language was about two things danger three things danger food sex why because these are the three things you need to know about in order to survive if there's a tiger coming then you better watch out because tiger is going to eat you up there's food there okay there's the opportunity to have sex and mate and reproduce so very basic language danger calls mating calls food calls but then one species costs develop the language first for gossip okay so instead of saying food so so I'm so sleeping what's on to someone who can be trusted so in film cannot be trusted so-and-so is a good person honorable guess what that led to that led to stories so we became storytellers okay we are the only species who tell stories we write stories scientific stories stories about culture etc and once we started writing stories and telling stories we actually Bank wish to all the other humans because the other humans could never be all animals move in packs you know whether it's the cat family or wolves or hyenas or elephants they move in packs and the leader of the pack could never get more than a few dozen followers humans could never get more than a hundred followers but get when they started telling stories they got millions of followers millions you can't tell a monkey give me your banana and then monkey Evan you'll get a billion bananas but you can tell human beings that and they'll go and commit suicide and become bombers or whatever so as soon as we started telling stories we got rid of all the other species because this led to everything that we call civilization art architecture music literature science technology money money is a story right it's a piece of paper which says I think you give you this piece of paper and you can buy an automobile or you know buy food with it so it's an agreement on what revalue money is a story commerce kingdoms monarchs countries nations all these came about as and through the ability to of humans to make stories so then they started making stories about the origin of the universe and the first story was God the second story as you'll see is the classical universe the third the relativistic universe the fourth the quantum universe the fifth the human universe and now we are saying actually you are the universe that is the universe is made up construct that there is no universe with you that is experiencing something and interpreting that as the universe but let's track this a little bit ok so this is the first story God created the universe and is the source and origin of life and mind that's the Sistine Chapel by the way I had the opportunity recently to teach a group of priests at vertical meditation in the Sistine Chapel was a great experience I just joined the board of the Vatican as an advisor for science and technology so it's not a it's not a big deal there are a lot of people but it's a testimony to Pope Francis that he wants to do this okay so this this universe it was the story of humans human storytellers till about the appearance of Isaac Newton and those are the dates and Isaac Newton was actually Christian he believed in the Bible but he also believed that God whatever that entity is God created the laws of nature as he called them they were called scientists at that time were called natural philosophers and so Isaac Newton says that the universe is created and ruled by fixed laws of nature that can be known through human reason and logic you don't have to believe in anything you just have to reason it out but of course you see the missing element here is so reason is based on thought but nobody is asking where does that come from but never mind that at the moment during Isaac Newton said there were these other great luminaries Leibniz Descartes Spinoza Walter Voltaire great minds I think for the moment we should just talk but Rene Descartes the French philosopher who came up with the theory of what we call dualism so dualism and you probably remember the famous phrase everybody's heard I think therefore I am okay so according to Descartes there's a mental and spiritual world and then there's a physical world and two are different okay and that's why it's called dualism mind and spirit one realm and the other is physical dualism was very popular at the time of these great philosophers and that time of Isaac Newton partly because it satisfied a lot of intellectual discourse at that time from what people knew about it and secondly it was also political the Pope basically said you scientists you can take care of the physical world and we guys will take care of the interest all guys anyway we guys will take care of the mental and spiritual so it's kind of a peaceful settlement between the two the priests and the scientists but nobody believes in dualism anymore because if there are two different entities mind spirit in one side and then the physical then how do they interact okay how does a thought create a physical manifestation simple ideas lift your hand up like this that's what the starches are thought right what happens here is physical so how does the thought which is not a physical entity you know you can't weigh a thought you can't measure a thought in terms of units of mass and energy how does a thought which is something outside of the physical realm cause physical effects whatever it is movement of muscles volition choice speaking you know it all starts with the torch and then here it is so today dualism is not fashionable because it cannot be scientifically justified furthermore without going into details it violates the laws of conservation of energy so where does the energy come from for a dot to cause physical effects okay so nobody believes in dualism anymore I just want you to know there are very few people who look at examining reality who believe in these that there are two different entities which leaves out what is called monism there's only one reality and so now in that monism there are two camps one