The Future of Personal and Planetary Well Being : An invitation to Sages and Scientists Symposium, Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville Arkansas

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Despite a steady increase in life expectancy, medical science is facing diminishing returns. It has been estimated that every increase in lifespan since 1990 has resulted in only ten months of increased healthy life; the rest is only prolonged suffering and the decline of aging. Globally more people now die of so-called “lifestyle diseases” than from infectious diseases. Doctors cannot make choices about lifestyle; only the patient can. Finally, half of all heart attacks before old age occur in people who live a good lifestyle, managing their weight, eating right, and exercising regularly.

What lies beyond lifestyle? That’s a matter of much speculation. Will human existence be improved in the future through technology, genetic manipulation, nano-robots in the bloodstream serving as cancer hunters? Or will it take a new philosophical conception, one that entices people away from a life of speed, constant activity, and stress?

By all odds it will take both, because innovations in technology can’t succeed if we continue to define well-being in old, outworn ways. Consider the following statements, which almost everyone, including doctors, take as fact:

  • The body is a machine, and like all machines it breaks down.
  • Aging is a pre-determined process, probably controlled by our genes.
  • The body is a mindless lump of matter except for the brain, which has evolved to produce mind or consciousness.]
  • The causes of most diseases are now known. What remains is to find effective drugs to target each malady.
  • You are healthy until something goes wrong, which is signaled by the appearance of symptoms.

In reality none of these statements is correct. The body isn’t a machine; machines cannot heal themselves. The body isn’t mindless; every cell is imbued with vast knowledge that far surpasses anything found in medical textbooks. The brain doesn’t produce the mind; that’s merely an assumption that has never been proved.

The most urgent need facing each of us is how to envision our bodies without the burden of outworn assumptions, which is why, starting in two weeks, an annual symposium known as Sages & Scientists Symposium will bring together the best thinkers with views both humanistic and scientific. This year’s theme is “The Future of Well-Being,” and the public is invited to attend. There is nothing on the planet as open to the free exchange of ideas, from every kind of thinker and researcher, all aiming to find a way forward into a viable future.

In my view a total rethink of the human body is long past due. To begin with, the division between mind and body is totally arbitrary. The body is a super-highway of information traveling to every cell, and thousands of different molecules inside a cell know exactly what their precise function is. The body’s ability to heal, along with the immune system’s encyclopedic knowledge of all the disease organisms our ancestors encountered (and defeated), far exceeds current medicine.

To get real about your body, you need to see it as a bodymind, a wholeness whose capacity for survival is only exceeded by its capacity to evolve. As the British physicist David Deutsch pointed out in a TED talk this past April, human beings have freed ourselves from the laws of nature that govern the physical universe, and this freedom has allowed us to define entirely how our future will look. That’s a startling reinvention of what it means to be human, because everyone assumes that the laws of nature are vastly more powerful than human beings.

In reality the possibilities created in our consciousness are infinite, but we will remain limited, insecure, and fearful until a new vision tells us who we really are. The body is as conscious as any thought, which is why bodymind is the right conception of our wholeness. Consciousness creates, governs, and organizes every process in the bodymind, and the source of this unlimited knowledge is you. There is no higher power or law of nature dictating your future. The limitations we ascribe to illness, aging, and death are largely mind-made, and the worst of these limitations is our belief that we must be limited.

In reality there is no “must” about it. The reason science talks about biology as destiny and evolutionists talk about humans as higher apes rests upon a deeply rooted mistake, that we are physical creations glommed together from bits and pieces of matter. This is the same as saying that a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci or Picasso is just daubs of oil paint. The entire point of a great painting is the consciousness that goes into it, fashioning beauty and meaning first and foremost.

Likewise, human beings are conscious agents whose existence, first and foremost, is rooted in beauty and meaning also, to which can be added everything else we most value: love, compassion discovery, curiosity, creativity, and evolution. These are aspects of consciousness, and the bodymind is our vehicle for exploring them. The future will be viable only if we have the confidence to see ourselves as expressions of higher consciousness.

I inaugurated Sages & Scientists Symposium so that the best thinkers would feel comfortable in each other’s company. Instead of compartmentalization, which is the norm in the academic world, there is a free and open field in which anything, from artificial intelligence to Vedanta, from virtual reality to epigenetics, is given time and space to be expressed. The concept has borne fruit beyond anything I originally envisioned. Now it can be truly said that well-being has a future and not simply a repeat of the past. The only way to know if human potential is unlimited is to test it through unlimited imagination, discovery, and deep understanding. The sooner every individual grasps this, the more we can live in hope and optimism.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and founder of Chopra Global and co-founder of Jiyo, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest book is Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify www.deepakchopra.com 

Are Human Beings the Ultimate Creator?

