Exploring Body Mind Spirit- Dr Deepak Chopra

Exploring Body Mind Spirit Newsletter cover image Why Reality Isn’t Just a Story Author image Deepak Chopra MD (official) Read this article on LinkedIn to join the conversation Read on LinkedIn By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, FRCP People like to live out storylines, a habit that goes back thousands of years. Everyone has an individual story, one of eight billion as things stand today. But collective stories are more powerful, universal, and long-lasting. If you had been born in any age of recorded history, the dominant story would have been either religious or physical-materialistic. At the present time, the physical/materialistic story is so dominant, thanks to modern science and technology, that a crucial fact gets lost: All stories are mind-made. We are their source, but when enough people are convinced that a story is absolutely true, we forget this fact. Instead of holding on to our status as creators, we lapse into the subsidiary role of being a character in the story. One major tradition, however, was free of stories, namely the Vedic tradition in India. Although Hinduism was the offspring of the original Vedic teachings, Vedic knowledge itself is not religious teaching. They teach instead about consciousness. No story is attached, because consciousness is timeless. It has no historic events, turning points, breakthroughs, disasters, triumphs, or loss of self-confidence. Consciousness simply is, like existence itself. When this truth is lost, the mind fills in the space with stories. A story is whatever you live by that isn’t fully conscious. Of course, the world’s religions and spiritual traditions contain inspiring thoughts, some of them deeply imbued with pure consciousness. By the same token, physical/materialist eras are filled with impressive discoveries that bring subtle levels of Nature to light. But only consciousness knows consciousness. Every other source of knowledge is subsidiary at best, unreliable at worst.