Why You and the Universe Are One

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

It takes a lot to overturn the accepted view of reality, but it doesn’t take a lot to begin. The accepted view of reality holds that human beings exist in the context of a vast physical universe “out there.” Only an extreme mystic would doubt this description, but all of us should. Sir John Eccles, a famous British neurologist and Nobel laureate, declared, “I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.” What Eccles means is that all the qualities of Nature, from the luxurious scent of a rose to the sting of a wasp and the taste of honey, are produced by human beings. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the main founders of quantum mechanics, said essentially the same thing when he declared that photons, quanta of light, have no color, such properties arise in the biology of perception.

 

Those are remarkable statements, all the more because they are all-inclusive. The most distant galaxies billions of light years away, have no reality without you, because everything that makes any galaxy real— with the multitude of stars with their heat, emitted light, and masses, the positions of the distant galaxies in space and the velocity that carries each distant galaxy away at enormous speed—requires a human observer with a human nervous system.  If no one existed to experience heat, light, mass, and so on, nothing could be real as we know it. If the qualities of Nature are a human construct arising from human experiences, the existence of the physical universe “out there” must be seriously questioned–and along with it, our participation in such a universe.

 

When you break experience down into its tiniest ingredients, the physicality of everything begins to vanish. The story we keep telling ourselves depends on reality “out there” having a physical explanation, but it doesn’t. For example, we depend on sight to navigate through the world. No matter what you see “out there”—an apple, cloud, mountain, or tree—light bouncing off the object makes it visible, but how? No one knows. What makes seeing totally mysterious can be summed up in a few undeniable facts:

 

  • Photons, the quanta of light, are invisible. They aren’t bright, even though you see sunlight as bright.
  • The brain has essentially zero light inside it, being a dark mass of oatmeal-textured cells enveloped in a fluid that is not terribly different from sea water. (There are extremely faint traces of photon activity in the brain, but the optic nerve doesn’t transmit photons to the visual cortex.)
  • Because there is no light to speak off in the brain, there are no pictures or images, either. When you imagine the face of a loved one, nowhere in the brain does that face exist like a photograph. How do action potentials in neuron electric firings become conscious awareness, no one knows.

 

At present no one can explain how invisible photons being converted to chemical reactions and faint electrical impulses in the brain creates the three-dimensional reality we all take for granted. Brain scans pick up the electrical activity, which is why an fMRI contains patches of brightness and color. So something is going on in the brain. But the actual nature of sight itself is mysterious. One thing is known, however. The creation of sight is done by you. Without you, the entire world—and the vast universe extending in all directions—can’t exist.

 

Expand this known fact to everything you experience, and every quality of life requires human participation. “Requires” means two things, first, that experience is the ground state of everything, including the activity of doing science, and second, that every quality is a human construct derived from experiences of individuals in human species. Another species with a different nervous system would participate in the universe in a way completely unknown to us with our human nervous system.

 

Physics has had decades to process the insight of John Archibald Wheeler, the eminent American physicist, general relativist and quantum physicist, who originated the notion of a “participatory universe,” a cosmos in which all of us are embedded as co-creators, replacing the accepted universe “out there,” which is separate from us. Wheeler used the image of children with their noses pressed against a bakery window to describe the view that kept the observer separate from the thing being observed. But in a fully participatory universe, the observer and the thing observed are one.

 

You are one with the universe because you experience Nature in your awareness, and there is no other source for reality as we know it. If anything is real that cannot enter human consciousness, we will never know it. How would we even know it? Even if we resort to abstract mathematics which might infer the existence of realities beyond our ability to sense them or measure them, we should realize that mathematics itself, albeit the most refined one, is tied to human observers. It takes a mathematician to understand mathematics. To summarize,

 

  • The universe we live in is a human construct, including everything in it.
  • All activity takes place in consciousness. If you want to point at where the stars are, there is no physical location, because consciousness isn’t a “thing.”
  • The brain isn’t the seat of consciousness but acts more like a radio receiver, and perhaps emitter, translating conscious activity into physical correlates. (The radio receiver metaphor describes the feedback loop between mind and brain, which are actually not separate but part of the same complementary activity in consciousness.)
  • To understand our true participation in the universe, we must learn much more about awareness and how it turns mind into matter and vice versa.

