Deepak Chopra
Founder, the Chopra Foundation
Meditation is not a system of thought; it is going beyond thought. That's why there is peace — even what we call peace of mind is an oxymoron. The mind is never at peace.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan is joined the renowned wellness expert and author Deepak Chopra to discuss his remarkable life story, the connections between our emotions and biology, and the potential applications of technology to emotional wellbeing.
Dr. Deepak Chopra is the founder of The Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit focused on well-being research and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. A world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine, Deepak is an extremely prolific writer who has authored more than 90 books. For decades, Deepak has been on the forefront of the meditation revolution and has helped bring the practice to millions worldwide.
Over the course of their conversation, Alan and Deepak cover a wide variety of topics, from Deepak’s early career as a medical doctor in rural India to the work he is doing in through the Chopra Foundation to bring meditation and other wellness practices to disadvantaged communities worldwide. Deepak is an out-of-the-box thinker who has been exploring the intersections between science and faith for much of his life. Through all that time, he has maintained his sense of wonder for the existence of the human consciousness and continues to push the boundaries of our understanding of it.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Deepak Chopra MD, MD, FACP, FRCP is the founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution and his 93rd book, Living in the Light (Harmony Books) taps into the ancient Indian practice of Royal Yoga and offers an illuminating program for self-realization, bliss, and wholeness. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of their top 100 most influential people.” www.deepakchopra.com
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann.
My guest today is a renowned wellness expert, author, and leader who has spent the last four decades working to help individuals around the world foster healthier relationships with the world around them and themselves. Dr. Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit focused on wellbeing research and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole-health company at the intersection of science and spirituality. A world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine who has authored more than 90 books, Deepak has been on the forefront of the meditation revolution and has helped bring the practice to millions of people worldwide.
Deepak Chopra has received a huge number of accolades over the course of his career. He is a clinical professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. Time Magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”
Deepak is a dear personal friend, and I'm thrilled to welcome him on the show today to discuss his remarkable journey, his life, his work on wellness over the years, and the small ways that we all can work to improve the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us.
Deepak, welcome to “Leadership Matters.” It is such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Deepak Chopra
Alan, thanks for having me. I'm privileged to be on your show.
Alan Fleischmann
I've had the great pleasure of getting to know you. It's not like you're not already a household name, but I think it's fascinating that, when I talk about you, people don't know always about your family background and your parents, where you were born and raised. So I'd love it if we could talk a little about that.
You were born and raised in New Delhi, in India, during the final days of the British Raj. Your father was a very prominent cardiologist, as I know. What did your mother do? Tell us a little bit about your father and what life was like at your house for you and your brother.
Deepak Chopra
Well, my father was a cardiologist. When I was growing up, he was part of the British Army, post-colonial, and then the Indian Army after independence, after 15th of August, 1947.
I was born in October, 1946, so I was born before the British left India. I’m one of what Salman Rushdie would call Midnight's Children — that refers to the speech that Mr. Nehru, the first prime minister, gave on the day of independence. The speech was called “A Tryst with Destiny.” In that speech, Mr. Nehru — who was a statesman-philosopher as well — tracked the history of Indian civilization in the last 2,500 years. He called that particular day his tryst with destiny; he laid a vision for the next 100 years, a long-term vision. That was the basis of the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, where I went to medical school later, and also, the Indian Institutes of Technology, which educated all the guys who are now running Silicon Valley — from Google to you name it. They're all part of that vision of Midnight's Children.
As I was growing up, my father was very British in his orientation. He was a researcher. When India and China went to war — somewhere around 1959? — and people were shooting each other across the Himalayas, my father had landed a plane in Leh, which is the world's rooftop in Tibet. He was putting catheters in people's hearts because they were coming down with high-altitude mountain sickness. He was the first person to describe that, and he was decorated for it, et cetera.
My mother, on the other hand, was a storyteller. She only had one year of college education, but she could sing mythical stories. She would have us — me and my little brother — on her lap and sing stories from mythology. But she will always stop at night before bedtime at what we call a cliffhanger. Everything was wrong, crisis after crisis after crisis. No hope, chaos. The hero was dying, the girl had abandoned him, the bad guys were winning. And she would say, “Now, go to sleep. Tomorrow morning, I want to hear the rest of the story. Make sure everybody's happy at the end of the story, make sure it's a love story, and make sure all the chaos and problems are solved.” So every morning, we got up with a solution to the chaotic mess of the cliffhanger that she had left us with that night.
