1.Come to me my love – A mystic poem composed by Rabindranath Tagore, and recited by Deepak Chopra 2. Nothing Lasts Forever recited by Lisa Bonet

Here is a mystic poem from Gitanjali (Art thou abroad on this stormy night), composed by Rabindranath Tagore, and recited by Deepak Chopra. Music composed and produced by Dave Stewart.

Nothing Lasts Forever – Tagore / Recited by Artist : Lisa Bonet

Nothing lasts forever
No one lives forever
Keep that in mind, and love

Our life is not the same old burden
Our path is not the same long journey
The flower fades and dies
We must pause to weave perfection into music
Keep that in mind, and love

My beloved, in you I find refuge

Love droops towards its sunset
To be drowned in the golden shadows
Love must be called from its play
And love must be born again to be free
Keep that in mind, and love

My beloved, in you I find refuge
Without seeing my love, I cannot sleep

Let us hurry to gather our flowers
Before they are plundered by the passing winds
It quickens our blood and brightens our eyes
To snatch kisses that would vanish
If we delayed

Our life is eager
Our desires are keen
For time rolls by
Keep that in mind, and love

My beloved, in you I find refuge

Beauty is sweet for a short time
And then it is gone
Knowledge is precious
But we will never have time to complete it
All is done and finished
In eternal heaven
But our life here is eternally fresh
Keep that in mind, and love

(Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941)

Lisa Bonet

For Lisa Bonet’s biographyView Here

Deepak Chopra on 1) What is Maya 2) What or Who is God? 3) What is Karma?

What is Maya
What is the meaning of Maya? Our senses gives a very unreliable and limited view of reality. Is the physical world we see is real? Our world corresponds to our nervous system. Our world is species specific, it is a perceptual experience and it is influenced by many things.What about science? Does that give us an accurate description of the world? It can not, as science is an extension of our senses, it only can give a human perception of the world. An accurate description of the world around us need to be independent of the observer. Infinite possibilities is the only reality. Maya means illusion and the measurement of infinity into finite forms.

Who or What is God ?

As soon as we define God we limit God. God is the ultimate mystery that we cannot define. God is our highest potential to know ourselves and the end goal of our seeking. It can be infinite potential, creativity, love, compassion among many other things. God is the universe in manifestation. Can we experience God personally?

What is Karma

What is Karma? There is a lot of misunderstanding around this word. Karma simply means action. Every action has consequences. Conscious choice making is the most effective way of creating future consequences of karma. Karma creates the future, but it is also an echo from the past. Karma conditions our soul through memory, desire and imagination. Most people are prisoners of Karma, because it becomes a conditioned reflex and produces predictable outcomes in their lives. The goal of enlightenment is to break the in shackles of Karma.

Deepak Chopra’s New Book “Spiritual Solutions”

In his latest book “Spiritual Solutions: Answers to Life’s Greatest Challenges,” best-selling author Deepak Chopra teaches readers how to transform obstacles into opportunities by raising their level of awareness.

“The secret is that the level of the problem is never the level of the solution,” said Chopra in the book.

Whether looking to lead a more fulfilling life; finding time for meditation; or wanting to jumpstart a stagnant career, this new book offers tools and strategies to help meet life’s challenges from within.

“There is no greater power for success and personal growth than your own awareness,” said Chopra.

The Fundamentals of Your Own Spiritual Solutions

Find out more about Spiritual Solutions at http://www.deepakchopra.com/book Deepak provides a template to create your own spiritual solutions. The fundamental is very simple. Awareness can be contracted and you can get disconnected from the world, feel threatened. Awareness can be also expanded and you could feel connected and feel a sense of wholeness. Pure awareness is the state of consciousness where you feel one with the world. Our thoughts are only one component of awareness, but thought is not the most important aspect of how we experience reality; it is the finest level of feeling. As a start you need to determine in what state of awareness you happen to be in. Problems occur in contracted awareness. Solutions start to emerge and when you move move to expanded awareness. Love, compassion, joy and equanimity move you into expanded awareness.

