Deepak, Sanjiv and Brotherhood
Deepak Chopra is well known as a pioneer in mind body medicine and has authored over twenty New York Times bestsellers. His brother, Sanjiv Chopra, is a professor of medicine and a Dean at Harvard Medical school. He’s previously authored five books. Deepak and Sanjiv recently collaborated on their joint memoir, “Brotherhood: Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream” and they both stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about the new book. Excerpts of the interview appear below.
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Ron Bennington: Welcome guys. It’s good to see you. Is this the first time you guys wrote together?
Deepak Chopra: It is the first time, yes.
Ron Bennington: Was that difficult? Or easy?
Sanjiv Chopra: It was actually very easy. We never saw each other’s chapters until the book was entirely done. So, Deepak wrote 12 chapters, I wrote 12, his tend to be longer. And it seemed to dovetail very nicely.
Ron Bennington: Now you guys…do the memories line up together?
Sanjiv Chopra: Not the actual specific details. Sometimes we’re recounting a story, both of us have it in a different chapter and the actual details are different, but the gist of the story is perfectly intact. But that’s our recollection.
Ron Bennington: But I love the fact that no one in the family ever remembers anything the exact same way.
Deepak Chopra: Actually, they say no one ever remembers anything the way anybody else remembers. That’s why they have problems in courts with eyewitnesses. Nobody can actually give the same details.
Ron Bennington: But the weird thing is that we are this collection of our memories.
Deepak Chopra: That’s all we are.
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Deepak and Sanjiv Talk About Their Experiences as Immigrants
Ron Bennington: When you guys came over together, was your experience in America similar or did you find that it was somewhat different?
Deepak Chopra: We came within 2 years of each other. It was pretty similar.
Ron Bennington: Pretty similar?
Both: Pretty similar.
Ron Bennington: And both of you of course, excelled at your field, but when we talk about immigration, I think one of the things that happens is when people come over without the education. Those are the people I think that have it the roughest, so how do we handle some of that?
Deepak Chopra: They have it the roughest, Ron, but do realize it’s like anything. It’s a give and take. America takes in immigrants because it needs them. Whether it’s for labor, whether it’s for Silicon Valley or technology, whether it’s for academia – America takes immigrants because it needs them. And the immigrants come because they’re looking to create a better life. So, it’s a two way street. And if today, all the immigrants from Mexico were sent back in Southern California – you would have a paralysis. You would have no economy.
Ron Bennington: Sure. You would say the same thing about New York City by the way. I don’t care if it’s a Chinese, Italian restaurant – walk into the kitchen and there are Mexicans and South Americans. Also, the people who deliver food.
Deepak Chopra: And they work hard.
Ron Bennington: Very very hard.
Deepak Chopra: I remember once when I was in Boston. A medical student going through the Joslin Clinic and he was Chinese. And his mother was a waitress in a Chinese restaurant and she worked night and day, so she could send him to school. And this kid graduated from medical school and went on to become an intern at Harvard Medical School. So, immigrants work hard. They have to prove themselves. They don’t take anything for granted. They don’t have a sense of entitlement which comes from complacency. So, I think this is the strength of America.
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Sanjiv Talks About Embracing Meditation
Ron Bennington: For both you guys, you both have paid attention and worked in the same kind of fields, not always together, but always the mind, body connection. You feel just as strongly about that, Sanjiv?
Sanjiv Chopra: I was a skeptic. Deepak first learned meditation and he had learned transcendental meditation about 30 years ago. And his wife learned. And he came to our home and he said – I’ve been doing it for several weeks. It’s changed my life. You should look into it. And my wife was very spiritual, also a physician – a pediatrician, went the next week. And I was a skeptic. Good for you Deepak. I’m glad it’s working for you. I don’t need it. And then, I saw dramatic changes in him and my wife – and just so much more peaceful, creative, so happy. So I learned meditation, about a month after my wife learned it. Now I have a saying that I share with students and colleagues, I say – You should meditate once a day. And if you don’t have time to do that – you should meditate twice a day. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: Twice a day. But the initial thing that kept you away from it was your scientific mind.