 

These are difficult truths for mainstream scientists to accept, and some would react to them with skepticism, disbelief, or anger. But following the other track of explanation, beginning with physical objects “out there,” fails utterly to explain how we are conscious to begin with. That’s why in scattered pockets, some physicists are beginning to talk about a conscious universe, where consciousness is a given throughout Nature. In fact, the founders of quantum mechanics a century ago agreed more with this view, having understood that quantum mechanics implies observation and agency of mind. In our upcoming book You Are the Universe, we call it the human universe, emphasizing where the whole construct comes from. As we will see in future posts, once you realize that you and the universe are one, the whole journey of being human shifts radically.

(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, Clinical Professor UCSD Medical School, researcher, Neurology and Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD  and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

 

Menas C. Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics, at Chapman University. He is a quantum physicist, cosmologist, and climate impacts researcher and works extensively on consciousness. He holds seminars and workshops for individuals, health and mental professionals, practitioners of contemplative traditions, and corporations on the natural laws that apply everywhere and are the foundations of the universe, for well-being and success. His doctoral thesis advisor was the renowned M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has authored 315+ articles, is author or editor of 15 books, including The Conscious Universe (Springer), Looking In, Seeing Out (Theosophical Publishing House), and is co-author with Deepak Chopra of the forthcoming book, You Are the Universe (Harmony). He maintains a Huffington Post blog. You can learn more at http://www.menaskafatos.com 

Wisdom Made Easy: 20 Principles

By Deepak Chopra, MD

There will never be a book titled Wisdom for Dummies, which would be a self-contradiction, but there will never be Wisdom for Really Smart People, either.  That’s because wisdom cannot be turned into a fixed system and taught. In a devalued way, wisdom can be transmitted as experience or lessons from a mentor to a student or apprentice. But Socrates made it his mission to oppose the Sophists, a school of teachers in Athens who founded their philosophy on teaching wisdom to others. Socrates held the contrary idea that to “know thyself” wasn’t possible without going deeply into the mysterious workings of truth, which is accessible beyond words and therefore beyond teaching.

 

In India, the same notion was carried even further. Speaking of the self and the reality it belongs to, the ancient rishis declared “Those who know it speak of it not. Those who speak of it know it not.” By taking wisdom totally away from the field of things we rely upon every day—information, news, opinions, private beliefs, assumptions, experience, memory, and education—the world’s wisdom traditions pose the ultimate challenge. This helps to account for why, in our information—and disinformation—age, wisdom isn’t a goal many people pursue. So much can be achieved without it, simply relying upon the very things that Socrates and the ancient rishis ignored.

The best incentive, I think, for promoting wisdom is to clothe it as something very desirable: waking up. The two actually are the same. They involve a shift in consciousness. The only way to know if you are waking up, or perhaps have already woken up, is to feel the contrast with being asleep. “Asleep” is a metaphor for a state of consciousness that brings unwanted pain and suffering, that constantly finds itself in confusion and conflict, that brings doubts about life’s uncertainty over which looms the fear of death. If waking up can end those ills, then wisdom justifies itself.

 

Wisdom can’t be taught and by the same token can’t be learned. Instead, it’s the kind of knowledge you become. Or in everyday modern language, wisdom is a stage of development, not brought about the way genes direct childhood development, but as a choice to consciously evolve. Being a conscious process, or what spiritual seekers call a path, wisdom does have guidelines and principles. There are various ways you can cooperate with the evolutionary process, the way putting a book before a young child can encourage the innate ability to read.untitled-design63

In that light, here are 20 principles I sketched in some years ago, with hopes of centering a book around them. I recently ran across them again and offer the list without commentary. The purpose is simply to show how I guided myself with the goal of waking up. How you use the list is up to you. It may give you some sense of where you are or want to be. It may remind you of things you’ve already realized but let slip. In any case, I want to reinforce a belief in wisdom that has endured for centuries and continues to survive, even in times where skepticism, materialism, and uncertainty tends to be the norm.

