Pure Consciousness

The Reality of Consciousness

The word “consciousness” comes from the Latin root scio, which means “to know.” Consequently, consciousness can be defined as that abstract and mysterious something that has the potential to know.

Without consciousness there would be no knowledge at all—whether philosophical, religious, or scientific. In other words, knowledge is structured in consciousness. This is not a matter of debate. It is a matter of common experience.

However, there are two different perspectives about the reality of consciousness, which amount to fundamentally different paradigms, or ways of thinking, about the world.

The objective paradigm, which provides the basis for modern scientific thinking, suggests that everything that exists, including all forms of consciousness, arise from complex interactions among fundamental fields of force and matter.

From this perspective, consciousness is nothing fundamental to nature. It is a mere epiphenomenon produced in the brains and nervous systems of biological organisms.

The subjective paradigm, which provides the basis for ancient spiritual thinking, presents a very different view. It suggests that everything that exists, including all forms of force and matter, arise from complex interactions among fundamental fields of consciousness. In this case, the brain must be viewed as product of consciousness, and not the other way around.

The Field of Pure Consciousness

In the ancient wisdom traditions, the fundamental fields of consciousness were called the gods, and the unity of these fields was called God, the Supreme Being. Alternately, in some traditions, the fundamental fields of consciousness were called selves, and the unity of these fields was called the Supreme Self.

In both cases, the Supreme Being or the Supreme Self was viewed as the ultimate origin of creation—the one thing from which everything originates.
The Supreme Being or Supreme Self can thus be equated with an unbounded and all-pervading field of pure consciousness, which operates non-locally on the basis of self-conception and free will choice.

The field of pure consciousness can be understood as the subjective essence of the unified field, which acts as the ultimate origin of creation. It not only acts as the origin of all individual thoughts, but also all of the forms and phenomena in nature.

In Sanskrit the word for pure consciousness is chit. The ancient Vedic texts tell us that pure consciousness is capable of knowing itself, by itself, through itself alone. without any dependence upon the empirical world, and that all subject-object relations arise as mere vibrations of consciousness.

“This duality, which consists of subject and object, is a mere vibration of consciousness. Pure consciousness is ultimately objectless; hence, it is declared to be eternally without relations.” (Mandukya Karika IV.72)

In Greek pure consciousness is denoted by the term nous, a term that is often translated as “intellect” or “intelligence” or “mind.” However, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about 500 BC, defined this term as follows:

“All other things partake in a portion of everything, while nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would partake in all things if it were mixed with any…For it is the thinnest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest strength; and nous has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have soul.” (Anaxagoras, DK B 12, trans. by J. Burnet)

That which is infinite, self-ruled, and mixed with nothing but itself, is none other than the field of pure consciousness. That field, which is the one eternal Self of all beings, is also the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Ruler, the Supreme Being, who acts as the ultimate origin of all things by merely knowing itself—that is, by merely vibrating within itself.

This is the essential teaching of the perennial wisdom, which has been bestowed upon mankind by the divine messengers since time immemorial.

Empirical Consciousness and Pure Consciousness

To more fully understand this teaching a distinction must be drawn between two different types of consciousness and two distinct types of knowledge, which can be called empirical and pure.

Empirical consciousness refers to the type of consciousness whose knowledge is born of empirical experience. This can be called empirical knowledge. It pertains to the phenomenal forms of created existence that abide within the physical Cosmos.

Pure consciousness refers to the type of consciousness whose knowledge is born from pure intuition. This can be called pure knowledge. It pertains to the non-phenomenal forms of uncreated existence that abide within the metaphysical Logos.

Whereas empirical consciousness depends upon the created existence of the physical Cosmos, pure consciousness does not. The field of pure consciousness has the potential to know itself, by itself, through itself alone, whether the physical Cosmos exists or not.

When pure consciousness knows itself in the absence of the physical Cosmos, it conceives itself as the metaphysical Logos—the imperishable field of pure knowledge that underlies all things in creation.

Human Consciousness and Divine Consciousness

Human consciousness is a manifestation of the field of pure consciousness. It is but an expression of universal divine consciousness. Prior to enlightenment, human consciousness is restricted to empirical consciousness and the forms of empirical knowledge that are born from it.

To obtain the state of pure consciousness, one must transcend the process of thinking. One must transcend the activity of the mind, body, and senses and experience the underlying basis of the mind.

This can be compared to a wave settling down on the ocean. In this analogy, the wave corresponds to a thought. When a wave settles down in the ocean, it expands and becomes indistinguishable from the ocean.

