News - The Chopra Foundation

A Science of Miracles – No Longer Optional?

A Science of Miracles—No Longer Optional?

By Deepak Chopra, MD

In its ambition to explain every aspect of the natural world, modern science has sidestepped very few problems. Some mysteries are so difficult that they defy the scientific method. It’s hard to conceive of experiments that will tell us what happened before time and space emerged, for example. But two mysteries have been consistently sidestepped for decades out of prejudice. One is the nature of consciousness, the other the reality of phenomena loosely categorized as mystical or supernatural.

However, now that there is a burgeoning science of consciousness, fermenting with much theorizing, arguments, and controversies, it may be necessary to solve all kinds of fringe phenomena, in particular miracles, that have long been considered the province of superstition, credulity, and outright fraud. (This is the hardened position of the vocal skeptics’ camp, but their impact on the practice of science is too minimal to deal with here.)

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Sonima’s Wisdom and Me

By Deepak Chopra, MD

The cutting-edge programs of the Sonima Foundation are based on an ancient wisdom principle. True wisdom occurs spontaneously, and in this case, I remember the story of how one child discovered it very early. Alfred Stieglitz, who became one of the greatest photographers of the twentie Screen Shot 2014-10-03 at 1.48.38 PM

th century, grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father had fought for three years in the Union army before buying himself out so that he could be home to see his first child grow up.

One winter the boy was seen slipping out the back door, which at first seemed only a bit odd. It was the dead of winter and freezing cold. But when he kept doing it, his parents investigated. It turned out that Alfred was slipping money to a bedraggled vagrant without telling anyone.

The family wasn’t rich, and his father rebuked him. “Why are you giving your money to a stranger?”

“Don’t you see?” Alfred replied. “I’m doing it for myself.”

The same wisdom principle, that in helping others we help ourselves, could change the world. That’s why I feel so dedicated to the Sonima foundation, because they have taken an idea close to my heart—the wellbeing of children—and expanded it. Through a groundbreaking health and wellness program, the foundation is creating the leaders of the future who will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

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Can Sam Harris Wake Us Up? (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Most of us recognized ourselves in the mirror this morning. The person looking back at us has a familiar name, a family, a job. He (or she) carries around a long menu of likes and dislikes, along with a personal history from the moment we emerged from the womb. It would amaze the vast majority of the human race to be told that this person in the mirror is an illusion. Sam Harris’s new book, Waking Up, delivers this startling notion loud and clear, and his aim, in a nutshell, is to debunk the illusion of the personal self, which he says is the key to becoming real.

No one can predict if the message will stick. “No self” has been around for centuries as a basic tenet of Buddhism. (Refer to Part 1 of this post for more details.) Harris dresses it up in brain science, but looking for Buddha in the brain is as futile as looking for Mozart in a piano. It’s obviously specious reasoning, but in Harris’s profession of neuroscience, everything comes down to the brain. Devout Christians find sermons in the stones; brain scientists find them in the anterior cingulate.
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Can Sam Harris Wake Us Up?

By Deepak Chopra, MD

It caused a stir when Sam Harris, in a new book titled Waking Up, changed his message from militant atheism to peaceful Buddhism. A positive message is better than a negative one, and since Buddhism is often labeled as “a religion without God,” Harris’s move isn’t as radical as it looks at first glance. He has had Buddhist teachers for a long time. Waking Up speaks to a growing number of Americans who say they are spiritual but not religious. Some of these people want to find God, only outside the constrictions of organized religion. Since he’s still adamant that God doesn’t exist, Harris probably has nothing to say to that group.

What he offers, with abundant backing from neuroscience, is a new flavor of Buddhism, in which some time-honored tenets are proven to be true by examining how the brain works. There is always a danger when someone holding personal beliefs dresses them up with science. You wonder if the contrary evidence has been fairly examined. Many readers may accuse Harris of paying serious attention only to the research that fits his scheme, and this is certainly true. An entire realm of spiritual experience is alien to him, not just the kind associated with praying, feeling God’s presence, contacting the soul, and near-death experiences. To Harris, this whole realm is delusional; therefore the research that supports it must be worthless (not that he shows any depth of knowledge about it—his dismissal is out of hand).

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Multi-institutional Collaborative Clinical Trial to Examine Health Benefits of Integrative Lifestyle Practices at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing

Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative (SBTI) study will use latest mobile health sensors and genomic/cellular/metabolomics biomarkers

Scientists and clinicians from seven research institutions have joined together for a first of a kind clinical trial on a whole systems approach to wellbeing. Such an in-depth clinically focused study is unique because previous research studies have typically examined the beneficial effects of individual wellbeing practices – such as meditation, yoga, or specific herbal preparations – few have taken anything like a whole systems approach which simultaneously includes a number of such practices to promote improved mind-body functioning. The Chopra Center for Wellbeing has been in the forefront of integrating whole systems approaches such as Ayurveda, meditation, yoga, massage, herbal treatments, and nutrition into programs for improving health and wellbeing.

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