So that's my background. I grew up with both very interesting mythology — which was real to me, it was part of my upbringing — and also the idea that that no matter what crisis there is, there's a love story and a happy ending there. So that I got from her.
Fom my father, what I got was the rigor of scientific discipline — validation for anything that was claimed by anybody in the world of biology or medical science. So I ended up going to medical school in India, then I came to America for advanced training. I trained in internal medicine, and then endocrinology, and then neuro-endocrinology, which is the study of brain chemistry. I had an amazing mentor here as well, in Boston. His name was Seymour Reichlin, who was the president of The Endocrine Society. He's now 97 and he's still very active: he comes once a year, does a sabbatical NYU, I meet him at Balthazar for breakfast, and he tells me about the snake he just found in his garden and how he dissected the brain looking for molecules of emotion.
So my relationship with my mentor is still alive. He's 97, he argues with me, and we talk about consciousness and the brain and all of that. So that's my background, very short background.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. Were you pressured or inspired to become a medical doctor?
Deepak Chopra
I was, I think, manipulated in a very interesting way. When I was 14, I told my father that I did not want to be a medical doctor, I wanted to write fiction. I was good at that, I was good at English literature, I didn't have any biology or anything as a subject in high school. So my father — who obviously wanted me to be a physician — gifted me some books on my 14th birthday, and so did my Mom. Among them were two particularly amazing books. One is called The Razor's Edge, and the other was called The Magnificent Obsession.
The point of all these books was that the protagonist, the hero of all these books, was a medical doctor. So I was completely taken by the protagonists, the heroes in these works of fiction. I went to my father after I'd read them and I said, “I changed my mind, I want to be a doctor.”
Now, I didn't have biology as a subject, so he got a private tutor. I took private tuition in high school for one year to make up for biology, then I had to go to another city to do my pre-med because my biology draining did not qualify me for pre-med. But now I wanted to be a medical doctor, so I went to another university outside of Delhi. Finally, I managed to go to the best institute. I actually ended up writing fiction anyway, and nonfiction both, and my medical background certainly helped me.
Alan Fleischmann
That's incredible, actually When I think about what you've done with your career, so much of it is creating the narratives, the messaging, and inspiration from your writing, as well as the rigor of science. It's an irresistible and rare combination, actually.
Deepak Chopra
Yeah, I credit my parents for that.
Alan Fleischmann
So you went to medical school in India first?
Deepak Chopra
Yeah. And then I came to the United States in 1970, fresh out of medical school.
Alan Fleischmann
What did you study when you came, when you did a residency here?
Deepak Chopra
The first year I was in New Jersey, in a very small community hospital because I got a scholarship there. The reason I got a scholarship there was, all the American doctors, American medical school MDs, were in Vietnam — there was a big shortage of physicians in the United States. So the “scholarship” was to get us to work in a community hospital as cheap labor.
I did that for one year. Then I applied to Boston to the Lahey Clinic, which was associated with the New England Deaconess Hospital, which was part of Harvard. So I got, basically, a residency in a Harvard institution. Then I became chief resident at one of the institutions, the Boston VA Hospital, which was affiliated at that time with Boston University, Tufts University, and Harvard, all three medical schools. So I ended up going to all three medical schools for advanced training, first in internal medicine, then became chief resident in medicine in Boston, and then went on to do neuroendocrinology. So my career as an internist, board certification, and then board certification in internal medicine, endocrinology, and metabolism was all in academic institutions — Harvard, B.U., and Tufts, all at the same time in various stages.
Alan Fleischmann
And that the endocrinology part, obviously, has played a role throughout your whole career. It's the basis of so much when you brought in the other, the Eastern path, I guess, into your journey, that stunningly has been a foundational piece of who you are and what you've been doing.
Deepak Chopra
Yeah. One day we were in the lab, and I had a colleague, Candace Pert, and she was looking at these molecules that everybody now knows a lot about: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, opiates, and many others. And she kind of said, “You know what? These are the molecules of emotion.” Suddenly, that clicked for me. I said, “Why don't you write a book on the molecules of emotion?” She said, “I will, if you write the foreword.” So I did.
That book was a huge contribution — I think, the first contribution — to mind-body medicine, but it wasn't written by me. It was written by this colleague of mine who then became the chief of brain chemistry at NIH. She also discovered the opioid receptor. That would have qualified her to get something we then called the Wolf Prize, which was the most prestigious prize in biology and medicine, like the Nobel Prize. But she didn't get it, her boss got it. When we complained, we were told, you know, that's the way it works, and furthermore, she's a female. Remember, this is the late 1970s.
