Waking Up Is Impossible, But It Happens Anyway


By Deepak Chopra, MD

The punchline from a joke has gotten embedded in popular language: You can’t get there from here. The original joke has a lost traveler stopping his car to ask a farmer how to get to a certain town. The farmer scratches his head and says, “You can’t get there from here.” the humor, of course, is rooted in the fact that you can get anywhere on the map from anywhere else.

One place where the punchline isn’t funny refers to our minds. Everything the mind does is active. It takes the fluctuations of air molecules to create sound, which travels from the vibrating eardrum until the impulse is converted into electrical and chemical signals in the brain. All other information about the world “out there” depends on variations of the same model. Sight is possible through the interaction of photons with specialized cells in the retina. These in turn send electrical and chemical signals to the visual cortex. Without this activity, nothing in the universe is visible; photons by their nature are invisible.

As for the world “in here,” it takes fluctuations inside brain cells to create thoughts, feelings, and sensation. So far, none of this seems problematic. A world created by fluctuations of physical fields, matched to a mind that can interpret brain fluctuations as meaningful experience, is totally coherent. But there’s a fly in the ointment that we don’t choose to recognize in everyday life.

All activity must have a source, which physics calls a ground state. You can reduce the fluctuations of electrical and chemical signals, for example, to a unified force field that is their source–the field of electromagnetism. This field, however, isn’t defined by the activity it produces. The activity is an effect; the field is the cause or source. Even when it isn’t fluctuating, the field exists, just as a still lake exists without waves. But our experience is totally composed of activity in mind, body, and brain. So how do we know that such a source, entirely invisible and outside our experience, is real?

We know it through mathematics, the unifying language of science. This is somewhat reassuring, although it begs the question of where mathematics came from. Let’s leave that huge mystery aside for the moment. The reason math has to be resorted to is that human experience cannot arrive at the source of any fluctuation, whether it is physical (like gravity or electricity) or mental (in the form of thoughts, perceptions, sensations, etc.). Literally you cannot get there from here.

Science feels good enough about using mathematical models (this confidence may be misplaced, but let it pass). However, mathematics is woefully unable to explain where meaning comes from. Meaning isn’t in the cards when formulas are applied. You cannot compute creativity, intelligence, love, compassion, imagination, fears, hopes, wishes, and dreams using the logic of numbers. Yet just as science is satisfied with its mathematical models to describe the source of the physical universe, there is a satisfying explanation for meaning, too.

This is the experience of waking up or enlightenment, which exposes the mind to its source. In between the fluctuations of the mind, which are responsible for the entire know world in human terms, there is a field of awareness. Like a still lake, it gives rise to waves but in its own nature is still, quiet, and undisturbed. When we identify with the mental activity that fills every waking moment, the source of mind is hidden from view. Yet everyone knows of it, because between every thought and sensation there is a gap, and this gap contains no activity. Here I’m speaking of the conscious mind. Physically the brain is always fluctuating since that is the life of all cells in the body.

Waking up to the source of the mind means that we contact the field of consciousness. This experience, simply labeled waking up, is mysterious. How do you stop identifying with the stream of consciousness that never stops during every waking hour? The traditional answer is meditation, which is the practice of being aware of awareness. As popular as meditation has become, the mystery of being aware of awareness isn’t widely known. We are trapped in the belief that you can’t get there from here, which on the one hand is irrefutable. You cannot use a fluctuation to get to stillness. The two are mutually exclusive.

What makes waking up a genuine experience–indeed, the most profound and meaningful experience anyone can have–is that awareness must be aware of itself. There is no other alternative. How could there be? To say that awareness brings us the whole world, both inner and outer, while it is unaware of itself is self-contradictory. It would be like saying that water makes everything it touches wet but isn’t wet itself. The ability to become aware of awareness enters the human world as what we call self-awareness. There are two types of self-awareness, however, which adds to the confusion. One type of self-awareness is bound by the ego. When someone says, “I know I have a bad temper” or “I tend to be a perfectionist,” a moment of self-awareness has occurred, but it is confined within the behavior of “I,” the self that is built up from memories.

The other kind of self-awareness isn’t bound by the limited self. It is the experience of pure awareness knowing itself. What is this like? Those who have waked up report it as blissful, freeing, fearless, and deeply peaceful. The evidence of thousands of people waking up in every

culture, including modern-day America, testifies to a simple truth: Against all odds, you can get there from here.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

Delivering on JUST Capital

Deepak Chopra and Paul Tudor Jones II

In August 2012, this column featured an article entitled Just Capital: What the 99% Really Need, which said “What the majority of people need in this country is a financial system that incorporates social justice.”

