Deepak Chopra - Unconditional Life: Discovering the Power to Fulfill Your Dreams

Praise for Dr. Chopra and Unconditional Life

Brilliant, provocative, and poetic Dr. Chopras kindness and deep caring for people, and his desire for their liberation from suffering, shine through on every page.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Director, Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and author of Full Catastrophe Living

Inspiring reading Dr. Chopra presents a rare perspectivethat of a scientist and a healer. Through beautifully told stories of his clinical experience, he demonstrates the possibilities of medicine with heart and spirit.

Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D., President, Omega Institute

And for His National Bestseller
Quantum Healing

Dr. Chopra is a fine, evocative writer who maneuvers his way suavely through medicine, physics, and metaphysics. For anyone who has awaited a Tao of medicine, this book is a most welcome arrival.

The New England Journal of Medicine

Dazzling.

The Washington Post

Brilliant and entertaining.

The London Daily Telegraph

A profound investigation of consciousness and health.

Yoga Journal

Drawing on both modern science and ancient wisdom, here is a model of health and illness that can stand the test of scientific scrutiny because of one simple fact: It works.

Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Space, Time & Medicine

A beautifully balanced web of dramatic examples and reasoned speculation.

Craig A. Lambert, Ph.D., Harvard Magazine

His case histories take the old mind-body controversy to new levels of complexity and fascination.

San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner

Illuminating and inspiring.
East West

Other books by Deepak Chopra, M.D.

CREATING HEALTH

RETURN OF THE RISHI

QUANTUM HEALING

PERFECT HEALTH

AGELESS BODY, TIMELESS MIND

UNCONDITIONAL LIFE
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published October 1991
Bantam trade paperback edition/October 1992

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from The Enlightened Heart by Stephen Mitchell. Copyright1989 by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

All rights reserved.
Copyright1991 by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-10038. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79919-7

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

Part One

The Mystery of
Personal Reality

H ow much more of this do you think I can stand? the patient demanded. He slumped in his chair, and his face darkened. Six months ago all I could think about was staying alive. I listened to anyone who held out hope for a cure. Theyre all scared to come out and use the word cure, of course, but Ive been promised every kind of rose garden you can grow. It all sounds pretty funny now, doesnt it?

No, I said quietly, I know how hard you have worked to get well. I put my hand on his shoulder, but the man stiffened and drew back. Lets drop it, he muttered. Only a fool would keep on like this.

A condition like yours is going to have its ups and downs. Thats only to be expected, I said gingerly, but instead of being so disappointed about your white counts

No, he interrupted bitterly, no more white counts. I dont want that anymore.

What do you want? I asked.

A way out.

Meaning what?

Believe me, if I knew that There was a long, tense silence. The man kept staring at the floor, his face set in a hard mask. We both waited to hear what I would say next.

My patients name was Robert Amis. He was thirty-seven and had worked for a small computer firm on the outskirts of Boston. A year earlier his company had urged all employees to undergo a complete blood screening as part of a stepped-up emphasis on health. Robert complied without qualms. He was surprised when the test results came back showing a suspicious rise in his white blood cell count. Follow-up tests were run, and a few weeks later an oncologist somberly informed him that he had an incurable form of leukemia. Robert was deeply shaken. The average life expectancy for his particular disorder, called chronic myelocytic leukemia, or CML, was uncertain, but it could be as short as two to four years. With so little time left, he knew he had to act.

The minute I left the doctors office, it was as if a switch clicked, he told me at our first meeting. I knew that my priorities had to change. He proposed to his live-in girlfriend and very quickly got married. Next he gave up his job in Boston and bought a condo in Miami. But the main thing that happened was that Robert threw himself with abandon into the project of curing himself. I kept reading that theres an inner healer, he said, and I was determined to find it.

He discovered no lack of channels for reaching his goal: self-hypnosis, visualization, psychotherapy, deep massage, and progressive relaxation were just the beginning. He started attending support group meetings with other leukemia patients and weekend seminars on self-healing, at which he heard inspiring stories from patients who had recovered from incurable illnesses. When I met him, he brandished the latest in a series of audiotapes he mailed out every month to update friends and family on developments in his lifemeaning his disease, for that had become so nearly all-consuming that there was very little of Roberts life outside it.

After six months, when he was at the height of his new existence, Robert felt more emotionally secure than he ever had. He confidently went in for his next blood test, only to find that, far from coming under control, his white cell count had skyrocketed. His disorder seemed to be accelerating dangerously, and his oncologist took a stern tone, advising him either to start intensive chemotherapy or to take the more drastic step of having a bone marrow transplant. Neither course of action was likely to lead to a permanent cure, but conventional medicine had little else to offer.