Stress Is Hurting You! 5 Proven Steps To Reverse Its Effects: Deepak Chopra

33:12Take some time everyday to be unoccupied. Even spiritual pursuit is an occupation. So take a little bit of what I think it was Kafka or somebody who said, all of human problems, humanity's problems come from our inability to sit quietly and do nothing. We'd rather electrocute ourselves. We're always doing, doing, doing. We have human doings, we are not human beings anymore. So if I pull over the lorry that I'm driving up the motorway and I say, do you know what, depack told me, take some time for myself. So I sit in the lorry for 15 minutes every day. How is that going to help me to transcend?

33:56It starts a process. We begin to ask yourself, who am I? I reflect on these questions everyday, who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? And who am I without these constructs? It's a big mystery, right? Who you are. Ultimately you realize you're the awareness in which all experience happens. But you're not the experience. The experience is in time. You are not in time. And this requires a different kind of education. It's not part of our culture. It used to be part of cultures. If you read Plato and the Republic and you'll see that this was part of every culture. But it was few luminaries.

34:53People romanticized even about this in India's spiritual country. Well, India's been violent forever. A few luminaries, the sages of the Upanishad, that we have a romancer of the Greek culture. You know, oh, Bob, the Greeks were the most civilized in the world. Well, yes, Socrates and Parminides and, you know, Pythagoras. And I can name a few, but the rest of the country, even in those times, you know, they had slavery. They had sexism. They had these, the source of the Olympics where they used to sacrifice humans. And, you know, we're still performing it. Even in our days, we're still repeating that cycle with what you call cheerleaders, the virgin bests of the past.

35:48We haven't changed, actually, but what else in terms of starting your day like daily habits? So you talk about sleep is being incredibly important here are the daily habits. Number one is sleep. Now we know, by the way, that lack of sleep is the number one predictor of premature death from cardiovascular disease. Lack of sleep is also a predictor of Alzheimer's. Lack of sleep interferes with your creativity. Lack of sleep causes inflammation. So that's for sure. Number one, number two, I think is any practice that quietens the mind, meditation, reflection, contemplation, sitting quietly, watching a breath, etc.

36:33Number three is exercise. Number four is mind body coordination. That's different than regular exercise. Yoga practice and martial arts, breathing practices, tai chi chi gong. They actually activate a different part of your nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system, which causes self -regulation in the body. So it's not just exercises, you know, something that puts mind and body together, even gymnastics or things like judo and I mentioned martial arts, but yoga is my practice. Then emotional, your emotional and physical environment, your social environment, because we live as social beings.

37:23So, you know, if you're toxic relationships, it's going to cause physical toxicity. Then nutrition, we now know that food that causes inflammation, refined, manufactured, processed food with chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, insecticides, pesticides. It's poison, it's like putting, putting agent orange in your body. So organic food, farm to table, maximum diversity of plant -based foods. Now we know a lot about micronutrients, we know about biological rhythms. But ultimately, I think spiritual experience is very important because no matter what you do, no matter what you do, no matter how healthy you are, there is old age.

38:13There is infirmity and there is death. So unless you face those bright head -on, when you are healthy, not when you're in a crisis, not when somebody dies in your family, then everybody panics. I had a crisis in my life, when I was six years old. My father was in England, he was training to be a cardiologist. I was living by grandfather. And one day we got a telegram that my father had passed all his exams. He was now fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, big deal in those days. We got a telegram, my grandfather wanted to celebrate. So he took me and my little brother to a carnival, then to a movie.

39:02I even remember the movie, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. Then we went to a fancy restaurant and then in the middle of the night he died. And they took him to for cremation, brought his ashes back in a little jar about the size of this coffee cup or a little bigger. And one of my uncles said, what happened? Yesterday he was taking the kids to a carnival and today is a bunch of ashes. My little brother who'd later became the dean of education at Harvard Medical School, he was four years old. He started to lose his skin. His skin started peeling off. I went into a panic and my uncles took my brother to every physician.

