Changing the World with a Glance

By Deepak Chopra, MD, Menas C. Kafatos, PhD

The power of seeing is well known to everyone, and many examples exist. There is love at first sight and Alexander Fleming noticing that penicillium mold kills bacteria. Galileo as a youth in church was the first to notice that a pendulum swings in a regular rhythm, setting the basis for pendulum clocks. Isaac Newton famously discovered gravity by watching an apple fall, although this tale was told second-hand and is probably a romantic fiction.

But what if a mere glance has untold power, literally the power to create reality? The opening for this idea came from what is known in quantum physics as the measurement problem a hundred years ago. A quantum is a tiny unit of energy, and if a specific quantum like an electron or a photon is considered a thing, it should be measurable. You should be able to know where it is at a given instant in time, for example, or how fast it is moving, how much it weighs, and the other properties that we assign to things in the everyday world.

But measuring the quantum turned out to be very tricky. Early in the era that begat quantum physics, two important closely related discoveries rocked the very notion of what a thing is. The first discovery was that a quantum appears in a double nature, depending on the circumstances of observation; it can behave like a particle but in other circumstances it could also behave like a wave. In many ways a wave is the very opposite of a particle, in that it extends infinitely in all directions, having no localized position. The particle aspect of a quantum became knowable only through an act of observation, converting it from an indefinite possibility to a concrete existence, known technically as the collapse of the wave function.

In fact, this collapse occurs with the active participation of an observer, setting up a quantum experiment, something known as the observer effect. The phenomenon that reality does not exist independently of measurement was so counter-intuitive that it continues to pose riddles a century after it was proposed, for unlike normal objects in everyday life—mountains, trees, rocks, etc.—that stay put no matter whether someone is present to look at them, a quantum apparently has an absolute need for an observer. Without being looked at, for the purposes of measuring it, there is no proof that the quantum, as a particle, even exists or where it might be.

Let’s set aside the technical issues the measurement problem gives rise to. Behind the technicalities, one faces the prospect that creation itself needs an observer in order to exist, including the entire universe. This theoretical hypothesis is taken very seriously in contemporary physics, because when you go as deep as the quantum field and reach the zero point of creation, time and space themselves vanish. Nothing of the known universe has a proven existence without an observer (although in a novel twist, some physicists theorize that the observer doesn’t necessarily have to be human).

Let’s accept the fact, well established in modern physics, that the precreated state exists, and that in some way the physical universe popped into existence from a state that has no ordinary qualities of everyday reality, no time, space, colors, shapes, indeed no materiality or constant energy. If the observer effect gives us any clue about how precreation turned into creation, a glaring fact emerges. Observation is neither passive nor neutral. Creation isn’t a passive act, and no observer is neutral because every living creature sees the world through a specific nervous system, tied to specific sensors. It is inconceivable with the human nervous system, for example, to imagine how a butterfly’s 360-degree field of vision operates.

So far, we’ve taken no unproven leaps; everything up to now is fairly standard physics, although there are all kinds of interpretations about what any of these discoveries actually mean and what kind of world is implied. One sizable portion of physicists, for example, have given up on describing reality in everyday familiar, sensory-based terms, conceding that the quantum world and the precreated state are only describable as abstract mathematical entities existing in a purely mathematical space.

If this view doesn’t represent a defeat for an objective reality devoid of the participation of observation, it certainly amounts to a humbling turn of events. The optimism that modern physics would arrive at a Theory of Everything has waned in many circles, and various advanced equations and observations of strange phenomena like dark matter, dark energy, and black holes greatly diminish anyone’s certainty that the physical universe is actually open to human explanation and its inherent limitations. Despite the excitement over observing a black hole for the first time, no one knows where the matter and energy sucked into a black hole goes (perhaps to regions of space-time beyond our accessibility) or whether it comes back again.

But if we stay with the basics, the observer effect and the collapse of the wave function seem to indicate that simply by looking out upon the world, each observer is enmeshed in creation, perhaps forever and everywhere. We are not solid bodies plunked down on the stage of history. We are entangled in the whole process of creating space, time, matter, and energy. For one implication of the precreated state is that the leap from precreation to creation is occurring all the time. Some theorists go so far as to say that we are surrounded by countless big bangs going off every second. What makes them occur? No one knows, but a very good candidate is our own participation in the process.

