LIHU‘E — “It’s just been wonderful coming here and I think this is the right place for the new awakening,” said Deepak Chopra, world-renowned leader in the field of mind-body medicine, when asked if he had a special message for
LIHU‘E — “It’s just been wonderful coming here and I think this is the right place for the new awakening,” said Deepak Chopra, world-renowned leader in the field of mind-body medicine, when asked if he had a special message for the people of Kaua‘i after his presentation earlier this week at the 2009 Wellness Expo.
A message with few words, yet profound meaning, said by a man with a compassionate spirit and gentle voice; it is difficult not to believe him.
Chopra, who has an extensive background in internal medicine and endocrinology, mixes science with the soul and has the ability to touch people of all races, religions and cultures with just his words, which is exactly what he did Monday night.
Robert Romero, who volunteered to work at the Wellness Expo last weekend, did so just to have the opportunity to hear Chopra speak, someone with whom he deeply admires.
Working as a flight attendant a few years ago, Romero said a passenger happened to leave a copy of one of Chopra’s books behind on a flight. It was the book that helped Romero eventually cope with the loss of three of his friends on Flight 93, Sept. 11, 2001.
Michael Patton and Kundrya of the North Shore were also excited to be a part of Monday evening’s event at the War Memorial Convention Hall.
“We came because of the energy here and to hear a world-class speaker,” said Patton.
Chopra spoke to a packed auditorium, beginning his presentation with an explanation of how he came to be frustrated with conventional medicine, which he believes loses focus on the human spirit.
“In fact, we don’t even acknowledge such a thing as the soul,” said Chopra. “I was frustrated in the paradigm in which I was educated.”
He believes medical training produces “superb technicians” who know everything about the body, but who are seemingly “more interested in diagnoses and treatment and not in the person.”
Chopra believes that there is a direct correlation to the thoughts we have and the bodies we sustain, something medical school fails to explain.
“Whenever you experience any emotion, there’s a certain biochemical state that corresponds to those emotions,” he said. “There’s someone inside you that’s having a conversation all the time. It goes on all the time and your immune cells are listening and are participating.”
He also said the first lesson in medical training is anatomy, which leads one to think that the physical body is merely a “structure,” but he says, “nothing is further from the truth.” Chopra even claimed that in less than a year, 98 percent of all atoms in a human body are recreated and replaced.
“The last time I came to Hawai‘i, I brought the same suitcase but not the same body,” he said.
All joking aside, Chopra often re-focused the audience’s attention throughout the evening back to issues that currently plague society.
“We’re the only species that has totally destroyed the ecosystem. We are the only species that tolerates the fact that 50 percent of our world lives on less than $2 a day and 20 percent on less than $1 a day. We’re the only species that has this degree of injustice and we’re supposed to be evolved, civilized human beings, but actually we are the most dangerous predator on this planet,” said Chopra.
Frequently consulting with scientists throughout the world, he said after meeting with evolutionary biologists, they explained to him that if all insects disappeared from the planet, life would cease to exist in five years because of their importance to the ecosystem.
“The same evolutionary biologists also said, if human beings disappeared from this planet, in five years, life would flourish.”
He does believe, however, that humans are at a very critical peak in our evolution and that the time has come to “make the right choices” and that hope still remains.
Chopra passionately believes that the entire universe is held within each and every human being, scientifically speaking no less; all living and breathing the same air and sharing the same atoms.
“Your body is a symphony of the entire universe,” he said. “Next time you look at somebody, just remind yourself that they exist in you. Look at a tree and say ‘that exists in me;’ a flower, a bush. Just say it to yourself and see what happens,” he said. “With me, what started to happen is I would look at a tree and experience it as my lungs. If it didn’t breathe, I wouldn’t breathe and if I didn’t breathe, it wouldn’t breathe. The oceans, the rivers, they’re not the oceans and rivers, they are our circulation. This air is our breath, this earth is our body recycled.”
He said that he is sure ancient cultures, including Hawaiians, realized this concept. Chopra identifies a story in history where President Harding asked to purchase land from Native Americans who did not quite understand what he meant by it.
“They asked, ‘Do you want to buy the butterflies too? Do you want to buy the flight of the eagle? Do you want to buy the scent of the flowers?’” said Chopra. “The land doesn’t belong to us, we belong to the land. So, similarly, the world is in us.”
Towards the end of his presentation, Chopra reminded the audience that the materialistic world America has gravitated toward most recently indulges the human senses, yet will not allow for true fulfillment.
“Happiness is the result of what happens within us and the knowledge of who we really are. Suffering is the result of not knowing the true nature of reality, meaning that there is no separate self; there’s no separate body, no separate breath, no separate energy; only one consciousness in which we are contained.”
He said if “you can begin to see the world as a mirror of yourself, those that we hate, those that we love, all that is happening in the world in every moment of our lives is only a mirror of what’s happening in your internal life.”
Chopra reminded the audience of his hope for humanity.
“There’s so much creativity and so much intelligence on our planet today. Human beings are awakening to a new consciousness. All the problems that we are seeing, from social injustice to war and conflict to poverty to global warming, which are created by human beings, can also be solved by human beings.”
He concluded his presentation by encouraging people to take a vow of non-violence, not only in their actions, but in their thoughts as well.
Visit itakethevow.com for more information.
• Coco Zickos, business writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or czickos@kauaipubco.com