39:49They couldn't find a diagnosis till somebody said, you know, he's missing his parents, he's feeling vulnerable, he's losing his skin. He's shedding his skin because he's that's a metaphor for his vulnerability. He'll be fine when his parents come back and sure enough, as soon as they came, my brother was healed. At six years I had a crisis, existential crisis. I went on to become a doctor, but what happens? You go to medical school, the first thing you see is a corpse. You're supposed to want to stand life by dissecting a body. You know, it's the way we are trained. You started off by looking at a human being as an anatomical structure rather than a process and consciousness.

40:35So it took me a long time, you know, going through medical school, training, myself going through crises, smoking, addictive behaviour, alcohol. I remember resuscitating a patient, putting a pacemaker, putting him on a respirator and then going outside to smoke a cigarette. And then, you know, I was disgusted with myself. I threw away my cigarette. That evening I threw away the scotch and I decided that I wanted to understand who am I. It's almost like in that moment you observed someone that was so full of life, just moments earlier, turning to, as you said, ashes in a jar, scattered in the window.

41:29And you go, where is my granddad? He's not local. So, non -looker. Right. Which is our essential nature, actually. To be non -looker, to be connected with all that is. And Indian poetry and poets in general, from William Blake, you know, we are led to believe a lie when we see with and not through the eye that was born in a night to perish in a night while the soul slept in beams of light. So, when we look through the condition mind, that's a lie. When we look beyond the condition mind, that is light. Do you think you'd be doing the work you are today if your granddad hadn't passed away when you were six in their circumstances?

42:18I think that was a very pivotal moment at six years of age, existential crisis. Most people don't have that at the age of six. Because it brought you a bunch of questions, didn't it? Really profound questions about the nature of life and existence, existence and love and... To go, Indian poet, love is not a sentiment. It's the ultimate truth at the heart of creation. That you and the other are the same being in different uniforms. Do you ever ponder if some of your beliefs are... If that moment really was pivotal, that some of your beliefs might have been a way to justify your sadness? Yeah, denial is a way of justifying sadness.

43:08I don't think belief is... Believe in many ways is a cover -up for insecurity. If I said, do you believe in electricity? He said, no, I see that device, that transistor, that TV set, electricity, gravity is my experience. So, I don't believe in belief, but faith is something else. Faith is the knowingness of the invisible without which there is nothing visible. The invisible is the source of all things visible. So when you day comes, when my day comes, when no longer... I'm preparing for it, right now. Yes, in my tradition, there are four stages of life. First 25 years, they're called ashrams.

43:57Ashram is a place to rest, or that which you identify as your home. First 25 years, education, second 25 years, family, children, fame, fortune, if you want. Third 25 years, giving back, now forth, self -realization, preparation for death. How does one prepare for death? By knowing and experiencing your non -local self. Is that what people would call spirituality or... Yes, spiritual. But authentic experience, I'm not talking about dogma or self -righteous morality or jealousy with a halo or cunning hypocrisy, which all pretend to be spiritual. But if you've had the experience, then you know yourself as non -local, then the unknown is the only place to be.

44:53The known is already happened. It's a prison. What do you believe happens once you die? I think the dream continues. The dream continues in a different frequency domain of consciousness. These days, actually, if you look at some of the theories of the universe, mathematical theories.

45:15Current materialistic view is that the visible universe is about two trillion galaxies. 760 ,000 stars, uncountable trillions of planets. Based on that current estimate with James Webb telescope and all this, our planet is not even a spec one grain of sand in all the beaches of the world. So the other day I went to a beach, picked up a grain of sand and a breeze came, drifted off in the beach to notice that one grain was missing. That's planet Earth, two trillion galaxies. But I recently interviewed a Caltech professor of physics, Sean Carroll, who sits on the desk of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of all time.

46:05Einstein cited that desk for a while. Sean Carroll believes there are infinite universes. Infinite universes. It's incomprehensible, the idea that there are infinite universes. But I believe they are, and that you and I have a cosmic journey that is infinite. And infinite means infinite. Infinite is incomprehensible, it never ends. You change uniforms, you change experiences, hopefully you evolve like a spiraled staircase. But it's a never ending horizon. Does that mean what people call reincarnation of some sort or is it even human? People, yeah, but what is reincarnation? See, everything recycles matter, recycles we agree, energy recycles we agree, information we recycle we agree.