camp says it's all physical everything is physical thought somehow is a mystery but the brain produces thought which I have already told you that we can't prove that we don't know we'll find out so monism is either it's all physical or the other is it's all mental spiritual it's all one thing but it's one thing whatever reality is it's one thing that's monism okay this model of it's a model of reality actually persisted until very recently give me five moments sir so this model persisted until recently it persisted until the last century this model of reality still works so from if we have landed men on the moon if we have put people on Mars if we have automobiles and jet planes all based on the laws of physics and not only the laws of physics on the classical laws of physics that Isaac Newton created almost 300 years ago it's amazing his mind was amazing okay seed leaves are laws of motion gravitation planetary motion objects on earth and celestial bodies laws of thermodynamics and all that until this guy showed up and he said the old model was obsolete so now we're going to take a short three-minute break Gabrielle you can come we decided you shouldn't sit for more than one hours so take a stretch okay so now we've come to the last century cracking this whole history Einstein published two theories one is called the special theory of relativity the other is called general theory of relativity so one was 1905 the others 1915 by the way he got the Nobel Prize not for these theories but for something called the photoelectric effect so next time you're in the elevator here and you're trying to get in and the doors is opening our closing but you go inside the space between the doors and it suddenly opens that's the photoelectric effect that's what he got nobel prize for how four times you know create the electrical effect and we use it in all our technology today he didn't get it for these two amazing theories so what is the special theory of relativity without going into details the speed of light is fixed at 300,000 kilometers per second it is constant for all friends of reference matter and energy are interconvertible so small amounts of matter have huge amounts of energy that's the basis of the atomic bombs okay so the atomic bomb came about as a result of this theory then 1915 he published the general theory of relativity which is more about a new theory of gravity so took away Einstein's idea of gravity and that gravity is a distortion in space-time so get gravity is a curvature in space-time and this led even though he didn't know it led ultimately to all the theories of black holes and gravitational time delay which means that as we get closer to a black hole gravity becomes very intense and so does time slow down and when you enter the what is called the event horizon when he very close to the black hole then time stops now it's very difficult to imagine all this because it's all based on mathematics but a few years ago when Stephen Hawking was seventy years of age they had in New York they had celebration of the science festival for him as a birthday celebration because he described black holes they had a ballet and a philharmonic orchestra to kind of explain black holes and time and so on it was an amazing play you know you have these ballet dancers and the story is that there's a spaceship which is about the size of a city literally the size of a city that is traveling through intergalactic space to another galaxy which is millions of light years away millions of light years away and the ship is the size of a city many floors and many different things and the captain of the ship has a son the idea is that they'll get to this other galaxy after many generations so they have to live in this spaceship for millions of years generation after generation it's all set to music with ballet dancers and everything and the captain has a son by the name of Icarus you know the story of Icarus right so the captain explains to Icarus that a black hole occurs when a giant star exhaust system or nuclear energy and starts collapsing on itself till it disappears to a point of zero volume and infinite density so nothing can escape from it not even light that's why it's called a black hole around the black hole there's an event horizon about 12 kilometers outside the black hole there's an event horizon and if you are looking at events from this side from our side of the event horizon then when a photon of light gets to the event horizon it takes eternity for the for the photon to travel from the event horizon to the black hole eternity because everything slows down if something takes eternity to cross 12 kilometers it means it's stuck forever right but if you are observing the same event from the other side then the photon zips right through enters the black hole goes through a wormhole and shows up in another universe in a different dimension of space and time that's the theory and now we know there are black holes even in our own every galaxy as a black hole okay so all this was based on mathematics that came from Einstein so the captain of the ship chose Icarus listen we're going to be crossing the vicinity of many black holes as we go through these different galaxies I want you to be careful don't mess with a black hole because then I'll never see you again and I don't want to lose you Icarus is 12 years old and one day he's playing with his computers on the ship and he spots a gravitational effect that he knows there's a black hole close by so he goes to the docking station of course he knows his father has told him not mess but he's curious he's 12 years old so it gets into this little space shuttle a little spaceship like you know you're big when you have big cruisers you have little boats and so he gets into this he leaves the mother ship and he's soon floating in intergalactic space he identifies through his computers where the black hole is and he heads