Self Realization is the Highest Healing - Deepak Chopra Best Speech

0:03 it's very important to understand that your body is a process it's not a thing there's in fact I told you yesterday that there is no such thing as a thing there are no nouns in the universe only verbs okay your thought is an activity emotions are an activity by activity means they come and then they disappear okay thoughts are an activity your emotions are an activity and perception is an activity you know you're what you're perceiving right now you won't be perceiving in the next minute okay not exactly the same thing and then of course when you walk out of here it'll be something different so thought

0:50 is an activity emotions are an activity perceptions are an activity and our body is a perceptual experience you don't have the same body today that you had when you were a baby or a teenager or that even had a year ago ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in your body and that were there a year ago aren't there today okay so people identify with their body but it's an experience just like a thought is an experience and even the universe is an experience and it's not the same today as it was 13.8 billion years ago actually dig out the

1:38 George Harrison song okay that summarized everything in the end okay so your body is a process and you cannot identify with an experience because no experience lasts even a microsecond when I came on the stage that's gone right a minute ago is gone a second ago is gone by the time you hear my sentence the beginning of my sentence is gone so this is what Ritchie's call the mistake of the intellect that the intellect makes a mistake it confuses reality with

2:28 the experience and reality realities eternal timeless but the experience in reality actually can't catch it you can't cut the past you can't catch the future and you can't even catch the present as soon as the president occurs as an experience it's over so the German philosopher Wittgenstein he said a life is a dream we are asleep but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming so what do we wake up to we wake up to reality now what is reality it's the consciousness that is doing that is dreaming it's projecting

3:15 the dream now last night you all had dreams most of you don't even remember them right they're gone so so true this is a dream and you know you how many people remember there what happened when they were between eight and nine or between five and six or how many people remember when they learn to speak the English language or any language but you did so just because you don't remember doesn't mean that it didn't happen okay now there are people who remember other lifetimes but if you ask them what they I don't choose there for lunch they won't be able to tell you and why is that because we only remember things

4:01 that we pay attention to or give significance to especially emotional significance so la you may not remember what happened three weeks ago on at 5:00 p.m. unless you were maybe with your sweetheart and he or she said will you marry me this is a diamond ring and open bottle of champagne then you remember right so memory is very fickle okay it's not who we are now in the understanding of Vedanta the memory the seeds of memory are called karma karma is the seed of memory which is called sanskara and the

4:47 seed of memory Sankara creates of asanas which are subtle desires which take our soul through a cosmic journey until enlightenment so we're going to cover that and even though time is a construct we'll try and finish it in one arms okay so your body is a process it's a process you cannot identify with your body or your mind because they're both processes or with the perceptual experience of the world at a more fundamental level it is energy and information your gene expression is influenced by your thoughts emotions relationships social interactions environment which is the whole science of epigenetics which is

5:36 over taking genetics you can change the neural networks of your brain to optimize physical emotional and spiritual well-being it's the new science of neuroplasticity only 5% of disease related gene mutations are fully penetrant you can change your relationship to time because what do we mean by that time is how we measure experience so we say I had a good time time flew I was in love time didn't exist I was at the dentist time dragged I have so many deadlines to meet I'm running out of time that's the most

6:23 dangerous internal dialog okay because when you keep saying I'm running out of time it shows the quality of your awareness and so you know your biological clock speeds up your heart rate speeds up your blood pressure goes high your platelets get sticky your body gets inflamed if you have a heart attack and you die then you have run out of time so experiences in time but the experience which is you as consciousness is not in time let me go back you as the conscious being is not a time so when you remember your past and

7:10 you remember your childhood you remember your adolescence who's that that remembers you say I remember I is timeless I is what we call the one the awareness that is having the experience so I is that which knows the experience remembers the experience all experience occurs in I and then all experience disappears in I only I remains with threads of memory and wisps of desire or karma and this is karma which is