47:05If consciousness is what gives rise to energy information and matter and energy information matter are human constructs for modes of awareness and consciousness. Why would consciousness not recycle? Why would it be the only exception? It wouldn't be the same consciousness there would it be bits of the code. No, it's a consciousness with seeds of potential manifestation, seeds of desire and seeds of memory. Now, if you want to be totally, you know, I want to use the spiritual language, which is not fashionable, but is fashionable to karma, memory and desire. So karma is past experience and interpretation of past experience.

48:03If you go to Starbucks, have a cup of coffee, that's karma. Now, depending on your experience, you like it or not, you decide to go back to Starbucks or not to go to Starbucks, you go to whatever the other place doesn't get a cappuccino. So, memory recycles as desire and desire recycles as karma, karma, simple means experience. Don't think of it. Good bad. And this is the software, who are awareness that recycles and evolves in cosmic time. Now, this is the theory, but you have to experience it. So, I asked you, what did you have for breakfast, but I now could ask you, do you remember a happy episode from your teenagers or your childhood?

48:51And immediately the memory comes, where was it? Not in your brain. You know, I hadn't skated. I learned skating when I was eight years ice skating. I didn't skate for 30 years, at the age of 38, with my two little kids, Rockefeller Center, ice there, picked up a pair of skates, started to skate. Every cell in my body, including my brain, had recycled a few million times. Where was that memory of skating? Big mystery. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite.

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50:23That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. Q1. What is the thing that you believe to be true that most people disagree with you on? Right now, my interpretation of what I call quantum healing, a quantum mechanics. I wrote a book called Quantum Healing in 1988. It was vilified. I reassured it a few years ago because now we have science. And I'm doing a book with the quantum physicist at the moment where I believe that our biology, like everything else, is quantum mechanical. So it goes every experience shapes our biology and experience happens in the moment. So your body is changing in the moment depending on the experience you're having at a very fundamental level.

51:14Pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, eating, breathing, digestion, metabolism, elimination, thinking, feeling, aspiring, fearing, all every experience shapes biology. We are the metabolic product of experience. And experience doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in the matrix of relationship. So what people disagree with me is this whole interpretation. I've been attacked by mainstream scientists. I've been persistent because I'm a physician and I see people. And you know, I'm not sitting in a lab, dissecting rats or doing designing experiments theoretically. But you see people. And as you said, people suffer.

52:07And you know, if you're a physician, that should be a job to address suffering, not be a technician who can fix everything about the human body. Know nothing about the human soul or the human experience. This morning I was at an event and I had a guy come up to me after and he said, I'm 40 years old now, Steven. I'm in a job and I don't like it. It really doesn't like his job that he's in. I'd say trapped is maybe a strong word, but he feels unable to take the leap towards a life that he feels will fulfill him. He referenced being scared of what his friends might say. And he just there was almost this desperation in his face as he spoke to me, he was seeking words of advice from me to him to help him out of that situation of like I'm 40 years old, I've got a partner.

52:58I've built this life, but it's not resonating with who I am. And I just, I could feel the suffering. That's a lot of people that are listening to this right now. That's what our social structure has created. Yet, you know, the people like Joseph Campbell, who coined the expression, follow your bliss, follow your joy, follow your purpose, follow your meaning, follow your Dharma. In Buddhism they say, three things will save you. One is take refuge in the community of conscious beings, take refuge in a higher purpose and take refuge in transcendence. If you do that, your life will be meaningful. And meaning is what drives us.

53:47You know, there are actually many studies, by the way, recent studies on what is called the happiness equation. I'll give it to you. H is equal to S plus C plus B. So, H stands for happiness is equal to S. Set point in the brain. The set point in the brain is when you look at the situation, do you see an adversity or an opportunity? How is the set point determined by a childhood? If your parents were complaining, condemning, criticizing, playing the victim, you will see every problem, every situation has an adversity. Condemn, complain, criticize and play the victim. On the other hand, your parents or your caretakers or your ecosystem of relationship when you were growing up, first three, four years of life, they were looking at opportunities.