Spiritual Solutions by Deepak Chopra

Most people do not realize that the challenges they experience in their life is there for a spiritual reason. The reason is to take them back to their inner purpose. Knowing this is obvious that there is a spiritual solution to every problem. The solution does not exist at the level where the problem occurred. You need to move to a higher awareness level to find a solution. I offer spiritual solutions in my book for material success and awareness, health and well-being, higher consciousness and relationships.

Deepak Chopra spiritual spirituality Educational Guru Talk “self help” “life coach” brain mind Business cretivity problem Success

Deepak Chopra remembers Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The guru who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the west died on 5 February aged 91. He’s remembered by the renowned spiritual writer, a close friend for more than 20 years

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with the Beatles.
Photograph: Rex Features

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started out as one kind of cultural curiosity – a lone Hindu monk who aimed to teach meditation to the world – and ended up as a different kind of cultural curiosity: the one-time guru to the Beatles. He came remarkably close to fulfilling his original intent. Millions of westerners learned Transcendental Meditation (TM), and a new word, ‘mantra’, was added to the English language. He survived long after the departure of the Fab Four, who decamped almost as soon as they sniffed the thin air of Maharishi’s Himalayan retreat (excluding George Harrison, who turned into a genuine seeker and quiet ally).

Maharishi owed his survival to two things. He was sincerely a guru, a ‘dispeller of darkness’, who had the good of the world at heart, despite the wags who turned TM into the McDonald’s of meditation and the caricatures that morphed his white-bearded image into a pop cliché. Sincerity would have served him little if Maharishi hadn’t also been a gifted teacher of India’s ancient tradition of Vedanta. Many visitors who came to gawk went away moved by both qualities.

Beginning in the mid-Eighties, I had the opportunity to know Maharishi as a friend. Whenever my medical practice permitted, I joined his inner circle. It wasn’t necessary to be reverent in his presence. He made a point of not being seen as a religious figure but as a teacher of consciousness. Of the many memories I could offer, here is the most intense … Maharishi had fallen mysteriously and gravely ill on a visit to India in 1991. My father, a prominent cardiologist in New Delhi, ordered him to be rushed to England for emergency care. Soon, I was standing outside the London Heart Hospital, watching an ambulance navigate the snarled traffic, sirens wailing.

Just before it arrived on the hospital’s doorstep, one of the accompanying doctors ran up with the news that Maharishi had suddenly died. I rushed to the ambulance, picking up Maharishi’s body – he was frail and light by this time – and carrying him in my arms through London traffic.

I laid him on the floor inside the hospital’s doors and called for a cardio assist. Within minutes he was revived and rushed to intensive care on a respirator and fitted with a pacemaker that took over his heartbeat.

I became his primary caretaker during this crisis, tending to him personally at a private home outside London. It quickly became apparent that he was totally indifferent to his illness, and there was an astonishingly rapid recovery. The hospital expected lasting health problems, but there were apparently none. Within a few months Maharishi was back to his round-the-clock schedule – he rarely slept more than three or four hours a night. When I approached him one day to remind him to take his medications, he gave me a penetrating look. In it I read a message: ‘Do you really think I am this body?’ For me, that was a startling moment, a clue about what higher consciousness may actually be like.

As he saw himself, Maharishi knew that he had come tantalisingly close to changing the world, as close as any non-politician can who doesn’t wage war. He held that humanity could be saved from destruction only by raising collective consciousness. In that sense he was the first person to talk about tipping points and critical mass. If enough people meditated and turned into peaceful citizens of the world, Maharishi believed, walls of ignorance and hatred would fall as decisively as the Berlin Wall. This was his core teaching in the post-Beatles phase of his long career before he died peacefully in seclusion in Holland, at the age of about 91, his following much shrunken, his optimism still intact.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Deepak Chopra & Co.- Life After Death – ( Updated Mar 27, 2012 )

The most recent hosting of Anita Moorjani’s near death experience encounters and video interviews has attracted increasingly page views and registered hits. The following updated video clips may lend credence to the incredible experiences as related by those NDE subjects and life after death spokespersons.