7:58 recycling as this and all this everything you're experiencing is karma so when people hear about this they said then we have no free will that's not true the past created the situation circumstances events of this what is that thing now okay but what you do right now is up to you so is there free will or is the universe determined and it's simultaneously both if you're asleep then there's no fever and if you're awake then there's infinite fever it's all up to how aware we are but expanding our awareness allows us to

8:45 actually reinvent the experience that we call the body what does change your relationship to time means it means to be present that's all so as listening to me right now just be aware of that which is listening as you listening to me be aware that which is listening and that which is listening is a presence that is not in time it's the same presence that was when you were a baby same presence when you were a teenager now

9:30 tomorrow everything experience will keep transforming but the presence in which the experience is happening is always the same so the ultimate goal of what is called enlightenment is called self realization not even self awareness self realization which means you realize who you are okay you are not the experience you're that in which experience arises and subsides in every now we can't even say moment of now because the moment is over as soon as it arises in every now now is the ticket to timeless being

10:17 which means eternity in that sense I is immortal okay not I stretching for endless time but I which is not in time altogether okay so I is immortal now it so happens that's the communist word we use right I is the communist word we use I went to the movies I was in love or I'm in love or I like Chinese food that I don't like Trump you know eyes the calmness expression in any language and

11:06 this is astonishing because even though we have an intimate experience of high most people don't know who or what I is that's why they say who are mi is the most important question of existence because I his existence itself now if I asked you right now where are you let's say I was here and where are you Renee where you Renee so he says I'm here which means I somewhere here and not I somewhere there for you hi somewhere here and the other is

11:54 somewhere there that's a common experience now that's a programmed hallucination okay because if we go inside your brain or your body there's not nobody there okay people keep saying you know I had an out-of-body experience and how was that the real mystery is how do we get an in body experience without being in it hi is not in your body your body is in hi your body is an experience in AI and what's the experience sensations images feelings thoughts perceptions what are these these are modified forms of AI

12:41 what's the thought okay just let's try an experiment think of your home where you live right now you see a picture well there's no picture in your brain your brain has something called neural correlates of consciousness but there's no picture of your home in your brain so what are you experiencing all I had to say is think of your home and beyond an experience so think of tasting an apple have an experience all you had is a thought right so what happened is or think of your favorite song any song you hear it there's no

13:31 sound in your brain look at this statue where are you having that experience in I I is having that experience but where is it happening it's not happening here because you're there okay this experience is happening in I so all experience is a modification of I I modifies itself into a thought it modifies itself into an emotion it modifies itself into a perception even the sound it modifies itself into the

14:20 experience which we call mind-body universe is this clear yes now so in the ultimate there's only I there's only I modifying itself into the experience that we call mind-body and universe I is modifying itself into the experience which we call me and other but me then refers to that which we call body mind and other refers to the other body mind or to this or this so and of course you and I may have slightly different

15:06 experiences because karma karma is the conditioned mind through which the movie is being projected so your present life is a movie and there are many characters in it is that what you call me and that which you call everybody else okay which are all part of the movie just like last night if you had a dream you were there in the dream and there were other people in the dream right and there was a location I had a dream that I was with Clint Eastwood we were playing golf and Pebble Beach and you know we won the trophy and this morning I said oh it was all happening in I and it's gone but

15:53 this is also happening in I and will be gone that's why this is a more convincing hallucination okay and we call it everyday reality now of course for some people the hallucination is causes a lot of suffering okay child abuse war pestilence starvation violence and for some people the dream is a nightmare and for other people it's heaven and the key is self-realization and now you can't tell that to somebody who's poor and struggling for for food because at

16:41 that moment they can't even be ready for that kind of understanding but you're here for a particular reason karma brought you here so you're ready to kind of embrace this right you can't take somebody to this place of awareness till they have evolved to a certain extent fulfilling more fundamental needs like survival of the body mind safety for a lot of people money and achievement and goals for a lot of people still struggling with relationships and love