By Deepak Chopra, MD

It’s rare to find someone with an optimistic view of humanity’s future. The prevailing mood globally is dark, and yet David Deutsch, a far-seeing British physicist, argues that humans are responsible for everything new—we are the ultimate creators in the cosmos.

I was excited to view his April 2019 TED talk headlined “After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up” By monotony Deutsch means the mechanistic processes that have been in place ever since stars and galaxies began to form, and by waking up, he means us. We are a unique source of creative novelty in the universe, so far as we know.

To support this very original idea, Deutsch points out that humans have told themselves a story for centuries that is mistaken. We have seen ourselves caught in the middle of struggle between cosmic good and evil, which was expressed in religious terms for a long time but has been updated by science into the struggle between order (the good side of the war) and chaos (the destructive side of the war, and therefore bad).

What we fail to realize, he says, is that human beings are not subject to the laws of nature; we use them in creative ways and therefore have broken the monotonous chain of pre-determined cosmic forces. This became possible thanks to DNA. When life first appeared, it began to change planet Earth.

In itself this was unparalleled in the universe, where tiny things are as a rule dominated by bigger things. When a comet hits the sun, for example, the comet is destroyed while the sun, being much bigger, is unaffected. Earth has been hugely affected by DNA, however. Photosynthesis from one-celled plants provided the necessary oxygen in the atmosphere to sustain higher life forms. The planet has chalk deposits, oil, gas, and coal thanks to dead life forms.

This amounts to the first time that the monotonous universe found a new direction, hence his use of waking up. The epitome of waking up arrived with Homo sapiens. Since that is the theme of my new book, Metahuman, I was particularly fascinated by this part of the argument. If we stop seeing ourselves as passively trapped between good and evil, evolution and entropy, the light and dark sides of our own nature, we can redefine what it means to be human.

What it means—here I totally agree with Deutsch—is unbounded creative potential. In Deutsch’s view we are the only life form that has the ability to acquire new knowledge that can be communicated in language, and from this unique ability we can turn any knowledge into technology. Our whole reality is already mind-created, and there is no reason to believe that the creative process is about to end.

In my book I also speak of human reality as mind-made, but I see that a choice is involved. Besides creative knowledge, we walk around prey to illusions created by the mind. The war between cosmic good and evil serves as only one example. Everyone is trapped in beliefs, prejudices, second-hand opinions, and unproven assumptions. These, in fact, are the source of war, crime, violence, racism, famine, anxiety, and pessimism. There is nothing in the setup of reality to confirm the necessity of any of these limitations.

Everyone knows before going into a war that the outcome will be pointless destruction and suffering, yet we find ourselves unable to turn this realization into lasting peace. Our self-made constructs push us in directions we know are bad for us. The point of Metahuman is that only by going beyond, arriving at a new level of self-awareness, can human beings evolve. I feel that this adds a new element to Deutsch’s model for the future. Where he places his faith on knowledge as the ultimate creative agency. I think the picture must be widened. Knowledge depends on the ability to know, an ability that is traceable to consciousness.

This doesn’t sound like a big distinction, but it is. Deutsch offers a radical rethinking of what it means to be human, yet his basic worldview is physical. He ascribes novelty and creative force to DNA, not to consciousness. But if he is right that evolution has led to humans as the ultimate knowers, where did this knowing arise? Either it was present in the creation to begin with, or you are forced to find the time and place where atoms and molecules bunching together learned how to think. Such a time and place has never remotely been discovered—and it never will be.

Knowing, as a trait of consciousness, must pre-exist. There is nothing to know without a knower, yet humans cannot be unique knowers. It took knowledge to create us. We didn’t create the trait of knowing; it came with life itself, and indeed with the whole project of the created universe. It takes a whole book to explain how existence and consciousness are one. But in his TED talk Deutsch describes just how far knowledge has gotten us, pointing out that our creative unfoldment is hardly about to end. Accepting that is half the battle.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and founder of Chopra Global and co-founder of Jiyo, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest book is Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify www.deepakchopra.com 

Giving “Wholeness” a Higher Meaning

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Thanks to its positive connotations, “wholeness” has become a buzz word in areas of life as
diverse as holistic medicine, whole-foods nutrition, and the human potential movement, which
aims to create a whole person rather than a separate, fragmented one. What these various
applications have in common is that wholeness is a choice—and there the problem lies.

