Transcript, E201: Deepak Chopra on finding your inner peace in a busy world

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LinkedIn News.

Jessi Hempel:

From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday.

We are all so much more than our jobs. If you want to do the work of growing in your career, if you aim to spend your hours purposefully... If you believe, as I do, that part of that purpose involves love, well this is a special episode for you. Sometimes Hello Monday is an interview show, sometimes it's more of a conversation. Today it's a master class. And along with you, a new student, you'll almost undoubtedly recognize our teacher by his voice.

Deepak Chopra:

Okay, so who are you? You're not your body. You're the awareness in which the body's a changing experience. You're not your mind. You're the awareness in which the mind is in a changing experience. You're not your emotions. You're the awareness in which the emotions are a changing experience.

Jessi Hempel:

That's Dr. Deepak Chopra. He offered to come on the show at the start of the year, just as his 93rd book published. Yes, you heard that right. Dr. Chopra has written 93 books.

I first learned about him when I saw him on Oprah in the '90s. I was a teenager. His voice provided the soundtrack to some of my earliest attempts at meditation.

His new book is called Living in the Light: Yoga for Self-Realization. And I'll admit when I picked it up, that I thought of yoga only as the movement classes I do on my Peloton app. But Dr. Chopra, he let someone else write that section of the book. Instead, he chose to write about the philosophy of Royal Yoga. It's an ancient path to transformation, with a remarkably practical application.

Now I wish I could bring you into the virtual studio here where Dr. Chopra and I met, because there's a nuance to this conversation that I don't know if you'll be able to hear. Sitting with him is a joy. He's patient, attentive, and he appears to wear the- a hint of a smile at all times. He's magnetic, even through a screen. The gift of Dr. Chopra's attention inspires me to want to attend. Imagine this experience for just a moment. Now, here's Dr. Chopra.

Deepak Chopra:

The first text of yoga was written by a great sage thousands of years ago. His name was Patanjali. And the word yoga means union with your true self. Your true self is not your body, it's not your mind, and it's not your experience of the world. Your true self is outside of space-time. It's what spiritual traditions usually refer to as the soul. But we don't use the word soul, uh, in this tradition of yoga, the word is pure consciousness or pure awareness. And that is the ultimate goal of life, is to operate from your true self.

Yuj is the Sanskrit word for yoga. It's also the English word yoke. You know, when Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," actually that's (laughs) a yogic statement, because you're connected to the source of all experience.

So, living in the light literally means living from the source of all experience, including the experience that we call body and mind, and the physical world. If somebody says, "Who's having this experience right now? Who's having this experience?" You and I. And, "Where is this experience happening?" You'd point to your head, "It's happening in my brain." If you're seeing something, you'd point to your eyes. But actually, all experience happens in consciousness or awareness. If there's no awareness, there's no experience. Period.

Shifting your identity from your ego identity to your divine identity, is living in the light. That's what it means. And yoga is the means.

Now when we look at yoga, there are four types of yoga. So this book is called the book on Royal Yoga, which is translation of a Sanskrit word called Raja Yoga. And then there are other yogas. There's a yoga called bhakti yoga, which is yoga of love. There's a yoga of the intellect, which is sight in a way. Signs of self awareness. And then there's something called karma yoga, which is selfless service to the world.

But Royal Yoga is eight limbs. And usually when you go to a yoga studio, you learn what? And that is how to move your physical body. Which is very important, but that is the third limb of yoga. The first two limbs of yoga are based on emotional and social intelligence, when you connect to the source of all experience. When you connect to your spirit, you don't have to worry about social and emotional intelligence. You, it comes to you automatically.

So the first two sections of the book are about principles of social and emotional intelligence, and the third is understanding your body as a field of awareness. The fourth is breath, and how to control your autonomic nervous system just by using your breath. There are hundreds of techniques to do that.

The fifth is withdrawal of the senses and learning to know what's happening inside your body. So, a good Yogi can regulate their blood pressure, body temperature, immune system, hormone system. Uh, let's call it interoceptive awareness, or Praytahara, or withdrawal of senses. That's the fifth.

The sixth is focused attention and intention. You need attention and intention to experience anything properly, and that's the sixth. The seventh is meditation, and the eighth is transcendence. That's what this book is about.

Jessi Hempel:

So, I spent a good deal of time with your section of the book. I came away thinking, "Gosh, this feels a lot less daunting than I originally thought."