17:27 and then once those needs are met then slowly The Awakening creative expression and then the awakening intuition and then the awakening our consciousness and ultimately the awakening that we call God or spirit or self it's all the same thing self realization because the self of the individual is the self of the universe by the self of the individual we don't mean body mind okay body mind is just a transient experience there's no actually in the deeper reality there's no body there's no mind and there's no universe

18:14 there's only you and that you is slightly different from this you and we call that the soul soul being the part of cosmic consciousness that is a journey through cosmic time ultimately for self-realization so in that sense self-realization is the highest intelligence okay now along the way of course there are many things that interfere with that and those are things that are part of our conditioned mind they create situations circumstances events that we have to

19:00 kind of navigate through till we say okay been there done that now let's go for it let's go for the final you know final part of the journey so what I'd like to do is just put that total well-being slide on will come to this song right at the end okay so this is a slide based on some data put together at Gallup also you know Gallup they do polls and they're usually very good last time they were on now I happened to be on the board of

19:47 gallop and not for the polls but for looking at data on well-being and this is how Gallup kind of breaks it down we we made the mind map here so they break down well-being and in the following segments hopefully to cover every aspect of well-being not yet spiritual well-being because you know it's difficult to measure although we are now doing it at the center with help of Paul Mills and UCSD and statisticians we're beginning to measure well-being spiritual well-being as well so these

20:33 are the five so-called buckets of well-being first is career well-being and basically do you love what you do every day is your job is your career and your calling in alignment okay so job is what you're doing today in these days career is what you do over your lifetime and calling is a commitment to which is bigger than yourself which is ultimately a spiritual quest okay if your job your career calling are in alignment then you're all set and here are some data which we can go into which we don't need to though but you

21:21 know this is Gallup data which is very useful for corporate training etc if your boss if your manager if your supervisor ignores you your rate of disengagement goes up by 45 percent and you fall sick if your supervisor your boss your manager criticizes you you get better twenty percent twenty five percent twenty two percent why because human beings would rather be criticized and ignored when you're ignored then you don't exist when you're criticized at least you exist but if your boss or your supervisor notices a single strength

22:09 that you have your rate of disengagement is less than 1% and you feel happy and you're healthy but that that acknowledgement of your strength is authentic it's not made up okay so this is very important because we now we know that only 20% of people and the American workforce are engaged the rest are disengaged which means they come to work but they have to because they need a job and then of that significant number are actively disengaged which means not only are they unhappy but they come to us to make other people unhappy so what would be

22:57 the ideal career it would be your job your career your higher calling and alignment and working with other people who are also complimenting your strengths because they have different strengths that you don't have yeah you can put that on you would work with people who complement your strengths and then you would also be spiritually and emotionally bonded with them it's like a good sports team you know in sports team they all have the same vision they complement each other strengths and they're connected emotionally if not spiritually they're connected that would be the ideal work environment I think we

23:43 can say that the Chopra Center if you experience the energy here everybody's complimenting their strengths okay what Roger does or Sheila does or Amanda does or Renee does I can't do and what I do they can do but maybe they're better at something else okay so but we are all bonded right so that creates a good good experience for of you okay if you have a happy friend then your happiness goes up by 15% if the happy friend has a happy friend it will go back to the big total slide so the next part is social well-being by the way just so you know in all the

24:30 studies that have been done on people who live long or live even beyond hundred and actually don't get sick guess what's the number one factor or all the things social networks we shouldn't call them social networks with social connections you know bonding networks imply so you know I have to go to network now yes the people who love you and those that you love that's the number one thing friends and family or colleagues that care about you okay that you can trust and they can trust you

25:17 that's the number one predictor of longevity and well-being so given that if you have a happy friend your happiness will go up by fifteen percent if the happy friend has a happy friend goes up another ten percent if the happy friends happy friend has a happy friend it keeps going up to the point where the happiness of people that you don't know is very important for your happiness now if you believe this data by the way then the best way to get rid of enemies and terrorists is to make them your friends or at least if not that increase their capacity for well-being and happiness that's the only way to get rid of a

