20 QUESTIONS FOR DR. DEEPAK CHOPRA
If life is a journey, Dr. Deepak Chopra has no intention of arriving. The Guru of All Good Things talks about what really matters in life – happiness, eating the seven colors of the rainbow, embracing the wisdom of uncertainty and stepping into the unknown in every moment – and the starring role death plays in life.
Q: You are constantly flying, constantly speaking, moving from hotel to hotel, country to country. What keeps you centered and unmoved through the craziness?
Deepak Chopra: I have never flown, spoken, moved from hotel to hotel or country to country. Those are activities I long ago delegated to my body. I am always at home and have never left.
Q: You’ve taught millions about the search for inner peace and happiness. Where are you on your personal journey?
Deepak Chopra: I really don’t know who I am or what my journey is about. There is a Chinese proverb, “a good traveler has no definite plans and has no intention of arriving.” I am still wondering what I will do when I grow up.
Q: In the past few decades, you have moved from being a Western educated endocrinologist to a ‘the poet-prophet of alternative medicine’. How have your own perspectives changed?
I have begun to embrace the wisdom of uncertainty and stepping into the unknown in every moment. I have also understood that consciousness is the ground of being….
Q: If there were one thing you’d ask people to incorporate into their daily lives for their health and well-being, what would it be?
Silence self-reflection. Constantly asking yourself, “Who am I, What do I want?”
Q: In ‘The Book of Secrets’ you tell readers ‘What you seek you already are.’ Can you explain that?
Yes, the seeker is the sought. This means that the highest form of human intelligence is to recognize that the world is as you are. What we call the world out there is really yourself interacting with yourself and experiencing yourself as objects, people, relationships, events, situations, circumstances and even the stars and galaxies.
Q: How important is peace as an antidote to life’s ills and in our strife-torn world, do you think it’s an achievable goal?
Deepak Chopra: Perfect peace would be boring and we would be doomed to eternal senility if we had it. However, if we make peace a goal and reach for the highest we might at least get somewhere.
Q: What can people take from all religions to create a more peaceful atmosphere?
All religions are based on an experience of unity consciousness and therefore spirituality is a domain of awareness where we experience our universality. Unfortunately organized religion frequently forgets this and therefore become divisive, quarrelsome and sometimes even idiotic. Go deep into your own nature and you will find in its essence it is profound peace.
Q: Who are the thinkers who have most influenced you in your life?
Krishnamurti, Adi Shankara, and my father.
Q: Is there anything that continues to surprise you about the human race?
A: Racism, bigotry, hatred, prejudice, violence. These are the atavistic remnants of Paleolithic times that still dominate modern culture.
Q: What lessons can children be taught at an early age to help them on the path to self-knowledge?
Children learn through role modeling. You cannot sermonize or lecture to them. You can only influence them by being an example of what you want them to be.
Q: How much of your accumulated knowledge have you been able to transmit to your own children? How do they incorporate these lessons into their busy lives?
All of it. They are my best teachers.
Q: How much do you think spa treatments help in promoting mental and physical well being?
By bringing you to centered awareness and by establishing restful awareness these treatments activate the natural healing response within all of us.
Q: What is the essence of the Chopra Center? It is certainly more than a spa.
The essence of the Chopra Center is healing, transformation, education, research into higher states of consciousness and dialogue in addition to its spa treatments.
Q: Why did you give up the day to day running of the Chopra Center? How much are you involved with the two new centers coming up, one in Dream Hotel and the other in London?
Because there are other people who do it much better than me. I am involved in the creative aspects of the new centers and the creation of the education curriculum and teaching of the workshops.
Q: Since we are this combination of mind and body, what suggestions do you have for keeping the body healthy and fit?
Deepak Chopra: These are the most important principles.
1. By changing my perception of my body, its aging and of time.
2. Through two kinds of deep rest – restful awareness and restful sleep.
3. By nurturing my body through healthy foods.
4. By using nutritional complements wisely.
5. By enhancing mind/body integration through regular exercise.
7. By eliminating toxins from my life.
8. By cultivating flexibility and creativity in consciousness.
9. Through love.
10.By maintaining a youthful mind.
Q: How important is our daily diet and nutrition in this body-mind equation? What are your personal preferences?
Deepak Chopra: Diet is very important as long as you do not become obsessive, compulsive or neurotic about it. The best advice I can give, don’t eat anything that comes in a can or has a label. Listen to your body, eat the seven colors of the rainbow and the 6 tastes of life, sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent, astringent, and salty.
Q: For so many aging baby boomers, death seems a very real possibility. Is there a mantra for immortality, something which can thwart death?
Death is what makes life possible. If you succeeded in conquering death, you would become a living mummy. Without death the world would have no rhythm, no music, no renewal, no freshness. It would be senile. Death is the mechanism by which the universe constantly recreates itself and looks at itself through fresh eyes. In biology programmed cellular death or apoptosis is the mechanism through which the body renews itself and remains healthy. Cells that forget how to die are called cancer cells.
Q: You are at the golden phase of your life, having achieved fame, family and the best bonus of all, wonderful grandkids! In the old days people used to live through the student phase, the householder phase and then move to the forests for the sanyasi phase – to reach oneness with the Supreme.In our frenetic lives, is it possible to be a part of the world and still achieve that oneness? How do you plan to do it in your daily life?
Deepak Chopra: I have a romantic notion that one day I will silently disappear into total anonymity and oblivion. I hope it happens.
© Lavina Melwani