for the black hole gets to the event horizon and then imagined event horizons like the rim of a funnel that tapers into a black hole where time stops so he gets right to the rim and he's a very good skillful navigator he kind of skirts the rim it's like the razor's edge you could go in and disappear forever or he could slip out but he manages to go around at once without slipping he'd away and then he just cuts around at once and then he pulls off the gravitational field and he gets back on his computer's he radios his dad he says dad I did it there's no response he said dad there's no response you can imagine the music and the ballet dancers knowledge so dad and he starts to cry because there's no response and so he's 12 years old he stops messing with his computers the spaceship drifts off and gets lost in interstellar space and then a little time goes by and suddenly he sees a galaxy a different galaxy and he gets on his computers he gets into this galaxy enters their gravitational field he finds a planet he looks at all these stars and finally he lands his little spaceship on this planet and all those people who are living there they come and to look at him and the planet and the spaceship and they welcome him and all that he's tried their old kid but then they look at a spaceship and they said where did you get that spaceship from he says it's the spaceship of you know the mother spaceship which was my father's big spaceship and I said you know that model went out a few hundred million years ago okay so a few hundred million years had passed for those people and all he did was take one circle around the black hole now this of course was a play in science fiction but this is today's science okay so what is the general theory of relativity also tell us it tells us that the universe is very dynamic that space-time matter are all interdependent they're the same thing now space is nothing great time is a very abstract thing where it's time where is yesterday where is the century ago where is the thousand years from now and so Einstein came to this remarkable conclusion that space time and matter are actually the same thing but he didn't know what it was and in 1930 he met this great Indian poet my book starts with that whole story he met the same great in in poit Tagore who was not only a point but he was a seer and he understood consciousness and the two of them met in a little town called Potsdam and they discussed the nature of reality and so Einstein was what scientists philosophers of science called a realest realest means that the world is real and Tagore was what they call an idealist idealist goes back to the time of Plato which means the world is made of ideas basically in other words the world is a projection of ideas from human consciousness then a very respectful dialogue lasted a few hours was reported in the New York Times and then the world war broke off broke you know the war broke Second World War Nazism came the whole conversation was lost I happen to find that conversation and it was actually the basis of the new book Tagore an Einstein talking about the nature of reality so around Einsteins time there were these other great physicists Niels Bohr Aaron Schrodinger Max Planck Paul Dirac Werner Heisenberg and they pioneered what we call quantum physics and quantum mechanics Albert Einstein was a reluctant participant in the development of the theories of quantum mechanics which is mathematical again okay reluctant why because as we will see when we go into quantum mechanic there's something called nonlocality where everything is instantly correlated with everything which basically violates the laws of relativity so he couldn't adjust to this whole idea that everything in the universe is entangled with everything else in the universe something we call quantum entanglement so if effect the universe you do something here and something in a distant part of the universe in a different location of space-time instantly response and so Einstein kind of ridicule that as spooky action at a distance and that became a very famous phrase in ridiculing of what we now call nonlocality so what are the basis of quantum physics again and without going to the math the most important is that without observation the world remains possibilities that's called the Copenhagen interpretation because all these scientists used to meet in Copenhagen which was the home of Niels Bohr who was the father of quantum physics one of these people or when Schrodinger you've heard of Schrodinger's cat and Schrodinger's equation while Schrodinger was a vedantist he was a student of Vedanta everything that we're discussing so the most important thing here is some of the things that we've been kind of discussing that you know particles and waves are the same thing there's something called nonlocality that the fundamental nature of the universe is that it's non-local everything is connected to everything everything is inseparable observation causes collapse of wavefunction the movement of atoms is random etc etc and this became the basis of all our technology today so today when you use your iPhone or your Android and use a computer when you use Twitter or Facebook or any of the technologies that we use today they are based on the calculations of quantum mechanics in other words it works okay we won't have our modern technology without the mathematics of quantum mechanics but then there's something called interpretations of quantum mechanics remember I use the word shut up and calculate that's a very popular word in amongst physicists that the calculations work and if you shut up and just do the math you might get your tenure you'll get a professorship your career will be furthered and you might get a grant from the government you might even win the Nobel Prize but don't ask what does it mean okay what is what does it mean that is how do we interpret this so what are interpretations