26:05 violent ideology you can kill a person you can kill a terrorist but you can't kill their mind again mind transcends the biology so lots of data on this if you hang out with thin people you lose weight if you hang out with people who are extremely heavy you'll start to gain weight why because we mirror each other right we mirror each other's thoughts emotions and also neurons and biology so that's very interesting physical well-being we've covered a lot in the last two days community well-being these

26:50 are three sanskrit words Seva satsang Simran so save our means service to dedicate yourself to a cause bigger than yourself even though it's also benefits you okay saver satsang means a gathering of people who are on the same journey like this and Simran means spiritual practice so those would be ideal communities in the world right where people are dedicated to serving a higher vision a higher cause where they have some kind of spiritual practice together that's called Simran the word actually means remembering remembering who you

27:37 are satsang means hanging out together being together but then that translates into is the community safe do you feel safe walking at night it's all measurable by the way in fact I can tell you this now but we had gathered data for the last 15 years on how we could when I say we means at the Gallup Organization we had gathered data how you could predict the quality of leadership you could predict a revolution you could predict a financial

28:23 crisis you could predict violence you could predict a wrestler yes just by looking at these different aspects of well-being we meaning again gallopin us met with the State Department in the George W Bush era you met with them in the Obama era and also in the Clinton years nobody actually listened but when the when the Middle East crisis started to take place you know when when Libya and Egypt and

29:13 [Music] Tunisia had their problems and we had already predicted that then they we got some attention so I was at that time teaching a course in I still teach it this is going to be my last year 15 years I've been doing it at Kellogg Business School and I was informed by the Dean of the miracles of the business school and by the State Department that one of the students in my class was going to be Gaddafi's son because we had predicted that Libya was going to fall and so and their wisdom the government said maybe we can prevent that you know

29:59 maybe we can rebrand Libya that's how governments think so I was told he was going to be in my class the Dean knew that he was brought to the class with two other companions one from the CIA one from the State Department they had other positions professor at Georgetown University etc etc he introduced himself my first name is their second name is this didn't use his last name I'm an investor and I live in North Africa and we asked everybody what are your hobbies and his was hunting adventure and horses Royall kind of family very articulate at

30:46 a british accent or the best clothes in the class and three weeks later he was dead you know because it was moving so fast the restlessness based on these statistics you know I was invited to go to Libya and but I got a message that I should wait and I had to wait three weeks to see it was a disaster I mean I'm telling you the story now because I can tell it okay okay so community well-being is very important okay finally financial well-being and what does the data show about that the data

31:33 so shows that financial well-being is very important but it's not the most important thing okay now if you ask people what's the most important thing in your life right now they'll say it's money because people are struggling in the world and so their perception is it's money but when they get the money they notice that initially where they're very happy six months they're back to the baseline one year for sure so if somebody wins the lottery and they've been twenty million dollars they'll be ecstatic in the beginning and then in six months it'll start to plateau in one year back why because it doesn't actually change who you are I know who you are is how you look at life and how

32:22 you treat other people and if you have love and relationships and you know people that care about you those are the most important things okay so financial the amount of money that you have influences your happiness by about ten to twelve percent okay the remaining comes from how you experience everything else in your life of course it's important to feel secure to have insurance to have retirement all these things are very important when you when we talk to businesses you know get the data on what is corporate well-being these are the things that we mostly talk about okay so Renee can you show the

33:11 happiness formula in the last few years social scientists have worked very hard to create what they call the happiness formula and so this is the happiness formula h is equal to s plus c plus V s is the set point for happiness which determines about 50 percent of your daily happiness experience and what is the setpoint is your attitude to life do you see life as an opportunity as a life as a opportunity to grow to love to experience relationship and love or do you see life as a problem how's the

34:01 setpoint determined it's determined in the first three years of life by parents siblings and caretakers and what's the mechanism the mechanism mirror neurons your neurons mirror the neurons of your parents or your caretakers and your siblings so if your parents were constantly complaining condemning criticizing playing the victim that's what you grow up to be if your parents were always happy and I was very lucky with that as I told you about my parents yesterday a little bit then you know you grow up with these amazing attitude that life is a place for service for satsang for Simran etc can the setpoint be