It’s the ultimate question: what happens when we die? Is there life after death? Deepak Chopra is a spiritual guru to millions. In his new book, he builds his case for the afterlife. The book is called Life After Death: The Burden of Proof.

Life after death conclusion on CNN

Deepak Chopra on Cnn discussing the evidence for life after death

Near Death Experience of a Neuroscientist

A neurosurgeon shares his near-death experience. Featuring also Dr. Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist and longtime NDE researcher.

Doctor claims he has evidence of the afterlife – Dr. Jeffrey Long on the Today Show

This is an older appearance from earlier in the year, but I want to continue posting NDE-related videos as I come across them.

It’s always interesting to hear the wild variety of anecdotes when it comes to the survivors of NDEs. With any consistent evidence for the survival of physical death, I anticipate some very fascinating angles taken in the Atheist vs. Theist debate circuit.

Good News: You Are Not Your Brain – By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP & Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School Director, Genetics and Aging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Deepak Chopra and Rudy Tanzi are co-authors of their forthcoming book Superbrain: New Breakthroughs for Maximizing Health, Happiness and Spiritual Well-Being by Harmony Books.

Like a personal computer, science needs a Recycle Bin for ides that didn’t work out as planned. In this bin would go commuter trains riding on frictionless rails using superconductivity, along with interferon, the last AIDS vaccine, and most genetic therapies. These failed promises have two things in common: they looked like the wave of the future but then reality proved too complex to fit the simple model that was being offered.

The next thing to go into the Recycle Bin in might be the brain. We are living in a golden age of brain research, thanks largely to vast improvements in brain scans. Now that functional MRIs can give snapshots of the brain in real time, researchers can see specific areas of the brain light up, indicating increased activity. On the other hand, dark spots in the brain indicate minimal activity or none at all. Thus we arrive at those familiar maps that compare a normal brain with one that has deviated from the norm. This is obviously a great boon where disease is concerned. Doctors can see precisely where epilepsy or Parkinsonism or a brain tumor has created damage, and with this knowledge new drugs and more precise surgery can target the problem.

But then overreach crept in. We are shown brain scans of repeat felons with pointers to the defective areas of their brains. The same holds for Buddhist monks, only in their case, brain activity is heightened and improved, especially in the prefrontal lobes associated with compassion. By now there is no condition, good or bad, that hasn’t been linked to a brain pattern that either “proves” that there is a link between the brain and a certain behavior or exhibits the “cause” of a certain trait. The whole assumption, shared by 99% of neuroscientists, is that we are our brains.

In this scheme, the brain is in charge, having evolved to control certain fixed behaviors. Why do men see other men as rivals for a desirable woman? Why do people seek God? Why does snacking in front of the TV become a habit? We are flooded with articles and books reinforcing the same assumption: the brain is using you, not the other way around. Yet it’s clear that a faulty premise is leading to gross overreach.

The flaws in current reasoning can be summarized with devastating force:
1. Brain activity isn’t the same as thinking, feeling, or seeing.
2. No one has remotely shown how molecules acquire the qualities of the mind.
3. It is impossible to construct a theory of the mind based on material objects that somehow became conscious.
4. When the brain lights up, its activity is like a radio lighting up when music is played. It is an obvious fallacy to say that the radio composed the music. What is being viewed is only a physical correlation, not a cause.

It’s a massive struggle to get neuroscientists to see these flaws. They are king of the hill right now, and so long as new discoveries are being made every day, a sense of triumph pervades the field. “Of course” we will solve everything from depression to overeating, crime to religious fanaticism, by tinkering with neurons and the kinks thrown into normal, desirable brain activity. But that’s like hearing a really bad performance of Rhapsody in Blue and trying to turn it into a good performance by kicking the radio.