Similarly, when a thought settles down in the mind, it expands and becomes indistinguishable from the unbounded field of pure consciousness, which lies at the basis of the mind, and is infinite and eternal.

By experiencing the field of pure consciousness, directly and intuitively, without any active involvement on the part of the individual mind and intellect, one comes to know the one eternal Self—which is the very essence of God, the Supreme Being. The Scriptures thus state:

“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalms 46.10)

This type of Self-knowledge, rooted in pure consciousness, is called gnosis. Those who obtain it more closely resemble immortal gods than mortal men. In this regard, the Hermetic sages declared:

“These men got a share of gnosis; they received nous, and so became complete men…these, my son, in comparison with the others, are as immortal gods to mortal men. They embrace in their own mind all things that are, the things on earth and the things in heaven, and even what is above heaven, if there is aught above heaven, and raising themselves to that height, they see the Good….Such, my son, is the work that mind does; it throws open the way to knowledge of things divine, and enables us to apprehend God.” (Corpus Hermeticum, translated by Walter Scott, Shambala, 1993, p. 151-3)

This type of all-embracing knowledge (gnosis), rooted in the experience of pure consciousness (nous), is required to make the journey back Home. It is required to obtain the mystical visions of the starry heavens, and of what lies above the heavens, deep in the bosom of the infinite.

Before one can even begin the journey, one must come to know the Self—the universal field of pure consciousness that lies at the basis of the individual mind. The Self is the one thing by knowing which everything else becomes known, because it is the universal Knower.

Hence, we should seek to know the Self—by transcending thought and becoming one with the field of pure consciousness. That is the Portal to worlds unknown, horizons unseen, and possibilities undreamt.

BY Robert E. Cox

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? ~ Miroslav Volf

Muslims and Christians can work together to depose dictators and assert the power of the people. We’ve seen it happen on the Tahrir Square in Cairo during the 2011 revolution in Egypt, with devout Muslims and Coptic Christians protesting side by side. But can Muslims and Christians work together to build a democratic society in which rights of all are respected, the rights of minority Coptic Christians no less than the rights of majority Muslims? They can, if they have a common set of fundamental values. But do they? They do, if they, both monotheists, have a common God.

Ever since 9/11, the most common question I am asked when I speak about these two religions is whether or not Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Muslims don’t push the question. But Christians do, vigorously — in Europe, Asia and Africa no less than in North America. Maybe that’s not surprising. In the manual of the terrorists who flew the planes on a suicidal mission it read: “Remember, this is a battle for the sake of God.” In the name of God and with expectations of glory in this world and rewards in the next, they killed themselves and thousands of innocent civilians. To many Christians it seems obvious that the God who spills the blood of the innocent and rewards suicidal missions with paradisiacal pleasures can’t be the God they worship.

The question, however, isn’t mainly about the terrorists and their God. It’s about Muslims generally. It draws its energy from a deep concern. To ask: “Do we have a common God?” is to worry: “Can we live together without bloodshed?” That’s why whether a given community worships the same god as another community has always been a crucial cultural and political question and not just a theological one.

Here are the realities we all face:

* Christianity and Islam are today the most numerous and fastest growing religions globally. Together they encompass more than half of humanity. Consequence: both are here to stay.

* As a result of globalization, ours is an interconnected and interdependent world. Religions are intermingled within single states and across their boundaries. Consequence: Muslims and Christians will increasingly share common spaces.

* Since both religions are by their very nature “socially engaged” and since their followers mostly embrace democratic ideals, they will continue to push for their vision of the good life in the public square. Consequence: tensions between Muslims and Christians are unavoidable.

Growing, intertwined and assertive — communities of Muslims and Christians will live together. But can they live in peace building together a common future?

At the height of the Iraq War in 2004, influential TV evangelist and former U.S. presidential candidate Pat Robertson said: “The entire world is being convulsed by a religious struggle. The fight is not about money or territory; it is not about poverty versus wealth; it is not about ancient customs versus modernity. No. The struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah God of the Bible is supreme.” Fighting words these are! Two supreme divine beings always means war.

The fact of the matter is this: fearful people bent on domination have created the contest for supremacy between Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and Allah, the God of the Quran. The two are one God, albeit differently understood. Arab Christians have for centuries worshiped God under the name “Allah.” Most Christians through the centuries, saints and teachers of undisputed orthodoxy, have believed that Muslims worship the same God as they do. They did so even in times of Muslim cultural ascendency and military conquests, when they represented a grave threat to Christianity in the whole of Europe.