If you are talking about whole foods versus processed foods, wholeness is certainly a choice,
and the same can be said for holistic as opposed to mainstream medicine with its reliance on
drugs and surgery. But speaking about a whole person is somehow different. If you consider the
issue a bit deeper, becoming a whole person is involved in the most fundamental questions
about what it means to be human.

The nature of human consciousness is such that we can take any viewpoint we want towards
our own existence. This goes beyond being an optimist or pessimist, beyond positive thinking.
Or even psychology. At the most basic level, each of us decides how to relate to reality itself. In
the modern era society teaches us to relate to reality through scientific, rational, logical means.
Nature, including human nature, is thus quantified, measured, mined for data, and arranged
through rational explanations.

From such a perspective, the human mind must be the product of the brain, following the basic
logic that brain activity can be measured and quantified. This fact seems so obvious that
neuroscience claims to be the prime, perhaps the only, way to explain the mind. Yet this claim
runs afoul of the entire subjective world, which obviously exists—everyone is aware of
sensations, visual images, sounds, thoughts, flashes of memory, etc., which occur “in here.”
This entire realm of human existence cannot be turned into data or quantified. (For some
background, you might want to consult the most recent post, “Why Math Is Leading Us Deeper
into Illusion.”)

Even though modern society officially relates to reality through scientific, rational means,
people actually keep a foot in two worlds, attending to the worlds “out there” and “in here”
separately. In consciousness studies this is known as the subject-object split, but it is far more
than theoretical. Every experience renews the subject-object split, because in every experience
there is something “out there” that registers as a perception “in here.” Fireworks are shot off
on the Fourth of July, hot dogs are served at the ballpark, the sun sets and the moon rises—in
each case, the objective worlds presents a phenomenon, and the mind perceives it, usually
followed by a personal reaction—oohing and aahing at the fireworks, enjoying the hot dog,
feeling a romantic glow in the moonlight, and so on.

On the surface you might suppose that relating to reality through the subject-object split is the
only way to relate. If so, then aiming to be a whole person would be futile. Wholeness by
definition lies beyond any kind of split or fragmentation. In physics, for example, more than a
century has been spent attempting to fuse two irreconcilable domains, the quantum world of
microscopic phenomena and the so-called classical world of macroscopic phenomena. This split
pertains to everyday life because there should be a seamless connection between quanta, the
basic building blocks of nature, and all the things we see around us—rocks, trees, mountains,
and clouds.

So far the split has proved insoluble, however, and physics remains with a rift down the middle
that no one has been able to fuse or bridge. The same is true in the human mind. The world
“out there” operates through things like cause-and-effect that should seamlessly connect to our
subjective responses. Sometimes there is no serious rift. If you poke someone with a pin, they
will go “ouch” almost without exception.

Yet these predictable responses are few compared with the unique ways in which seven billion
people are building a life story based on their own beliefs, memories, desires, fears, and
predilections. You cannot robotize a human being, no matter how hard authoritarian regimes
have tried. There is always the unknown, unpredictable possibility of a new and unexpected

thought. That’s the source of our greatest human gift, creativity. But it is also the source of our
suffering. The unpredictable mind is intimately tied to the uncontrollable mind, which afflicts us
with guilt, shame, doubt, hostility, anxiety, and depression.

For centuries it has been declared, usually in a religious or spiritual context, that the cause of
suffering is the separate self. Isolated and alone, building our individual stories, we have no
connection to wholeness. We are like coral reefs amassed from tiny grains of experience, and
that’s that unless we can exchange the subject-object split—the very thing that placed us in
separation—for a new relationship with reality.

Let’s say that you accept the terms of this argument, or if you don’t, let’s say you have other
reasons for believing that wholeness is worth attaining. How would you get there? What would
it feel like? Might you not be better off with your present life, warts and all, than pursuing some
chimera? The answer to all of these questions is the same: they are the wrong questions. They
presuppose that wholeness is a choice when in reality it isn’t.

Wholeness is everything. It is the One, the All, or Brahman, as it was known in Vedic India.
Being whole, it cannot be accepted or rejected. It cannot be lost, either. To choose wholeness is
like saying “I chose not to exist yesterday, but I have decided to exist today.” Another
implication, which will surprise almost everyone, is that you cannot related to wholeness. There
can only be a relation between two separate things, and wholeness has no separations, no
divisions, no “this and that,” no “yes or no.”

As a result, wholeness offers the possibility for choiceless awareness. In choiceless awareness
you experience yourself as whole, which is to say, as pure existence and pure consciousness.
You still accomplish the things you ordinarily do in the world, but your experience is seamless
and unified. I realize that choiceless awareness sounds arcane if not impossible. We are so used
to relating to reality through the subject-object split that everything is a matter of A or B.
Countless choices fill our lives.