Deepak Chopra:

(laughs) Yes.

Jessi Hempel:

My original framework (laughs) for what might be involved in bringing yoga into my life in any way, was a sense of discipline that I don't have. I'm a mother of two very young children. And, um, you know, I, I'm also not that physically fit. And I thought, "Well, this is not a framework for me."

But instead what you actually offer, is, um... Y- y- you lay it out over the course of six weeks, uh, a way to begin to become familiar with this material and apply it to my life, but in a manageable and approachable way. What brought you to try to do this now, and w- who are the people you hope benefit from it?

Deepak Chopra:

Sitting on... I'm sitting in my office, in my library now, and I have hundreds of books on yoga here, written by the biggest authorities of yoga. And when I pick them up, they're pretty archaic. You look at a Yogi in a mountain, (laughs) and in the background is temples. And it sounds very daunting, as you said. This is a book on the Royal Yoga.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Deepak Chopra:

So I thought, "Who's gonna read this?" I, I of course being an academic and a scholar, I read these books written by authorities. But if I want a person like you to understand what yoga is, I have to do it properly... In the English language, using sentences that you and I are familiar with and are not daunting.

And so we get the mystery out of this whole experience of yoga, and actually still remained loyal to the totality of the eight limbs of yoga.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. And yet, there were still pieces that felt very mysterious to me. I will tell you. Um,-

Deepak Chopra:

Okay (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

... it felt to me like your book was asking me to rethink my brain as not the locus for how I navigate the world, but rather just another sensor in my physical body. Am I understanding that right?

Deepak Chopra:

That, yeah. 100%. Your brain is like a user interface. So right now, you know, I'm on a computer, a desktop computer, that has many icons. And so if I press the icon Amazon, I'm transported into the world of Amazon. If I press Netflix, I'm transported to that world. Like that, your brain is an interface for you to experience existence. Existence of your body. Existence of your mind. Existence of your emotions. Existence of your relationships and personal relationships. Existence of your professional ecosystem. Existence of nature, and existence of the universe.

And the brain is like the interface with icons, you can train the brain... And this we know, this is called neuroplasticity. You're not your brain. You're not even your mind. You're the source of both of those. And the brain and mind correspond to each other. The brain is what the mind looks like as a physical object. You know, so if I have to study your mind, I can look at the neural correlates. But the brain is not the source of experience in the same way this computer I'm using is not the source of the experience. You and I using the computer, where the experience is happening in awareness.

Jessi Hempel:

So to come back to awareness, talk to me about the role that breath plays in helping us to get to awareness.

Deepak Chopra:

Okay. So you notice that when you're nervous, your breath becomes shallow and you breathe rapidly. If you're angry, your breath has another kind of movement, uh, which is inflammatory. So any emotion that you have, whether it is, uh, anxiety, anger, hostility, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, or depression, there- there's a brain correlate to that. You can look at what's happening in the brain.

Now do- through these practices, we can change that. We can change the neural networks of the brain. That's called neuroplasticity. And in order to do that, you have to change even the activity of your genes. Because your genes are basically templates for information states, but which genes are active and which g- genes are n- inactive, is what matters.

Imagine if I had a computer above my house, and it was monitoring all of the electrical appliances in my house, and, uh, it would automatically adjust the electrical appliances. If I walk into the kitchen, the kitchen would light up. In the library, the lights would go down. If I walked into the screening room, the television set would go up... And you know, all of that. This is called epigenetic modulation of genes, metaphorically speaking. So you can learn to rewire your brain for what I call a joyful, energetic body, loving, compassionate heart, reflective, creative mind, and lightness of being. But not only can rewire your brain to do that, you can activate the genes that do the rewiring. And now that is all accepted science. It wasn't like 20 years ago.

Jessi Hempel:

Well, Dr. Chopra, I think you're right, um, that that is generally accepted. It is interesting to me that that is happening at the same time that we are piloting into a moment when we are lonelier, more anxious, and less happy as a culture, than we were even 20 years ago.

It feels like we might be rewiring in the wrong direction. So I guess I ask, like i- is anybody capable of doing what you are suggesting? And how do we actually begin to cultivate it not just at the individual level, but at the, the societal level and the cultural level?

