Power, Freedom, and Grace

by Deepak Chopra

  Stay in tune with your body by being aware of how you dance with the universe. When walking, have awareness that you are walking. When sitting, have awareness that you are sitting. When breathing, have awareness that you are breathing. This is life-centered, present-moment awareness. Practice until you can stay anchored in this awareness and make it a permanent habit. Soon you will realize that in the dance of the universe, you are not walking; walking is happening. You are not sitting; sitting is happening. And you are not breathing; the one Being is breathing through you.

  Pay Attention to the Rhythms and Cycles of Your Body-Mind

  Perhaps you can now understand, even scientifically, that your body is a whole universe within itself. Your body is the dance of the universe. So just saying, My body is the dance of the universe, is one of the most important things you can say to yourself.

  If you understand the quantum mechanical nature of the body-mind, then you realize that the body is nothing other than vibrations in the unified field that result in the molecules that make up the body. The body is ultimately just vibration, and the vibration of the body has to match the vibrations that make up the universe. This matching, or falling into a rhythmic relationship with, is called entrainment.

  Entrainment was first described by a physicist who did an interesting experiment with five clocks. Each clock had a pendulum about the same size, and he started the pendulums swinging at different times. After about four hours or so, the pendulums all started swinging synchronously to the same rhythm. You can do this experiment any number of times, and you’ll find that even though you start the pendulums swinging at different times, after a while they all start swinging to the same rhythm.

  Entrainment is a universal phenomenon, and it begins at the moment of conception. A baby’s rhythms begin to entrain with cosmic rhythms through the physiology of the mother. Throughout the pregnancy, and even after the baby is born, the baby’s heart rate will entrain with the mother’s heart rate, and it keeps entraining as long as there is proximity to the mother. The heart rate may not be the same, but there is a rhythmic relationship between the two.

  If you have a group of women living together, you find that after a while their menstrual cycles will entrain with one another. When you agree or disagree with somebody, you fall in or fall out of entrainment because your thoughts are stimulating the same quantum fields as their thoughts. When I agree with you, then my breathing spontaneously matches your breathing, and so on.

  Your body is part of the body of the universe, and you can entrain your body’s rhythms with the universal rhythms. How do you do this? You do it through your senses. What is sensory experience other than taking in information from the universe “outside” your body and matching it with the information “inside” your body, which is a universe within itself?

  For example, if you introduce a sound that resonates in all the cells of your body, the vibration of the sound will facilitate entrainment. The sounds of the alphabet in all languages are tonal or vibrational sounds that can be used to immediately cause a vibration in all the cells of your body. In English, the sounds are A, E, I, O, U, and you can use any of these vowels to make a sound. Take a deep breath, and then as you exhale, make the sound of a vowel such as “Ahhhh,” or “Ayyyy,” or “Eeeee.” As a result of this vibration, the cells begin to entrain with one another.

  This is one way to restore biological rhythms, and to entrain your body’s rhythms with universal rhythms. You can also do this with music you enjoy. Music influences your heart rate, brain waves, blood pressure, stomach contractions, and levels of hormones associated with stress. When you listen to music you enjoy, the body’s pharmacy secretes endorphins, which are the body’s natural opiates or morphine-like compounds. The body’s pharmacy also generates healing neuropeptides when you listen to music you enjoy.

  Your sense of sight also profoundly influences your body. Research has shown that information you take in through your eyes can influence heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones, and so on. When you are looking at a natural scene such as a forest, or a sunset, or a rainbow, your brain waves show distinct patterns that are quite different from the patterns that appear when you are looking at an urban scene, an industrial plant, or a parking lot.

  The sense of smell is another powerful way to evoke a pleasant sensation in the body. The smell of a rose or any fragrance that you enjoy can evoke a sense of harmony and joy. Certain aromas are known to stimulate the body-mind; others are known to calm and relax the body-mind. There are many books on the subject of aromatherapy, and you can experiment on your own with different aromas.

  Any sensory input — whether you hear something, see something, smell something, taste something, or touch something — changes the body-mind’s chemistry in less than a hundredth of a second. If we know that, then we can choose the appropriate input to influence the chemistry in a favorable direction.

  Theoretically, if you were totally aligned with the cosmos, if you were in total harmony with its rhythms, and if you had zero stress, then there would be very little entropy in your body. Your body wouldn’t age if you were totally synchronized with the cycles of the universe. If it did undergo entropy, it would be on the scale of the universe, which is cosmic cycles or eons of time. But your body-mind is not totally aligned with the rhythms of the universe, and why isn’t it? Stress. You see, as soon as you have a thought, any thought, it interrupts the innate tendency of the biological rhythms to entrain with the universal rhythms.