interpretations are sets of statements which attempt to explain quantum mechanics beyond the recipes it gives for performing calculations so kalasa furs of science such as Schrodinger Everett borne all these born by the way was the German German mathematician who also called the physicist who got C Nobel Prize he was the great grandfather or no grandfather of Olivia newton-john the singer um she told me that so these guys were more interested in what does this whole thing mean okay what's going on as I mentioned the Copenhagen interpretation is the most popular was until recently and what is the Copenhagen interpretation unless there's a conscious being in looking at the universe it doesn't actually exist that's the Copenhagen interpretation it remains possibilities then a conscious being looks at it and it becomes this for humans this but for other species we don't know what even though we can have relationship you can have a relationship with your dog or your cat but you don't actually know what they're seeing or what they're experiencing the relationship is in consciousness right so this was the go to Wikipedia and these are the interpretations of quantum physics more than twenty so more than twenty different schools explaining what's going on and they all work with the same math so the math works no matter what interpretation you choose when you have twenty-five interpretations of the same mathematics then one thing is sure no one knows what's going on okay everybody disagrees about everything I accept the math so I mentioned you the most the most popular interpretation was Copenhagen Niels Bohr and all those luminaries that I showed you until recently and why until recently because most modern-day physicists are realists and they are also a tastes and they actually use the term militant atheists that they think if you believe in God or something like that you know that's all goo-goo it's not real and you're stupid basically so they try to avoid consciousness as an explanation so as I said until recently that was the most so now there are all these twenty five but the most important one the one that most scientists subscribed to at the moment is something called eternal inflation so you know a few years ago I asked Joel Premack who is one of the physicists who discussed describe dark matter is at the University of California I said I don't understand eternal inflation the math is too difficult can you explain it to me eternal inflation was first proposed by a Russian cosmologists who's now at Stanford but usually originally from massive Moscow so the mathematics came from him his name is Andrei Linde this is the explanation I got imagine there's a casino outside of space-time it cosmic casino bigger than Las Vegas and imagine that in this cosmic casino there are an infinity of slot machines and each slot machine is throwing up coins randomly randomly because no God no consciousness nothing like that so it has to be random and these machines are throwing up coins this is a metaphor of course to explain the math and if the coin comes back heads up it doubles in size if the coin comes back tails up it halves in size now imagine a scenario where you have an infinity of tails so tail tail tail tail tail tail almost an infinite number of times so every time the coin gets reduced in size till it becomes Planck sighs Clank size of the smaller size you can imagine 10 to the power of minus 37 centimeters okay it's a size that is invisible it's about the size of a quantum fluctuation so in the in the cosmic casino there are holes little holes which are playing sighs this quantum fluctuation escapes the casino and spins off into a universe and because this casino has an infinite number slot machines actually infinite casinos infinite coins and this happened for this happening for all eternity then every once in a while there's the birth of a universe in fact there may be an infinite number of universes by now the math works but will we ever be able to prove this theory no because what they're talking about is immeasurable you can't measure once you get to Planck's a scale nothing is measurable it's basically mad so does quantum physics explain the universe no it's a way of calculating and a nice way to create computers and transistors and all of that but doesn't explain what's going on this is where we are today okay Copenhagen is explained so basically everything that people are talking about is mathematical guessing games in fact there's a book now cooked from person called Max tegmark who's the head of mathematics and physics at MIT and his book is called the mathematical universe he says if something can be proved mathematically then it exists somewhere it exists okay but will we ever be able to document that there's no theoretical way that we can okay so basically we have reached a dead end we have reached a dead end principally because first of all the whole universe that's visible is point zero one percent and ultimately we have to come to some other theory which leads to the latest theory that the universe is consciousness that random events may not be enough to explain the fine-tuning of the laws of nature and the rise of life on Earth so about five years ago had this debate with the most prominent atheist of our time Richard Dawkins who is a professor at Oxford of evolutionary biology very famous if you haven't heard of him then you haven't read his books God Delusion etc etc but he's very prominent ok when he's he's the leader of the Atheist movement and so we were invited to have a debate conversation in Mexico he can find it on the internet if you want if you look up Richard Dawkins Deepak Chopra will find it and it was there very interesting to our conversation but I mentioned to him this idea that the universe is an expression of consciousness and he was very upset I quoted I quoted Freeman Dyson who was now 93 years old and still teaching at