Deepak Chopra - The book of secrets: unlocking the hidden dimensions of your life

DEEPAK CHOPRA, M.D.

The

BOOK

of

SECRETS

Harmony Books

NEW YORK

CONTENTS

To my father,

K RISHAN L AL C HOPRA :

your graceful life and your graceful death

inspired and finally unlocked

the hidden dimensions of my life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Peter Guzzardi, my very skillful editor: you are both my critic and one of my best friends;

Shaye, Tina, Tara, Brian, Jenny, and the rest of my family at Harmony: you have been loving, gracious, and tolerant since the beginning of my career;

Rita, Mallika, Gotham, Sumant, Candice, and darling Tara: you make everything worthwhile and sacred;

Carolyn Rangel, Felicia Rangel, and Jan Crawford in my office: your dedication and hard work make everything possible;

And finally, thanks to my family at the Chopra Center, who translate my words into a practice that makes a difference in peoples lives.

Introduction

OPENING THE BOOK OF SECRETS

T HE GREATEST HUNGER in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all of these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfiedindeed, often more dissatisfied than when they began. The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found.

The pearl is also called essence, the breath of God, the water of life, holy nectarlabels for what we, in our more prosaic scientific age, would simply call transformation. Transformation means radical change of form, the way a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. In human terms, it means turning fear, aggression, doubt, insecurity, hatred, and emptiness into their opposites. Can this really be achieved? One thing we know for certain: The secret hunger that gnaws at peoples souls has nothing to do with externals like money, status, and security. Its the inner person who craves meaning in life, the end of suffering, and answers to the riddles of love, death, God, the soul, good and evil. A life spent on the surface will never answer these questions or satisfy the needs that drive us to ask them.

Finding the hidden dimensions in yourself is the only way to fulfill your deepest hunger.

After the rise of science, this craving for knowledge should have faded, but it has only grown stronger. There are no new facts to discover about lifes hidden dimensions. Nobody needs to peer at more CAT scans of patients undergoing a near-death experience or take more MRIs of yogis sitting deep in meditation. That phase of experimentation has done its work: We can be assured that wherever consciousness wants to go, the human brain will follow. Our neurons are capable of registering the highest spiritual experiences. In some ways, however, you and I know less about the mystery of life than our ancestors.

We live in the Age of the Higher Brain, the cerebral cortex that has grown enormously over the last few millennia, overshadowing the ancient, instinctive lower brain. The cortex is often called the new brain, yet the old brain held sway in humans for millions of years, as it does today in most living things. The old brain cant conjure up ideas or read. But it does possess the power to feel and, above all, to be. It was the old brain that caused our forebears to sense the closeness of a mysterious presence everywhere in Nature.

That presence, which is found in every particle of creation, suffuses your life, too. You are a book of secrets waiting to be opened, although you probably see yourself in totally different terms. On a given day, you are a worker, a father or mother, husband or wife, a consumer combing the mall stores for something new, an audience member waiting impatiently for the next entertainment.

When you are living the truth of one reality, every secret reveals itself without effort or struggle.

It comes down to the age-old choice of separation or unity. Do you want to be fragmented, conflicted, torn between the eternal forces of darkness and light? Or do you want to step out of separation into wholeness? You are a creature who acts, thinks, and feels. Spirituality fuses these three into a single reality. Thinking doesnt lord it over feeling; feeling doesnt stubbornly resist the higher brain; doing occurs when both thought and feeling say, This is right. The one reality can be recognized because once you are there, you experience the flow of life without obstacles or resistance. In this flow, you encounter inspiration, love, truth, beauty, and wisdom as natural aspects of existence. The one reality is spirit, and the surface of life is only a disguise with a thousand masks that keeps us from discovering what is real. A thousand years ago, such a statement would have met with no argument. Spirit was accepted everywhere as the true source of life. Today, we have to look with new eyes at the mystery of existence, for as proud children of science and reason, we have made ourselves the orphans of wisdom.

Therefore, this book must work on two fronts. First, it must persuade you that there really is a mystery lying in the hidden dimensions of life. Second, it must inspire you to feel the passion and dedication required to get there. This isnt a project to postpone until you are ready. You have been ready since the day you forgot to keep asking who you are and why you are here. Sadly, most of us keep shutting out thousands of experiences that could make transformation a reality. If it werent for the enormous effort we put into denial, repression, and doubt, each life would be a constant revelation.

Ultimately you have to believe that your life is worth investigating with total passion and commitment. It took thousands of tiny decisions to keep the book of secrets closed, but it takes only a single moment to open it again.

I take it literally when the New Testament says, Ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened. Its that simple. You will know every secret about life when you can truly say I must know. I cant wait a moment longer. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree and Jesus wrestling with demons in the desert are symbolic of the same drama of the soul that you were born to repeat. Never doubt this: You are the most significant being in the world, because at the level of the soul you are the world. You dont have to earn the right to know. Your very next thought, feeling, or action can begin to uncover the deepest spiritual wisdom, which flows as pure and free as mountain waters in spring. It isnt possible for the self to keep secrets from itself forever, no matter how thoroughly weve been trained to believe otherwise.

Secret #1

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE IS REAL

T HE LIFE YOU KNOW is a thin layer of events covering a deeper reality. In the deeper reality, you are part of every event that is happening now, has ever happened, or ever will happen. In the deeper reality, you know absolutely who you are and what your purpose is. There is no confusion or conflict with any other person on earth. Your purpose in life is to help creation to expand and grow. When you look at yourself, you see only love.

The mystery of life isnt any of these things, however. Its how to bring them to the surface. If someone asked me how to prove that there really is a mystery of life, the simplest proof would be just this enormous separation between deep reality and everyday existence. Ever since you and I were born, weve had a constant stream of clues hinting at another world inside ourselves. Havent you ever fallen into a moment of wonder? Such moments may come in the presence of beautiful music, or at the sight of natural beauty that sends a shiver up your spine. Or you may have looked out of the corner of your eye at something familiarmorning sunlight, a tree swaying in the wind, the face of someone you love as he or she sleepsknowing in that moment that life was more than it appears to be.