After the fall of Constantinople (1453), the city named after the first Christian emperor and a seat of Christendom for more than 1,000 years, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, a towering intellect and an experienced church diplomat, affirmed unambiguously that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, albeit partly differently understood. Significantly, in response to the fall of Constantinople and the Muslim threat, Nicholas of Cusa advocated “conversation” rather than “crusade,” a strategy pursued doggedly though unsuccessfully by his friend, Pope Pius II. For Nicholas believed that war could never solve the issue between Christendom and Islam.

We live in a different world than Nicholas and Pius II did, but our options are roughly the same. We should resolutely follow Nicholas. The terrorists must be stopped. As to the 1.6 billion Muslims, with them we must build a common future, one based on equal dignity of each person, economic opportunity and justice for all and freedom to govern common affairs through democratic institutions. Muslims and Christians have a set of shared fundamental values that can guide such a vision partly because they have a common God.

On Feb. 18, during the “Day of Celebration,” Sheik al-Qaradawi — one of the most influential Muslim clerics in the world, exiled from Egypt since 1961 — addressed the crowd of over one million. He began by noting that he is discarding the customary opening “Oh, Muslims.” In favor of “Oh, Muslims and Copts.” He praised both for bringing about the revolution together. And he added, “I invite you to bow down in prayer together.” Such prayer, addressed to the common God in distinct ways, lies at the foundation of hope for a new Egypt.

Whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God is also the driving question for the relation between these two religions globally. Does the one God of Islam stand in contrast to the three-personal God of Christianity? Does the Muslim God issue fierce, unbending laws and demand submission, whereas the Christian God stands for love, equal dignity and the right of every individual to be different? Answer these questions the one way, and you have a justification for cultural and military wars. Answer them the other way, and you have a foundation for a shared future marked by peace rather than violence.

Miroslav Volf is the author of ‘Allah: A Christian Response’ (HarperOne; February 2011), the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, and the Founding Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

The Hijra: Movement of God’s People ~ Omid Safi

The Islamic calendar does not begin with the year of Muhammad’s birth (as the Christian calendar begins with the birth of Christ), nor does it begin with the commencement of revelation to Muhammad. Rather, it begins with this purposeful move of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to what became known as Medina. This migration, the Muslim Exodus, established the model community under Muhammad’s rule and care. This was the emigration to Yathrib, the city that would be renamed Madina al-nabi (“the City of the Prophet”) and forever after known simply as Medina (“the City”).

Like much of the Prophet’s actions, this movement has been remembered both for itself, and also for the larger symbolism of the need to spiritually and politically move to a state of emancipation. There are other similar moves in other traditions, whether it is the Exodus of the Hebrews, or the Rastafarian tradition remembering, as Bob Marley put it, the Movement of Jah People. Muhammad’s migration to Medina would be known as the Hijra, and it is the quintessential marking point of Islamic history.

The context was urgent, and timely: The pagans of Mecca were stepping up their persecution of Muhammad and his followers. Whereas in the beginning of Muhammad’s prophetic career the persecution was directed at the marginalized members of the Prophet’s community, now there were clear indications that Muhammad’s own life was in grave danger. In fact, the Meccans were planning the imminent assassination of the Prophet. It was at this time that providential grace provided an opening: a community of people from Yathrib, a city two hundred miles away from Mecca came to Muhammad, offering their allegiance to him and asking him to come to their city to help them settle their tribal disputes. They had been long impressed by Muhammad’s qualities as the Amin (“the Trustworthy”) and saw him as having the Solomonic wisdom to arbitrate among them.

After Muhammad’s dear wife, Khadija, passed away, his two closest friends were Ali and Abu Bakr, a respected elder of the community. Both would play crucial roles in this migration. Muhammad had Ali assume the dangerous task of sleeping in his stead in his bed while the band of assassins waited outside the Prophet’s house. Muhammad covered Ali in his green shawl and had him repeat a verse of Surah Ya-Sin as protection. Meanwhile, Muhammad and Abu Bakr took to the road, heading toward Yathrib. Standing outside the city, Muhammad looked back lovingly on Mecca and said: “Of all God’s earth, you are the dearest place unto me, and the dearest unto God. Had not my people driven me out from you, I would not have left you.”

The Hijra was neither an abandonment of Mecca nor the forgetting of where one had come from. It was the determination to rise up from oppression, with the intention of returning eventually to redeem even the oppressor. This Muhammad would accomplish at the end of his life through his triumphant return home. But before he could liberate Mecca, he had to move to the city where the Muslim community would become established.