54:43They were always engaging in compassionate empathetic conversation and joy and laughter and celebration. Then you'll have a set point for happiness. This set point determines 50 % of our daily happiness experience. Can the set point be changed? Yes, by self -awareness, by reflective inquiry, by mindfulness, by actually knowing that you have a problem. Most people don't even know they have a problem. So that's 50%. So S plus C, conditions of living, primarily material conditions of living, money. So, if you are extremely poor, you will suffer. If you are extremely rich, that doesn't guarantee that you will be happy.

55:33In fact, what a lot of rich people do is they confuse their self -worth with their net worth. So I wrote a book before this called Abundance that was inspired by Bob Marley, one of his lyrics where he said, some people are so poor, all they have is money. So, happiness, when it pertains to money, is 10 % of your daily experience. If you win the lottery, you'll be ecstatic in the beginning. In six months, you'll plateau. In one year, you'll be back to your set point. So, even if you win the lottery, in five years, you might be worse off because now you're worrying about taxes, you want to put your money in the wherever, you know, in the Bahamas or something.

56:16And it's become your identity, money. If you're, you know, all billionaires, money is their identity. They confuse self -worth with net worth. So, that's 10%. Now, we have 40 % remaining. That's the choices we make every day. There are two kinds of choices we make every day. Once for personal pleasure, sex, alcohol, entertainment, movies, shopping, shopping is the number one choice for pleasure, by the way, in the world. That's why we call people consumers, a very ugly word to describe a stardust being with self -awareness. But does pleasure bring you happiness? It does, but it's transient. You know, if you're, and you have the danger of being addicted to pleasure, if you have an addictive personality as I did.

57:09Okay, so pleasure brings happiness transiently. There's another choice you can make that actually is called fulfillment when you have meaning, purpose in your life. And if you know how to make other people happy, by giving them attention, which means listening, appreciation, noticing their uniqueness, affection, letting them know you care, and acceptance, radical acceptance. You can't change another person, so you feel better, which is what we're trying to do all the time, changing other people so we feel better. Impossible. You can't change yourself, even if you try. So, acceptance. What would you say to that guy?

57:53What should I have said to him in terms of advice? Because he did really have to have told him, let's take a day off, and let's go fishing or let's go into, you know, have a picnic or let's go to see a comedy. Let's go to see a just take discontinue and try this. A little moment of being, not doing, not thinking, not feeling, not speaking. I take a week of silence every year. Now I'm taking even longer. So sometimes I'm thinking, you know, a month in silence. But, you know, I'm 76, so that's my different stages of life too. In the hope that that night help him realize that he's playing the wrong game, or he's thinking about the wrong game.

58:44You know, one thing you can do to alleviate anybody's suffering, to some extent, is fully accept them and listen to them. Don't give them advice. People feel better if you just listen to them, and there's neuroscience that they're amygdala cools down. If you just listen with deep empathy, which means you feel what another person feels, there's some biology around this. You know, when you feel what another person feels, and you deeply listen, there's a phenomenon called limbic resonance. Your emotional brain resonates with their brain. And then if you deeply listen to them, and you let them know you care for them, there's another thing that happens.

59:28It's called limbic regulation. And then the third step is limbic revision, the neural networks re -buyer. So acceptance, affection, appreciation, and attention. That's what you do. Don't give them advice. People go to therapist to get advice. Therapists don't do that. They listen. Good therapist, listen. Interesting. So in the old traditions, you know, that's why people went to confession. They basically revealed their so -called sins to the priest, and they felt better. One of the things I've read about, I read you talk about, is this the role that affirmations and positive self -talking, those kinds of things can have on our healing.

1:00:20To some extent, anything mental is weak. This is what I've wondered, because a lot of like, you know, books and Instagram will say, look in the mirror and say nice things to yourself. Yeah, that's work. It's mental. Mind is weak. You have to go deeper. It's, you know, to say, if you're trying to force yourself to be positive, that's exasperating. That's very stressful. But instead of forcing yourself to be positive, observe your thoughts. You know, observe both negative and positive thoughts, and you see that all experiences by contrast. You can't have one without the other. It's like a pendulum can swing only in one direction.