In other words, simply by looking, you are shaping the universe you perceive, a human universe unique to us as a species of consciousness. Unseen all around us are frameworks of space, time, matter, and energy spinning off on their own course. It is speculated that every thought leads to an “event line” that shoots off into a new reality. This sounds like dizzying stuff, but it gives rise to amazing possibilities in everyday life.

The first possibility, which has already been sketched in, is that each of us co-creates reality. Instead of being something “out there” in the physical world, reality not only includes the subjective mental world “in here,” but reality cannot exist in its present form without human consciousness. “You are the universe” must be taken seriously, along with its converse, “the universe is you.”

In the next post we’ll see that this proposition totally overturns everyday life and how we interact with the world. An expanded state of freedom with far more creative possibilities is dawning.

(To be cont.)


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. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotifywww.deepakchopra.com 
Menas C. Kafatos, PhD is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics at Chapman University, conducting research in quantum physics, cosmology, climate change and related hazards. He works on issues related to reality and the role of consciousness for natural laws that apply everywhere, the foundations of the universe, for scientific understanding, and spiritual non-dual awareness in everyday life. His doctoral thesis advisor was the renowned M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison. He is a lecturer and has authored 330 articles, is author or editor of 20 books, including The Conscious Universe Looking In, Seeing Out, Living the Living Presence, Science, Reality and Everyday Life, and is co-author with Deepak Chopra of You are the Universe. www.menaskafatos.com 

The Hidden Power of “Follow Your Bliss”

By Deepak Chopra, MD

When you take the popular phrase “Follow your bliss” and trace it back to its source, something more powerful was intended. In a late interview the famous expert on mythology Joseph Campbell first used the phrase, saying “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you.”

 

This implication that bliss is a personal path, and that the path is pre-determined, is much more than “do what you really like to do,” which is how most people interpret “Follow your bliss.” Let me expand on this point by showing that “bliss” is much more fundamental than almost anyone realizes. It holds the key to transforming the mind.

 

Doing what you really like to do is certainly a good idea; it is much better than the opposite, doing what you have to do even if you don’t particularly like it. But no one can engage in pleasurable activity all the time. The human mind brings us experiences of pleasure and pain, and since the two are paired as inescapable opposites, mental tension and conflict are inevitable no matter how positive and pleasant you try to make your life be. (For deeper background, please see my most recent post, “Can You Make Your Mind Your Friend?”)

 

Campbell deeply understood the cultural and spiritual roots of “Follow your bliss.” He emphasizes the universal quality of bliss in the same interview. “Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.” This gives enormous power to the life you are supposed to be living, and it also points out how to get there.

 

Bliss in the ancient Indian tradition is Ananda, one of the three primal aspects of creation.  “Sat Chit Ananda” is often translated from the Sanskrit as “eternal bliss consciousness,” which is the foundation of existence. What is implied is that existence ,consciousness, and joy belong together without beginning or end. That’s very different from the modern scientific assumption that the mind, especially the human mind, evolved over billions of years from inert, mindless matter.

 

Campbell knew what Ananda was, and in a simple way he tells us that if you get hold of bliss and follow it, you will arrive at the essential nature of the mind, which is blissful by nature. Therefore, existence itself is blissful by its very nature.  Such a declaration, if true, would totally overturn our everyday experience, because it seems obvious that a person’s existence can be filled with problems, obstacles, struggle, conflict, and trauma.

 

For “Follow your bliss” to be sound advice is workable only if these negative experiences are in some sense unreal, by which I mean that they mask the actual nature of reality. Only the individual can prove the truth or falseness of Ananda, and this is done by following the invisible thread of consciousness to its source. If the restless, discontented mind, tossed between pleasure and pain, has a blissful source, it has to be reachable if it is to do any good.

 

Let’s say that you want to follow your bliss as far as it can take you. There are essentially three stages on such a path.  Stage 1 is the experience of personal joy, which all of us have known at least once in our lives. These moments touch the lives of people who fall in love or who achieve a triumph or who simply find themselves overjoyed for whatever reason. You grab and hold on to Stage 1 bliss as long as you can, but eventually the moment passes.