34:48 changed yes it can be changed that's why we're here set point change is very significantly through practices that have in one way or another to do with meditation spiritual practice they change our setpoint that's 50 percent of daily happiness experience see is conditions of living we are talking about financial conditions I already told you 10 to 12 percent of our daily happy experience main thing to remember about money it should not be a source of stress or anxiety so if you're extremely poor then it is a source of stress and anxiety extremely rich it depends you

35:37 know it depends on what you do with the money it also depends on how you earn the money okay so you feel good about the way you earn the money and you spend the money but there are people who are extremely rich who are also extremely unhappy because money is their identity and that's all they think about so in that sense the extremely poor and the extremely rich share one thing in common they think about money all the time so if you're thinking about money all the time then you're poor period doesn't matter how much money you have because it's become your identity okay that leads us to the third part of the formula which is a big chunk of

36:23 happiness 40% or more and that's all the choices that you make every day so if your choices about personal pleasures then those choices will lead to happiness but to be trans transient in the United States the number one choice for personal pleasure is shopping the number two choice for personal pleasure is entertainment food alcohol the third choice is sex Americans don't have time for sex or even enjoyment of sex because they're too busy shopping do these choices make you happy they do but the the the happiness lasts a few

37:11 days or maybe a few months if you buy a new automobile you buy a new device iPhone you'd be happy for a while but after a while it's something that you don't even think about okay doesn't add to your happiness and that's true for anything that you buy by the way a house a yacht a private plane after six months it's not a source of joy anymore so happy people tend to spend more money on experience and less money on product experiences like going on a vacation

37:56 with your family or even going out and for entertainment with other people okay that you share a bond with then you have something to look forward to that makes you happy you enjoy the experience that makes you happy you have good memories that makes you happy so experience is more important than I think and then of course if you spend money on other people that is also a source of happiness but the fastest way to happiness is not to spend money on other people but to give them attention affection appreciation and acceptance so attention means you're a good listener appreciation you notice

38:42 good qualities and others and acknowledge them authentically affection means you care your love and acceptance means you don't try to change another person it's hard enough for you to change when you're trying to change yourself to expect another person to change because you want them to change is delusion okay so that's the happiness formula and now in the remaining time that I have let's talk about what's really important which is self-realization or or enlightenment as the ultimate expression of healing the word eeling the word whole the word wholeness are the same word so healing holy wholeness

39:28 health are the same word healing is the return of the memory or holiness is the return of the memory of who we really are okay you have these slides on neuroscience okay so I'm gonna put this frame this today in a way that is kind of scientific it's kind of what I've done all my life I have make a living by saying these things but just know that you don't need science to be enlightened okay that would be very difficult then only and it so happens that scientists

40:14 are the least enlightened so but nevertheless I'm gonna show you what we can call the neuroscience of well-being can you put that here too okay okay so this is called rewiring the brain for higher consciousness and we'll talk what that means higher consciousness now remember that your brain is not who you are your brain is an instrument that you use to experience this this means all this and this as well but the brain itself is also an experience how do you know that you have a brain well people have seen brains on dissection tables and cat scans and so on but even the neural correlates of higher

41:02 consciousness or neural correlates they're not who you are in any case now it's possible to map the brain with every experience that you have mental perceptual cognitive emotional it doesn't matter because we can look inside the brain and right now we have a big project coming up in the next couple of months where we're going to look at and Sheila and ball mills and I and many others we're actually getting the protocol and we'll be mapping the brain in higher consciousness and particularly with the techniques that you are learning and so if you want to look at all the research

41:49 that's current go to Chopra foundation.org and that's our research if you want to look at research throughout the world go to I sh a are online org ish our fish our stands for Integrative studies historical archive and repository it's an initiative of the Chopra foundation but so he chard not only keeps track of all the research we do but all the research being done all over the world so please visit it and you can also go to Chopra foundation you can go to ish our and then we have an app that I should tell you about it's called Jo ji y hole and you can download