1:01:01It has to swing into directions. Heart is meaningless without cold. Pleasure is meaningless without pain. Joy is meaningless without suffering. Birth and death are actually not even opposites.

1:01:21Birth and death are opposites. Life is the continuum of birth and death. You can't have one without the other. In biology, there's something called apoptosis, program cellular death. When a cell forgets to die, it becomes cancer. That's what it is. A cancer cell doesn't die when it's supposed to. Normally, our cells are dying constantly, so you can be born again. That's the literal meaning of born again. What do you think of them? What do you think success is then? If we're stepping away from this identity which can cause so much suffering? What is, for me, success is the progress of realization of worthy goals, number one.

1:02:06And where they got us a subjective measure. For me, it could be taking care of my dog. It could be my wife's dog. It gives you pleasure. Yes, taking care of your dog. But if money is your goal for the sake of making money, then you'll be happy. But if money is your goal, so you can actually make a difference in people's lives, including your own and your family. But also community and large. That's a worthy goal. So it's number one, progressive realization of worthy goals. Number two, the ability to love and have compassion. And number three, actually, which is for me the most important, to always go back to your creative source.

1:02:50Once you have this ability to go back to your creative source, you will be successful, no matter what. Don't be bamboozled by the hypnosis of social conditioning. Don't be in a rush to conform. You know, there are studies that you fill the gallop. I'm on the advisory board of Gallop. If you have a house, that's $50 ,000. And you're offered a house that's $500 ,000, but your neighbors have a million dollar homes. You won't move. You're always comparing yourself to the other person. This is how we are socially programmed. Rush to conform, comparison with others. And you know, if the child doesn't conform, then he's not a good student.

1:03:42And I used to bump, but my son was growing up. He always was reading comic books and, you know, I'm engaging in games and sports. And I was very poor at mathematics. And my wife would constantly complain that he's not good at school. I said, wait a minute. He'll do what he's enjoying. Let him do what he's enjoying. He ended up creating a sports company, a comic book company. And now he has a very successful business called the Religion of Sport with Tom Brady. One five Emmys. It wasn't a good student. So I said, don't focus on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. And if you have a child who loves to play tennis, it's poor at math.

1:04:31Get a maternist coach. And one day he might get a mathematician to be accountant. When you look forward at the direction of travel that we're on as a civilization, what advice do we need now? The most. Don't get stuck in melodrama. This whole world is full of drama, drama. Everything that sells is drama. News is not news anymore. It's opinion and drama. And all the violence in the world is drama. And you know, you read about drama, shooting, killing, incest, well, crazy stuff. And we're addicted to drama, actually. And didn't we complain about it? We're addicted to trauma or drama. Yeah, both.

1:05:26And what's the cost of being addicted to trauma and drama? Suffering because because you sacrifice yourself for the drama of being a conformist. Does this mean we have we should take like, you know, I'm thinking about my relationship with technology and social media and news feeds and stuff. Well, technology is neutral. You know, in this in this capable it's past part of our evolution. If you don't adapt technology, you'll become extinct. So it's part of our evolution. How do we use technology? You know, in my field, AI, machine learning, precision diagnosis and even intervention. I believe technology is a great gift.

1:06:13But again, technology can destroy the world too. This is what it means to be human. Humans are very dressing species. Our fall from grace is exactly what, you know, mythical traditions tell us. The knowledge of good and evil. We ate the fruit. It's hard to go through life these days and not be tempted by drama. It's even someone who, you know, it's a process. It's a process. What is that process? Growth. You know, people. Some people do grow. Some people do evolve. And I think ultimately that is the purpose of our existence is to keep evolving. Do you ever get tempted by drama or distracted? Not anymore.

1:07:05I used to. I used to engage in debates. It was like, you know, big high for me to win a debate. How long ago? Well, I started in school and left debating only recently. I was just five years ago. I was debating Richard Dawkins in Mexico. I felt foolish after that. So you made the decision not to debate anymore? Not to engage in debate anymore, no. Because nobody changes the mind. The debates don't change the mind. The audience doesn't change the mind. They, in fact, get reinforced by the opinions they came with. So if we do want to try and change people's mind, because we need to change. If you want peace in your life, be peaceful.