She was heartbroken. She had had an amazing career. But she died prematurely from a heart attack. When I went to the funeral, the boss, who was now much older and retired, he actually acknowledged that she was the discoverer of the opioid receptor. So that's a bit of history for you.
Alan Fleischmann
I wish he'd done that earlier.
How did you get interested in whole-health practices, integrating the science and the spirituality part? You brought so much of both Eastern traditions and Western traditions together in a way that I don't think anyone else has ever done.
Deepak Chopra
So, first I got interested in what we now call the mind-body connection, how your emotions influence your biology moment to moment. If I tell somebody you have cancer, their metabolism, biology changes instantly. On the other hand, if you give them good news, and you say, “Oh, that was a mistake, that was somebody else's diagnosis, I made a mistake”… Which actually happened to me. I told a patient, “You have cancer,” and I saw his expression, his body language. His blood pressure went up, his heart rate sped up. The next moment, I realized that I had given him the wrong information, that that was somebody else's chart. I apologized. In one minute, in a few seconds, his biology changed.
I knew that emotions affect us. But then I realized that wasn't the whole story. Emotions are connected to relationships. Then of course, the quality of your sleep determines how you feel. Then there are other things, like vagal stimulation, breathing exercises, biological rhythms, and nutrition, that affect your biology. So that got me into whole-health practices and integrative medicine.
But then something else happened. I realized that integrative medicine also was not the whole story. There's another aspect that we don't understand about our biology and our brain. That, Alan, is referred to as the hard problem of consciousness.
Let me explain what that is. The hard problem of consciousness is, how does our brain produce experience? So right now, you and I are having an experience. You're looking at me on the internet, you're hearing these words. There's the experience of your own body and your own thoughts. There's the experience of where you are. How does the brain produce this through electrochemistry? We know that for every experience, there's something that happens in the brain. But that something is not an experience. I can put a knife through the brain, and you won't feel any pain. As for neurochemistry, how does it produce a 3D experience of the world with objects, spacetime, feelings, thoughts, emotions, aspirations, yearnings, desires, fears, and fears of death? How does a physical object fear death? In science, this is called the hard problem of consciousness, which means we cannot explain how the brain produces any experience, thought, perception, whatever. Science is struggling with this.
So this then led me to explore Eastern wisdom traditions, which say that the brain does not produce experience. The brain is also an experience. So where is the experience happening? The Eastern wisdom traditions say it's happening in awareness. Awareness is not an object. Awareness is that which experiences all the objects, including body, brain, and the world. This is a radical idea as far as science is concerned. Science doesn't like the word ‘spirit.’ But when you say ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ and you replace the word ‘spirit’ with ‘awareness,’ then we now have a dialogue.
So now what has happened is, I'm at the stage where I'm actually postulating a new theory, which says that consciousness produces all experience. Consciousness is not in space-time. Consciousness modifies itself as perceptions, images, feelings, thoughts, sensations. Consciousness doesn't have a form, and because it doesn't have a form, it's infinite.
Now, once you open that window, you open Pandora's Box. People say, “Is that what the Jews call Ein Sof?” The Hindu says, “Is that Brahma?” The Christian says, “Is that God?” So when you start reading those ideas, you've opened up Pandora's Box, because science can do away with these terms — God, Ein Sof, Allah, Brahma, all of these things. But when you use consciousness, they’re comfortable. Even when you say infinite consciousness, they're comfortable, because science now acknowledges that the source of all experience, the source of all reality is something called the singularity, where space-time, energy, information, and matter all coalesce into a field of possibilities. So whether you call it spirit, or Ein Sof, or Allah, or Brahma, or God, or just ‘it,’ it doesn't matter.
There’s a famous scientist, John Wheeler, who just passed away in his late 90s. He was one of Einstein's favorite colleagues at Princeton, and he wouldn't use the word God. But he did say, we are the it from the bit. It's kind of a secular term for infinity. So that's where we are in this conversation. We're looking at what the great religions have called God, but we're not using the word.
Alan Fleischmann
When you’re looking back on this earlier period of your career, you were integrating all different kinds of philosophies — but especially the traditional Indian medical system, Ayurveda, with modern medicine. Was that was anyone doing that?
Deepak Chopra
Not that I know of. Not when I started, but it's become a movement, it's become a huge movement. It's become part of our science right now.
Alan Fleischmann
And it's become much more science than it was when you started.
Deepak Chopra
Right. When I wrote Quantum Healing in 1988, I was vilified. Then I reissued the book, because I got together with Rudy Tanzi at Harvard and he said, “No, those were important insights.” And now we have genetics and epigenetics to prove that.
