Dr. Deepak Chopra Unlocks the Quantum Body: The New Science of Vitality and Longevity

The Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration, is a podcast brought to you by Goodnet, a part of the Arison Group. Goodnet is an online good news magazine founded by businesswoman and philanthropist Shari Arison, filled with inspirational and uplifting content. Our podcast dives into stories that inspire change and highlight the incredible efforts of people making a difference.Together we will embark on a transformative journey of positivity, kindness and inspiration. Special thanks to the Arison Group's Essence of Life Radio for hosting our podcast. 

This episode, launching the Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration, features a conversation between Goodnet's Managing Editor Debbie Berman and world renowned author and spiritual leader Dr. Deepak Chopra, offering practical tips on how to live a happier, more fulfilled life and highlighting Dr. Chopra's groundbreaking new book Quantum Body.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

DB: So hello and welcome to our very first episode of the Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration. We are thrilled to have you here. Goodnet is an online good news magazine. It was founded by Shari Arison, businesswoman and philanthropist, who decided to dedicate herself to content that was positive and inspired and promoted positivity, mindful living, and personal growth. We reach a wide audience of individuals who are passionate about doing good and taking positive action. Our podcast, recorded here today at the Arison group's Essence of Life Radio, will touch stories that inspire change. So sit back and relax and get ready to be inspired. Let's make the world a better place, one story at a time.

So for our first episode, we have with us Dr. Deepak Chopra. I'm a personal fan of yours. I have to say. I have to start with the fact that I've been very personally influenced by your work. I've been reading a lot in preparation for the podcast, and I'm very excited to share with our readers some of your wisdom and some of the amazing ideas that you've been able to amass over the years. I believe it's really aligned with what our readers want to hear, want to see and are seeking out. 

So I'm just going to give you a brief introduction because I don't want to miscalculate it. I have it here on my phone. Dr. Deepak Chopra, you might not know this about yourself, but you're very impressive. Founder of the Chopra Foundation, a nonprofit entity for research on wellbeing 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 the Gallup  organization. He is also an honorary fellow in medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He's the author of over 95 books translated into 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. And for the last 30 years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His upcoming book, Quantum Body, delves into the innovative world of quantum science and shows how unlocking its secrets can revolutionize how we live and age, and ultimately, how we can eradicate disease. Time magazine has described Chopra as one of their top 100 most influential people. I want to know when you sleep while you're doing all of those things, Dr. Chopra, is there sleep involved?

DC: I don't do anything. I just let my mind do it. I stay detached.

DB: Excellent. It sounds like a lot. But you're saying if you go with the flow and you go where the spirit takes you, you get to all of those places. 

DC: That's fine. If you go with the flow, there's no time. Time is a human construct based on resistance, on denial, on defensiveness, and on seeking. But when there's no resistance, no defensiveness, no denial, and no seeking, then you flow, and there's a scale you know. But human beings start with survival, then, say, then adaptation, then thriving, then flourishing, then flow, and finally awakening. That's the sequence of evolution of our consciousness. 

DB: So I would like to discuss your new book, Quantum Body. It's groundbreaking in its attempts to bridge the quantum and the quantum body. Those two terms, a body and a quantum, are not usually in the same sentence. And in the very, very opening of the book, there was something that really stayed with me and touched me. You describe a visual image that you had a long time ago, maybe 30 years ago, of a human body shimmering with light and energy. I'd like you to tell me a little bit about that experience of what that vision felt like for you and how it inspired you to go forward.

DC: Obviously, the vision came in a meditation, and what I was meditating on was the formless nature of ultimate reality. So whether you look at ultimate reality from a scientific perspective or from a spiritual perspective, fundamental reality is nothing that can be conceived or perceived, because it is formless. Being formless, it has no borders. And anything that has no form has no border and if it has no border, it's infinite. And if it's infinite, it's timeless, it's irreducible, it's fundamental.