But these choices have not made us happier, wiser, or more certain about who we are and
what our place is in the universe. Indeed, no ultimate questions have been solved, which is the
legacy of separation. We peer into reality like children with their noses pressed to the window
of a candy store. This isn’t the place to detail what the journey to wholeness actually is (for
that, please see my book, The Book of Secrets), but the road to wholeness begins by knowing
what’s at stake: a complete shift in how we relate to reality. From there, the possibility of
higher existence opens up.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify
 www.deepakchopra.com 

 

Higher Consciousness in Less than a Minute

By Deepak Chopra, MD

There are very old, rich traditions of higher consciousness around the world, and diverse as they are, they seem to have one thing in common: Arriving at higher consciousness takes time, perhaps a lifetime. Along with this idea comes other, closely related ones. Higher consciousness is exceptional. It requires intense inner work. Only a select few ever reach the goal.

The overall effect of these ideas is to discourage the average person from even considering that higher consciousness is within reach. For all practical purposes, society sets those apart who have become enlightened, saintly, or spiritually advanced. In an age of faith such figures were revered; today they are more likely to be viewed as beyond normal life, to be admired, shrugged off, or forgotten.

Much of this is a holdover from the merger of religion, spirituality, and consciousness. For centuries there was no separating the three. Most traditional societies developed a priestly class to guard the sanctity—and privileged status—of reaching near to God. But these trappings are now outdated and even work against the truth, which is that higher consciousness is as natural and effortless as consciousness itself. If you are aware, you can become more aware. There is nothing to higher consciousness than this logical conclusion.

No matter who you are or what level of consciousness you think you are in, two things always apply. The first is that you use your awareness every day in all kinds of ways. You think, feel, wish, perceive, etc. The second thing is that you have constricted your awareness, through a process that the English writer Aldous Huxley called the reducing valve. Instead of finding yourself in a state of expanded awareness, you edit, censor, ignore, and deny many aspects of reality. The reducing valve squeezes “whole mind,” another term favored by Huxley, to a small flow of permissible thoughts, perceptions, and feelings.

The reducing valve takes years to form, and much of what happens consists of social conditioning, which shapes us almost unconsciously. There is the huge influence of negative experiences that give rise to fear, the memory of pain, and the desire to be less open and more closed off for the sake of defending yourself. But positive experiences also can constrict your awareness, because likes and dislikes operate together. “Yes to this” and “No to that” is like a pendulum whose swing we ride for a lifetime. So powerful are our reasons for reducing reality that we grow to fear, dislike, and deny the possibility of whole mind.

Yet by definition whole mind cannot be destroyed, only distorted. A simple example is contained in the word “Hello.” Whenever someone says hello, they open a channel of experience that has little to do with the dictionary definition of the word.

If you aren’t using the reducing valve, this is what “hello” can communicate:

  • Tone of voice
  • Mood
  • State of two people’s relationship
  • Memories of past encounters
  • Foretelling of what might happen next\
  • Signals of acceptance or rejection
  • Alerts to possible threat or, possible welcome.

Can so much be contained in a single word? Absolutely. The study of linguistics packs all these layered experiences inside everyday language. The next time someone says hello, open yourself to the wider experience you are having. Is the other person feeling friendly or indifferent? Are you reminded of old thoughts of this person? Does your mood suddenly change? What’s the vibe being created between you?

If a traffic cop stops you and walks up to your car, his hello and yours in reply have the same dictionary definition as when someone you are deeply infatuated with says hello. But the two encounters carry vastly different meanings, which our antennae always pick up. They pick up everything unless we use the reducing valve. But 99% of the time we do use it. We don’t want the traffic cop to see that we are angry, scared, annoyed, or guilty. Or we don’t want the lover we are infatuated with to see anything but what we think will seem desirable.

In a word, we feel safer and more in control by editing reality, and yet even if such feelings are attained, we pay a high cost. The reducing valve makes every situation a reflection or repetition of an older experience. It enforces routine. It puts other people, and ourselves, into a box. Very little is actually new and fresh, even though as viewed by whole mind, every moment is unique and unpredictable, open to infinite possibilities. Great painters have looked at the same trees, grass, clouds, and flowers that you pass by without notice and turned them into beautiful visions. Nothing is so mundane that is cannot be a source of wonder, creativity, love, and the deep satisfaction of being alive, here and now.