Muhammad and Abu Bakr eventually arrived in Yathrib and were received with joy and beautiful poetry composed in honor of the Prophet. Ali too would join them in a few days. It had taken him three full days to disperse all the goods that Muhammad’s enemies and others had entrusted him with, a further indication of the level of trust all had had in the very soul they were persecuting.

When Muhammad arrived in Medina, his address there was simple, and a reminder of the need to connect acts of worship with care for the poor:

O people, give unto one another greetings of Peace; feed food unto the hungry; honor the ties of kinship; pray in the hours when men sleep. Thus shall you enter Paradise in peace.

The first communal action in Medina was establishing the Mosque, truly the first Muslim mosque. Muhammad himself joined in the building task, and he was fond of reciting a line of poetry as he worked:

No life there is but the life of the Hereafter,
O God, have mercy on the Helpers and the Migrants.

One of the ways in which God’s mercy rained down on the Helpers (the Ansar, those from Medina who received the Prophet) and the Migrants (the Muhajirs, those who accompanied Muhammad from Mecca) was through a bond of brotherhood. Muhammad’s first declaration was to alter the social fabric of the Yathrib (now Medina) community. He had each member of the Helpers pair up with a member of the Migrants, establishing a bond of faith that bypassed, transcended and inverted tribal connections and socioeconomic class status. Muhammad’s own faith-brother would be none other than Ali.

In one of his first speeches, Muhammad preached the following sermon:

Praise belongs to God whom I praise and whose praise I implore. We take refuge in God from our own sins and from the evil of our acts. He whom God guides none can lead astray; and whom He leads astray none can guide. I testify that there is no God but He alone, and He is without comparison… Love what God loves. Love God with your hearts, and weary not of the word of God and its mention. Harden not your hearts from it… Love one another in the spirit of God. Verily God is angry when His covenant is broken. Peace be upon you.

This community was one based on faith in God and love for one another “in the spirit of God,” as this speech enjoined them to do. It was in Medina that the general moral outlines of Muhammad’s teachings became linked with a full set of ethical, legal and social injunctions. In Mecca, Muhammad received the Divine call that placed him in the footsteps of Abraham, and in the line of Biblical prophets. It was that purposeful movement from Mecca to Medina that established the Muslim community, one that would remain rooted in the spirit of God, carrying the fragrance of the Prophet.

As the Prophet moved from Mecca to Medina, Muslims today, and every day, hope to leave behind and beyond the state of injustice, heedlessness and tyranny, to move to the higher spiritual ground of a community rooted in the spirit of God and the love of one another, and then to come back to redeem that very state of tyranny and injustice. That is the loftiest way to remember and honor the movement of God’s people.

Omid Safi is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. The above essay draws on his newly published Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne).

Deepak Chopra about his new novel on the life of Muhammad

Full interview with Alan Steinfeld and Deepak Chopra about his latest book Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet

10 minutes with … Deepak Chopra By Nicole Neroulias – Understanding Deepak’s Vision of Muhammad

(RNS) Spiritual and alternative-medicine guru Deepak Chopra, 64, has written dozens of books about faith. His latest, “Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet,” is a fictionalized biography narrated by the people around him, including a Christian hermit, a Jewish scribe, two of his daughters, a convert, and an enemy.

Chopra spoke about his experience writing on Islam’s founder and prophet. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What makes a Hindu American from India decide to write a biography on Muhammad?

A: I grew up with a lot of Muslim friends, and the whole idea of revelation has been a lifelong interest of mine. I’ve written about Jesus and Buddha, and my publisher suggested that I do Muhammad next. But I was reluctant in the beginning because Islam is much more recent and we have access to a lot of thehistory, and some of the facts are not very palatable. There’s the beheading of the Jews, there’s the marriage to Aisha, a girl of 6—we are told all this from history, confirmed by scholars.

Biographies written by Muslims are straightforward—they don’t brush aside the facts; in fact, they justify them. Some Western biographies are apologist, and do not portray the negative side at all. So, it was a choice that I had to make: do I do it with integrity, honesty, respect, but without being an apologist? Finally I decided, why not?

Q: Weren’t you worried about becoming a target of radical Muslims?

A: Once I decided to write the book, I didn’t want to think about that because it would have interfered with my writing. I spoke to author Irshad Manji, who has five fatwas on her, who said it’s not as much a thing as it used to be. She said she doesn’t even think about it.

