An Interview with Deepak Chopra

[Guest guest]

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The Metaphysician:

An Interview with Deepak Chopra

 

 

Amazon.com: What was your religious upbringing in India?

 

Deepak Chopra: I was brought up with a smattering of

Hinduism and Buddhism and a lot of Catholicism because I

went to a Catholic school that was run by Irish Christians.

 

Amazon.com: Irish Catholics, really? What led you into

Ayurveda medicine and the Eastern influences in your

spiritual teachings?

 

Chopra: I had been studying comparative religions ever since

I was a teenager. In fact, I went to medical school for

spiritual reasons, trying to figure out the nature of human

existence by looking at human bodies. I carried the

questions that we all have. Do we have a soul? What happens

after we die? Does God exist? Is there meaning or purpose?

Is it random?

 

After medical school I started getting involved in Ayurveda

and exploring Vedanta (a philosophical system central to

Hinduism). Suddenly all the things I'd heard from my mother

and grandmother and from various other people who used to

come to our house--swamis and gurus--came back to me. It

basically became clear to me that I did understand Vedanta

and that I could put it in a contemporary framework.

 

Amazon.com: In "How to Know God," you speak of the seven

stages, or the seven ways, that humans interpret God. Can

you explain these stages?

 

Chopra: The seven stages are found in every spiritual

tradition. Let's just take biblical examples for the moment,

since they're the most familiar. Stage one is an image of a

punishing God who behaves like Jehovah when he's upset. He

destroys Sodom and Gomorrah; he banishes Adam and Eve from

the Garden of Eden; he sends the plague; he kills every

newborn child in Egypt because they are anti-Semitic. This

God is the fight or flight stage, and that is because the

people who projected this kind of God were themselves in the

fight/flight response.

 

Amazon.com: And isn't this also the stage when people think

of God as a mighty protector?

 

Chopra: They look at God to be a protector, but they're also

afraid of God. Much like a child looking at his parent who

he doesn't understand. The parent punishes them when they're

doing things wrong, and sometimes they feel unjustly

punished.

 

The second stage, called the reactive stage, is a God who is

the maker of rules. He's the cosmic policeman. And we find

him in the Ten Commandments. We find him in the Book of

Leviticus. We find him in the laws of Manu in the East. We

find him in all religions. He's the reactive response.

 

Stage three is a God of peace. Of course we have him in

Butar and Lao Tzu, but we also have him in

Judeo-Christianity with Jesus Christ--and in many of the

psalms, such as "Be still and know that I am God." Stage

three is the restful awareness response.

 

Amazon.com: And stage four is the intuitive response, which

seems to be a popular interpretation of God within the New

Age movement.

 

Chopra: Yes, but you also find it in the Gospel of John:

seek and you shall find; ask and you shall know; knock and

it shall be opened to you. Stage four is discovering not

only that you have the still presence of the soul inside

you, but that you can ask it a question and the answer

exists. Because your soul, which is a confluence of meanings

and relationships, has an intuitive intelligence that is

relational; that is nourishing; that is wise; that does not

have a win/lose orientation; that has a computing ability

that's far beyond anything that exists in the realm of

rational thought. Once we begin to understand that, we begin

to understand ourselves. Then we project God as the

redeemer, because He or She understands us.

 

Then we have stage five, the creative response. The Book of

Genesis is the most beautiful expression of the creative

response. God said, Let there be light. There was

light. The Gospel of John: First there was the word and the

word was made into flesh. Not only do you have art,

invention, and discovery, but you also have whole creativity

with the divine mind in that you create and orchestrate the

incidents of your life.

 

Stage six is the visionary response. The whole New Testament

is the visionary response. It's the God of miracles, 35

miracles, and everything Jesus Christ describes and talks

about is the visionary response. When I begin to accept how

accessible miracles and visions are, my identity of myself

shifts from being a skin-encapsulated ego into an

inter-being, and ultimately into an archetypal being.

 

The seventh response is the sacred response. That's when I

just slip over the event horizon and I'm one with the

source. And by the way, in Judeo-Christianity, God says to

Moses, I am that I am. Jesus says, Before Abraham was, I

am. So you know, you have all the seven responses right

there.

 

Amazon.com: Do you feel like you dwell mostly in that last

stage?

 

Chopra: I have glimpses of it. [laughs]

 

Amazon.com: Where, then, do you tend to dwell?

 

Chopra: I certainly see myself in the fourth stage where I

can remain centered in the midst of chaos and confusion and

I feel the presence of my soul and spirit all the time. I'm

aware of the sacred presence in others and myself. And

sometimes I get totally drawn into the fray--and that's all

right. You have to be natural.

 

Amazon.com: You speak of these as stages. Do you see this as

a journey to God that begins with stage one and ends with

stage seven?

 

Chopra: Yes, it is a journey. Although, depending on

different situations, we react from different levels.

Somebody suddenly robs me in the middle of the night, I

might go into the fight/flight response. Each stage

transcends the previous stage but also includes it. You

transcend it, but you still use it except selectively.

 

Amazon.com: So how would you apply this information to

everyday life?

 

Chopra: This might come as a shock to people, but I now have

an interactive Web site: Howtoknowgod.com. Say you're a

mother and you open the dresser drawer of your 14-year-old

daughter and find a diaphragm there. And you don't know how

to handle the situation.

 

Amazon.com: Oh, you are in stage four, the intuitive

response. I happen to have a daughter that age!

 

Chopra: Okay, so now you can go to howtoknowgod.com; what it

does is help to quiet your mind. It will help you elicit the

intuitive, creative, restful, and visionary responses. And

then it helps you decide what is the most appropriate

response in the situation at this moment. Because it may not

be the visionary response. It may be the reactive response,

it may be the intuitive response. Any response could be

appropriate depending on the circumstance or the situation

in that moment.

 

Amazon.com: So there's no surefire prescription?

 

Chopra: You've got to find the God solution that pertains to

the situation, circumstances, and karmic relationships of

your life, whether it be relationship problems or parenting

anxieties. We're going to explore this on the Web site so

that people begin to make practical use of the understanding

of these responses.

 

Amazon.com: Yet it seems like our spiritual task is to

always rise above situations, calling upon our higher

selves, or in this case a higher stage, to find the best

responses.

 

Chopra: Yes, Einstein once said that you can never solve a

problem at the level at which it was created. You have to go

to at least one level beyond.

 

Featured in this e-mail:

 

"How to Know God: The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of

Mysteries" by Deepak Chopra

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609600788/ref=ad_b_sp_2

 

To find out more about Deepak Chopra's groundbreaking new

book, visit his Web site at

http://www.howtoknowgod.com

 

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