Actually, my next book is called Quantum Body with a quantum physicist from Europe. His parents migrated to Canada after the Holocaust, and he's absolutely brilliant. While I can give out all these theories, he actually has the math to prove them. So that's where we are right now.
Alan Fleischmann
Amazing. And what's the book going to be called?
Deepak Chopra
It’s called Quantum Body: The Future of Human Wellbeing and Longevity.
Alan Fleischmann
And when does the book come out?
Deepak Chopra
This year, in December.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, we’ll have you back on to talk about the book too.
Deepak Chopra
Yes, we can have our physicist friend on too. He moves between Warsaw, where his parents were before the Holocaust, and he’s also been a professor at many European universities. He's now a very prominent professor in Canada as well, at the University of Calgary.
Alan Fleischmann
That’d be brilliant. And that'd be your 91st book?
Deepak Chopra
My 94th book.
Alan Fleischmann
Which is amazing.
In 1996, you founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, which has since grown into a global entity — I know it's become different as it's grown to a worldwide presence. What's been the secret to attracting such a massive following? Between your books, the Center, and other things that you do — obviously, you're out there as a thought leader — what has been the secret? I think of you as bringing things that people can relate to in mass, but also as talking to people as individuals.
Deepak Chopra
There's a lot more to that. The Center in California doesn't exist anymore, but we have two other centers, licensed properties. One's called Civanna, which is in Arizona, just outside of Phoenix. The other is called the Chopra Mind-Body Zone, which is in Orlando. What they do is, people come in, they stay there for a week or so, and they get educated about their own health and lifestyle. We now know that less than 5% of disease-related gene mutations are fully penetrant, which means less than 5% of genetic mutations actually predict disease. And the remaining 95% are based on lifestyle, sleep, stress management, emotions, relationships, parasympathetic activity, biological rhythms, nutrition, and even the role of micronutrients and the microbiome in our body.
So when people come, they actually feel that they can participate not only in prevention of disease, but even reversal. We now know that heart disease, coronary artery disease, can be reversed. We're learning that of other diseases, inflammatory disorders. The science is called epigenetics, ‘epi’ meaning above genes. So above the genes, there's a sheet of proteins that act as on/off switches for your genes. All of that is based on experience. So, the quality of your life experience. Are you happy? Are you unhappy? Are you feeling secure, insecure? Are you rested? Are you stressed? What food are you eating? Breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, feelings, thoughts, longings, aspirations, fears, emotions in general — all of these things regulate your biology.
So by addressing this, we can actually make the future of wellbeing very precise, very personalized. Now with machine learning and AI, you can actually tailor the treatment to people, because not all people respond to the same interventions similarly. You can have two people with exactly the same disease, they see the same doctor, they get the same treatment, but they have different outcomes. That’s because disease is not just cause/effect, it's multifactorial. And so is health multifactorial.
Alan Fleischmann
And you're learning, exploring, researching, and then teaching as you go. I mean, so much of this not known. I imagine what you now know and understand today is very different than what you knew just 10 years ago.
Deepak Chopra
And you know Alan, I recently went on ChatGPT 4 and one I was gifted by Microsoft — something called Prometheus, which is beyond all these AI machines. I asked ChatGPT theoretical questions about genes, genetic activity, consciousness. It's amazing what I'm learning even there.
So at the moment, I'm actually working with AI to create what we call machine learning for your own wellbeing. Right now as we speak — as you probably know — we have an emotional chatbot that we're using to prevent suicide. The youngsters are much more comfortable talking to the emotional machine, because they're not feeling judged. They become friends very quickly, they share their deepest, darkest secrets, and the machine understands, they have a relationship.
And we are taking that further now. As you know, with your friend Robert Smith we are creating a sort of leadership program, part of which will be online. We'll be using machine learning and everything else to train leaders of the future.
Alan Fleischmann
It's amazing how we're going to apply this to marginalized communities and vulnerable communities — the idea being, by talking through those who struggle with mental health issues, they'll have support.
Deepak Chopra
Not only that, we'll have online programming for training future leaders as well, based on deep listening; emotional resilience; expanding skills like intuition and creativity; making action plans; dreaming big; empowering people with self esteem; giving them opportunities and responsibilities for their health, but also for their jobs; and ultimately, harnessing the powers of consciousness and synchronicity. It's a unique program, I used to teach it at Kellogg, and I’ve taught it at Columbia, Wharton, and Harvard as well. But now, with your and Robert’s help, we're taking it to disadvantaged communities. We have a model for that already in New York and it's being embraced a lot. As you know, the new mayor of New York, who is African American, wants to champion the upliftment of the African American community in New York. With the model that we're creating with you and Robert. It could go global.
