Deepak Chopra wants to put together a group of people committed to a just and peaceful world but he tells Ann Dempsey that starts with individuals
Deepak Chopra, believes in coincidence. Twenty-five years ago he was working, unhappily, in Boston in endocrinological research.
"I was dismayed to discover that the job was all about one-upmanship, and left without having anything to go to. In those days I would have experienced life as difficult and stressful. Then I kept coming across a copy of The Boston Globe, open at a page advertising a job at a local hospital. I felt it was beckoning me, applied and got it. Now I was working with real people instead of dissecting rats, my boss taught me to meditate which was to have a profound effect on my life and career."
Today, at (59), he is the co-founder of the Chopra Centre for Wellbeing in California, known and respected worldwide for his education and research on body/mind health, and the author of many books on healing, success, positive ageing, peaceful living and more. He will be in Dublin on April 4th to give a talk entitled Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life which will include some of his ideas on the transforming power of coincidence.
He suggests that everyday coincidences are full of positive potential. In this light, people, places, events that offer themselves at specific times can be recognised as containing precious clues about facets of our lives that need attention. "As you become more aware of coincidences and their meanings, you connect more and more with the underlying field of infinite possibilities," he says.
Against this, he believes that many of us live lives of only limited awareness. So we may be most in touch with our physical selves and the world around us, or particularly receptive to informational cues, or our spiritual energy may be our strongest trait.
However, if we can integrate these three worlds of body, mind and spirit, which he describes as physical, quantum and non-local reality, and discover the intimate relationship between them, we can learn to respond more intuitively, creatively and prophetically to life.
No slouch about what can be tackled in an evening, Chopra will be asking if you and I can contribute to world peace and create a better world. How can we transform ourselves? The answer, he says, will probably involve a complete somersault of our current attitudes. "It takes a total shift in perception to realise that you are not in the world, the world is in you."
How can this shift begin? In common with many who work in this realm, his answer seems simple, though not easy. He advocates people begin spending time in meditation, ideally 20 minutes each morning sitting quietly, being rather than doing.
I remark on the early chaos in most houses, with management of breakfast, bus money, lost copybooks, clock watching, fights and rows. "Get up 20 minutes earlier," he says.
Finding time can involve partner support, he agrees, adding that himself and his wife Rita facilitated each other in achieving a quiet time first thing when their two children were small. "It's a matter of what's important to you."
Those unaccustomed to meditation may need to take a leap of faith, to begin the practice without knowing where it will lead them. There are many different ways to meditate. It can be as simple as sitting quietly and letting thoughts come and go without either trying to hold or banish them.
It can include paying attention to your breathing without trying to change it. Some people use music, meditation tapes or CDs, or a word "mantra" which they repeat silently.
"Meditation has only one reason: to get in touch with your soul, and then go beyond that and get in touch with the consciousness that your soul is a ripple of. It might be a good stress management technique, but the one real purpose is the means to enlightenment," says Chopra.
There's the story of the child who completed a jigsaw of the countries of the world in record time because it was double-sided with a pictures of parts of a body on the other side.
"Once I put the man together I put the world together," explained the child.
Deepak Chopra would approve. "If we want to change the world, we have to begin by changing ourselves," he says. His latest non profit-making venture is the Alliance of the New Humanity, an international grouping of people committed to creating a just, peaceful and sustainable world reflecting the unity of humanity - beginning with their own personal and social transformation.
Finally, I wondered how much happier Deepak Chopra is himself in the years since he abandoned the Boston lab for a larger stage? "I am not constantly happy, I don't think one can be when there is so much suffering in the world," he says. "But I do feel fulfilled, and there is a difference."
An evening with Deepak Chopra, 4th April 2006, National Concert Hall, 7.30-10pm, tickets €50-€75, book online www.nch.ie or telephone 01-4170000. For more information log on to wwwjsaonline.ie