1:08:00If you want love in your life, give love. Whatever you want. Engage in that. I think that's the only thing. You can't. You have to be the change that you want to see in others. And then people respond. Not but what you say. Not by what you do, but just by your presence. You've written 93 books, as I said earlier. I think this is your 93rd. I've been told this book about living in the light. New book. Yoga for self -realization. I guess my question, you know, I can't comprehend the concept of writing so many books. I wrote my first one and then I'm currently writing my second one. And I've been, it's just consuming all of my time.

1:08:46And I went off to Bali. I spent a month there writing it in. I'm glad you enjoyed that. I love it. I always get that to write. It's amazing. But my question to you, you know, I think this book is fantastic. And I think that we'll talk a little bit about you're going to sec. But your 94th book. It's coming this year. It's called Quantum Body with the Quantum Physicist. So I feel kind of good about that because I've been talking about that for now since 1988. That's 12 plus 23. That's over 30 years. I've been vilified, attacked, everything about that. And I realized that people are territorial. You know, the physicists say, who the heck is he talking about quantum physics?

1:09:31The biology says he's not training biology. He's a physician. Who the heck is he talking about biology? And yet, my experience tells me that your body is non -local. It's follows the principles of quantum mechanics. And now found some supporters who know the math. And you know, even the body can be understood mathematically now. I don't know if you're familiar with this theorem called Gurdles theorem, which says it's very famous theorem. And you know, Gurdles was a German mathematician who was Einstein's favorite colleague when they both immigrants to America at Princeton. But he came up with a theorem which says there are theorems in math that are true, but you can't prove them.

1:10:26And they're disruptions. They're basically mathematics. His platonic truth describes everything in the universe. And yet, there are theorems that don't follow algorithms when the mathematician thinks of them. He said, where did this come from? They don't know. They can't even prove it, but it seems intuitively true. And if they follow the theorem, it leads to new creativity. So I think creativity is inherent in the universe. We are aspects of that creativity. And with self awareness, we have source to that creativity. But that creativity will never happen if you don't take time to actually incubate in discontinuity.

1:11:19In my life, I figured it out. Nine steps intended outcome. Number one, information gathering. Number two, information analysis. Number three, incubation. Taking time off. Go to Bali, play golf. If you're a Republican, that's mystery school for Republicans or whatever. So incubation. And that is a time you settle with uncertainty. And then there's that Urika experience inside. So incubation leads to insight, which is a disruption. It's something totally new, new context, new relationship, new story. And then if the insight is accurate, then you're inspired, not motivated. Motivation is mental inspiration as the word says, inspirate.

1:12:07Then you implement it, then you integrate it, then then you are a debt and a resurrection. These are my nine steps to creativity. I just made them up. Information intended analysis, information gathering, information analysis, incubation, insight, inspiration, implementation, integration, incarnation. I used that for writing my books. I can tell. Yeah. And if you were to write one last book, if I said, deepak, you could write one more book. That's it. You can only write one. It's going to be your last ever book. Which subject matter would you think was the most important subject matter to write that last book about what would be the top line message of that book?

1:12:49I hate to use this word. It's misinterpreted, but the title would be enlightenment. Explain. What do you mean? Like why would why enlightenment? What would the book be about? It's the only solution ultimately to know truth with the capital D. You're not your body, you're not your mind, you're not your emotions. They're all like clouds passing through the sky. You know, when I read some of the great luminaries with Kinshain, our life is a dream. We are asleep. But once in a while we wake up enough to know that we were sleeping. Buddha, when he died, he said, this lifetime of ours, a transient is autumn clouds to watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.

1:13:52A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain. As I look back now, my life 76 years, it's a dream. It's been a good dream with a few nightmares here and there. But it's been a dream and I feel the only solution is to wake up now. You know, when the Buddha was dying, people asked him, who are you? Are you a Messiah? Are you God? Are you a messenger? He said, none of the above. He said, who are you? He said, I'm awake finally. I think that's our ultimate destiny to wake up. What do we need to do to wake up? We need to question our everyday reality and human constructs.

