Brief Summary
Deepak Chopra introduces a new YouTube series for subscribers, focusing on achieving a peaceful, just, sustainable, healthy, and joyful world through individual transformation. He outlines seven stages of well-being, from survival and safety to awakening, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the true self as a field of awareness connected to the universe. The session includes a guided meditation incorporating self-inquiry, mindfulness, and transcendence, aiming to connect participants with their true selves and promote global peace.
- Seven stages of well-being, from survival to awakening.
- True self as a field of awareness connected to the universe.
- Guided meditation for self-inquiry, mindfulness, and transcendence.
Introduction and Vision
Deepak Chopra welcomes viewers to the new YouTube subscriber series and expresses his excitement about engaging with the audience regularly. He encourages viewers to suggest topics for future sessions, including Q&As, meditations, and satsangs. Chopra shares his 40-year-old vision of reaching a critical mass of consciousness to create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world, emphasizing that this transformation begins with each individual embodying the change they wish to see.
Stages of Well-being
Chopra outlines the stages of well-being, starting with survival and safety, followed by success, which he defines as the progressive realization of worthy goals, the ability to love, compassion, connect with one's spiritual center, and achieve total freedom. The subsequent stages include adaptation, thriving, flourishing, flow (no resistance to existence), and finally, awakening to one's true self, where the individual self (Atman) realizes its identity with the universal self (Brahman).
Understanding the True Self
Chopra explains that the person is not the real self; instead, the real self is awareness. He describes the universe as fluctuations of awareness and introduces the concept of "Britis" from yoga. The universe, including all its elements, is made of these fluctuations. Behind the conditioned mind is a field of awareness, referred to as Brahma or cosmic consciousness. The individual self (Atman) is identical to Brahman, representing a formless, infinite, borderless, timeless, spaceless, and irreducible entity that is the ground of all existence.
Modification of Pure Consciousness
Pure consciousness modifies itself into the individual soul (Jiva), which contains seeds of memory, desire, and past experiences (karma). This further modifies into mind, intellect, and ego, forming the subtle body. The subtle body then modifies into the five senses (sensory organs) and motor organs, which act as sensors and responders to experiences, creating a feedback loop for self-regulation and homeostasis. These processes lead to the creation of the physical body and energy, integrating mind, body, intellect, ego, senses, motor organs, and the universe into a unified experience.
Essential Spiritual Experience
Chopra revisits the stages of well-being, emphasizing that awakening leads to liberation and the discovery of one's true identity beyond spacetime. The essential spiritual experience involves finding the true self beyond space and time, the spontaneous emergence of platonic values such as truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and the loss of the fear of death, as the true self exists outside the cycle of birth and death.
Guided Meditation
Chopra leads a guided meditation, beginning with observing the breath without controlling it, recognizing its effortless and spontaneous nature. He encourages participants to acknowledge that all life experiences are sensations that arise and subside, similar to the breath. The meditation incorporates self-inquiry (Atma Vichara), where participants ask themselves questions like "Who am I?", "What do I want?", "What is my purpose?", and "What am I grateful for?" to connect with their souls.
Mindfulness and Transcendence
The meditation transitions into mindfulness, focusing on sounds, bodily sensations, and mental images, recognizing that all these experiences arise and subside within one's awareness. Participants expand their awareness beyond their physical boundaries, encompassing their city, country, planet, and even the universe, while acknowledging the sensations, feelings, and thoughts that arise. The session concludes with transcendence, using the mantra "Aham" to connect with the universal vibration of existence and resting in the formless, infinite awareness of the true self.
Q&A and Closing Intentions
Chopra answers questions from the audience, addressing topics such as experiencing emotions during awareness and the significance of synchronicities, which he interprets as connections to the divine source. He shares his plans to create a global movement called the "Pandemic of Love" and announces the opening of the Chopra House studio in New York. The session concludes with Chopra guiding participants to set intentions for a joyful, energetic body, a loving, compassionate heart, a quiet, creative mind, and lightness of being, emphasizing love as the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.