Deepak Chopra:

So, I have created a website. It's non-profit. It's called NeverAlone.Love. Check it out. Www.NeverAlone.Love. And we are creating online and offline communities with four simple ideas. Attention, affection, appreciation, and acceptance. So, affection means love in action. Not just love without action, because love without action is irrelevant. An action without love is meaningless. Love in action is what we call karma yoga, and that is called affection. Appreciation, we are noticing the unique gift that everyone has in the world. Acceptance, not trying to change anyone, but accepting them... Radically accepting everybody as they are.

So attention, affection, appreciation, which means gratitude, and we are connecting people with each other globally with this. And we've even, uh, uh, deployed an emotional AI that talks to teens. Teens are nervous talking to a human being because they feel judged, but they're very happy with our emotional chatbot. Her name is PIWI. And she was... That was the nickname of a recording artist that we knew who died from suicide.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm.

Deepak Chopra:

So now PIWI is also stands for Personal Interaction With Intention. And PIWI has intervened in 6,000 suicide l- ideations. She talks to 20 million people simultaneously. And, uh, we are creating global communities both online and offline, where people never feel alone.

Jessi Hempel:

It is so compelling to me and so interesting, that you offer up technology as a path for us to, um, guide each other and ourselves to less loneliness. Because I sometimes think that technology can be the scapegoat, that we can blame our situation on technology. Um, are you optimistic about technology's impact?

Deepak Chopra:

So Jessi, I, i-, I believe technology is neutral. And it's inescapable. We are using technology to do this interview, right? So technology can be used for diabolical, but besides, technology can be used for divine purposes. And it's help (laughs) to us, how we use it.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Deepak Chopra:

I believe that if we create global communities of caring, then we can rewire the global brain. Because what is the global brain? It's the internet. We can (laughs) rewire the global brain for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. That's my goal.

If we don't use technology, we become irrelevant. But right now, people are using technology to enhance their self image, and they don't know what their self is. I jokingly say that, that our world has sacrificed themselves for their selfies, and now we don't know the difference between ourself and our selfie.

So you know, if we can get people to actually embark on a journey of recognition of what the true self is through technology, that'd be a great gift for humanity.

Jessi Hempel:

We're gonna take a quick break here. When we come back, more with Dr. Deepak Chopra.

And we're back. When Dr. Chopra talks about reaching our truest selves by living in the light, he's not talking about light. But since I had this time with him directly, I wanted clarification. What is the light? I remember here, writing augmented reality stories early on. I remember visiting companies like Magic Leap and Oculus, that were trying to make products that simulated reality by projecting realistic images directly to my brain. As Dr. Chopra spoke, I started to think about all reality as a projected experience to my brain.

And the light? Well, the light is what's left when we turn off the projectors.

Deepak Chopra:

The l- true light of awareness is the light of consciousness and awareness, not photons. Photons are colorless. They're massless. They're dimensionless. But you're experiencing a three-dimensional world with colors, and shapes, and objects. The brain doesn't produce experience. The brain is, as I said, a user interface for experiences.

Jessi Hempel:

So, if my brain isn't producing the experiences... Be patient with me here, because I'm a hard student for you, I think, Dr. Chopra. But-

Deepak Chopra:

No, you're good.

Jessi Hempel:

What is producing the experience?

Deepak Chopra:

You are.

Jessi Hempel:

What, what is producing the experience w-

Deepak Chopra:

You are. The real you is spaceless, is timeless, is borderless. If your consciousness doesn't have a form, there's nothing you can point out to. Just like the eyes cannot see themselves, the cheek cannot bite themselves, consciousness cannot see itself. Sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions... Which we then called mind-body and universe, those are human constructs for an experience that is actually happening outside of space-time.

So, you. The real you is not subject to birth or death. It is spaceless. It's infinite. It's formless (laughs). But without it, there would be no experience. It doesn't have color, but without it there's no color. It doesn't have sound, but without it there's no sound. It doesn't have sensation, but without it there's no sensation.

If I put a knife through our brain, you won't feel a thing. Okay, because the brain is the least self-aware organ in our body. It's like a computer that's monitoring everything that's happening in your body and regulating it, but the real you that is regulating the computer, is timeless being.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm.