1:14:41They're useful. Money is a useful construct. Latitude, longitude are useful constructs. But they're still constructs. They're not reality. What is the source of these constructs? When you get to the source, you realize that your capacity for creativity is infinite. Your capacity for love is infinite. Your capacity for compassion is infinite. Your capacity for healing is infinite. And ultimately, you are infinite having a dream right now. If I made you Prime Minister or President of the world, you know, if there was one significant change you could make to lead us more towards that better future of enlightenment.

1:15:21I would say an education that does not sacrifice self -awareness. We have information overload right now. I don't need information overload. I can Google it or now go to chat GPT or something like that. What I need to know is, who am I? How do you feel about chat GP? P2. It's good. I think it's very good. And I think it's unavoidable also. I actually went to a demonstration recently by Microsoft and something that's coming soon. It's called Prometheus. It's way beyond chat GPT. Interesting. It will put most of us physicians out of business because it makes the best diagnosis, gives the best information.

1:16:11What happens then? It's not your purpose and your meaning. Well, we have more time for creativity. Fundamental creativity to create joy in the world. I think the essential message is, if you're not joyful, you wasted your life. I see entrepreneurs all the time, young guys coming up to me with amazing ideas. But they're talking about exit strategy before they've started the business. It's like dividing the loot before there's a train to rob. But they're already talking and we're living in a hustle culture. I have five exits. You keep exiting, exiting, exiting. And you're still hustling and you're dying.

1:17:00And that's the final exit. You're still a hustler. So I see make joy and self understanding, self awareness, the fundamental purpose of existence and everything else will follow. Where's your joy? Where is that? Why did you drive it from? The fact that I exist and I'm aware of existence, that's a perpetual surprise to me. I was looking at emotions and what's the healthiest emotion you can have? It's not love, it's not compassion. It's not even joy. It's all. It's wonder. Why do we exist? And why do we have the awareness that we exist? If you're perpetually surprised and full of wonder and joy, you return to innocence.

1:17:59And what we've lost to this world today is the loss of innocence. How do I get my innocence back? Are you married? I'm in love. When you have a child, you'll see it. You'll see it. A child is spontaneous. Isn't the moment. It's joyful, unless it's wet or hungry, but that's a different situation. But it's joyful. It's just looking. I was the other day I was in a train from Orlando Airport to baggage claim. Everybody was stressed in the train, bearing my Hispanic to mother on the phone and full of anxiety and shed a little baby in the crib. This baby was looking around in total amazement. Finally it caught my eyes and it gave the most amazing smile.

1:18:58And the whole room lighted up, just looking at that innocence. We have lost our innocence and we take it away from our children.

1:19:14Children love laughter. They love stories. They love surprises. They love to play peekaboo. When's the last time you were surprised?

1:19:29I can't recall being surprised. When I feel I want some joy, I just look at children playing. Is there a way to bring that joy back into our lives as a practice? Yes. Play. Play. Not drama. Has adults played seen as a waste of time? No, plays is when you find creativity and joy. I'm not talking about drama. I'm talking about play. Play for the sake of play. Now even sports has become competitive. But when you played because you were playing, when a musician is playing, they're not thinking of the end. When you're singing a song, you're not thinking of the ending of the song. You're in the song.

1:20:20When you become the song, when you become that which you're playing, when the music and the musician become one, when the nor and the known become one, when the observer and the observer become one, when the lover and the beloved become one, that's transcendence. That's joy. That's play.

1:20:44Living in the light, yoga for self -realization. This is your fourth phase of life and you're into your self -realization phase. Do you know the body holds the score? Yes. There's a lot of similarities between your philosophy and that book about how. I think everything is a skeptic. So, breath work and a lot of spiritual things. I start as an ultimate skeptic. I need science, I need evidence, I need proof. And as I read through that book and watch some videos of that, one of the things that it's proven is phenomenal for your mental well -being is things like acting, yoga. They talk about psychedelics and things like that as well, but one wouldn't assume that there's a profound amount of scientific evidence that yoga and acting have really positive mental health implications.