  1. Always think unlimited possibilities. Infinity exists in all directions.
  2. Choose consciously, each and every time.
  3. Pay attention to the timeless core of your being.
  4.              Nurture the richness of your inner life. Daydream, imagine, and reflect. It’s the source of infinite creativity.
  5. Know that everything is connected to everything else.
  6. Instead of asking “What’s the problem? “ask “What’s the opportunity to evolve?”
  7. Understand Karma: No debt in the universe goes unpaid.
  8. Your only identity is I am, undefined and infinite.  Any label you give yourself limits you.
  9. The invisible and subtle gives rise to the visible and material.
  10. Be comfortable with and embrace paradox, contradiction. and ambiguity. Uncertainty is the womb of creativity.
  11. Consciousness regulates and becomes the flow of energy and information in your body, your relationships and your world.
  12. The most effective way to transform into higher consciousness is to pay attention in the present moment.
  13. Our most natural state is joy. It is the foundation for love, compassion, healing, and the desire to alleviate suffering.
  14. Be your own best friend by forgiving yourself and dropping self-judgment.
  15. Intuition is deep listening with the body, mind, heart, and soul.
  16. Know that your self cannot be squeezed into the volume of a body or the span of a lifetime.
  17. Emotional intelligence begins when you feel without labels or evaluation.
  18. Each mind is entangled with all minds past, present, and future through the exchange of meaning.
  19. Ultimately your reality is rooted in your own source. Take responsibility for it at every level.
  20. No matter what the situation is, remind yourself “I have a choice.”

 

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, Clinical Professor UCSD Medical School, researcher, Neurology and Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD  and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

All of Us—Doctor and Patients—Need to Face up to Healthcare Hazards

By Deepak Chopra MD, Nancy S. Cetel, MD, Danielle Weiss, MD, Joseph B. Weiss, MD

Medical mistakes are a touchy subject in the medical community. Both sides of the healthcare system fear them—patients because of their general anxiety about going to the doctor, physicians because of the looming threat of malpractice. The situation needs to be faced squarely, with candor and above all, with reliable statistics. These have varied widely over the years. While the numbers of fatalities reported annually in US hospitals has had estimates from 44,000 to 440,000, even the lower estimate is a public health catastrophe.

We say this against the background of the vulnerable position even the best cared for patient faces. Entering the hospital represents a loss of freedom, exposure to anxiety-producing procedures, a sterile environment, and being handled, physically and emotionally, by strangers. Adding medical mistakes to the list must become unacceptable.

At present, however, preventable mistakes continue to persist and are often more grave. Several publications over the past two dozen years, including our own, have highlighted the alarming frequency and consequences of adverse events during medical treatment. Among the most credibly researched and analyzed findings are the following:

* The US Department of Health & Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, reported that a review of in-patient records from 2008 confirmed 180,000 fatalities occurred in the Medicare population alone, because of medical errors.

* A 2013 evidence-based estimate, using a weighted average of 4 databases, suggested that the current range of annual deaths in US hospitals from adverse events was between 210,000 to over 400,000.

* Most recently, in 2015, journal authors from Johns Hopkins estimates the number as over 250,000 deaths per year, making hospital errors the third leading cause of US hospital deaths after heart disease and cancer.

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Regarding the last citation, Dr. Martin Makary, Professor of Surgery and Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, comments that medical care gone wrong is commonly due to “a communications breakdown, poorly coordinated care, or a misdiagnosis,” but these are rarely mentioned when a doctor fills out “primary cause of death” on a death report.

 

As a result, Makary notes, “these are issues that have lived in locker rooms, doctors’ lounges, and nurses’ stations…in the form of stories and not epidemiological errors.” A recent review of 4,000 medical journal articles showed that even the most accurate medical record review protocol identified adverse events in 2.9% to 18.0% of records, with preventable errors identified in 1% to 8.6% of records. Although alarming in its own right, this number is a significant underestimation of the true frequency of errors. In a telling report that interviewed nearly 1,000 patients in Massachusetts 6 to 12 months after discharge, patients recalled three times the number of adverse events reported in the medical record.

 

The many reasons why errors would be underreported is all too readily apparent. Avoidance of identification, liability, blame, guilt, financial penalty, malpractice action, job security, disciplinary action, hearings, reviews, etc. are just some of the powerful motivations to avoid reporting an error. Surveys of physicians confirm the obvious, that under-reporting is widespread. Yet without accurate statistics the full extent of the endemic problem, as well as the ability to monitor efforts to reduce errors, cannot be accurately assessed. Human error is inevitable, but every effort must be made to minimize the risk and consequences.

 

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, Chairman and Founder, The Chopra Foundation, Co-Founder, The Chopra Center for Wellbeing

 

 

Nancy S. Cetel, MD, President and Founder, Speaking of Health and specialist in women’s health and reproductive endocrinology.