Deepak Chopra:

It's what spiritual traditions call the soul. Now these days it's kind of tricky to use words like soul, spirit, God, especially when you're at a neuroscience conference. Okay, they don't like these words.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Deepak Chopra:

So we use the word awareness to represent the personal soul. It's your personal awareness. It's your conditioned mind. To represent the collective awareness, it's the collective brain on the internet. To represent the cosmic consciousness, it's outside of space-time, and that's where you are.

Jessi Hempel:

To me the most beautiful thing about living in that moment of awareness, that light, would be the idea that I wouldn't have all the garbage about the past weighing me down and running through my mind, and generally making me unhappy, but I could live without it.

Deepak Chopra:

These days it's very fashionable for people to say, "I'm spiritual, but I'm (laughs) not religious." But the religious experience is a spiritual experience. If you look at all the religions of the world... Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Rumi, Rawdah... Any of the prophets, the experience is identical.

There's only three things, and those three things is what living in the light really is all about. Number one is transcendence. You realize that you are eternal immortal. Not because somebody said it to you, but because you had the experience. Number two is the spontaneous emergence of what we call platonic qualities. Truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, peace. And number three is loss of the fear of death. Period. If you have those three things, you're all set. Right?

(laughs)

Jessi Hempel:

(laughing) Yeah. Dr. Chopra, I laugh a little bit because you say in passing, "Oh, number three is loss of the fear of death." That is the central biggest definition to my like sense of, of humanity. Like, humans are born and then we fear death.

Deepak Chopra:

What dies is a perceptual activity, that we call the body. What dies is a cognitive ability, that we call the mind. But the experiences themselves, are seeds for manifestation in let's say pure consciousness of the true self or the soul. They recycle. Just like information recycles, energy recycles, [inaudible 00:20:23] recycles, (laughs)-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)-

Deepak Chopra:

... consciousness recycles. Okay? So what I'm looking at right now is Jessi recycling as a body and a mind, and Jessi thinks that's what she is. She's her body, she's her mind. And I say, "Okay, which body are you? You started as a fertilized ovum, then you were a zygote, then you were an embryo, then you were a baby, then you were a toddler, then you were a... Y- you know, teenager. Then young adult, then mature adult, all the way to dusty death." So if you say, "I am my body," which one?

The body is the most evanescent, ephemeral, transient thing you can think of. So is the mind. If I ask you, "What were you thinking last week on Tuesday at 4 o'clock?" You have no idea. But when you were thinking of that, (laughs) it was pretty important to you. It might even be stressing you out. Okay, but now you can't even remember what you did.

So just because we don't remember everything that's happened in our past, doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Deepak Chopra:

I, if I said, "Did you have a 14th birthday," of course you have it. Do you remember the 14th birthday in detail? Probably not. Okay, so who are you? You're not your body. You're the awareness in which the body's a changing experience. You're not your mind. You're the awareness in which the mind is in a changing experience. You're not your emotions. You're the awareness in which the emotions are a changing experience. You're not your perceptual experience of the world, you're the awareness in which that is happening.

That awareness, we say, "I." Say, "I was two years old. I was five years old." Now, the body was different. The mind was different. The emotions were different. "I was eight years old." Well, I don't have the emotions of an eight-year-old right now.

Jessi Hempel:

Can I ask you a question building-

Deepak Chopra:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

... on that, Dr. Chopra? Um, one of our listeners, um, Christine, asked me specifically to ask you about how you think about the future? If we take as truth that the past is not who we are right this second, and if we live in the present, how can we live in the present and also plan for the future?

Deepak Chopra:

Well if you are really focused on what you are doing in the present, then the future is spontaneously guaranteed to be in the direction that your deepest desire is. So I do a practice, where I'll ask myself four question every day. Who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? What am I grateful for? And I don't even try to answer those questions, I live those questions. And then life moves you into the answers. You don't need to know the answer. Life moves you, and this is called spontaneous evolution.

You don't have to plan the future. Hard work, exacting plans, driving ambition. You can be successful, but at the end of it you'll have rotten teeth, heart attacks, drug addiction, divorce,-

Jessi Hempel:

(laughs)

Deepak Chopra:

... and kids on all kids of problems. So, that is the way people achieve success. In my view, success is guaranteed when you're totally in the present moment. When you also redefine success as the progressive realization of worthy goals, as the ability to have love and have compassion. And most importantly, you're always in touch with your true self.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

We're getting close to the end of our time, and I want to ask you a question about your own career, Dr. Chopra. Because as long as I have been an adult, and even before that, you have been a guide on these questions. When you l- look over the course of your career, do you think we, humans, have made progress on what you are teaching, and do you feel like you are making progress on what you are teaching?