Princeton University one of the only living people since Einstein Sharpe has very sharp British like Dawkins he's in he was in Cambridge now it's and Princeton so I quoted Dyson in the debate you saw it apparently on the internet and he screamed at me he should first of all Dyson didn't say that secondly he should sue you and here's all I was afraid he was going to get a stroke he was so upset you see these militant atheists it's not rational it's none of this is part of the conversations very emotional they are rebelling against their parents who told them there's God or something like that you know it's it's a childhood thing which is very emotional it's not about rationality or physics is about their dad or their mother or something you know so he got very upset with me and afterwards he said Dyson should sue you so I actually emailed Dyson these days that's the other thing you can find anybody and you can find their email and you can send them so I said dr. Dawkins said you should sue me because I said you think we live in a conscious universe and Dyson actually responded to me and to Dawkins and I've saved that email for future generation he said three things have have three riddles very precise language three riddles have occupied me throughout my life now number one a universe that is fine-tuned for life and for mind so the universe is if the math was off by one fraction of a second one decimal point here or there we won't be having this conversation so universe fine-tuned for mind and life the second he said the unpredictable movement of atoms he didn't use the word random he said unpredictable random means that the movement of atoms is inherently random unpredictable means I don't know what's going on okay it's like going to Grand Central Station and everything seems random but everybody is going somewhere right some people are going to Philadelphia some people are going to New York so it's not inherently random it's unpredictable to meet the observer you know somebody is going there it's all seems totally chaotic but there's purpose behind each of these movements so he said the unpredictable movement of atoms and the second riddle and the third riddle is our own consciousness he said I don't know the connection between these three riddles but I know there's a connection and that was Sincerely Yours Freeman Dyson PS I have no intention of suing anyone okay so I've saved that email but this this leads us to where we are right now okay physics and math cannot explain this experience we're having nor can biology explain this experience we're having so we've got to start thinking in totally different ways which became the basis of my book you are the universe and I want to do this in a very gentle way so without now going into we have a little bit of limited time so if I ask you what is this you're going to say it's an iPhone if I ask you this was this it's a shoe ask you what's this this is the hand if I ask you what's this it's a body I've asked you what's this it's a statue and what I'm proposing to you right now is these are human constructs four modes of knowing and experience in our consciousness these are human constructs four modes of knowing and experience in human consciousness first of all no other species would have this experience they won't say this is a statue or this is a phone that's issue okay not even a child would you want to show that little video of the baby oh my daughter sent me that she found this on some a Facebook page of a friend of hers or close friend of us so what do you seem that in that video all you see is curiosity wonder even mystery do you see that there's a sense of mystery what's what's going on alright and also a little bit of joy wonder that's an essential state of a human being till we come up with a construct you not supposed to eat that that's a toy this is your hand this is your body okay and your name is whatever it's Indian or Canadian Indian and you're a male and you're a Hindu and now you have a constructor a human construct for basic experience which is what curiosity wonder joy or mystery colours shapes textures smells this is what experiences but by giving names to the experience we have created a construct that's an object this is a body and this is a human being and where is that construct created of course in consciousness it's the giving words two modes of experience and modes of knowing and what is the mode what is knowing what is consciousness knowing itself as this experience so this baby is what less than a year old okay now guess what happens by the time the baby is eight years old and that's my precocious grandson okay so let's show that video after you've been bamboozled bamboozled by what we call education so this was his graduation speech and he's not even yet in the element either hasn't finished elementary school when he finished his last school whatever okay so very early in life we create constructs and then you know as you get older you become Stephen Hawking it becomes mind time then you say space-time galaxies stars gluons bosons quarks particles are these things real or are there names for experience what is the experience the experience is what we call qualia a quality of consciousness color shape form appearance sound and what are qualia their qualities of consciousness modifying itself has experience so there is no such thing as a universe there is no such thing as a body there is no such thing as a mind all there is is consciousness modulating itself as experience which we call qualia which are both perceptual and mental and then we give words to these experiences and we construct the human universe so all human knowledge is rooted in consciousness and our knowledge is also very limited because of the limitations of what we call the brain you know you can't experience most of what we call reality infrared ultraviolet you know ultrasound infrasonic or whatever supersonic