 

 

Danielle Weiss, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, Medical Director & Founder, Center for Hormonal Health & Well-Being

 

 

Joseph B. Weiss, MD, FACP, Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California San Diego.

 

 

References:

 

Brennan TA, Leape LL, Laird NM, et al. Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study I. N Engl J Med 1991;324:370–6.

 

Kohn LT, Corrigan J, Donaldson MS. To err is human: building a safer health system. Washington DC: National Academy Press, 2000.

 

Department of Health and Human Services. Adverse events in hospitals: national incidence among Medicare beneficiaries. 2010. http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00090.pdf.

 

A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care James, John T. PhD Journal of Patient Safety: September 2013 – Volume 9 – Issue 3 – p 122–128

doi: 10.1097/PTS.0b013e3182948a69

 

Makary MA, Daniel M. Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US. BMJ 2016;353:i2139. doi:10.1136/bmj.i2139

 

Measurement of patient safety: a systematic review of the reliability and validity of adverse event detection with record review. Mirelle Hanskamp-Sebregts, Marieke Zegers, Charles Vincent, Petra J van Gurp, Henrica C W de Vet, Hub Wollersheim Published 22 August, 2016 http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/8/e011078.full

 

Weismann JS, Schneider EC, Weingart SN, et al. Comparing patient-reported hospital adverse events with medical records reviews: Do patients know something that hospitals do not? Ann Intern Med. 2008; 149: 100–108.

 

Overview of medical errors and adverse events. Maité Garrouste-Orgeas François Philippart, Cédric Bruel, Adeline Max, Nicolas Lau and B Misset Annals of Intensive Care 20122:2

DOI: 10.1186/2110-5820-2-2 Published 16 February 2012

 

Valentin A, Capuzzo M, Guidet B, Moreno R, Metnitz B, Bauer P, Metnitz P: Errors in administration of parenteral drugs in intensive care units: multinational prospective study. BMJ 2009, 338: b814. 10.1136/bmj.b814

 

Ridley SA, Booth SA, Thompson CM: Prescription errors in UK critical care units. Anaesthesia 2004, 59: 1193–1200. 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2004.03969.x

 

Garrouste-Orgeas M, Timsit JF, Vesin A, Schwebel C, Arnodo P, Lefrant JY, Souweine B, Tabah A, Charpentier J, Gontier O, et al.: Selected medical errors in the intensive care unit: results of the IATROREF study: parts I and II on behalf of the Outcomerea study group. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2010, 181: 134–142. 10.1164/rccm.200812-1820OC

 

Garrouste-Orgeas M, Soufir L, Tabah A, Schwebel C, Vesin A, Adrie C, Thuong M, Timsit JF: A multifaceted program for improving quality of care in ICUs (IATROREF STUDY) on behalf of the Outcomerea study group. Critical Care Med, in press.

 

Overview of medical errors and adverse events. Maité Garrouste-Orgeas, François Philippart, Cédric Bruel, Adeline Max, Nicolas Lau and B Misset Annals of Intensive Care20122:2

 

DOI: 10.1186/2110-5820-2-2 Published 16 February 2012

 

Kennerly DA, Kudyakov R, da Graca B, et al. Characterization of adverse events detected in a large health care delivery system using an enhanced Global Trigger Tool over a five-year interval. Health Serv Res 2014;49:1407–25. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.12163 Google Scholar

 

Rutberg H, Borgstedt Risberg M, Sjodahl R, et al. Characterisations of adverse events detected in a university hospital: a 4-year study using the Global Trigger Tool method. BMJ Open 2014;4:e004879. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-004879

 

Christiaans-Dingelhoff I, Smits M, Zwaan L, et al. To what extent are adverse events found in patient records reported by patients and healthcare professionals via complaints, claims and incident reports? BMC Health Serv Res 2011;11:49. doi:10.1186/1472-6963-11-49 [CrossRef][Medline]Google Scholar

 

Classen DC, Resar R, Griffin F, et al. ‘Global Trigger Tool’ shows that adverse events in hospitals may be ten times greater than previously measured. Health Aff (Millwood) 2011;30:581–9. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0190

 

Sari AB, Sheldon TA, Cracknell A, et al. Extent, nature and consequences of adverse events: results of a retrospective casenote review in a large NHS hospital. Qual Saf

 

J Health Care Finance. 2012 Fall;39(1):39-50. The economics of health care quality and medical errors. Andel C1, Davidow SL, Hollander M, Moreno DA. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23155743

After Gay Rights, Gay Spirituality

untitled-design43By Deepak Chopra, MD

It’s taken decades for gay activists to achieve the most basic right that every minority deserves: equality under the law. In principle one might say that the battle has been won, even if some states are dragging their heels and some groups mount fierce resistance. Thirty years ago, it took mass protests to push for major funding of AIDS research, and the overturning of antiquated, prejudiced sodomy laws wasn’t a sure thing when the Supreme Court took up the issue in 2003.

