Deepak Chopra - The Book of Secrets: Who am I? Where Did I Come From? Why am I Here?

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.

Also by

DEEPAK CHOPRA

Creating Health

Return of the Rishi

Quantum Healing

Perfect Health

Unconditional Life

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind

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 and Fereydoun Kia)

Healing the Heart

Everyday Immortality

The Lords of the Light

On the Shores of Eternity

How to Know God

The Soul in Love

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

Epilogue

SECOND BIRTH

AT A CERTAIN POINT life has no more secrets to reveal. You live as if there is one reality, and in return it repays you richly. The fear born of duality is gone, replaced by an unshakable contentment. Awareness has become fully aware of itself. When we reach this stage of freedom, life starts over, which is why enlightenment is rightly called a second birth.

Growing up in India, I never met an enlightened person. My family was deeply religious, particularly on my mothers side. But when I was born the whole country was caught up in the turmoil of a political birth, as the English decamped overnight and left us to suffer our birth pangs alone. These were terrible times: Rioting and wholesale killing raged unchecked, as religious intolerance led to violence throughout North India.

When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a religious fanatic on January 30, 1948, the killer claimed another victim. A thread. The traditional costume of the Brahmin caste included a double thread worn over the shoulder. There were many evils in the caste system, but in my mind the double thread symbolized a deep truththat enlightenment was possible. Until modern times, everyone in India knew that the double thread was the promise of a second birth. It stood for a legacy going back before memory began. Today, enlightenment is no longer the goal of life, not even in India. The most that any teacher can do is to open the door again; he can answer three questions in the age-old way:

Who am I? You are the totality of the universe acting through a human nervous system.

Where did I come from? You came from a source that was never born and will never die.

Why am I here? To create the world in every moment.

To gain this knowledge for oneself is like being pushed through the birth canal again. You may utter a cry of surpriseand perhaps of shock and painat finding yourself in an unknown world. Once you accept this second birth, you continue to have thoughts and feelings, but now they are soft impulses against a background of silent awareness, faint ripples that rise and fall without disturbing the ocean of being.

I cant help feeling that enlightenment was never Indias prize to possessor any cultures. The second birth comes from looking at life as it already is, seeing it from the still point inside. To the degree that anyone does that, they are enlightened. The universe goes to the still point in order to create time and space. You go there to fetch a word or the memory of a face or the scent of a rose. At this very moment, the world is blossoming into its infinite variety before falling silent in amazement at the miracle it has just achieved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEEPAK CHOPRAS books have become international bestsellers and classics of their kind. Dr. Chopra is founder of the Chopra Center for Well Being in Carlsbad, California. Visit his website at www.chopra.com.

Secret #1

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE IS REAL

THE 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.

Countless clues have come your way, only to be overlooked because they didnt form a clear message. I have met an astonishing number of people whose spiritual beginnings were nothing short of amazing: As children, they may have seen a grandmothers soul leave at the moment of her death, witnessed beings of light surrounding on a birthday, traveled beyond their physical bodies, or come home from school to see a beloved family member standing in the hallway, even though the person had just died in a terrible auto accident. (One man told me he was a bubble boy for the first ten years of his life, journeying in his bubble high over the city and away to unknown lands.) Millions of peoplethis is no exaggeration but testimony from public pollshave seen themselves bathed in a pearlescent white light at times. Or they heard a voice they knew came from God. Or they had invisible guardians in childhood, secret friends who protected them while they slept.

Eventually, it became clear to me that more people have had such experiencestruly secret voyages into a reality separated from this one by a flimsy veil of disbeliefthan not. Parting the veil means changing your own perception. This is a personal, totally subjective, yet very real shift.

Where would you begin to solve a mystery that is everywhere, yet somehow never forms a whole message? A great sleuth like Sherlock Holmes would start his search from one elementary deduction: Something unknown wants to be known.