I was recently in Sweden, and they have an African community from Ethiopia and Eritrea who are having problems similar to those of African Americans in our country. Because of mass migrations occurring now in Europe, the African communities are facing similar problems — the African Europeans, let's call them. So we can take this global now.
Alan Fleischmann
Which is amazing when you consider the scale in which you can actually reach people now. It's extraordinary.
And is that a central part of what the Chopra Foundation is doing now?
Deepak Chopra
Yes. One is leadership, the second is mental wellbeing, which is also connected. And the third is, we're exploring right now the role of psychedelics in chronic illness, in mental illness, and also what we call end of life care, when people have the fear of death.
Given our understanding of consciousness, when you remove what you call the beliefs or fears of the conditioned mind, there is something that people experience at the end of life. Not everybody experiences it, but a significant number of people do. It's called terminal lucidity, where — even if they have dementia, or they've had a stroke, or they're otherwise moribund — for a few hours before they die, they have extreme clarity. They lose all their fears, it’s like a religious experience. Transcendence, emergence of Platonic values like truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, equanimity, and then loss of the fear of death. That's the religious experience. That's Moses, that's Jesus, that's Muhammad, that's Buddha. And now, it's psychedelics, also, that can give us that experience.
Now of course, you have to take a lot of responsibility to make sure that this is done under supervision by experts in the field of neuroscience, or by people who are trained in this field. So we, the Foundation, work in New York with a neuropsychiatrist. She's trained from Oxford, she's an MD, and we have permission to use, at the moment, certain substances under certain conditions for research purposes.
That's another aspect of our Foundation. We are using ketamine under research protocols, and soon, probably psilocybin. The old story of mushrooms.
Alan Fleischmann
how do you determine when to use mushrooms, or herbs, or even more traditional drugs, I guess, when you're dealing with anxiety issues?
Deepak Chopra
We have two full-time librarians. One was from Wikipedia, the other is an MD/PhD cultural anthropologist. So we look at what's been validated in the literature and we look at something called meta-analysis. You can do computer analysis now and see what other researchers have found. So our job is not to do basic science research ourselves, but highlight the research that has already been validated.
Alan Fleischmann
Are there circumstances where you would recommend more traditional Western drugs for dealing with anxiety? Or a combination with mushrooms, with psychedelics?
Deepak Chopra
So, the traditional drugs for anxiety stop working after six months. The traditional drugs are very good for acute crises, like a psychotic episode, or somebody who is bipolar, or something that's considered psychosis and very severe, traditional drugs are good.
But other means to treat depression are becoming clear. One is adjusting the microbiome. You have two million genes in your gut that are connected to your brain, they're influenced by what you eat. So if you change the diet to a diet that has maximum diversity of plant-based foods, or somebody's a meat eater and it's organic and not produced from a factory, then you can actually change the genetic information in your gut. Strangely enough, depression improves and inflammation goes down.
This is something that I didn't know when I was in medical school or during my training. When people said, “I changed my diet and my depression went away,” I didn't believe them, because there was no basis. But now, there is a basis.
So given that there's new research not only on nutrition and mental wellbeing, but also on what we call micronutrients, nutritional supplements, and mental wellbeing, and then ways to decrease inflammation, including VR, including what are called electroceuticals, and soon what we'll call digiceuticals… What we call traditional pharmaceuticals, their future is endangered at the moment. Because traditional pharmaceuticals just interfere with mechanisms of disease, they don't actually address the cause of disease. So even new pharmaceuticals will be different. They're called intelligent nutrients, which simulate, in one way or another, the biochemical pathways of the body.
So there's a revolution going on. Pharmaceuticals are slowly on the way out. Electroceuticals, digiceuticals, and soon, web-based ceuticals on the web 3.0. And then also, what we call VR treatments. Already, there's evidence that VR can help people with eating disorders, with anorexia, even with autism and other things. But now we're exploring VR for inflammation, which is at the basis of almost every chronic illness. It's a big revolution going on.
Alan Fleischmann
And things like rhodiola and ashwagandha, are they considered in the same category as psychedelics?
Deepak Chopra
No, they're called adaptogens. They modulate the effect of stress at the cellular level, so they're very effective also because stress is a big issue.
People think stress is all in the head, but no, your biological systems can get stressed if they don't have an opportunity to repair themselves. So these ayurvedic herbs like ashwagandha are called adaptogens. They modulate stress at a cellular level.