  But if you pay attention to the rhythms and cycles of your body-mind, and if you become a little familiar with cosmic rhythms, you’ll see that you can synchronize your body’s rhythms with the rhythms of the universe. You don’t have to be an expert, just pay a little attention to this. Notice how you feel at different times of the day and at different times of the month depending on the lunar cycle. Look at the sky, and observe the cycles of the moon. If you look at a newspaper, check the high tide and low tide. Feel your body and see how it relates to each of the seasons. Understanding these rhythms can really help you, but the following information is all you need to remember.

  Between six and ten in the morning and between six and ten in the evening is when your body is hypometabolic, or at its lowest phase of metabolism. Try to spend time in silence around six in the morning and six in the evening. Ideally speaking, it’s best to meditate in the early part of this phase, and to exercise in the middle of this phase — especially if you’re doing it to lose weight.

  Between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon is when metabolic fire is at its highest. This is the time to have your biggest meal, because your body will metabolize the food much better. Between two and six in the afternoon is a good time to be active, to learn new mental skills, or to engage in physical activities. Between two and six in the morning is a good time to dream.

  Around six in the evening, and preferably before sunset, is a good time to have dinner. It’s best to make dinner a lighter meal, and to have at least a two- to three-hour interval between dinner and sleep. Then try to get to bed by ten or ten-thirty at night, and you’ll have ideal sleep and great dreams.

  These are very basic suggestions, but once you start to synchronize your rhythms with the cosmic rhythms, the body feels quite different. It feels vital; it doesn’t get fatigued. You feel more energy subjectively. You begin to experience that state of consciousness where everything in your life is flowing with ease. And when everything is flowing with ease, you are living in the state of grace.

  Vibrant health is not just the absence of disease; it’s a joyfulness that should be inside you all the time. It’s a state of positive well-being, which is not only physical but emotional, psychological, and ultimately even spiritual. Technology won’t make you healthy. What will make you healthy is to be aligned with the forces of the universe, to feel that your body is part of the body of nature, to commune with nature, to commune with your soul, to take those moments of silence and solitude.


  Your body is more than a life-support system; it is the expression of your soul on the journey of its evolution. The body is a sacred temple where you have stopped for a few moments on your cosmic journey. Keep this temple clean and pure. Listen to its cries for pleasure and even ecstasy. You are a privileged child of the universe, and this is your abode for now. The caravan of life will stop in other places, at other times. You are on a journey of healing and transformation, and the opportunity for your next quantum leap of creativity is right now.

  KEY POINTS

  To experience and practice grace:

  Listen to your body’s wisdom.

  Maintain inner-body awareness at all times.

  Pay attention to the rhythms and cycles of your body-mind.

  12

  The Infinite

  “The winds of grace are always blowing;

  it is for us to raise our sails.” —Ramakrishna

  When my granddaughter was four years old, I took her for a walk on the beach. It was a beautiful night, and the stars and the moon were out. I turned to her and said, “Tara, I love you very much.”

  And as soon as I finished the sentence, she said, “How much?”

  I said, “Well, I love you more than the stars and the moon.”

  And as soon as I finished the sentence, Tara said, “Why?”

  I said, “Because you came from there.”

  And she said, “How?”

  I thought to myself, I don’t know if I can explain this to her, but I’ll try. “You know, Tara, when you eat your fruits and vegetables, it’s the light of the sun and the stars and the moon that made the food you eat. And when you eat the food, you’re taking the light of the stars to make your body, because everything comes from the light. You are a being of light; your body is made out of light.” Then I had another thought, and I said to her, “Even your eyes are made out of light. The stars made your eyes so they could see themselves.”

  Tara thought and she thought, and for the first time she was quiet. But as we were leaving the beach, she said, “Grandpa, look up. The stars want to see themselves.”

  And it’s true. The infinite Being, the one song, which is the universe, moves and breathes and looks at itself through your body. The universe is looking at itself as the stars. The universe is looking at itself as the chair you sit upon. The universe is looking at itself as me, and it’s looking at itself as you. We are the eyes and the ears of the universe. The universe looks, tastes, smells, feels, and hears itself in so many ways through each creature — through a honeybee, through a bird, through an antelope, through a butterfly.

  If you could have just that little feeling of how the universe expresses itself through you, then you would be a better channel for that expression. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have, but you must get yourself, or what you think of as you, out of the way. It’s just a shift in attitude, that’s all.

  Just allow the universe, the infinite, to express itself through you without interfering. Allow the infinite to see itself through you, to think itself through you, to experience itself through you. At the deepest level of your being, you are already powerful and free. When universal intelligence is flowing through you without interference, your life flows with effortless ease. This is the experience of grace.