Sanjiv Chopra: My scientific mind and my concept of people doing meditation was people in saffron robes, walking with begging bowls and some of them were charlatans and I didn’t want anything to have to do with it.
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Deepak and Sanjiv Talk About Success and Happiness
Ron Bennington: But some of what happens in meditation, is believing that the material world is not as important and we shouldn’t be chasing the dollar. And yet, you both have become well off. You both attracted money to yourselves, so how does that work out for you?
Deepak Chopra: That’s a Judeo-Christian guilt ethic. I say – well, should I be making money through pornography or weapons? I mean we’re just so permissible in this country. The number in Hollywood which sells cheap stuff to the world. I would like to think that if by spirituality, we mean self-awareness, that’s basically what it is. It’s not some kind of holier-than-thou morality which H.G. Wells once said – “Morality is just jealousy with a halo”. (laughs) But if we can teach people to take care of themselves, to be self-aware, to have access to their intuition, their creativity, their imagination, their well-being – what’s wrong with being successful about it? America is one country where you should never apologize for success.
Ron Bennington: So, success can be there and all you’re really looking for is more peace to yourself and the more peaceful you treat other people.
Deepak Chopra: There’s a hierarchy. People want success, but if they have enough of it, they say – I want love and I want to belong. If they have enough of it, they say – I want true self-esteem. If they have enough of it, they want creative expression. So, we’re never satisfied. As Abraham Maslow said – there’s a hierarchy and you move from one to the other. And that’s what life is all about.
Ron Bennington: And that chase is part of it.
Sanjiv Chopra: I think the eternal quest for every human being is to seek happiness. And Albert Schweitzer who was a physician, a theologian, a musician, Nobel laureate – 1952, he got the Nobel Peace Prize, a very humble man. And when he got it, he said – now, I have to go earn it. And he once said – success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. And I think by being anchored by meditating, by always reflecting on your core values with new friends, with your family – one can become happy very quickly and achieve success.
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Deepak Talks About Unanswered Questions in Science and Consciousness
Ron Bennington: I wanted to bring up another thing that I find so interesting and it’s in the book, “Brotherhood” – where you’re saying that the brain does not create the mind, or the mind is not of the brain – that it happens separately. And it’s always interesting to me because I meet so many talented musicians here. The greatest songwriters of all time, who aren’t specifically sure how to write those songs or where the songs end. And they all use so many different examples to just almost say the song showed up one day. Some of the greatest songs.
Deepak Chopra: This is one of the open questions in science. The number one open question in science is – what is the stuff of the universe? What is it really made up of? Only 5% of the universe is atomic in matter, which means this – (bangs on console). And even the atomic part of it is actually..when you get down to sub-atomic particles it’s made out of nothing. So, if you ask a good scientist what’s the universe made up of? What’s the stuff? They will say – don’t know. The second is – what’s the origin of consciousness? And most scientists in the last 300 years, would have said – your thoughts are produced by a brain. Intention, imagination, creativity, insight is all a dance of molecules. You say – how? The answer is – we don’t know, if it is. So now, many people are questioning that consciousness is a product of the brain like anybody would say bile is a product of gallbladder. But is consciousness a product of the brain? Second open question. You can go look it up in “Science 2008”. Don’t know. Don’t know. We know that it correlates. So, if I ask you to imagine a red sunset right now, there will be an electric impulse in your brain, but you’re not experiencing an electrical impulse – you’re experiencing a sunset. This is a question that remains unanswered. There’s lots of physics, lots of mathematics these days, lots of what is called quantum biology that is suggesting that the mind sculpts the brain. And that is called neuroplasticity – that’s where your musicians have a different brain. People who download songs, they have different neural networks. People who walk tightrope in circuses have different circuits. So yes, I just wrote a book with a Harvard neuroscientist. The thesis of the book is – you are not your brain. And next time when we come here, we will talk about why you’re not your genes either. (laughs)
Sanjiv Chopra: I mean the fascinating field of neuroplasticity, mirror neurons and there’s also neurobiology of leadership – and to me, one of the most fascinating syndromes in medicine is when somebody has had an amputation and they are still experiencing pain in that limb that is missing. Phantom Limb Syndrome. Now, you can take a patient like this and have them sit in a studio like this and they can see another individual sitting and he or she is massaging their right leg. And this person, who is missing the right leg and is suffering from Phantom Limb Syndrome, gets relief. Isn’t that amazing?