Alan Fleischmann
So as a patient, if you consider the use of psychedelics and the use of adaptogens, they can be combined with other things like diet and nutrition.
Deepak Chopra
All of that.
Now, psychedelics are not used under normal circumstances at our centers, because we don't have approval. So, psychedelics only under supervision and research protocols through academic centers.
Alan Fleischmann
You've been an amazing mentor on these topics, because you explore and then you share. A lot of science and research, whether we're talking about Western medicine or Eastern medicine, is usually not shared as well. I love the fact that you write so many books.
Who were the key mentors in your life that inspire you, either present or past? And what did they teach you?
Deepak Chopra
My real mentors were my parents. I've already told you what I learned from them — scientific rigor and storytelling. That's been a major part of my life. Spiritually, I had a mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought Transcendental Meditation to the world. He's no longer with us.
I also had the opportunity of meeting Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and of course, Obama. These I consider role models and mentors. That also includes Martin Luther King, Jr. So I studied their lives — whether it's Martin Luther King Jr, or Mother Teresa, or Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma Gandhi — I think they're role models that we could all learn something from.
Alan Fleischmann
You’ve written about several of them actually, including the Buddha.
When you're actually exploring the writing of a book, what is it that actually has you motivated? Is it to share the science and to have the individual understand that they can take control of their lives?
Deepak Chopra
It's actually more than that, in that it's something that I have struggled with and overcome in my either my understanding or my experience. At that point, I feel ready to write something about it.
Quantum biology has been an obsession of mine for the last 35 years, I won't let go of it. And now, you know, I'm 76, I'm in good health. So I'm exploring what we call longevity, I'm involved in a lot of longevity experiments, and also something called healthspan. We are actually launching a global telemedicine platform for longevity, with world experts on different aspects of longevity — physical, emotional, spiritual.
Alan Fleischmann
You’ve spent a lot of time exploring the brain, and you’ve spent a lot of time with the microbiome and the gut. Have you ever have you figured that both have to deal with inflammation, and that's the continuity between both? Or is it that one should actually explore both separately, and then get into the spirituality?
Deepak Chopra
No, I think they're all part of what we now call an integrative or holistic understanding of wellbeing. You can't even say that the brain is confined to your skull — your whole body has neurons, neural networks. So your gut, actually, is a brain. When you say, “I have a gut feeling about such and such,” you're not speaking metaphorically anymore, you're speaking literally. Your gut makes the same chemicals as your brain makes when you're having a feeling. In fact, your gut feelings are probably more trustworthy, because gut cells don't know how to doubt themselves — at the moment, anyway.
Also, when you say my heart feels this or that — sad, happy, et cetera — the heart has a neural network like the brain. We can't confine the brain to the skull anymore. It’s extending its tentacles to every cell in the body and receives information from every cell in the body.
And the microbiome, with genetic information that is turned on and off by every experience in life. Is very similar to our brain. Right now as I'm speaking to you, the genes in your frontal cortex are being activated. How? This is the big mystery, but we are now activating each other's neural networks. In fact, people who are listening to us are also activating the genes in their cortex.
So this raises a big question: where is the mind? The answer is, it doesn't have a location. It, just like the spirit, doesn't have a location. So again, we're getting to this whole idea of an infinite consciousness that is self-regulating itself as every experience in every single sentient being. Whether we want to call that consciousness divine, infinite, God, Allah, Ein Sof, or ‘it,’ it doesn't matter.
There is a deep mystery to our existence. When people say, “The universe was born in a big bang 13.8 billion years ago,” then the obvious question is, why 13.8 billion years ago? Why not 20 billion years ago? Why then? No one can answer that. Then you say, “Well, what caused the Big Bang?” No one can answer that. “What were the laws of physics in what is called the Planck epoch?” No one can answer that. “Why is the universe fine-tuned for mind, life, and consciousness?” No one can answer that. These are huge conundrums in modern science for one simple reason: they have not included consciousness or spirit in their understanding of reality. Right now, science includes only things that are physical; anything that is outside of the physical domain is not part of regular science.
Science is based on what we call subject-object split and something called naive realism, which means the picture of the world is exactly what you're looking at. But that's not true. That's a human look of the world. What is the world look like to an insect with 100 eyes? Or a bat that knows the world through the echo of ultrasound? Or a snake that navigates experience through infrared? Or a butterfly that navigates through what we call ultraviolet?