Now that my book is out, there have been a few (negative) things on Twitter from Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, like “who is he to write about Islam and the Prophet, he’s committed blasphemy,” but I don’t see it gaining traction.

Q: There are some things that you didn’t include—for example, you don’t have a chapter from Aisha’s perspective. Why not?

A: I have two of his daughters and his first wife. But Aisha was 6 when she was married and 9 when the marriage was consummated, and I have no idea how to get into the mind of a 6- or 9-year-old. I did include her in the last chapter, where she plays an important role (after Muhammad’s death, as an adult), in the way she wins over his enemy.

Q: Your book portrays Muhammad as holy from childhood, even from conception. But isn’t he generally understood as an ordinary man until later in life?

A: There was something definitely special about him from the beginning. He was introverted, he did not hang out with the other people his age, he took time to go into solitude. And the fact that he was illiterate makes it even more special.

If you’ve heard the Quran, it has a very special grammatical quality where the sound echoes the sentence. Even if you did not speak Arabic, it’s hypnotic. It’s similar to hearing the Vedas chanted, or the Torah. How does somebody who is illiterate, who has no ambition to be anything special, start reciting this beautiful verse? This is the mystery of revelation.

Q: Why isn’t Muhammad subtitled “A Story of Enlightenment,” like your biographies of Buddha and Jesus?

A: In the case of Buddha, he spoke of enlightenment and he taught of enlightenment. And Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is clearly spoken from a state of enlightenment. But Muhammad is more complex, and he did not claim to be enlightened. Muhammad said, “I am a man among men.”

Q: How else was writing about Muhammad different than Buddha and Jesus?

A: I like Muhammad a lot, because he’s like us more than anybody else. Jesus is just so exalted, and Buddha is just so exalted, it’s almost beyond our reach. Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. His story is full of adventure, intrigue, betrayal. It’s a great story.

Q: I’ve heard that your next book will be about God—but, from whose perspective?

A: I’m doing a book called “The Future of God,” about science and spirituality and the understanding of consciousness, and one called “When God Spoke,” looking at the experience of divinity through various Eastern and Western saints, including a lot of women. It’s not God as some kind of image or idea or concept, but what the experience means.

Making Muhammad Safe ~ Deepak Chopra

For the past decade Islam has been suffering from fear almost everywhere you look. Arab countries are afraid of being invaded by the U.S. in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. Sunni Muslims are nervous about the rise of Iran to a nuclear state dominated by Shiites. But on a far more personal level, everyone is afraid to say anything about Muhammad that would inflame the faithful. I’ve experienced this recently myself. On tour for a book about Muhammad — one that I wrote primarily to tell Westerners that the Prophet led an exciting, inspiring life — the first word that comes up in every interview is fatwa. The first question is “Aren’t you afraid to write this book?”

Every religion takes sole possession of its founder. That’s what makes it strong. That and claiming that your version of God is the only correct one. But nobody who writes books about Jesus or Buddha does so in fear. The irony is that the stronger the faith, the more open it is to intolerance. Fundamentalist Christians believe that everyone else is an outsider to the true faith, including other Christians. But Islam has become locked down to an extraordinary degree. Those of us who want to write as sympathetically as possible about Muhammad, without giving in to official hagiography, are warned off. We are made to walk on eggshells. Saddest of all, those Muslims who are pleased to see a novel about Muhammad’s life scan it nervously to make sure that nothing is out of place.

Isn’t it time to make Muhammad a safe topic? The Danish cartoonist who lampooned the Prophet stepped into taboo territory since Islam forbids any physical depiction of him. But Islamic art over the centuries has come to terms with the strictures against painting portraits and taking photos of people’s faces. Adaptation means survival, and those forces in Islam that don’t want to adapt, far from preserving their faith for eternity, are endangering it.

The irony of the situation is double, actually. Muhammad recognized Jews and Christians as people of the Book, along with Muslims. They are not outsiders but fellow worshipers. Islam was meant to be an umbrella that includes them and tolerates their faith. So the fundamentalist streak in Islam isn’t true to the spirit of the Prophet. The very notion that the Koran should never be translated from the Arabic and never commented upon was born (so far as I can ascertain) among his followers after the Prophet’s death. As a result, the other people of the Book have passed through reform movements and adaptations that have been denied to the Muslim faithful.