 

A change occurs in Stage 2. Instead of possessing an experience of joy, the joy possesses you. By this I mean that it is more impersonal. In Stage 1, bliss is all for me, the ego-personality. In Stage 2, you rise above personality. The Latin roots of the word “ecstasy” mean “to stand outside.” That’s how Stage 2 bliss feels. You go outside your normal boundaries.

 

Stage 2 feels light and sometimes out-of-body. Religious awe falls into this category, along with wonder before the beauty of Nature, or its immensity. There can be a sense that time has stopped or that your mind has expanded into a new space that is free, open, untroubled, peaceful, and forever calm. But the essential aspect of Stage 2 bliss is that it possesses you, not the other way around.

 

Stage 3 is the experience of Stage 2 bliss on a permanent basis, so that it becomes the default state of your awareness. Every person’s mind has a default state already, a set of grooved-in reactions, responses, beliefs, and attitudes that make up their personal story. Stage 1 bliss occurs inside this default setting, while Stage 2 takes a brief vacation from it, and then Stage 3 leaves the old default setting behind completely.

 

At that point, “Follow your bliss” has accomplished what it was meant to accomplish: liberation. There are many terms for this state, such as enlightenment, waking up, Nirvana, Moksha, or the peace that passes understanding. The important thing is the experience, which begins simply enough, by focusing on the bliss you can create in your life, valuing it, and beginning to experience, usually through meditation or Yoga, a settled sense of the quiet, peaceful mind.

 

The mind’s quiet is actually an open space in which creation begins to vibrate, at first beyond our perception. But over time this vibration is perceived and grows. The vibratory quality of creation is what Ananda adds to the other two terms, Sat Chit, which are the infinite creative potential of pure Being, existence in its original state before any activity has begun.

 

Only when you are aware of your essential nature in bliss can the complex problems of the mind and all its suffering be solved once and for all. Your mind will become your friend, because you experience bliss even under circumstances that used to bring pain, confusion, and conflict. “Follow your bliss” has a transformative power, which Joseph Campbell understood and wanted to tell us about.

 

Originally published by San Francisco Chronicle

 

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. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential available on iTunes or Spotifywww.deepakchopra.com

In loving memory of Charity Sunshine Tillman Dick

Remembering Charity Tillman Dick, Sages and Scientists alumnus 2013.

Topic: Discourses from the Undead

A journey through the precipice of life and death

 

Speaker Bio: Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick is a soprano, composer and writer. She has performed extensively across Europe, Asia and the United States sharing the stage with noted artists and musicians including Jessye Norman, Eva Marton, Joshua Bell, Patti LaBelle, Condoleezza Rice, The Fray and Bono at venues including Lincoln Center in New York; The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio; The National Palace of the Arts in Budapest, Hungary; and Il Giardino Di Boboli in Florence, Italy. Some of her operatic roles include Gilda in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviatta, and Ophelia in Ophelia Forever. Charity’s performances have been broadcast internationally on CNN, CBS, PBS, and the BBC. After receiving a diagnosis of Idiopathic Pulmonary Hypertension in 2004, Charity served as the national spokesperson for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association where she testified before Congress, worked to raise awareness and expand federal research funding. Charity has since undergone two double lung transplants at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Charity is a contributor at FIVE and The Huffington Post, where she blogs about the issues she’s passionate about: life, music, health, religion and organ donation.

 

2019 WMIF | 1:1 Fireside Chat: Rudolph E. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra

 

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi moderated the Fireside Chat with Chopra Foundation Founder, Deepak Chopra, MD at the World Medical Innovation Forum (April 10, 2019), Boston, MA

Moderator: Rudolph Tanzi, PhD Vice-Chair, Neurology, Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MGH; Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology, HMS

Deepak Chopra, MD, Author and Founder of The Chopra Foundation

INFINITE POTENTIAL

In his first ever podcast, Deepak Chopra investigates the greatest mystery of all: what makes us conscious beings and why it matters that we are. Through stories and conversations with remarkable people, Deepak engages with perspectives rooted in science, art, humor, the future and even outer space. He welcomes a far-ranging group of guests, including Jane Goodall, Russell Brand, Dan Savage, Christopher Wylie, Jean Houston, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and many more, who have paved new paths for understanding our present and future. How do we define, harness, and elevate our minds? How can we live creatively and purposefully? What makes you…you? Join Deepak as he explores the infinite possibilities.

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