So we are now questioning what is physical reality when the basis of all science is physical reality. In fact, what we call physical reality might be a species-specific experience, and there's a deeper reality which is unfathomable. That's why we call it the mystery, and that's why it always remains a mystery, because we there are things that we will never know because of the restrictions to our knowing. The human brain can only access a narrow band of electromagnetic activity. We cannot imagine formlessness, and yet, we are told everything comes from emptiness. We cannot imagine our death, because even if we imagine it, we survive as the one who's imagining the death. So non-existence is an issue, because no one has experienced non-existence. We only experience existence.
There are many, many conundrums in science, which we trust to give us access to technology, and it does. But are we finding truth through the scientific method? I don't think so. Are we finding truth through philosophy? I don't think so. Are we finding truth through theology or religion? It may be a map. But ultimately, truth cannot be found through human reasoning. Because human reasoning and logic is also based on perception. And our perception is a species-specific perceptual distortion. Your senses tell you the earth is flat — nobody believes that anymore. Your senses tell me that the ground you're sitting on is stationary, when it's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space that thousands of miles an hour. Your senses tell you that everything is solid and material when actually, science tells us everything that appears material is proportionately as void as intergalactic space.
So we have a problem. The scientific method is very successful, and yet, is actually taking us away from truth, which is spirit.
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. We're here with Dr. Deepak Chopra — author, wellness expert, thought leader, and inspirational founder of the Chopra Foundation — and we're discussing his life journey, thoughts, wisdom, and reflections on leadership.
When we're talking about longevity — which is such a big focus for you — as well as about brain health, spiritual health, and how emotional wellbeing dictates a lot of our physical wellbeing, we're often dealing with things like Alzheimer's and things that one looks at, perhaps, with less of a spiritual lens. How do we imagine a long life, a healthy life, and deal with those obstacles like more signs of a ill brain health going forward?
Deepak Chopra
So as you know, Alan, I've written three books with Rudy Tanzi, who is the world expert on Alzheimer's — in fact, he discovered all three genes that predict Alzheimer's. But Rudy will also tell you that out of the 45 genes associated with Alzheimer's, only three predict Alzheimer's. The rest are related to lifestyle. That's number one.
As far as the genes that actually predict disease — doesn't matter if they predict cancer, or Alzheimer's, or whatever — that's less than 5%. We have technology, right now, called CRISPR, that’s getting better and will allow you to edit genes. You'll be able to cut and paste genes in the same way you cut and paste your email. Metaphorically, you read the barcode of a gene, delete it, and then insert that right gene.
So when we look at the combination of technology and lifestyle, then the future of wellbeing is a precise, predictable, preventable, participatory process. With machine learning and AI, it can be very personalized. So we're looking at a very bright future for health and longevity, as long as we don't blow up the planet with a nuclear weapon or don't address climate change — those are the bigger issues right now for our survival. Climate change, mechanizedwar, eco-destruction. Those are the big challenges that we're facing as humanity.
Alan Fleischmann
They're horrible challenges that we need to get more urgent on, get people to understand how important it is that we act now on those.
But you're optimistic, though, about longevity. You're optimistic about brain health.
Deepak Chopra
Very much so, because I see the evidence and I practice what I preach. I’m 76, and my biological markers are nowhere close to my chronological age.
Alan Fleischmann
So we shouldn't be worried about a future that has Alzheimer's.
Deepak Chopra
No, we should be concerned and address it, and people are addressing it. There are amazing scientists out there. You know, David Sinclair is now the number one expert on longevity at Harvard. He's an Australian investigator, and he's discovering what are called signal molecules. Some of them are already available, like nicotinamide mononucleotide, something called fisetin, quercetin. You can buy them on Amazon. These signal molecules actually help DNA repair and self-regulate, and decrease inflammation. There'll be more of them coming as we look at the future.
Alan Fleischmann
As we look at modern society, where there's a huge number of trends and stories, people posting things for attention, how have you been so successful in penetrating and reaching so many people through your messages? I would argue that you've crossed all demographics. You reach folks from all ages and communities, not only in this country, but globally. How do you do that?
Deepak Chopra
Alan, I only share what I'm struggling with and what has been useful to me personally. And furthermore, I only share what can be validated. Before I share anything on social media, I am very careful. And also with my books, because I've been criticized for many years, for many decades, for being out of the box. I don't believe in a box — I don't think you should think out of the box, I think you should get rid of the box altogether and then you have access to creative thinking. If you're really interested in a subject, then try to become an expert on it. And if you're not an expert and you don't think you can be an expert on it, hang out with people who are experts and can show you, or at least point to the right direction.