We’ve become excited by a flawless 2008 article published by Donald D. Hoffman, professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California Irvine. It’s called “Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem” , and its aim is to show, using logic, philosophy, and neuroscience that we are not our brains. We are “conscious agents,” Hoffman’s term for minds that shape reality, including the reality of the brain. Hoffman is optimistic that the thorny problem of consciousness can be solved, and science can find a testable model for the mind. But future progress depends on researchers abandoning their current premise, that the brain is the mind. We urge you to read the article in its entirety, but for us, the good news is that Hoffman’s ideas show that the tide may be turning.

It is degrading to human potential when the brain uses us instead of vice versa. There is no doubt that we can become trapped by faulty wiring in the brain – this happens in depression, addictions, and phobias, for example. Neural circuits can seemingly take control, and there is much talk of “hard wiring” by which some activity is fixed and preset by nature, such as the fight-or-flight response. But what about people who break bad habits, kick their addictions, or overcome depression? It would be absurd to say that the brain, being stuck in faulty wiring, suddenly and spontaneously fixed the wiring. What actually happens, as anyone knows who has achieved success in these areas, is that the mind takes control. Mind shapes the brain, and when you make up your mind to do something, you return to the natural state of using your brain instead of the other way around.

It’s very good news that you are not your brain, because when mind finds its true power, the result is healing, inspiration, insight, self-awareness, discovery, curiosity, and quantum leaps in personal growth. The brain is totally incapable of such things. After all, if it is a hard-wired machine, there is no room for sudden leaps and renewed inspiration. The machine simply does what it does. A depressed brain can no more heal itself than a car can suddenly decide to fly. Right now the golden age of brain research is brilliantly decoding neural circuitry, and thanks to neuroplasticity, we know that the brain’s neural pathways can be changed. The marvels of brain activity grow more astonishing every day. Yet in our astonishment it would be a grave mistake, and a disservice to our humanity, to forget that the real glory of human existence is the mind, not the brain that serves it.

Deepak Chopra: 1. Scientific Understanding of Consciousness 2. The Universe evolves in consciousness 3.How Consciousness creates Multiple Worlds

Scientific Understanding of Consciousness

There is a reason why the scientific understanding of the brain will never solve of the issue of consciousness. The limitation is not technical, but it is in principal . We see neural networks of the brain by using medical imaging, but consciousness perceives that network and consciousness is not visible.

A physical system will never explain the sense of Self, an imagined future or a remembered past, an initiation of an action or free will. As we understand this, we should ask ourselves , what is the most primal experience of our lives. It is our subjective experience of our reality and that is experienced in our consciousness.

The Universe evolves in consciousness

Reality is different in different states of consciousness

How Consciousness creates Multiple Worlds

Higher States of Consciousness- Deepak Chopra

Since consciousness is the basis of all reality, any shift in consciousness changes every aspect of our reality. Reality is created by consciousness differentiating into cognition, moods, emotions, perceptions, behaviour, speech, social interactions, environment, interaction with the forces of nature, and biology. As consciousness evolves, these different aspects of consciousness also change.

Although every spiritual tradition speaks of higher states of consciousness it is especially in Vedanta that we find such a structured map of these stages of development. The average person only experiences three states of consciousness in an entire lifetime. These are deep sleep, dreams, and waking state of consciousness. The brain functions measurably different in each of these states. Brain biology and brain waves show precise and different characteristics between sleep, dream, and waking states of consciousness.

Spiritual practice or sadhana begins the process by which an individual transforms his or her consciousness from these three common states of consciousness into “ higher states” of consciousness. Through of any of the four primary yoga practices (the yogas of being, feeling, thinking, doing) the mind is led past its conditioned states to its pure unconditioned state. Beyond the first 3 states of consciousness are the following four states: Soul consciousness, Cosmic consciousness, Divine consciousness and Unity consciousness. As each state of consciousness unfolds within us, it opens us into a newer more expanded reality. Let’s discuss each of these in turn:

Soul consciousness is the state we experience when our internal reference point shifts from body, mind, and ego, to the observer of body, mind, and ego. We experience and cultivate Soul consciousness when we meditate. This observer is referred to as the witnessing awareness. During meditation, a person begins to identify with this aspect of the Self which is beyond thinking and feeling, (the silent witness), and then he or she begins to feel more calm, centered and intuitive in daily life. As the authentic core of oneself solidifies, there is less emotional drama in their lives. Relationships are more loving and compassionate and one finds a deeper more caring relationship with the environment and nature. With the experience of the silent witness, the biology will also reflect greater balance and the activation of homeostatic mechanisms. Meditation has been shown to lead to the reduction of stress markers, slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, enhanced immune function, and orderly and precise self-repair mechanisms. Those who practice meditation are less prone to sickness.