It cannot be conceived or perceived, but it is responsible for all conception and perception. So what I'm calling the quantum body, in ancient wisdom traditions, is also so called the spiritual body, or Karana Sarira, which means the causal body. The quantum word is a modern term, and I'm using it metaphorically, a scientific term as well. Yeah, it's a scientific term. But, you know, quantum simply means the smallest unit of energy and information, in which waves of energy and information are either emitted or absorbed. So your thoughts are energy and information, your feelings are energy and information, your imagination is energy and information, and every sensory experience is energy and information. If you understand the body as a field of energy and information, and you say, where does this come from? It comes from the formless domain. Now, having said that, I should say I have a lot of critics. You know, 99 percent of mainstream medicine and mainstream physicists have criticized me for this metaphor. Or this analogy for 35 years. 

DB: Right. I was going to say, this is not new for you. I think you've been criticized all the way through, and it seems that you were a bit of a visionary. And it took a little while for science, for medicine to catch up with your thinking. 

DC: Well, even now, most people don't agree with what I'm saying. However, if you look at the principles of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principles, the measurement effect, and also look at the relationship of quantum mechanics to what we call epigenetics, how genes are modified by experience, and then you see that, you know, our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions, our intentions, our attention actually determine biological responses. Now, in the past, a lot of people have dismissed this as a placebo, as, oh, you know, it's a placebo. It's not important. But that's, you know, a convenient way of actually denying science, which shows that there is no experience. No experience. Right now I'm speaking to you. The front part of your brain is getting activated, the frontal cortex. And if someone's watching this program, their brains are also being activated. So our biology is interpersonal. It's not personal. And it's amazing that now the science is saying that there's no such thing as a separate self. And when we feel ourselves separate, fear, anger, guilt, humiliation, shame, depression, that's when the healing system gets triggered into what we call the inflammatory response, which is now part of almost every chronic disease, for sure.

DB: Definitely.

DC: And something that goes wrong in self regulation. So when we go to the source of all experience, we activate quantum healing. And the best way to do that is meditation.

DB: Okay, fantastic. While you were speaking, you actually, if we're in this moment, and my thoughts and your thoughts and everybody that's listening to our conversation are zeroing in on the thoughts. This is the only moment we have. You remind me very much of Shari Arison, who, when she founded Goodnet in 2011, this was also a bit of a visionary endeavor. The idea of bringing good news to people instead of just feeding the anxiety and the frenzy of what the media is trying to get us to get to with news. Is there anything good happening in the world? 

Yes, there's a lot of good things happening in the world, and those are what our stories touch on. Shari really believes in…starting with yourself as you were speaking, it really reminded me of that. To control your thoughts, to think good, and then to translate that, to speaking good and not stopping there …to doing good. And when you do that, when each individual does that. We create a ripple effect, and our good spreads out through the world and it turns into good action. And that's really what Goodnet is about. You touched on it a little bit.

But quantum physics is a little bit daunting for people who are not scientists. And it needs to be translated into lay terms from the book. You had something in here that resonated. It says your real body is a quantum creation. It rises from the same quantum field that created the universe. Your genesis is here and now. Your true source, the origin of who you are, exists at the finest level of nature, the quantum field. Would you like to elaborate on that a little bit? 

DC: Yeah. They said the quantum field is the source of all energy and information. And at the quantum level, your body doesn't have. Have a border with the rest of the universe. It's all one field of energy and information. What I'm saying is a little beyond that, though. The quantum field arises in a field of awareness. Because we only know the quantum field as a mode of knowing and experience in consciousness. So even more primordial to the quantum field, which is an energy and information field. More primordial to that is the consciousness field, which is modifying itself as that particular mode of knowing and experience that we ultimately see as the physical body. But the physical body that we see is a result of our senses translating energy and information into the appearance of the body. The appearance of the body is misleading. Any perception you have is misleading. Your perception tells you that the ground you sit on is stationary. We know it's spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. Your perception tells you that the earth is flat. Nobody believes that anymore. Your perception tells you that objects have three dimensionality. They have shape and they have solidity. But now we know they're proportionately as void as intergalactic space. So our perceptions deceive us into knowing fundamental reality. We have to go beyond our perceptual activity to actually know what fundamental reality is. Right?