Deepak Chopra:

We've made a lot of progress collectively on these teachings and understanding of true self, but at the same time we have a world that has full of conflict. War, terrorism, climate change, extinction of species, poison in the food chain, pandemics. And so as a result of living with that conditioned mind, which is recycling over eons of time, we are sleep-walking to extinction. We could in fact harness a collective love, and compassion, and creativity, which is the mission of our non-profit foundation. To reach a critical mass, one billion people, for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world, so that they actually are the change they want to see in the world.

So, that's the answer to your first question. On my personal level, the tradition I come from, there are four stages of life. So, the first 25 years is education. I did that, and I did a good education. The second 25 years is fame and fortune. I did that, and I was good. The third 25 years is actually giving back. Which I just completed. I entered my 76th year. So, the last 25 years are only about two things. One is living in the light, and the second is preparing for death. And that's what I'm doing, joyfully (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

(laughing)

Deepak Chopra:

And I'm, I am very healthy.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. W- well, congratulations very much on your 76th year. When you say preparing for death, Dr. Chopra, I think about that as a, a quest beyond health.

Deepak Chopra:

It's ultimate well-being. It's the... The, the word health comes from the word wholly, which means returning to the memory of wholeness. Where you started from. You know the T.S. Eliot poem, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring is to arrive where we started from and know the place for the first time." That's preparing for death, to remember where you came (laughs) from.

Jessi Hempel:

(laughing)

Deepak Chopra:

The dream continues. This is a dream. If I asked you... You know, Wittgenstein, the great German philosopher, said, "Our life is a dream. We are asleep. But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we are dreaming." So if I asked you, Jessi, what happened to your childhood, you'd say, "It's a dream." What happened to your teenage years? "It's a dream." But if I asked you what happened last night, "It's a dream." What happened five minutes ago? "It's a dream." What happens to my words by the time you hear them, they don't exist. Even that's a dream.

This is a dream, so I'm now preparing for the next dream.

Jessi Hempel:

Well thank you for spending so much time with us, Dr. Chopra. It was wonderful to have you in, um, our virtual studio.

Deepak Chopra:

Thank you.

Jessi Hempel:

That was physician, author, and teacher, Dr. Deepak Chopra. His newest book, Living in the Light, is available now.

You know, sometimes a podcast can be just an excellent jumping off point for more discussion, more community. And this week, we have two great opportunities to connect just a little bit more.

Now a lot of y'all know that we have started a group on LinkedIn, the Hello Monday group, and we'd love for you to join. You can click on the link right from the show notes, wherever it is you listen. Our community is a supportive place for career conversations. It's full of lovely and helpful people. I think of it as one of the kindest places you'll find in the web. We can't wait to welcome you there, so check it out.

And as always, we'll be convening for office hours live on the LinkedIn News Page. We'll talk about this week's episode.... Whatever it is that we have to talk about, we'll do it at 3:00 PM Eastern, this Wednesday. So, come find us. You can find us on the LinkedIn News Page, or email us at [email protected] for a link.

Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News. Sarah Storm produces our show. It's engineered by Assaf Gidron. Rafa Farihah, Wallace Truesdale, Kaniya Rogers, Michaela Greer, and Victoria Taylor help us connect to our highest selves. Joe DiGiorgi mixes our show. Courtney Coupe is Head of Original Programing. Dave Pond is Head of News Production. Our theme music was composed just for us by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. And Gianna, this episode made me think of you. Dan Roth is the Editor and Chief of LinkedIn.

I'm Jessi Hempel, we'll be back next Monday. Thanks for listening.

I have to tell you too, that my middle name is Joy.

Deepak Chopra:

(laughs) Definitely, that's-

Jessi Hempel:

And for most of my life, (laughs)-

Deepak Chopra:

Yeah?

Jessi Hempel:

Well most of my life, I was very unhappy about that. I di-, I don't know why. I just felt-

Deepak Chopra:

Oh my God, why?

Jessi Hempel:

... angry at my mother for choosing it. Um,-

Deepak Chopra:

I would think that's the best-

Jessi Hempel:

And now it feels like the greatest gift (laughs).

Deepak Chopra:

Absolutely. Absolutely.