we develop instruments to explore these realms but reality is infinite and it localizes in us this experience and we are the conscious agents who create reality in our own image and what we call God or the universe or a body or a mind are just labels that we give to modes of knowing and modes of experience which are modifications of our own selves why is this important this is important because very consistent with Vedanta by the way but also a new kind of spin on it this is important because we are you know as you look at the causes of human suffering across eons of time human suffering comes because first of all we don't know what reality is number two we are clinging and holding on to something that's very transient it's it's an appearance and disappearance we are also afraid of impermanence we identify with an ego which is another construct and we are afraid of that those are called the five pleasures of five causes of human suffering and the wisdom traditions tell us that all these causes of suffering would disappear if we understood what is real what is real is that which knows that which tries to figure it out that is consciousness itself and since that consciousness is not in time it is eternal you don't have to have the constructs of death because that happens to an experience not to you everything okay okay so if you could know what is real you would not be afraid of death okay so let's let's stop just a few minutes we have still a few minutes left we say this body is real right you can touch it feel it etc now close your eyes and just experience your body right now with your eyes closed in other words fill your body open your eyes what did you experience when you close your eyes and felt the body what did you experience hmm sensation right some energy some vibration but some sensation more OS moreover the sensation was all kind of diffused amorphous something here or something here or something if you weren't familiar with the word body like that baby okay its eyes are closed what's it's experiencing sensations where are the sensations coming from consciousness what are they they are modified forms of consciousness consciousness modifying itself as this sensation now look at your body what are you experiencing don't say my body what are you experiencing the shape a color a form you're experiencing qualia qualities of consciousness they're modified forms of consciousness so what is your body body is an intermittent stream of sensations sense perceptions intermittent if it a thing did you have the same sensation and perception of this ten years ago or when you said I was a child it was a different experience right so this is not a thing this is an activity of consciousness modulating itself has this experience if you just replace the word body with experience and what is the experience sensations and sense perceptions which are modified forms of consciousness everything that we call the physical world is like that it's an intermittent stream of sensations images feelings and thoughts so there is nothing that you can call the thing everything that you call a thing is an activity and some of that activity recycles in the same pattern so it looks like the same thing you know what you walk out of here this building is not suddenly going to show up as a dinosaur okay but at one time it did show up at this this location did show up as a dinosaur or what we call a dinosaur another human construct okay so as you look through a bigger lens then you say nothing stand still not your body not this building not what you call a tree or a mountain or a galaxy or a quark it's an activity and what's it an activity of it's a quality of awareness the experience that you're having is in time but that which is modulating its itself as experience is not in time at all because it's awareness it has no form it's nothing and what is that nothing it's you it's you interacting with yourself to experience this now in the beginning that can be very scary but as you get comfortable with it and you know it then you know that you're in the immortal being a timeless being and that even death is an illusion in the same way as birth is an illusion birth and death happen every moment why because there's appearance and then there's disappearance last night's dream there was appearances and disappearances right things appearing and things disappearing well the same thing is happening right now things are appearing and disappearing not only things that you see as the outside world but your own body your own mind appearing disappearing appearing what is vibrating is consciousness what is vibrating is you as the universe okay so when we say you are the universe this is not a metaphor it's literal without you there is no universe without you there is no experience of this body without you there is no experience of a thought without you there is no experience of an emotion without you there is no experience of a perception without you there is no experience of anything but what you are is a particular species of an infinite consciousness just like mosquitoes another species of consciousness and mosquitoes universe god knows what lattice what is the universe of an insect with a hundred eyes who knows okay so infinite consciousness formless eternal timeless and we are like little branches of that in a room a as a great poem Rumi has great poems in you he says we come spinning out of nothingness scattering stars like dust look at these words spinning out of nothingness this is you beyond ideas of right and wrong there is a field I'll meet you there but then one of his best we are not just a drop in the ocean of consciousness we are also the ocean in the drop so you're both an individual but also you're the infinite being you're the infinite being having an individual experience to what purpose to find out who you are Who am I the infinite being having a local experience Who am I a spiritual