Cosmic consciousness is the state when soul consciousness gets stabilized and the witnessing awareness is present all the time in waking, dreaming, and sleeping states. This state of consciousness is sometimes described in traditions as being both local and non-local simultaneously. The silent witness Self is unbounded, but the body and the conditioned mind is localized. In the Christian tradition the phrase “to be in the world and not of it,” describes this flavor of Cosmic consciousness. In this state, even during deep sleep, the witnessing awareness is fully awake and there is the realization that one is not the mind/body, which is in the field of change, but rather an eternal spirit that transcends space and time. The most remarkable aspect of this state of consciousness is the knowledge of one’s nature as timeless and therefore no fear of death. Although Cosmic consciousness is not the pinnacle of enlightenment, nevertheless it marks the critical transition from an identity bound to a conditioned life, to a life of freedom in self-knowledge.

Divine consciousness is the expansion of cosmic consciousness where the ever-present witnessing awareness is experienced not only in the silence of the Self, but also in the most abstract qualities of nature and the mind. Dormant potentials such as the awakening of the nonlocal senses (referred to in Sanskrit as tanmatras) begin to be experienced. As the individual mind starts to access these unused realms of the psyche, they will activate extraordinary spiritual abilities previously thought to be unattainable. These include experiences such as knowledge of past and future, clairvoyance, refined sense of taste, smell, sight, touch and hearing, control over bodily functions, heart rate, and autonomic functions.

In other words, objects are experienced simultaneously on a gross sensory level and subtle more abstract level. Appreciation of life from this more refined perspective represents the real engagement of the heart and love as the engine of spiritual growth at this stage. By experiencing the patterns and deeper connections that underlie external diversity, we find our soul is stirred by a profound sense of beauty, awe, compassion, gratitude and love.

The integrating power of these qualities brings together the polarized world of Cosmic consciousness which is divided between the Self and non-Self. In Divine Consciousness this harmonizing and synthesizing power is felt as the presence of Divinity in our heart. Wherever one goes one feels the presence of the Divine. The Vedic seers would say in Divine consciousness, God is not difficult to find, but impossible to avoid.

At this stage, there is an even greater conviction of the immortality of existence, not only as nonlocal consciousness, but also in the knowledge that you are that enduring presence of divine love. Divine consciousness also brings a deeper experience of liberation, as the external sensory world is no longer seen as a kind of spiritual exile which the soul must endure, but rather the world is a manifestation of the beauty, and love of one’s consciousness and therefore integral to one’s spirituality.

Unity consciousness is also referred to as Brahman consciousness. It is a state of consciousness where the ever-present witness is not just recognized as the core Self of one’s existence, it is now perceived as the primary reality of every experience. You, as the observer, are that pure consciousness. The process of observation is also that consciousness. And the object of observation is that same pure consciousness. The culmination of enlightenment is the knowledge that consciousness alone exists, that is all there is , was, or ever will be. That oneness, or unity, dominates awareness even as one engages in the same mundane details of life as before.

One ceases to identify with an individual body-mind apparatus and sees the whole universe as one’s physical body. Of course, there is a personal body and there is a material universe, experienced through the senses, but they are now cognized to be incorporated in that one single reality of consciousness.

Dormant potentials previously mentioned are now fully operative. There is the ability to heal and transform others and everything is experienced as miraculous. A flower is seen as a flower but is also experienced as rainbows and sunshine and earth and water and wind and air and the infinite void and the whole history of the universe swirling and transiently manifesting as the flower. In other worlds every object is seen as the total universe transiently manifesting as a particular object.