  Through your body-mind, you create and experience the world of objects and events in space-time. Through your intellect, you create and experience the world of ideas. Only through your soul can you create and experience the world of power, freedom, and grace. In the depths of your being is the light of pure Being, pure love, and pure joy. When you live from here, a new world opens. This world is unbounded, infinite, eternal, joyful. And this can be your world, if you want it. In this world, there’s no limit to your power, freedom, and grace.

  Understand the ideas in this book, follow the suggestions, and you will unlock the mysteries of your own existence. Who are you? What do you want? To know the answers to these questions is to know your true self. Once you know your true self, you will know true happiness, the intoxication of love, spirit flowing in its pure essence — unimpeded, unrestricted, full of mystery, magic, and adventure.

  Happiness resides in the realm of spirit. To find happiness is to find your soul. To find your soul is to live from the source of lasting happiness. This is not happiness for this or that reason, which is just another form of misery. This happiness is true bliss, and it follows you wherever you go.

  Appendix

  THE OLD AND NEW PARADIGMS

  The following chart illustrates some of the old and new ways of perceiving ourselves and the world we live in. With the help of science, we are shifting into a new paradigm, not only of the human body-mind, but of our very interpretation of nature itself. This shift in our thinking sees the body-mind as an expression of a larger wholeness.

  THE OLD PARADIGM THE NEW PARADIGM

  The superstition of materialism says that we are separate from our source and from one another. The unified field of pure consciousness says that we are connected to our source and to one another.

  The world is composed of visible, solid matter and invisible, nonmaterial energy. The world is composed of one underlying, unmanifest field of intelligence that manifests as the infinite diversity of the universe.

  Sensory experience — what we can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch — is the crucial test of reality. The field of intelligence experienced subjectively is the mind; the same field experienced objectively is the world of material objects.

  Solid objects, or visible clumps of matter, are separated from one another in space and time. “Solid” objects are not solid at all, nor are they separate from one another in space and time. Objects are focal points, or concentrations of intelligence, within the field of intelligence.

  Mind and matter are separate, independent entities. Mind and matter are essentially the same. Both are the offspring of the field of pure consciousness, which conceives and constructs the whole world.

  The body is a physical machine that has somehow learned how to think. Infinite consciousness somehow creates the mind and then expresses itself as the body. The body-mind is the field of pure consciousness itself.

  Human beings are self-contained entities with well-defined edges to the body. Human beings are inseparably interconnected with the patterns of intelligence in the whole cosmos. At the most fundamental levels of nature, there are no well-defined edges between our personal body and the universe.

  The human body is composed of matter frozen in space and time. The human body-mind is a changing, pulsating pattern of intelligence that constantly re-creates itself.

  Our needs are separate from the needs of other living beings. Our needs are interdependent and inseparable from the needs of other living beings.

  The external world is real because it is physical. Our internal world is unreal because it exists in the imagination. The external world and the internal world are the projections of one Being, the source of all creation. Both are patterns of movement of energy within infinite consciousness.

  The superstition of materialism says that we live in a local universe. The unified field of pure consciousness says that we live in a nonlocal universe.

  Location in space is an absolute phenomenon. Everything in the cosmos is nonlocal, meaning we can’t confine it to here, there, or anywhere.

  Location in space exists independently of an observer. Location in space is a matter of perception. Near or far, up or down, and east or west are only true from the vantage point of the observer.

  The thinking mind is localized in the brain, and the body’s intelligence is localized in the nervous system. The thinking mind is part of a vast field of nonlocal intelligence that extends far beyond the reaches of the cosmos. The body’s intelligence comes from the same nonlocal field.

  The superstition of materialism says that we live in a time-bound universe. The unified field of pure consciousness says that we live in a timeless universe.

 
Time is an absolute phenomenon. Time is a relative phenomenon. Physicists no longer use the word time; they use the term space-time continuum.

  Time is local, measurable, and limited. Time is nonlocal, immeasurable, and eternal. The fact that we can localize time is just a notion, a perceptual artifact based on the quality of our attention.

  Humans are entangled in a vast web of time that includes past, present, and future. There is no past or future, then and now, before or after; there is only the eternal moment. Eternity extends backward and forward from every moment.

  Time exists independently of an observer. Time only exists in the mind of an observer. Time is a concept, an internal dialogue we use to explain our perception or experience of change.

  Things happen one at a time. The world operates through linear cause-effect relationships. Everything happens simultaneously, and everything is correlated and instantly synchronized with everything else.

  How we interpret our experience of time has no effect on our physiology. How we interpret our experience of time brings about physiological changes in our body. Entropy and aging are partly an expression of how we metabolize or interpret time.

  The superstition of materialism says that we live in an objective universe. The unified field of pure consciousness says that we live in a subjective universe.

  The world “out there” is completely independent of an observer. The world “out there” does not exist without an observer; it is a response of the observer. Through the act of observation, we construct the world we live in.