Surrounding the Prophet with veneration is one thing. We can all understand and respect that. But surrounding him with threats, a kind of theological barbed wire, is another thing. It isn’t acceptable to the outside world, and moderate Arabs would be well served to speak out against it. I don’t mean to dictate to anyone how they should follow their religion. But we’ve come to an impasse if no one is allowed to speak the truth about Muhammad or comment upon his life. As long as freedom of thought is considered the enemy, the Islamic world will be embroiled in fear forever.

Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet by Deepak Chopra

From the New York Times bestselling author of Buddha and Jesus comes the page-turning and soul-stirring story of Muhammad. This riveting novel captures the spellbinding life story of the great and often misunderstood Prophet.

At a time when Islam is both the world’s fastest-growing religion and a source of controversy on the world stage, Deepak Chopra takes us back to the origins of this great and often misunderstood faith in MUHAMMAD: A Story of the Last Prophet is the latest in Chopra’s series of “teaching novels” depicting the founders of the world’s great religions, which began with his New York Times bestsellers Buddha and Jesus.

“A great surprise awaited me when I began writing the story of Muhammad,” Chopra says in an introductory note. “Among all the founders of the great world religions, Muhammad is the most like us.” An orphan raised by an uncle and surrounded by a large extended clan, Muhammad lived a conventional life well into adulthood, becoming a successful merchant, marrying well, and raising a family. “What is extraordinary,” Chopra says, “is that there are so many marks of common humanity in Muhammad’s transformation.”

That transformation begins with Muhammad’s terrifying encounter with the archangel Gabriel in a cave outside of Mecca. Unable to process the experience, he tries to hide from it at first, before gradually coming to realize that he has been chosen as the instrument through which God will work His will. With that realization, Muhammad’s life is irrevocably changed. “There is an inner man that nobody sees,” he tells his daughter. “Now he is on the outside, and the outer man, he is gone forever.”

Muhammad’s task is to dispel centuries of ignorance and superstition by doing away with idols and multiple deities, uniting the warring tribes under a common faith in the one true God. At first he shares his message with a small circle of family and friends, but ultimately begins preaching in public, which earns him many enemies. After a failed assassination attempt, he flees to Yathrib (Medina). There his transformation continues, as Muhammad becomes a warrior of God who must confront the armies of the infidel.

Chopra tells Muhammad’s story through a series of narrators that represents a cross-section of seventh-century Middle Eastern society: A Christian hermit, a Jewish scribe, a slave, a mendicant, a wet nurse, a merchant, Muhammad’s beloved wife and children, his bitterest enemy—and even the archangel Gabriel. Each has a part to play in the spiritual development of a man who claimed no divinity for himself, yet established one of the world’s great religions.

“I know that Muhammad suffers under centuries of disapproval outside the Muslim world,” Chopra writes. “Ours is not the first age to react suspiciously when told that Islam means peace.” By exploring the life—and the humanity—of Muhammad, Chopra performs an important service by fostering a better understanding of a vibrant, vital faith that continues to transform the world.

“One of the most imaginative and touching biographies of Muhammad….Chopra’s grasp of Muhammad’s life and mission extends his range in a surprising direction; his popularization is welcome.” — Publishers Weekly

“Compellingly told, this is not only good storytelling, it also helps readers,
especially non-Muslims, better understand the complexities and contradictions surrounding Islam.” — Booklist

“Higher consciousness is universal. It is held out as the ultimate goal of life on earth. Without guides who reached higher consciousness, the world would be bereft of its greatest visionaries—fatally bereft. Muhammad sensed this aching gap in the world around him. He appeals to me most because he remade the world by going inward. That’s the kind of achievement only available on a spiritual path. In the light of what the Prophet achieved, he raises my hope that all of us who lead everyday lives can be touched by the divine.”

—Deepak Chopra, from the Author’s Note in MUHAMMAD: A Story of the Last Prophet

About The Author
Deepak Chopra is the founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California, and Manhattan, New York, and is acknowledged as one of the master teachers of Eastern philosophy in the Western World. He has written more than fifty-five books and has been a bestselling author for decades with over a dozen titles on the New York Times bestseller lists, including Buddha, Jesus, The Third Jesus, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, The Path to Love, and many others.

MUHAMMAD
A Story of the Last Prophet
By Deepak Chopra
HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
October 2010 s Hardcover, $25.99 s ISBN: 9780061782428

Commentary on Book Launching on Sept 21, 2010 by Deepak Chopra at the Riverside Church, New York

The book launching event witnessed a unique convergence of three aspects of ancient and traditional cultures and religions being showcased in the presence of a full-packed hall of attendees and fans of Deepak Chopra. A Hindu by birth, Deepak authored more than 50 books, one of which the most recent one entitled ” Muhammad – A Story of the Last Prophet” was launched in the interior church hall – an event that may seem ‘ sacrilegious ‘ if it was held in some countries that view their places of worships as ‘holy’.