Last week, thanks to the work of JUST Capital, the nonprofit charitable organization we co-founded in 2014, that vision took a giant leap forward toward becoming a reality. On June 13, we rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange for the launch of the JUST ETF, a new exchange-traded fund launched by Goldman Sachs, based on JUST Capital’s research. To our knowledge, it is the first ever financial product in which the underlying companies are included based solely on their alignment with the values and priorities of Main Street America. On the day of its release it became the single most successful sustainability or values-oriented ETF launch in history, and one of the top 10 equity ETF launches of any kind.

JUST Capital was created to breathe life into the vision of a more just marketplace in America. Our hope is that last week’s NYSE bell ringing represents a shift in how capitalism itself can better serve the broader best interests of society, especially for those who need it the most.

The salient point of the original article, and the mission that JUST Capital has taken on, is this: If we are to address the critical social challenges of our time, then the intrinsic enabling power of the $15 trillion private sector, and especially the large corporations that drive it forward, must be harnessed. Business as a force for good – in addition to making a profit – must become the new normal.

Unlike any other financial product we know of, the JUST ETF is built around the priorities and values of the American people. It is Main Street, not Wall Street, that gets to decide the criteria for just business behavior, how important they are, and ultimately how corporate success is defined.

We’ve captured the priorities of the public through three years of exhaustive polling and survey work, during which we engaged a cross-section of 75,000 Americans. We can now state with some confidence that the criteria for just businesses are: paying a fair (and living) wage; investing in workers; making healthier, more beneficial products; treating customers with respect; reducing environmental impacts; creating good jobs; strengthening communities; leading with integrity; and ultimately striking a better balance between the needs of all business stakeholders.

The beauty of this simple framework lies not just in its anchoring in basic, shared human values; it’s that it also makes for more successful company performance over time. In our rankings of the largest publicly-traded corporations in America, the most just corporations not only outperform their peers across all the themes described above, they also do better in the financial markets. Our diversified index of the top 50% of just corporations by industry has outperformed its benchmark in live trading by over 4% over the past 18 months, and the companies featured in the index generated a 7% higher return on equity. When you think about it, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Any company that invests in its workers, makes great products, looks after its customers, treats its community stakeholders well and is run with genuine integrity is bound to outcompete its peers. This is the win-win we believe in, and which many just corporate leaders throughout the country have also committed to.

The conditions that gave rise to the original two-part article about JUST Capital – the need to address income inequality, the erosion of public faith in our country’s institutions – have not changed. Indeed, some might say they have deteriorated. But the tools we are developing to overcome them are becoming at once more powerful and more in

tune with our fundamental values as a free market economy that is of, by, and for the people.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

Paul Tudor Jones II is founder, Co-Chairman, Chief Investment Officer and the controlling principal of Tudor Investment Corporation, a leading alternative investment firm founded in 1980 with principal operations today in Connecticut, New York and London.

Paul’s philanthropic service includes founding and serving as former Chairman and current board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, and founding and serving as former board member of the Excellence Charter School. He is Chairman of JUST Capital Foundation, Inc., Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, former Chairman and current board member of The Everglades Foundation Inc., Chairman of Pure Edge, Inc. Foundation, Trustee of NYU Langone Medical Center and serves on the Board of the Apollo Theater Foundation.

Paul holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia.

If a Machine Could Make You Happy, Would You Do It?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes many claims, some quite futuristic, others just around the corner. Somewhere in the middle lies the prediction of human behavior, with the attendant claim that if people are predictable, this could be the future of well-being.

To predict when someone is going to get angry, sad, afraid, or tense is already well within reach. AI is developing readouts of muscle activity and related bodily responses that indicate what the brain is going to do. Going a step further, at the MIT Media Lab they’ve taken enormous steps into translating thoughts—i.e., words in our heads—into signature brain signals. These signals can be digitized, and suddenly, a thought in your head can be sent to Google’s search engine via Wi-Fi, allowing you to search the Internet simply by thinking.

