Chopra Deepak - Super brain: unleashing the explosive power of your mind to maximize health, happiness, and spiritual well-being

ALSO BY RUDOLPH E. TANZI
Decoding Darkness (with coauthor Ann B. Parson)

ALSO BY DEEPAK CHOPRA

Creating Health

Return of the Rishi

Quantum Healing

Perfect Health

Unconditional Life

Journey into Healing

Creating Affluence

Perfect Weight

Restful Sleep

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

The Return of Merlin

Boundless Energy

Perfect Digestion

The Way of the Wizard

Overcoming Addictions

Raid on the Inarticulate

The Path to Love

The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents

The Love Poems of Rumi

(edited by Deepak Chopra; translated
by Deepak Chopra and Fereydoun Kia)

Healing the Heart

Everyday Immortality

The Lords of Light

The Soul in Love

How to Know God

On the Shores of Eternity

The Chopra Center Herbal Handbook

(with coauthor David Simon)

Grow Younger, Live Longer

(with coauthor David Simon)

The Deeper Wound

The Chopra Center Cookbook (coauthored by David
Simon and Leanne Backer)

The Angel Is Near

The Daughters of Joy

Golf for Enlightenment

Soulmate

The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

Peace Is the Way

The Book of Secrets

Fire in the Heart

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga

(with coauthor David Simon)

Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives

(coauthored by David Simon and Vicki Abrams)

Life After Death

Buddha

The Essential How to Know God

The Essential Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

The Essential Ageless Body, Timeless Mind

The Third Jesus

Jesus

Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul

The Ultimate Happiness Prescription

Muhammad

The Soul of Leadership

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes

(with coauthor Gotham Chopra)

Consciousness in the Universe: Quantum Physics,
Evolution, Brain and Mind (with Stuart Hameroff and
Sir Roger Penrose)

War of the Worldviews

(with coauthor Leonard Mlodinow)

Spiritual Solutions

God: A Story of Revelation

FOR CHILDREN

On My Way to a Happy Life (with Kristina Tracy,
illustrated by Rosemary Woods)

You with the Stars in Your Eyes
(illustrated by Dave Zaboski)

Copyright 2012 by Deepak Chopra and
Rudolph E. Tanzi

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available upon request

eISBN: 978-0-307-95684-2

Book illustrations by Tam Nguyen
Jacket design by Michael Nagin
Jacket photography: I-Works/AmanaImagesRF/Getty Images

v3.1_r1

To our wives and loving families

Rudys Epilogue:
LOOKING AT ALZHEIMERS WITH HOPE AND LIGHT

Deepaks Epilogue:
BEYOND BOUNDARIES

Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.

Will Cuppy

W hat do we really know about the human brain? In the 1970s and 1980s, when the authors gained their training, the honest answer was very little. There was a saying circulating back then: Studying the brain was like putting a stethoscope on the outside of the Astrodome to learn the rules of football.

Your brain contains roughly 100 billion nerve cells forming anywhere from a trillion to perhaps even a quadrillion connections called synapses. These connections are in a constant, dynamic state of remodeling in response to the world around you. As a marvel of nature, this one is minuscule and yet stupendous.

Everyone stands in awe of the brain, which was once dubbed the three-pound universe. And rightly so. Your brain not only interprets the world, it creates it. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell would have none of those qualities without the brain. Whatever you experience todayyour morning coffee, the love you feel for your family, a brilliant idea at workhas been specifically customized solely for you.

Immediately we confront a crucial issue. If your world is unique and customized for you and you alone, who is behind such remarkable creativity, you or the brain itself? If the answer is you, then the door to greater creativity is flung open. If the answer is your brain, then there may be drastic physical limitations on what you are able to achieve. Maybe your genes are holding you back, or toxic memories, or low self-esteem. Maybe you fall short because of limited expectations that have contracted your awareness, even though you dont see it happening.

The facts of the case could easily tell both stories, of unlimited potential or physical limitation. Compared with the past, today science is amassing new facts with astonishing speed. We have entered a golden age of brain research. New breakthroughs emerge every month, but in the midst of such exciting advances, what about the individual, the person who depends upon the brain for everything? Is this a golden age for your brain?

We detect an enormous gap between brilliant research and everyday reality. Another medical school saying from the past comes to mind: Each person typically uses only 10 percent of their brain. Speaking literally, thats not true. In a healthy adult, the brains neural networks operate at full capacity all the time. Even the most sophisticated brain scans available would show no detectable difference between Shakespeare writing a soliloquy from Hamlet and an aspiring poet writing his first sonnet. But the physical brain is not nearly the whole story.

To create a golden age for your brain, you need to use the gift nature has given you in a new way. Its not the number of neurons or some magic inside your gray matter that makes life more vital, inspiring, and successful. Genes play their part, but your genes, like the rest of the brain, are also dynamic. Every day you step into the invisible firestorm of electrical and chemical activity that is the brains environment. You act as leader, inventor, teacher, and user of your brain, all at once.

As leader, you hand out the days orders to your brain.

As inventor, you create new pathways and connections inside your brain that didnt exist yesterday.

As teacher, you train your brain to learn new skills.