The fact that the court did invalidate state laws against homosexuality was the bellwether for a shift in public acceptance that will only accelerate in the future. It’s time, then, to consider another dimension that has been masked by the headlines over legal battles. That’s the dimension of spirituality, where religious intolerance has been the norm and finding the way to self-acceptance has been a poignant personal struggle for every gay man and woman.

The issues are framed by questions that millions ask every day without being gay, since they pertain to the loss of faith that society has been wrestling with for decades:

Does God love me?

Does he (or she) know that I exist?

Can God relieve my suffering?

Where was God when I endured my darkest hours?

It would be easy, and probably correct, to say that these questions are more pointed for gay people, because they are burdened by social disapproval, hidden prejudices, and long-held dogmas about God’s condemnation of homosexuality. Spirituality is a larger dimension of life, however, based on real personal needs. For gay people to realize their place in a living kind of spirituality, seven needs must be filled:

1. The need to safety and security.

2. The need to be recognized for achievement and success.

3. The need to belong to a community.

4. The need to be listened to and understood.

5. The need to express oneself through creativity and self-exploration.

6. The need for higher moral worth.

7. The need to feel at one with God or other depiction of highest Being.

I hate to announce it to accepted prejudice (both inside and outside the gay community), but in my experience, gay people have done more to fulfill these needs than society as a whole. They may have been forced to face themselves by hostile circumstances; they may be more compassionate and accepting of differences in general; it could be that feeling like outsiders has increased their self-awareness. I can’t point to an exact cause – no doubt there is a mixture of many causes – but the result has been an open kind of seeking that is one of the most valuable aspects of modern gay life.

Which of us has had to pay constant attention to being safe and secure when we walk down the street? Who feels automatically that their achievements will be undermined or their acceptance put into question simply because of who they are? Gay people confront both obstacles to the first two needs on the list, which are taken for granted by the majority population. The higher needs are just as tinged with self-doubt and negative social attitudes. What this means is that your gay friends and those happy gay couples kissing on their wedding day have gone through personal struggles you probably have only a little awareness of. Seeking for God comes down to seeking oneself in the grand scheme of things, and every gay person knows what that feels like.

Spiritual seeking is a huge topic, naturally. On one front most gay people have to come to terms with the religion they were brought up in. For Christians, a landmark is The Good Book by the late Peter Gomes, who held the position of Preacher to Harvard College. Gomes, who came out fairly late in life, devotes considerable space to the condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible, and his approach in the face of these condemnations is summarized in the book’s subtitle, “Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart.”

In other words, bringing a modern mindset and an open heart unfolds a new path, one that isn’t literally tied to the attitudes of Jewish culture thousands of years ago, or the extension of those attitudes by the early Christian fathers. For gay people who want to remain among the faithful, there are churches in every large city that will welcome them. Even the Catholic Church shows signs of softening its strictures under a new, more compassionate Pope.

Not having the church door slammed in your face is barely the first step in filling the spiritual dimension in a person’s life. The seven needs I’ve listed take a lifetime to fulfill, attended by inner work and a desire to keep evolving every day. At the very least the straight and gay world can agree on that, because seeking is a common human project. To fill the spiritual dimension requires a shift in attitudes in all of us. Gay people need to realize that they deserve to be fulfilled spiritually. Straight people need to agree.

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. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. www.deepakchopra.com

Sleep Out for homeless youth

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Support Sleep Out for Homeless youth.  You can donate and/or join Chris Clarke, Deepak Chopra and others on November 17th at Covenant House (New York City).

Each year in 27 cities across North America, Covenant House cares for over 50,000 at-risk and homeless kids in their journey from the street to safety, and ultimately, to independence. By participating in this event you are helping to make sure the doors stay open for all the children that need them.

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