If you put these breakthroughs together, a new model of human behavior emerges, one based on predictability and reading the signals originating in the brain that attend predictable behaviors. AI experimenters get very excited about the notion that the brain, and the behavior it triggers, can be mathematically reduced to equations that in essence turn people into a complex of algorithms. The excitement is justified, because anything that can be expressed logically is understandable in computer language.

Even though a computer cannot fall in love and arguably could never grasp any emotion, positive or negative, if a certain muscle response triggered by the brain gives a 75% probability that you are about to fall in love, then match.com can be perfected—compatibility will be a numbers game.

Let’s say that AI’s dreams come true in the future. Would it be ethical to plug the brains of criminals into a Wi-Fi network that predicts the likelihood of a crime being committed, so that the police can head it off at the pass? That was the premise of Steven Spielberg’s movie, Minority Report, and in real life we are close enough to science fiction that prisons are working with predictability models to judge which inmates are safer to parole.

As soon as such a possibility is raised, the specter of Brave New World rises, along with the robotic behavior of North Koreans. Mind control is only a step away from mind reading. None of us wants our free will taken away, even if we would behave like happy people. We assume that

North Koreans aren’t robots when they aren’t under threat of reprisal, and this is true. Apparently, the American sitcom Friends has become a cult in North Korea, and despite the threat if imprisonment, tapes of Friends episodes are hot on the black market and constitute a forbidden pleasure for North Koreans.

But let’s go a step farther. What if a computer could figure out the algorithm of specific behavior that you, an average citizen, follows. Much unhappiness is caused by unconscious behavior that is totally predictable, and self-awareness is a rare commodity. If a computer knew you better than you know yourself, it could detect all the ways you make yourself unhappy, and then set out to improve your well-being.

There are lots of ways this might happen. A drug could change your brain chemistry or make your muscles relax. Biofeedback could train your brain to abandon certain self-defeating pathways and build better pathways in their place. Schools and training labs could teach you to recognize when you are about to feel depressed or anxious and then give you meditations that abort the depression and anxiety at a very early stage. The field of bio-manipulation could conceivably end the worst of human suffering, which is mental.

The bottom line right now is that AI plays both sides of the street. While claiming that body-mind responses can be predicted, digitized, and used for all kinds of healing, from repairing spinal injuries to teaching autistic children how to change their facial expressions (the notion being that if the child adopts normal expressions in place of the typical blank autistic mask, the range of the child’s emotions will become more normal at the level of the brain). Simple but profound behavioral techniques such having doctors smile at their patients and touch them reassuringly on the shoulder seem promising in reducing patient anxiety and complaints.

The other side of the street is the claim that “of course” people aren’t going to be turned into robots by AI. But how is the mind to be neatly divided into the trainable part (deterministic) and the creative, liberated part (free will)? If I can be plugged into a device that predictably improves my mood, transforming me from sad and lonely to a happy camper, should I do it? The argument against bio-manipulation is hard to pin down, but not because a future Big Brother is going to turn us into robots.

The problem is that every aspect of mind and body works in a complex fashion with every other aspect. If you “improve” a person’s mood, for example, you might strip away the benefits of anxiety. One marked benefit is the phase that artists and problem solvers go through known as “anxious searching,” where the mind worries over a painting, poem, or difficult problem until the answer emerges. Then the anxiety has served its purpose, and the mind, having reached a creative solution, is actually happier and more contented.

I’ve only scratched the surface of how AI can affect the mind but knowing what’s at stake is important. In future posts the discussion can go deeper. At the moment, there’s no doubt that AI finds itself at the troubled junction point of neuroscience, big pharma, ethics, philosophy, and social engineering. The most basic questions like “Do we have free will?” lead to harder questions still, like, “Is free will hurting or harming us?” It’s likely that issues once consigned to religion and philosophy will loom as practical choices in everyday life. How things will ultimately turn out isn’t subject to an algorithm, even if human behavior is mostly predictable.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

The Microbiome: How to Talk to Your 2 Million Genes

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Naveen Jain

The term “microbiome” has become popular in the last decade, and most people now realize that their bodies are populated by an enormous quantity of microbes. Taking every location from the skin to the mouth to the intestinal tract into consideration, the microbiome weighs around 3 lbs., roughly the same as the human brain.

The radical importance of keeping your microbiome balanced and healthy is just beginning to dawn on medical science and biology. If you took a snapshot of a tiny portion of your digestive tract, it would be teeming with an array of life forms almost beyond comprehension (including bacteria, viruses, bacteriophages, archaea, fungi, yeast, etc. Since it has long been known that we can’t digest food without the aid of the so-called “flora” in our intestines, the microbiome didn’t spring out of nowhere. What wasn’t realized until recently, however, is its staggering extent.