And behind the scenes one can feel the presence of the same ever-present witnessing awareness that is now in both subject and object. Unity consciousness is the ultimate level of freedom from fear. It is characterized by an abiding sense of joy and peace. There is no “other” outside of oneself to be afraid of, and the constant dance of unity masquerading as diversity is seen as the blissful nature of life itself. All of creation is seen as the play of consciousness or leela.

This state of enlightenment is sometimes compared to the drop of water that is experiencing itself as the ocean, knowing that it was the ocean the whole time. You and God are now one because there is no you left any more. Sometimes when people try to conceptualize this by projecting their current sense of self into Unity consciousness they are afraid that in losing their old identity they will lose their existence, memories and individual perspective. But the enlightened person doesn’t’ see it that way.

They understand that personal identity was an illusion to begin with. They realize that nothing real or valuable is ever lost on the path to enlightenment. They are experiencing their original identity but only now recognizing it in its completeness and its full glory. This state is of course described in the Vedantic tradition but is beautifully captured in the following verses from T.S. Elliot:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

This brief outline of higher states of consciousness is only intended to give a general sense of the unfolding of human potential. It is important to emphasize that spiritual development is not fundamentally an intellectual or a faith-driven enterprise. Enlightenment is not attained by reading and studying, nor by fervent belief in something outside yourself. The development of higher states of consciousness primarily comes down to regularly and systematically experiencing deeper values of the Self and then integrating that into one’s daily life. The specific experiences an individual has on this journey, will necessarily vary, based on the spiritual tradition and practice one follows, but also based upon your own personal history and tendencies.

Meditation and Spirituality An Interview with Deepak Chopra

The Share Guide: What do you think are the most significant health benefits of meditation?

Deepak Chopra: They are stress reduction, better sleep, lower blood pressure, improved cardiovascular function, improved immunity, and the ability to stay centered in the midst of all the turmoil that’s going on around you. Meditation helps you do less and accomplish more.

The Share Guide: I understand there’s now 15 million Americans who are practicing yoga, but most are doing just asanas (poses). How many do you think are aware of the spiritual aspect of yoga?

Deepak Chopra: Not enough. Because when it started in the U.S. it was mainly as another form of physical fitness. Somehow that gained prominence and it became a fad–just a good way to improve flexibility and muscle strength. Of course, these are benefits of yoga. But the larger picture of yoga as it was meant to be understood originally is that yoga is union. It’s only now that people are actually becoming aware of the spiritual aspects of yoga.

The Share Guide: In your new book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga, you describe the eight limbs of Raja yoga. And one thing that surprised me was that you said they’re not to be seen as sequential stages. I always thought the first limbs were preparatory for the last three, which are the meditation stages.

Deepak Chopra: That’s one school of thought, but not what I learned. I had my spiritual apprenticeship with the Shankara- charya school in India, and my immediate mentor was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought Transcendental Meditation to the West. Maharishi was a disciple in turn of the Shankaracharya. That tradition goes back to the ninth century sage Adi Shankara. Their interpretation always has been that the eight limbs of yoga are practiced simultaneously. In that way it is similar to the Eightfold Path in Buddhism.

The eight limbs are Niyama, Yama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi and are all actually combined into one discipline. Yama and Niyama are rules of social and personal conduct, so why not include them as things that you do? It’s about the internal shift in attitude that you have to make.

Pratyahara and Pranayama are actually forms of Raja yoga, and therefore they are complementary to Asana. Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi are supposed to be the culmination of this practice, but all eight limbs are still part of your daily practice.

The Share Guide: All right, so we can work on all the limbs at the same time.

Deepak Chopra: Right, and we should.

The Share Guide: I’d like to ask you about mantras. I received a personal mantra from Dr. Warren Mills, one of your Primordial Sound Meditation teachers. Can you discuss what mantras are in general and what is specifically beneficial about receiving a personal mantra?