DB: But we are still human, and we do still need to drink from that cup. And we still need to function within the borders and the boundaries. And so how?

DC: We are projections of consciousness. Impermanent projections of consciousness. Nothing that you perceive is permanent because perception is always revising itself. So perception recycles and also actually evolves to greater understanding and creativity and insight and intuition. You might say we are still human. Well, if the human experience is an experience in evolution, I think we are ready to move from human to metahuman. Where we send the idea of a separate self.

DB: I need to, I need to absorb that. That's very interesting. How do we get there? How does the regular person who's hearing you, who's inspired by what you're saying, how do we get there?

DC: By not identifying with experience, but the source of experience. So right now, the experience people are having is something on their television screen or their computer or their handheld device. 

DB: But that’s if we're lucky, Dr. Chopra, probably they're also driving. They're also watching Netflix. You know, they're bombarded. 

DC: Yeah. Whatever they're doing is a program on a screen. Okay? But without the screen, there's no program. So the screen is the source of the program. In this metaphor, the programs will come and go. Only the screen is there. So most people identify with the experience instead of the source of the experience, which is pure consciousness, which is self regulating, self organizing, self healing, self evolving. Infinite correlation, infinite creativity, and also unpredictable because it is creative. So instead of identifying with the experience, you go to the source of the experience. I had a conversation about this, you know, about 20 years ago with Shari in Israel. I remember. 

DB: She sends her very warmest personal regards as well. 

DC: Thank you. 

DB: And I'm sure she was influenced by the conversation that you had with her.

DC: So, the human body. I also read a lot of your work. The human body is also constantly evolving. Our cells are always constantly being switched over. That's why we can actually make this a medical thing. We can actually regenerate and create and take our bodies in a completely different direction. The body is not a noun. It's a verb. So you say, I have a body, then you have to qualify which one? Because your body started as a fertilized egg. Then it was a zygote, then it's an embryo, then it's a baby, then it's a toddler, then it's a, you know, young teenager, mature adult, etcetera, away to dusty death. So you can't say there is such a thing as a fixed body. The body is constantly recycling, but also evolving into different stages of development. 

DB: I heard you once, we describe it as a river almost. 

DC: Yeah. You know, you look at a whirlpool, maybe it changes its appearance. Whereas this same activity in the river, and the river, too, is very good. Yeah. 

DB: Okay, so here's something that everyone that is viewing you today or meeting you for the first time visually, Dr. Chopra is 77 years old. Is that correct? When's your birthday?

DC: Yeah, my biological age, half of that. My chronological age is about 77. Exactly.

DB: What I was going to ask.

DC: Chronological age, right. Biological age, spiritual age, psychological age, emotional age. 

DB: So how old are you in all of those numbers? I read that when you were 75, you tested out to have the biological body of a 38 year old. What are your numbers at now?

DC: The test is not the crucial thing. 

DB: But that's what impresses everybody.

DC: The crucial thing is, on a scale of one to ten, is your body joyful and energy? My body is joyful, energetic. Ten out of 10. On a scale of one to 10, do you experience a loving, compassionate heart? On a scale of one to 10, is your mind quiet and creative? On a scale of one to ten, how light is your spirit? Those are the ways to…Those are the questions.

DB: And what doctor, Dr. Chopra, What doctor asks us those questions? 

DC: Only witch doctors like me.

DB: Well, I think we need to start incorporating that into how we interact with patients, interact with each other. Those are the questions. Those really are the questions. You say in your book, what if aging was a mistake? What does that mean?

DC: Well, I think there's a saying in ancient wisdom traditions. We don't grow old. When we stop growing, we become old. So as long as you're growing…

DB: Could you repeat that?