A human being possesses roughly 23,000 to 25,000 genes, and there is enough capacity for juggling DNA into new combination that these genes create 7 billion unique individuals on Earth, with no end in sight for creating billions more unique people. Your trillions of cells, however, are estimated to be outnumbered around 3 to 1 by the collected microbiota (as the collective microbial colonies are called) that co-exist with us. In terms of genes, however, it is estimated that all of these small creatures and plants contribute 2 million genes to our existence.

Now we realize that the human body is an ecosystem, and to be healthy requires “talking” to your microbiome in all kinds of ways—you have a whole planet to manage at the microbial level. The digestive functions they perform is barely the tip of the iceberg. As intestinal microbes feed, they excrete chemicals that are essential to wellness. Besides producing well-known chemicals like vitamin B, the microbiome sends neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine into the bloodstream. Hormonal levels are influenced, and so is your immunity from disease.

What we are realizing is that none of the microbial life inside us is a free rider. Those 2 million genes evolved with us. Some are actually woven into our own DNA. As in the Earth’s ecosystem, survival demands that every microbe performs a useful function. But where there is balance the possibility for imbalance occurs. When this happens, the body and the microbiome are off kilter, with the result that disease processes may start to form, and natural functions like staying at a proper healthy weight are impaired—or even become impossible.

The cutting edge of microbiome research involves mapping out thousands of microbes and identifying their functions—an overwhelming task now made possible by high-speed computers and data analysis. But even at this early stage, we can jump to some practical conclusions.

Companies are beginning to offer a service that analyzes your personal microbiome. With a small stool sample, it is possible to profile your unique digestive process, which foods you metabolize well or not so well, which chemicals (known as metabolites) your microbiome is secreting in terms of harmful and helpful ones—and this is just the beginning.

The most challenging epidemics in modern society are connected to lifestyle, and lifestyle is how we “talk” to our microbiome. The next bite of food you eat sends a message to your microbiome, and in reply it will send a chemical message back. Unhealthy chemical responses that originate in the microbiome are thought to be strongly linked to heart disease and overweight, for example. No two people are chemically alike at any given moment. The body is like an information superhighway, and although traditionally the brain was the hub for all incoming and outgoing information, the true hub is the gene. Therefore, with its huge preponderance of genes, the microbiome is thought now to dominate the information superhighway.

Pursuing gene therapies for the past fifteen years, ever since the Human Genome Project provided a complete map of human DNA, has proved frustrating and enormously expensive. But influencing your ecosystem of genes happens naturally every day. The information superhighway is populated by the messages sent from gene to gene, and these come from thoughts, emotions, stress levels, relationships, and the quality of food, air, and water you ingest.

The future of wellness is at stake here. By attending to the ecosystem that is you, the entire system of mind and body is affected. For the first time, in practical terms relating to eating, being active, sleeping, and managing stress and inflammation, the old model of preventing risks can be replaced by a positive model. The positive model is about optimizing the personal well-being of each person. If we learn from an early age how to “talk” to our microbiome, that conversation turns into feedback loops that maintain balance and wholeness everywhere.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

Naveen Jain is an entrepreneur driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation. He is the founder of several successful companies including Moon Express, Viome, Bluedot, TalentWise, Intelius and InfoSpace. Moon Express is the only company to have permission from the US government to leave earth orbit and land on the moon. Viome is focused on disrupting healthcare with the goal of “making illness elective” by identifying biomarkers that are predictive of chronic diseases and preventing them through personalized diet & nutrition. Naveen is a director of the board at the X PRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Naveen Jain has been awarded many honors including “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year”, “Albert Einstein Technology Medal” for pioneers in technology, Recipient of “Ellis Island Medal of Honor”, Most creative person” by Fast Company, “Top 50 philanthropists of 2018” by Town & Country magazine and “Humanitarian Innovation Award” at the United Nations

The Microbiome: How to Talk to Your 2 Million Genes

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Naveen Jain

The term “microbiome” has become popular in the last decade, and most people now realize that their bodies are populated by an enormous quantity of microbes. Taking every location from the skin to the mouth to the intestinal tract into consideration, the microbiome weighs around 3 lbs., roughly the same as the human brain.