Deepak Chopra: There are many kinds of mantras. The mantra that you are using as part of your Primordial Sound Meditation instruction as taught by the Chopra Center, is called a bija mantra. The word bija means seed. It’s the most basic kind of mantra there is, and it’s traditionally used for transcending or going beyond the realm of thought.

The way that mantra is selected is based on your time of birth and your place of birth. Based on that information, the person who is giving you the mantra can actually know the exact position of the moon at the time and location of your birth. There are 108 such positions, and so there are 108 mantras, and they are selected according to this principal. These days we have a computer program to do this, so we can take your information and immediately get your astrological chart. This knowledge goes back hundreds of years.

Now there are other mantras, of course, that have very specific effects. There is a huge body of knowledge on mantras for healing, for wealth consciousness, for invoking specific deities that are symbolic representations of psychic energy within your own self. Ever since I was a child, I’ve used thirty or forty different mantras for different reasons: for making me go to sleep if I can’t sleep; for increasing my energy; for increasing my desire for knowledge, etc. Usually mantras are given by teachers who are very knowledgeable and intimate with the tradition. In fact, they are passed on from teacher to disciple. Then the disciple one day becomes a teacher himself or herself, and passes the mantra on again. But as I said, it’s a huge body of knowledge.

The Share Guide: I am familiar with some for specific things like the Lakshmi mantra for generating righteous wealth. What about kirtan, which is devotional chanting with music?

Deepak Chopra: Kirtan is devotional chanting, but it does not always involve mantra.

The Share Guide: Regarding the seed mantra, is that supposed to be chanted out loud or quietly?

Deepak Chopra: Silently. Because it’s a seed mantra, at some point in meditation it disappears.

The Share Guide: Another aspect is the yantra or the mandala. I think those words are interchangeable.

Deepak: Yes, they are.

Share Guide: We use the Sri Yantra mandala in meditation class to gaze on while we meditate.

Deepak: Right. The Sri Yantra is the visual vibration of the mantra OM.

Share Guide: I’ve been told to draw the energy from the center of the Sri Yantra into your heart chakra. Is this how you use it, or are you just supposed to gaze at it?

Deepak: That’s one way. But you can just sit quietly and gaze at a yantra and it will draw your attention into the bindu (the point in the center) and then you disappear in it’s unboundedness.

Share Guide: I see meditation as a way to bridge the apparent gap between the physical and the spiritual. What are your thoughts on this?

Deepak: Meditation has only one reason: to get in touch with your soul, and then go beyond that and get in touch with the consciousness that your soul is a ripple of. It might be a good stress management technique, but there is only one real purpose, which is the means to enlightenment.

Share Guide: When I interviewed Dr. John Hagelin a couple of years ago (he also works closely with Maharishi), I remember him talking about five states of awareness: waking, sleeping, dreaming, meditating, and the fifth state which really intrigued me, a state of enlightenment in action, keeping that consciousness in your actions.

Deepak: There are actually seven states of awareness. Deep sleep is the first; dreaming is the second; then the third stage is waking; the forth stage is meditation; the fifth is called cosmic consciousness, which is when you have that internal experience of meditation in deep sleep, dreaming, and waking, so you are established in that state even while in action.

Then beyond cosmic consciousness is the sixth stage of consciousness which is God consciousness, where you become aware of the spirit in the objects of your perception. So you look at a flower and you can feel the presence of divinity within it. Or you look at a telephone or a table or a shoe and you can feel the presence of the infinite in it. The infinite is everywhere. And the seventh stage is the ever present witnessing awareness in the object of experience. They fuse and become one, and when that happens then you experience enlightenment–you see the whole world as an expression of yourself and you see that the ground of your being is also the ground of all existence.

By Dennis Hughes, Share Guide Copublisher

Deepak Chopra, M.D. is a bestselling author, teacher, trained medical doctor and pioneer of the mind-body connection. His books include The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, How to Know God, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga. Dr. Chopra cofounded The Chopra Center for Well-Being in Carlsbad, California to advance the cause of mind-body-spiritual healing, education, and research. He regularly gives lectures and seminars around the world.

Nothingness Where We Come From ~ Deepak Chopra