DC: We don't grow old. When we stop growing, we become old. Okay. So, unlike the aging of other animals, which is fixed, human aging is entirely flexible. We have, as I said, biological age, psychological age, emotional age, spiritual age. We have the ability, at least for a time, For a time period of time. Ultimately, death is the only way to resurrect ourselves. But death makes life possible. But for human beings, we can change our experience of time. We can change our experience of the body as a field of awareness. We can reframe the idea of aging. We can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the healing response. We can slow down and even suspend the experience of time. So for us, as human beings, we have enormous flexibility. And when it comes to aging. And now there are scientific studies that prove that.

We had a meditation retreat for a week a few years ago, and at the end of the week, the level of the enzyme telomerase, which regulates our biological clock, went up by 40 percent. There's no drug that does that.

DB: That's fantastic. Your co authors on this book are also experts in their fields. There's a physicist and an endocrinologist that are working with you on this. There's science in this book for your critics. And again, I want to bring it back to our community members on Goodnet so that they can have something to take away when this podcast is over. Because it sounds wonderful, but it sounds very, very high and very, very difficult to implement into my own simple life. So while I was reading, I did see that you have some great techniques. You talk about breathing, feeling and seeing. 

DC: Yes. So by regulating your breath, you can regulate your autonomic nervous systems. As simple as that. You can speed up metabolism, slow down metabolism, increase energy, etcetera, just through regulating your breath. And that's part of the yogic tradition, feeling. The more you feel empathy, compassion, love, joy, equanimity, the more your body goes into, say, self regulation.Okay. And seeing, seeing means see not what appears, but go to a deeper level of seeing. So you actually feel the presence of being in your body and the presence of being in others. And that happens when you are motivated by love. Anything you do, you do it through love, because love removes the subject object split and gets rid of the illusion of the separate self. Because we're all, we are really all connected. There is no separation. Yes.

DB: Because we're all, we are really all connected. There is no separation. Yes. Yeah, that's, that's actually beautiful.

I'm wondering if you would be for a few minutes, if you would guide us with some of the vagal breathing, a short breathing technique that…I'm in the middle of my day, I'm stuck in traffic, my kids are waiting for me, I have to pay a traffic bill, I'm very, very stressed out. Give me something that I can do for two minutes, five minutes. 

DC: But you know, stress is the worst use of our…

DB: Yeah, it's an enemy. Yeah.

DC: Stress is the bad use of our consciousness. Yeah. Creativity and healing is the best use of our consciousness. I'll do that. And then I actually have to go to another appointment. 

DB: Okay, let's do that. Let's do that. That would be great. Okay.

DC: Very simply, it will go even beyond breathing and bring your awareness to your breath. Now bring your awareness to your heart and mentally ask yourself, what do I want? Just ask the question, don't try to answer it and see what comes up. What do I want? Any sensation, any image, any feeling, any thought, notice it. What do I want? So you don't have to set any goals, just ask the question and see what comes up. And then notice that. Okay, now take a deep breath. Inhale through the nose, and as you exhale, just produce the humming sound. Humm. 

Take a deep breath again. And as you exhale through the nose, even doing that for a minute or two during the day will activate your vagus nerve, which is one way to do it. There are many other ways. There are eye movements you can use. You can smile, hum, you can sing, you can take a deep breath. You can put awareness in your heart. You can do yoga, tai chi, qigong. These are all ways to activate the healing system.

DB: Fantastic. Two quick questions. Looking ahead. What areas of research and explanation in the medical field are you most excited about to apply this technology? 

DC: I'm most excited about solving the hard problem of consciousness which says what we call the material world is actually the spiritual world modifying itself as the perceptual activity that we call the material world. So that's my main focus right now. And the other is with people like yourself, Shari Arison, to create a critical mass for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and joyful world.

DB: Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today on the Goodnet Effect. A special thank you to Arison's Essence of Life radio for hosting us and from the bottom of our hearts to our special guest, Dr. Deepak Chopra for sharing your wisdom and insights. Make sure to follow us for more inspiring and uplifting content on goodnet.org and find us on social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Together, let's continue to spread positivity. Thank you so much, Dr. Chopra. Thank you. 

DC: I'm very happy to be on it. Thank you so much.

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