And to add spice to this event, Deepak invited his rock and roll Pakistani singer to accompany his reciting of poems by Rumi with the strumming of the guitar and humming the sounds of Allah.

All in all, it was an inspirational evening to remember – with the audience joining in the singing of John Lenon’s “Imagine” lead by Salman Ahmed, UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador


Located on the Upper West Side, on the edge of the Morningside and Harlem communities of New York City, the edifice is modeled after the 13th Century gothic cathedral in Chartres, France. Its gothic tower stands as a beacon to the world and continues to bring people with very different perspectives together. A bird’s eye-view of The Riverside Church from the Hudson River with its surrounding community in the background. Surrounding the church are religious and educational institutions and the public parks of Morningside Heights and Harlem. The Riverside Church is situated at one of the highest points of New York City, overlooking the Hudson River and 122nd Street.

Interior: From The Inside Looking Out…
In the Nave of The Riverside Church, the strivings and aspirations of humanity pervade which is a tribute to its founders, architects, artists, and craftsmen, and to their dedication to the glory of God.

The Labyrinth on the floor of the chancel has been adapted from the maze at Chartres, one of the few such medieval designs in existence.

The pulpit has welcomed speakers from far and near: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached his famous anti-Vietnam War sermon from this pulpit; Nelson Mandela addressed the nation during an interfaith celebration welcoming him to America; Marian Wright-Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund spoke about the need to provide quality healthcare to all children; and the well-known Dr. Tony Campolo delivered a sermon concerning affluence in America.

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Rock & Roll Jihad
A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution

Description

“The story you are about to read is the story of a light-bringer….Salman Ahmad inspires me to reach always for the greatest heights and never to fear….Know that his story is a part of our history.”
– Melissa Etheridge, from the Introduction

With 30 million record sales under his belt, and with fans including Bono and Al Gore, Pakistanborn Salman Ahmad is renowned for being the first rock & roll star to destroy the wall that divides the West and the Muslim world. Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey.

Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi – rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman’s story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious — and stratified — society.

He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north.
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Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia’s biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis.

As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald’s, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a “rainbow bridge” that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman’s star from rising.

Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West — lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.

Muhammad and the Litmus Test ~ Deepak Chopra

Does the truth need to pass a litmus test? When you tell the truth about anyone’s religion, the answer isn’t so clear. Before I engaged in writing a novel on the life of Muhammad, the risks were only too apparent. Islam was a hot-button issue. Tempers were running high. Looming large were the fatwa and Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, and the worldwide uprising among Muslims over a cartoon in a Danish newspaper that was thought to blaspheme against the Prophet. Therefore, simply to set down the events of Muhammad’s life — events that are by turns gripping, exciting, disturbing, and inspiring — leads directly into an inflamed debate.

To me, the danger of writing about Muhammad are, frankly, a red herring. You can’t know what is safe to say these days and what isn’t. Before he backed down at the urging of President Obama and others , an obscure Florida pastor with less than a hundred in his congregation, proposed, against all sense, decency, and caution, that everyone join in Burn-a-Koran Day to commemorate 9/11.

Terry Jones feels perfectly safe to incite potential violence, because he has prayed over it, and apparently his God can’t stand Allah (I thought they were the same God) and favors ignorant intolerance. By lineage, Jews, Christians, and Muslims share The Book, meaning the same antecedents in the Old Testament, which each faith interprets so that it comes out number one. Being “people of The Book,” a term frequently used when discussing the relationship between Islam and Judaism, hasn’t stopped historical feuding and bloodbaths.

To keep their claims of absolute divine truth, each religion has learned to moderate its criticism of other faiths. It’s not so much live and let live as people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Your founder walked on water? Yours heard a voice in a burning bush? Yours was visited in a cave by the angel Gabriel? From inside the faith, these are articles of belief that cannot be questioned. If you stand outside the faith, they seem unreasonable, to use the mildest term possible.

As a non-Muslim, I was writing from outside the faith. Therefore, I didn’t challenge the accepted life of Muhammad as taught for over a thousand years to all devout Muslims. Yet at the same time I couldn’t give them only the aspects of their Beloved that are the most attractive. Muhammad, viewed as a historical figure, was involved in military campaigns; he asked God to strategize the battles. At one point he ordered the execution of Jews who had collaborated with the enemy. He was told by God to marry a girl of six who was betrothed to another man.