1:21:33Correct. Why is yoga so good for us as humans? Yoga means union, union with yourself and yoga has eight limbs as I talked about in this book and ultimately all those book eight limbs are meant to give you only one insight. You and the universe are made of awareness. You're not made of energy, you're not made of matter, you're not made of information, you're made of awareness. Awareness is non -local, fundamental, not subject to birth and death, infinite and formless. So, befriend your non -local formless self. You know, again, I go back to poetry, acting is great, poetry is even better. Rabindranath Tagore, one of my favorite poets said, in this playhouse of infinite forms, I caught sight of the formless.

1:22:35And so my life was blessed. Befriend the formless and then the forms will be seen as expressions of the formless. Without the formless, there is no form. Form is the morphing of the formless into space -time and causality, the theater of space -time and causality where we are playing as avatars. That is something for me to think about tonight.

1:23:11It's become abundantly clear to me over the last, I don't know. Over the last couple years in particular, as more people know who I am because of this podcast and I do teased some stuff on TV that you can call yourself such a tremendous amount of suffering by getting more and more attached to your avatar and like your avatar becoming more of a defined thing. I think I have spent a lot of my, definitely the last two and a half years, trying to resist as much as I can, this temptation of becoming my avatar and doing that on a practical level I thought, you know, well, resist label, Steve. So don't be anything.

1:23:43Don't like in terms of your bio, your professional bio. Don't be those things. You are 30, do you? 30. 30. Wow. That's pretty young to have that awareness. Yeah, because I could see how I could cause myself a ton of suffering and build a life which wasn't really who I am by being a social media CEO for example. Success at an early age. Yeah. You confused your celebrity with yourself. Outside of me, just like saying to myself, okay, I'm going to write books and I'm going to do this theater and we'll do this music show and I DJ now and I do all these other bits and pieces. I was in psychedelics for a while with a Tyler sciences as a creative director and investor and outside of me doing, doing lots of stuff, which is I thought was the antidote to not to resisting my label.

1:24:32You're telling me that the real antidote to resisting my label is like a higher sense of enlightenment. Right. I would suggest a book for you.

1:24:47Yeah. I'm raised in security and unpredictability. The more access you'll have to the unknown and the unknown is the source of all creativity. The known is the prison of the past. We have a closing tradition on this. That's funny. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest. The cool, the one question is I'll show you. You're the first person to have a see that question. Can you see it?

1:25:24What is my biggest insecurity? I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw of a gravesite and there was a sign on the gravesite and said, to whoever was standing by the gravesite, where you are, I was, where I am, you will be. So embrace the idea of death. And if you do it, you'll see it's death that makes life possible. Because death is creativity. Have you struggled with the idea of death? All my life is in six years. And that will raise its head to some degree when your parents passed. Yes. And now I'm in a stage where I'm embracing it. Totally. How did that impact you at losing your parents? Has someone that's been sensitive and insecure about their problems?

1:26:30I would say grief, sadness, longing. But our longing can be the way to. How long ago was that that you lost your parents? Oh, my parents only in the last 20 years. But grandfather with whom I lived in the first few years of my life. He was like a parent. My grandparents were my parents because my parents were in England at that time. And I was, I and my brother were left with our grandparents who brought us up. And that, by the way, was a big, that fear of abandonment also is a driver. The fear of abandonment is a driver. And there is no cure for that other than don't think about yourself all the time.

1:27:24Anytime you, by the way, you were suffering, ask yourself, who am I thinking about? You're thinking about your avatar.

1:27:34Very true. Deepak, thank you so much for having me. This was one of the best conversations I've had. Oh, thank you so much. That's a huge honor. You really are, you've been a, someone that I followed from, from afar, but I have had tremendous admiration for everyone that I've encountered. That's encountered you. Wow. Has been so, you know, we have mutual friends with, we're sort of in business together in many respects who are healing great. They're lovely people. Yeah. And it's been an honor that you come here and spend some time with me today. And it's been my privilege. Thank you. Thank you so much, Deepak.

1:28:04Thank you.

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