So I think my success is just that — that I struggle with things personally, I try to solve them. Having solved them in my personal life, I share them. If I have new ideas and they seem valid — these days, anyway — I consult the experts.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. You obviously surround yourself with both people who are right-brain and left-brain experts as well.
I liked the way you say that though; it's the things that you're struggling with, the things that you're curious about, and the things that you're learning that you want to share with other people as well. That's probably the reason you've managed to get through to so many — you speak a truth. You're not trying to sell something, you're actually trying to share something.
Deepak Chopra
Yeah, I do my best. That one inspired quote that I have from my childhood, from the great Indian sage-poet Tagore, is that I'm perpetually surprised by the fact that we exist. That keeps me going. Why do we exist? It's a great mystery. If you're not perpetually surprised by your existence, then I think your humanity is incomplete. So that surprise, that peekaboo experience that you see in babies or children. They're constantly surprised, that's why they're full of curiosity and wonder — until we destroy it, when they lose their innocence. I think losing your innocence is what impedes curiosity, wonder, and awe.
The other day, I asked my advanced AI, “What are the healthiest emotions that a human being can have?” It gave me the usual answers: love, compassion, empathy, joy, peace. And then I asked my AI, “How about awe? How about wonder? How about bewilderment? How about surprise?” I think if you don't have awe or wonder, then that's not human.
There's no other animal that experiences awe, or mystery, or wonder. I think losing that is the biggest disadvantage a human can go through. They are bigger emotions than what we call ordinary, regular human emotions.
Alan Fleischmann
The sense of optimism, as well. When you experience awe and wonder, it gives you a great deal of humility. I think Albert Einstein always said that if you don't look at life as a miracle, then there's nothing to discover.
Deepak Chopra
And everything is a miracle, because we don't have an explanation for existence. Everything that follows as part of existence must be a miracle.
Alan Fleischmann
What questions do people not ask you that you wish they asked you? Including me?
Deepak Chopra
I think, these days, they do. The most interesting thing, at my stage right now, is the whole mystery of death. I've done a series on YouTube on the mystery of death, and I explore that mystery in my deep meditations.
I have a couple of fellow explorers who are monks in Tibet. I communicate with them and we do experiments, mental and spiritual experiments that go beyond the leaky margins of our everyday perception. So we know at least that, in our experience of existence, everything recycles. Matter recycles, energy recycles, information recycles. Why would consciousness be the only exception? If you didn't recycle on your journey in cosmic time, you would be the one exception. Even plastic recycles — it takes a long time.
Alan Fleischmann
I do believe that those who I've loved in life are no longer physically with us are still with me, because I feel their energy and I feel their wisdom. They're not physically around me the way that I love and I miss, but there there's definitely an energy force, a wisdom that is immortal and lives on.
Deepak Chopra
Fundamental reality is not what is visible, but what is invisible. Without the invisible, there's no visible. Just like with no hot, there’s no cold; with no up, there’s no down; without pleasure, there’s no pain. You have to have a pendulum swing back and forth, you can’t have a pendulum swing one way.
So form and formlessness, visible and invisible, go together. Science is now telling us that the essential nature of the physical world is that it's not physical. All our technology is based on it, including the Zoom that we are using right now. Every tweet, every song you send on the internet, every movie you watch on your computer or your iPhone, is based on a new understanding that the essential nature of the physical world is not physical.
Alan Fleischmann
One last question for you: I'm not sure that you're going to tell me that I should credit you, but I always credit you as saying to me many years ago that you should meditate once a day. And if you're very, very busy, you should meditate twice a day. I always think about that when you look at things like blood pressure, and stress, and health and wellbeing around depression, or even just creating that wonderment that you described a moment ago. How key is meditation to that daily practice?
Deepak Chopra
It's absolutely key. I’ve never missed a meditation all my life, and as I get older I do even more. Meditation is not a system of thought; it is going beyond thought. That's why there is peace. Because even what we call peace of mind is an oxymoron; the mind is never at peace, period.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s allowing yourself to let go.
Deepak Chopra
That's it. Let go and flow. No resistance to existence.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that, that's wonderful.
You're listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. We just spent this last hour with a good friend and a friend to all of us, Deepak Chopra, who's been sharing a bit about his journey, his wisdom, his awe and wonderment at the miracle of life, and how we as individuals and collectively as communities can come together to live a healthier life.
It has been such a pleasure having you on. I wanted to have you on for so long, Deepak, and I'm hoping you'll come back on with your co-author later this year so we can talk about your next book.
Deepak Chopra
Thank you, Alan. It’s always fun to be with you. Onward with our programs on leadership.
Alan Fleischmann
See you soon, thank you.