I didn’t judge any of this from a modern perspective. Child marriage was part of a society that existed across enormous gulfs of time and mores, just as the ancient Greeks do. Once you apply litmus tests to someone else’s faith, the result is guaranteed to be explosive. Fundamentalists in all religions don’t care. The benighted Terry Jones has counterparts in the Islamic world who are just as disturbing, and both say “God wants me to do this.” It’s not up to me or any chronicler of Islam to judge either side of religious conflict.

To me, putting on my writer’s cap, the only muse that must be honored is the truth, told with respect and without distortion. The great enemy here is denial. None of us has the right to deny another person the dignity of faith, and by the same token, no person of faith has the right to claim sole ownership of the facts. Outsiders are allowed to peer in the window of churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues. Those inside then have a choice: slam t window shut or open it and let in some light.

Published San Francisco Chronicle

Deepak Chopra On “Muhammad: A Story Of The Last Prophet”: Balancing Between Fact and Fiction

Deepak Chopra discusses the balance between fact and fiction in his upcoming book “Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet.”

Right Think and Wrong Think About Muslims ~ Deepak Chopra

September 6th, 2010

Earlier this year Gallup provided two intriguing statistics about Americans and their view of Islam: 53 percent of Americans view Islam unfavorably compared with 42 percent who view the religion favorably. Majorities view other major religions favorably: 91 percent for Christianity, 71 percent for Judaism and 58 percent for Buddhism. The negativity comes even as 63 percent of Americans said they know little about Islam.

It’s no surprise that ignorance leads the way for prejudice. When I set out to write a fictional account of the life of Muhammad, I considered myself free from prejudice. I was raised in India playing with Muslim kids and maintain close ties with Muslim friends. Yet when I began to research the origins of Islam, I found that compared to what I had absorbed about the life of Jesus or Buddha, my knowledge of the Prophet’s life was almost a blank. But in the present climate of antagonism toward Muslims, a blank is good, since so many people started out their knowledge of Islam with two facts: Arabs control the world’s oil supply, and Muslim extremists attacked the U.S. on 9/11. This accounts for another finding by Gallup, that Americans see extremists as woven into the basic fabric of Islam, a view they don’t hold about Jewish or Christian fundamentalists. Would you say that Christians who kill anti-abortion doctors and burn down abortion clinics are basic to Christianity? Yet the protest of moderate Muslims that jihadis are an extremist minority tends to fall upon deaf ears.

There are some moderating facts as well. Only 9% of respondents told Gallup that they had a great deal of prejudice against Islam, and until the recent upsurge of rhetoric against the proposed Muslim center near Ground Zero, the tradition of religious tolerance in this country held strong, with half of respondents saying that they felt no prejudice against Muslims. Right think prevails over wrong think. And yet Muslim-Americans are still a hidden minority in this country. Did you know that they are the most diverse religion ethnically in America? Most people automatically equate Muslim with Arab. Given the image of Muslim women as being strongly oppressed, would it surprise you to learn that in this country, they are: one of the most highly educated female religious groups in the United States, second only to Jewish American women.”

By the time I finished writing my book, I had a wealth of knowledge about Muhammad compared to when I started. The most surprising fact about him is that among all the founders of great world religions, he considered himself “a man among men,” in other words, the closest to how you and I see ourselves. Even though Muhammad received the Koran as a divine transmission (in keeping with most of the world’s scriptures) and is a sacred figure in Islam, his self-conception was not like that. I found him fascinating, even as I found that the contradictions present in Islam today, such as the clash between religious tolerance and jihadist fervor, have roots going back to the very beginning.

In the end, the issue isn’t right think or wrong think. It’s about emotions. Could I write about seventh century Islam without the negative feelings surrounding al-Qaeda, 9/11, the Iraq War, oil oligarchies, and the looming Iranian bomb? Not completely. This is consistent with psychological findings, which show that emotions cannot be entirely separated from reason. So our duty isn’t to join right think — however abhorrent wrong think is — but to be self-aware and honest. Being able to hold mixed feelings at the same time is known as the capacity for ambivalence. Mature people have this ability; immature people don’t. Self-aware people speak openly about their ambivalence; people who prefer to be unconscious hide their prejudices until it is safe enough to haul them out. Which camp you belong to is your choice.

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle