HieroniMusing December 11, 2001
Excerpted From Upcoming Book by Zohara M. Hieronimus
Future Talk – Creating Paradise on Earth

Deepak Chopra on the Divine Bodies

Dr.Deepak Chopra, a Vedic medical practitioner and world renowned educator, with whom I have had dialogues for a decade described the Vedic world view of the human being’s body, its relationship to nature and the universe or cosmos. Speaking with me, from the The Chopra Center for Well Being, Deepak made it clear as he does most things he addresses that, ”the physical body is a microcosm of the universal body. Each of us has a personal body but we also have a universal body. The personal body comes and goes, the universal body is always there. When we look at the environment we see it as part of our extended body. We are part of the ecosystem, we are part of the web of life. “ Deepak has a way of igniting images in the mind as he speaks. “The trees are our lungs. The earth is our physical body. The waters, the rivers are our circulation and the air is our breath. “

Reverence for the Environment

There is a reverence for the environment in this world view as well. In fact, Chopra added, “ it is not called the environment it is called the universal body. Both the personal body and the universal body are made up of the same stuff, the same material. Space, air, fire, water and earth. Your metabolic fire and fire of the sun are the same thing. The air that you breathe and the atmosphere are the same thing. So the five elements go to create the physical body, but behind that there is a subtle operation at work. Both the universal body and personal body have a subtle body and that subtle body is what we today would call the body of information and energy.” Chopra has a way of integrating ancient and modern sciences and arts, seemlessly, showing no differentiation between ancient world views and modern expressions of them in science.” In our our personal body it is reflected as our mind, our intellect, and as our emotions. And then beyond the subtle body, is the causal body which is the soul and spirit. This is the domain of non locality. Where we are in fact beyond space and time. “

Subtle Bodies and the Vedic Scriptures, subatomic particles in different locations of space/time, communicate with each other, without the exchange of energy or information. This is a very counter intuitive idea. Nothing moves faster than the speed of light, yet according to non locality it can happen simultaneously.”

We had moved quickly from the realm of the natural elements to our natural invisibility and yet fundamental connectivity. As Chopra made so easy to understand, this too , is part of the anatomy of our physical bodies as well.

The Body and Soul

“Now when we look at our physical body,” he began, “ it is an expression of non locality. It is a projection of your soul. In our physical body there are 100 trillion cells and each has to know what their cells are doing, otherwise your body would fall apart. Your body can have thoughts, kill germs and play the piano at the same time. And while it’s doing that, it tracks the movement of stars. So the intelligence that orchestrates all that which has to be infinitely creative, which has to have the other properties of infinite dynamism and infinite correlation and infinite organizing parts, that intelligence is the intelligence of the non local part of your self, which in the Vedic tradition is atmic or soul which is one with Brahman.”

The Soul Expressed Through Intention and Attention

Given Deepak’s deep understanding of the natural dynamics in our bodies, reflecting the natural laws of the planet, I asked him to explore with us the role that intention plays “relative to the unfolding of our humanity as a godly humanity.”

“Both attention and intention,” he made clear “are triggers for transformation. Consciousness works though both attention and intention. In the eight limbs of yoga, these qualities of attention and absorption, leading to unity consciousness where the observer and the observed are one, the physical body is the object of our observation, a process of observation. In reality they are the same field of consciousness , which is beginning to observe itself. In reality there is no separation.”

Molecules of Consciousness

“The body is a field of molecules, the mind is a field of ideas, one is experienced objectively, the other is experienced subjectively but they are essentially the same. Physicists might say this is a tangled hierarchy. The consciousness and the observation of consciousness simultaneously co-create each other. And the principle that before you can view a subatomic particle, it’s a virtual particle. You the observer are essential to its manifestation, of the actual particle from the virtual body. Similarly, before you have a thought, it’s there, it exists as a virtual thought, or before you manifest a memory it’s there. Where do these virtual memories reside, where do these virtual desires reside? They reside in our soul.” Where, Deepak asked rhetorically are the law of thermodynamics written or Einstein’s relativity? “These,” Chopra said “which are so essential to the workings of the universe, these are the thoughts of god.”

Human Beings Are Immortal

Humans we both agreed, are awakening to our purpose, as serving the divine order, or being in harmony.Deepak was quick to point out qualities that are evidenced in those who have accepted their role as co-creators. “Once you get in touch with that part of yourself, that is inseparable from everyone else, it has to be experiential not intellectual. Once it is experiential, there are certain symptoms such as spontaneous joy and the ability to share it with others, the progressive expansion of happiness, the ability to love and have compassion, a sense of connection to the creator of all the universe, a sense that one’s life has meaning and purpose and ultimately overcoming the fear of death, the fear of the mortality of the physical body.” These, Chopra pointed out, are progressive stages of awakening that happen spontaneously, “once you get in touch with that part of yourself that its immortal.”

Cause And Effect Are Not Linear

We tend to make karma, the law of cause and effect, very linear. “It’s an approximation of a phenomena that is immensely complex because every action,” Deepak conitnued, “ is the result of the entire universe The fact that we are talking on the phone is a conspiracy of the entire universe. Every space/time event orchestrates the activity of the whole universe. Not in a minimum manner. Since we are part of the universe and complex part of the package, when we change, the whole changes. So, the best way to change the world is to change ourselves. When the electron vibrates, the universe shakes. So yes, every act of ours has good or bad, and that’s a judgment anyway. But every act has an effect on the entire universe. Every time we act from selflessness it comes from a more expanded level of pure awareness. We are not acting from our skin encapsulated ego. The more it comes from the non personal domain ,the more impact it will have on the universal domain. In the tradition of Karma Yoga or a person who has an internal dialogue, that everything I do, every thought of mine, every breathe of mine, every movement of mine is a divine moment of the eternal, being established in light before action. Thus one experiences, spontaneous right action. It removes the anxiety of the action, for you are not doing it personally and it creates the law of least effort. You accomplish a lot more by doing less. Again, acting from a universal domain of awareness.”

Chopra has the gift of understanding the domains of the human being’s divine body, its inter dimensional actions, its divine nature. And like Chopra, there is another medical Doctor with whom I have had public discussions during the past decade or more, Dr. Larry Dossey. Larry is one of America’s true pioneers in integrative medicine. He makes clear that our ability to understand the human body, the human mind, and the soul are all interconnected.

We Are Immortal Beings

The modern laboratory is beginning to express the exact same understandings as those held for centuries by the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, that we are immortal souls in potentially immortal bodies. What we can assert positively Dossey says “is that mind effects matter. That thought begets energy, begets matter.” As Chopra and Dossey and many others suggest, the body has its own type of cellular memory, beyond the brain. In fact every cell, as a water carrier, carries within it a signature of an emotion, an experience, a thought, a stimuli whether it be self or other originated. Thus, what we think, say and do, as posited by the ancient wisdom teachings, does in fact impact the world . “But,” as Dossey made so celar when we spoke, “ not just our own bodies, not just our own minds, the entire universe is effected by each one of us.” Coming back to the themes discussed earlier in Future Talk, that both our attention and our intention has not just a little, but everything to do with the physical and invisible worlds; we are, divine co-creators, albeit mostly unconscious, of the powers and responsibility we have in shaping the world of today and tomorrow.

The Body As Vehicle of Consciousness

Our bodies are not machines, says Dossey, they are special vehicles of consciousness that enable us to experience the physical plane. The reality is, and experience shows us this, “that we are infinite beings in finite bodies. We are infinite mind, always a part of the universal mind.”

Form acupuncture to homeopathy, to herbal therapeutics, the complementary medical community has been applying ancient understandings for decades, appreciating the invisible life energy of chi that circulates in the body and which has correspondence to nature. That we are carbon based water beings, makes us part of the natural world and the elements is it composed of. Finding correspondances within our body’s organ systems, of the harmony and changes of the seasons, as acupuncture enhances, makes it possible for human beings to reach greater inner potential and more refined and integral outer acts. Seeing the realm of nature within our bodies, as Ayruvedic traditions like that practiced by Chopra, or enabling the power of nature to heal as is done in distant healing through loving prayer, makes it readily apparent, we are, every moment, like it or not, creating the world. As we build or deconstruct events, by the power of free will, orientation, and our thoughtful intent, we are in fact showing our capacity to build form nothing and to dematerialise the material realm as well. In terms of human health and human evolution, some suggest we are moving into to a period of post humanism- when man and machine will become more and more intertwined as biotic creations. That, as we reach into the DNA strands of the human and animal life, we will create new species, alarming for serious reasons. For some, like Ray Kurzwiel this development and human/machine is an inevitable course in humanity’s evolution. Of this I am not sure, but what I am certain of, is that if we don’t come to these technologies with spiritual and ethical precepts, if we aren’t asking ourselves and those in the world, should we do something, may we do something, or can we do something, we may fail to safeguard our divine spiritual beingness and risking further diminishment of immortal aptitudes in exchange for the temporal conquest of time , which in itself, is a delusion.

“The Vedic tradition, “Chopra made clear, “ looks at endless cycles that have no beginning and no end… Brahama is inactive, and Shakti the feminine principle is what creates the energy of the dance. It is always a harmonious interrelationship between the feminine and the masculine forces which creates the cosmic dance.”

Through out the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, these inherent energies inside each human are assigned many names but are essentially the same expressed dynamic between opposites, between two becoming one; expressing the fundamental nature of love which is to unite energies.

Love Is the Ultimate Truth

Love is not just a sentiment, Chopra stated, nor is it just an emotion,
“Love is the ultimate truth, the heart of creation, and the truth at the heart of creation is unity consciousness. We are the same divine spirit in different sizes. As you peel away the layers of the souls, you ultimately have the creation of knowing, that there is no such thing as a person, there is only the universe manifesting in all these portions. It is the same being. And when we have that experience, then we cannot help but be in love, and love becomes our essence… which permeates the atmosphere, and creates peace and harmony and laughter. It becomes an experience of belongingness.”

Zohara M. Hieronimus

December 11, 2001