“Nothing is so mundane that is cannot be a source of wonder, creativity, love, and the deep satisfaction of being alive, here and now.”

That last sentence is the key—it opens the door to higher consciousness not just in a minute but instantly. You are naturally nothing less than whole mind; the reducing valve minimizes your potential by an unmeasurable extent. How do you measure the next opportunity to feel wonder after the opportunity has vanished? What value is lost when “hello” is a ritualized word with hardly any meaning once all the possible meanings have been squeezed out of it?

The motivation for expanding your awareness lies in those questions. You can do it here and now, without effort. Just realize clearly that higher consciousness is the most natural, effortless, and fulfilling way to live. From there, infinity follows.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify
 www.deepakchopra.com 

Everyday Immortality

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Questions of life and death, including the existence of life after death, seem to resist any firm conclusion. Most people tell pollsters that they believe in God, the soul, and the afterlife, but for all practical purposes we live in a secular society. The reassurances of organized religion no longer persuade millions of modern people, while on the other hand, there is a sharp rise in skepticism, doubt, and atheism.

Living as if we are mortal is the choice most people now make—for practical purposes, they live as if nothing existed before birth and nothing is likely to exist after death. Yet there is another choice rarely discussed, which one might call practical immortality. It rests upon a simple but life-changing decision anyone can make, the decision to identify with consciousness.

Right now everyone’s allegiance is split. We identify with our bodies some of the time and with our minds the rest of the time. If you run a marathon, go to the doctor for a checkup, feel attracted to someone else physically, or drag through the day for lack of sleep, you are identifying with your body. When you feel sad, have a bright idea, or argue about politics, you identify with your mind.

These may seem like obvious things, but it is due to split allegiances that death poses so much fear. If you think that life ends when the physical body ends, the prospect is rarely pleasant, and no matter how much spiritual literature you read, a mental conviction that physical death isn’t the end won’t resolve your fear. Everyone seems to agree that nothing can be known about the existence of the afterlife until we get there—or not.

By the same token, going beyond our divided allegiance offers a solution that dispels all doubt and fear, through the simple step of seeing consciousness as the foundation of life. In such a framework, here are the basic points:

  • We live in a universe where consciousness has always existed. This point is easy to accept because science has never found, and never will find, the process by which atoms and molecules learned to think.
  • The brain allows consciousness to function throughout the bodymind system (including thoughts and feelings along with monitoring and regulating every bodily process), but the brain doesn’t create consciousness. This follows from the fact stated above that atoms and molecules don’t think.
  • Mind is intimately linked to matter, but can neither be created nor destroyed. Since physics already holds that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, there is no reason not to say the same about consciousness.
  • Consciousness is constantly changing according to whether a process if physical or mental. This too is in line with the standard rule in physics that matter and energy are ever-changing.
  • The modes that consciousness takes give color, dimensions, shape, the five senses, and any other way of knowing the world. We experience our lives through the qualities, or qualia, of the five senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell deliver the primary qualia, but all mental activity depends on experience, which only occurs in consciousness.
  • In itself, consciousness doesn’t need any specific quality. Water is innately wet, fire is innately hot, but at its source, consciousness is the wellspring of qualia; therefore, there are infinite possibilities for combining and recombining the ingredients of experience.
  • In different states of consciousness, qualia come and go. Smelling a rose when you are awake is different from smelling a rose when you are dreaming. In deep, dreamless sleep qualia subside, and there is only pure undisturbed consciousness.
  • At no point can you show that consciousness ceases to exist. Non-existence is a human concept, not a natural fact. For non-existence to be a fact, consciousness would have to be and not be at the same time. Since we know that consciousness is here with us all the time, the “not be” option makes no sense.
  • If consciousness has no non-existence, neither do we. During sleep all kinds of qualia, including memories, feelings, thoughts, and plans, get rearranged. When you wake up in the morning, this rearrangement allows you to be renewed for the new day. You don’t automatically follow a pre-set program.
  • Likewise, death is a re-arrangement of qualia. The eternal transformation of consciousness, which we live with on a practical basis every day, simply enters a new phase.

It’s not necessary to dwell on the details of every point on the list. The gist of practical immortality is actually quite simple. If consciousness exists—and we know it does—living with it as a permanent feature of life is the most logical way to live. We don’t fear going to sleep at night, because the continuity of consciousness has been part and parcel of every life without exception. It would defy everything we know—and experience—about consciousness for it simply to cease because the physical body comes to an end. Everything about creation and destruction has been regulated by consciousness, and it will never cease doing this in a timeless way.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify
 www.deepakchopra.com