 

The radical importance of keeping your microbiome balanced and healthy is just beginning to dawn on medical science and biology. If you took a snapshot of a tiny portion of your digestive tract, it would be teeming with an array of life forms almost beyond comprehension (including bacteria, viruses, bacteriophages, archaea, fungi, yeast, etc. Since it has long been known that we can’t digest food without the aid of the so-called “flora” in our intestines, the microbiome didn’t spring out of nowhere. What wasn’t realized until recently, however, is its staggering extent.

 

A human being possesses roughly 23,000 to 25,000 genes, and there is enough capacity for juggling DNA into new combination that these genes create 7 billion unique individuals on Earth, with no end in sight for creating billions more unique people.  Your trillions of cells, however, are estimated to be outnumbered around 3 to 1 by the collected microbiota (as the collective microbial colonies are called) that co-exist with us. In terms of genes, however, it is estimated that all of these small creatures and plants contribute 2 million genes to our existence.

 

Now we realize that the human body is an ecosystem, and to be healthy requires “talking” to your microbiome in all kinds of ways—you have a whole planet to manage at the microbial level. The digestive functions they perform is barely the tip of the iceberg. As intestinal microbes feed, they excrete chemicals that are essential to wellness. Besides producing well-known chemicals like vitamin B, the microbiome sends neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine into the bloodstream. Hormonal levels are influenced, and so is your immunity from disease.

 

What we are realizing is that none of the microbial life inside us is a free rider. Those 2 million genes evolved with us. Some are actually woven into our own DNA. As in the Earth’s ecosystem, survival demands that every microbe performs a useful function. But where there is balance the possibility for imbalance occurs. When this happens, the body and the microbiome are off kilter, with the result that disease processes may start to form, and natural functions like staying at a proper healthy weight are impaired—or even become impossible.

 

The cutting edge of microbiome research involves mapping out thousands of microbes and identifying their functions—an overwhelming task now made possible by high-speed computers and data analysis. But even at this early stage, we can jump to some practical conclusions.

 

Companies are beginning to offer a service that analyzes your personal microbiome. With a small stool sample, it is possible to profile your unique digestive process, which foods you metabolize well or not so well, which chemicals (known as metabolites) your microbiome is secreting in terms of harmful and helpful ones—and this is just the beginning.

 

The most challenging epidemics in modern society are connected to lifestyle, and lifestyle is how we “talk” to our microbiome. The next bite of food you eat sends a message to your microbiome, and in reply it will send a chemical message back.  Unhealthy chemical responses that originate in the microbiome are thought to be strongly linked to heart disease and overweight, for example. No two people are chemically alike at any given moment. The body is like an information superhighway, and although traditionally the brain was the hub for all incoming and outgoing information, the true hub is the gene. Therefore, with its huge preponderance of genes, the microbiome is thought now to dominate the information superhighway.

 

Pursuing gene therapies for the past fifteen years, ever since the Human Genome Project provided a complete map of human DNA, has proved frustrating and enormously expensive. But influencing your ecosystem of genes happens naturally every day. The information superhighway is populated by the messages sent from gene to gene, and these come from thoughts, emotions, stress levels, relationships, and the quality of food, air, and water you ingest.

 

The future of wellness is at stake here. By attending to the ecosystem that is you, the entire system of mind and body is affected.  For the first time, in practical terms relating to eating, being active, sleeping, and managing stress and inflammation, the old model of preventing risks can be replaced by a positive model. The positive model is about optimizing the personal well-being of each person. If we learn from an early age how to “talk” to our microbiome, that conversation turns into feedback loops that maintain balance and wholeness everywhere.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

 

Naveen Jain is an entrepreneur driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation. He is the founder of several successful companies including Moon Express, Viome, Bluedot, TalentWise, Intelius and InfoSpace. Moon Express is the only company to have permission from the US government to leave earth orbit and land on the moon. Viome is focused on disrupting healthcare with the goal of “making illness elective” by identifying biomarkers that are predictive of chronic diseases and preventing them through personalized diet & nutrition. Naveen is a director of the board at the X PRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Naveen Jain has been awarded many honors including “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year”, “Albert Einstein Technology Medal” for pioneers in technology, Recipient of “Ellis Island Medal of Honor”, Most creative person” by Fast Company,  “Top 50 philanthropists of 2018” by Town & Country magazine and “Humanitarian Innovation Award” at the United Nations.