42:36 it anytime please do because you have a faculty of people who are teaching every day whether it's meditation yoga or nutrition or love or anything that's important you'll find it in Jogja okay do download the app 95% of the content is all free okay it has many it's a whole library of meditation as well so once again that's Jo he char Chopra Foundation those are three sources okay so your prefrontal cortex is this part of the brain right in front right behind your forehead and we now

43:25 know that you can actually grow connections and not only grow connections in the frontal cortex but equal call even grow neurons this is pretty wild nobody thought you could grow neurons but now we know so that's called neurogenesis and then synapse Genesis 100 billion neurons with tens of thousands of connections which are originally created by genes but are now sculpted by your mental and perceptual experiences and now we know that meditation and mindful awareness actually promote this and also reflection and we'll go into these techniques in a moment

44:10 I mentioned the three brains the other day so we won't go into this okay but we have three brains the reptilian brain we call the instinctive brain the limbic brain which is emotional brain and then the cortical brain which is the intellectual brain they're all important ok the brilliant brain protects you in times of danger the emotional brain helps you to connect with people when it's dysfunctional then you have anger hostility fear guilt shame depression and it causes inflammation and then the intellectual brain lets you embark on a journey of self-reflection and

44:56 creativity ok so they're all important but the emotional brain is found in all mammals and all mammals have groups we call them as humans families and social engagement and all mammals nurse their young they play and they don't lay eggs they make babies and they COO and they cuddle and they have fun and these are all the different parts of the brain I don't think we need to go into this today this could be a one week course and main thing is that these

45:44 three brains have different ages so the reptilian brain is 300 million years old in evolution the emotional brain is a hundred million years old and the cortical brain is only four million years old so while we all pretend to be creatures of rationality we are not ruled by rationality we are ruled by emotions and instinct again they're more useful as anyway okay because the intellect makes the mistake of think it's so smart that it can solve all the problems and many times the intellect is the problem so here are all the techniques that will can help you

46:34 conscious choice making I don't think I need to explain this so whenever you're confronted with the choice you should ask yourself is this going to make me happy is going to make other people happy if the answer to both is yes and do it if the answer to both is or one is no don't know it and you don't need to think too much about it right also there's a difference between instant gratification and long-term fulfilment so it's going to have a double cheeseburger going to me make me happy actually maybe my now I'm doing it because I'm so used to it but in an hour how am I going to feel okay so every

47:20 choice should be a conscious choice to the extent that you can consciousness of the experience we call the body body awareness being grounded in the body and connecting to our larger body which is the earth monitoring and regulation of emotions now this is a whole topic in itself so I'm not going to talk about it today but I think you have enough knowledge to know that love compassion joy peace the most important things okay and that's what you focus on now of course a lot of people have emotional distress because of emotional trauma past experiences and there are ways to get

48:06 rid of that emotional trauma and that involves first bringing awareness localizing the emotions because all repressed emotions are in this one of the seven chakras which are junction points of consciousness and biology and also I think we have many programs here but also I have lots of material online if you want to look up the seven steps to emotional release you know responsibility awareness labeling expressing sharing releasing

48:52 celebration to the point where you never need to feel emotional distress at any time now ever since I did a program on Oprah the stop formula became very popular so stop signs for exactly that sto P when you're in distress or you're being reactive stop has T take three deep breaths and smile o observe what's happening in your body and keep your awareness on the discomfort till it goes away just by putting awareness and P proceed with awareness and compassion make it a habit and then you that's called response flexibility the more

49:37 flexible you are in in your responses the more you will decouple automatic behavior the more flexible you are in your responses the less you'll be a biological robot biological robot means you're triggered into situations and circumstances and events by the same patterns of behavior so you become a bundle of conditioned reflexes and that's constantly being triggered into the same responses and that you have no freedom okay so the more you observe this is Krishnamurti is highest teaching he said the highest intelligence is the ability to observe yourself without