being having a human experience what do I want to find out who I am what's my purpose discovery what am i grateful for existence you didn't ask to be to exist but here you are okay having this human experience so here's our formula to replace Einstein U is equal to C universe is equal to consciousness in fact there is nothing other than consciousness consciousness is how we know any experience the universe we know is a human contract even contracts come through what we call education all education is ignorance all education is ignorant of reality because education doesn't tell you how we know what we know it's information why would I send the kid to an expensive school to get this this is on Google you want to know what the meaning of existence is right all experiences are modifications of core consciousness or pure awareness awareness is a field of infinite possibilities and so we are humans create constructs around raw experience and assign names to them constructs created science technology art religion and civilization are they useful yes if I say to you I'm going to meet you on Tuesday at 12 noon at the corner of Broadway and 56th and then we'll go to Serafina and have Caesar salad that's a useful construct if I didn't give those give you that information we would probably never meet at the corner of 56th and Broadway we would never end up in Serafina having Caesar salad but these are names we have given to experience whose decides this is Broadway who decides this is the line between Canada and the US yes yeah and it's about time to build a wall and have the Americans and have the Americans paper it so these are constructs all walls are constructs and the biggest constructs are mental constructs money is a construct Wall Street is a construct nation-states are constructs race is a construct religion is a construct reality is not a construct realities that which gives rise to the construct and dodges consciousness now this is very useful right it makes the human experience very navigable we fly jet planes and we send Rovers to Mars and but even the body is a construct we're sending a construct to another construct the only reality is consciousness in which those constructs are conceived are governed and come into existence and the most difficult and fundamental constructs that we cannot get rid of because we are so bamboozled a mind brain body world and cosmos these are names we give to experiences tell a dog it has a mind teletig is called a dog tell Obama's dog that it was in the White House sitting in the Oval Office that his boss was a president poor boy he has no idea we made it up when we experience sensations including sense perceptions images feelings and thoughts acronyms EFT we give it the name mind when we experience sense perceptions we give them names such as brain body world cosmos names and descriptions are language constructs that nail down raw experience a baby's raw experience a sensory sound sight touch says taste and smell along with pleasure and pain the attraction or aversion to experience is rudimentary emotions the interpretation of sense perception is taught without these human constructs realities consciousness in various modes of itself not yet labeled as sense perceptions thoughts emotions the real reality is being existence awareness timeless formless dimensionless by the way now scientists agree that the real reality is dimensionless Einstein was the first one who kind of he was such a genius that he was think at least even though he was stuck with the materialist model because that's the prevailing model he said if all the objects in the universe disappeared most people think that all that would be left in space this is what I am sensitive all it's in the book if all the objects disappeared all that would be left to space it is most people think like that but my theory says that if all the objects disappeared even space would disappear time would disappear what we call spaces unmanifest consciousness and what we call matter is manifest consciousness and the distance between them is space-time all in ourselves mind-brain cosmos a human construct derived from modes of knowing and experiencing consciousness forms and phenomena rise and fall in an eternal now last night's dream but this one too forms and phenomena rising and falling he turn aliy now now is not in time now is the window to eternity timeless devoid of constructs where eternal timeless awareness recycling in space-time as the experience of form and phenomena anything that could be named or described from particles the galaxy's DNA to genome mind to brain world to cosmos is the human concert constructs are divided derived from modes of knowing and experiencing consciousness modifications of ourselves you are the universe there is only consciousness if you are religious you can say there is only God God being the mystery that gives rise to this experience eternally now ok I'm going to skip the rest of these slides because the whole section called qualia science in the book but birth death body mind God stars galaxies these are constructs for experience your freedom lies in the experience of identity beyond constructs and pure awareness prior to subject object split the subject object split is artificial for me right now I'm the subject of experience you're the object but for you you are the subject and I'm the object so which one is it actually it's all one okay all human suffering is the result of attachment to a construct that happens to an experience not the awareness in which the experience is born and dies in the timeless moment of now so freedom is now and just being okay we'll take the break now for about whatever time a construct and then we'll do the next set of sutras thank you very much

Channel: The Chopra Well

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Length: 110min 43sec (6643 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2017