50:23 judging yourself just observe yourself of course observing yourself as different components your body your mind your emotions your perceptual experiences and the world empathy an interception interception perception means I'm aware of the outside world interception means I'm aware of the inside world not only of the body but what that which we call mental space you can modulate your emotions but once you have to become aware of them that's an interesting word gaba googa ba stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid and GU is when you're experiencing healthy emotions there's a lot of this gamma goo

51:10 in your neurons that prevents inflammation emotional modulation insight and then linking there's a part of your brain in that's called the insula intial means island that connects your heart lungs intestines and you know the in yoga there is something called Protea Hara the seven eight limbs of yoga so you remember them yama niyama pratyahara dhyana samadhi pranayama yoga snah I didn't say them in order so Raja will correct me afterwards but that's okay so

51:56 one of them is protea this is knowledge that you can learn to regulate your heart rate your the the behavior of the internal organs and yesterday we covered a little bit of that when I spoke about the vagus nerve okay so all that is possible these are the three brains I'm not going to go into evolution right now but other than all emotions even negative emotions have have biological reasons okay so this was first pointed out by no other than Charles Darwin himself he said fear readies the animal for flight anger readies the animal for combat jealousy alerts the mammal to the loss

52:43 of reproductive chances disgust is the noisiest revulsion and the invisible likelihood of contamination from rotting foods in smart guy huh contemporary pride guilt shame humiliation are only found in social mammals like primates chimpanzees and of course humans and then humans now are embarking on a new journey love compassion empathy and higher consciousness so when we experience these when we have experiences what are called flow spiritual exaltation scientific

53:29 discovery just the delight of exploration then you know we move into higher consciousness and then that results starts with intuition creativity vision and ultimately connection with that which we call sacred okay skip all the science for now although it's very interesting well through emotions we regulate our entire biology on an everyday basis or emotions our moods are neural networks heart rate immune function sleep-wake cycles blood

54:18 pressure dreams digestive processes are all regulated by emotions okay we experience the external environment through sound touch sight taste and smell and also we experience what we call the inner environment and part of our brain limbic brain is doing a lot of that the internal environment we can learn to experience through yoga pratyahara pranayam and through all these aspects body awareness breath awareness heart awareness visceral awareness sensations images feelings thoughts and the highest intelligences

55:06 what can be called meta cognition meta cognition so what is meta cognition it is the awareness of self including the awareness of conscious choices but also the awareness of experience when you're having the experience what is called silent witnessing awareness so yeah that's metacognition observing ourselves having a sensory experience intentional perceptual experience and self of observation activates the prefrontal cortex now that was shown by Dan Siegel who's a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA and very good

55:54 friend of ours we do a lot of work together okay so enlightenment happens as we take the journey of non reactivity we cultivate divine attitudes such as gratitude loving-kindness compassion equanimity when we have non-judgmental awareness of the external and internal our environment when we go deeper into yoga through understanding what's happening inside our body through the kriyas the Bundys Yoga Nidra when we transcend through primordial sound meditation when we experience metacognition and this leads to the

56:41 progressive awakening of self ultimately till it leads to self realization and this progressive awakening is through waking up from the waking stage which is the lucid dream we are having right now and then waking up to the dream set and then waking up to even to the slow sleep State those are the three states that everybody experiences every day but they think that's life okay waking dreaming sleeping is most people's life but not yours anymore okay the next step is soul consciousness and then cosmic consciousness then divine consciousness

57:27 and then unity consciousness which is also called Brahman consciousness so all these have sanskrit words the waking state is Jerrod Chetna Chetna means consciousness the deep sleep is sushupti and then for each of these states there are words okay but they're very well defined in the Vedic literature and what I thought is my afternoon you know have one hour for Q&A maybe I should devote a little bit to this this last part states of consciousness because in order to keep everything going we have to respect

58:14 everyone's time so even though I said never say run out of time this experience is over okay see you in the afternoon [Applause] [Music] you