Ron Bennington: Yeah.
Sanjiv Chopra: Because the same neurons that are firing in that other individual, are now firing in him. And he thinks that limb that is missing, is being massaged. And he’s getting relief.
Deepak Chopra: See Ron, basically this is one experiment that shows that your mind transcends a single brain. Okay, that it transcends a single brain, that the mind is an embodied relational process. Now, because we have social networks, I can send somebody an abusive tweet in South Africa and their blood pressure will go up or their adrenaline will go up. (laughs) So where is this thing that we call the mind? If it can travel through social networks, through these walls. And more and more people are suggesting that the mind is both embodied and relational and maybe, non-local, which means outside of space and time.
Ron Bennington: So, what you’re saying is that sometimes I can send those vibes, even back and forth. I’m angry and maybe somebody else will pick up on it.
Deepak Chopra: There’s an experiment that we did. I don’t think I even told Sanjiv about this. We took people who meditate together and they go into deep meditation. We introduce the intention that they will stay connected. We separate them, put them in Faraday chambers. Faraday chamber means your cell phone won’t work because there’s no electrical magnetic radiation, that can go in and out. We do something called an “evoked potential”. We take a flashlight and shine it in one person’s eyes – both brains light up at the same time. Now, this study has been published. We are still looking for application, so I have to be very careful what I say. But there are more and more studies being done in this field that suggest – yes, your thoughts influence people that are not near you. This is the basis in wisdom traditions that a lot of people meditate together. They produce high levels of Dopamine and Serotonin. You go and you examine the urine of people who are in the city, their 5-hydroxy tryptophane level goes up, even though they have no idea this was doing this. This is a completely new paradigm. And when I post this kind of stuff in blogs, et cetera, half of the people said – what are you smoking? Okay, but we have to look at it.
Sanjiv Chopra: But it’s not only true of meditation, it’s also true for prayer. So prayer, there’s something called “intercessory prayer”. There can be people sitting in a church in Boston, praying for infertile couples in South Korea. And randomized – and the half they pray for, there’s pregnancy and greater fertility and completion of pregnancy compared to the ones that you don’t pray for.
Deepak Chopra: In cases of anovulation, yeah.
Sanjiv Chopra: In cases of anovulation. Now, you can’t really do a lot of clinical studies because let’s say somebody’s in cardiogenic shock from a massive heart attack. And you say – okay, we’ll pray for half of them and not the other half. The other half are being prayed upon by their family, by the nurses, so everyone’s being prayed upon. The best studies are actually in animals. And you can take animals and produce cardiogenesis or inflict wounds and look at growth of the cancer or wound healing. And the animals that are prayed upon do far, far, far better.
Ron Bennington: See, I think when some people think “prayed upon”, that they think there’s going to be an outside god entity that comes in.
Deepak Chopra: It’s intention. That’s all it is. Intention is energy and information.
Ron Bennington: Yeah. And I don’t know about it in the positive, but I will say that in the negative – I’ve gone into parties or bars where I think we’ve got to get out of here. I could feel the negativity.
Deepak Chopra: The negative energy. Well, mobs…
Ron Bennington: Yeah, at sporting events.
Deepak Chopra: When a mob reaches a certain level, a threshold of restlessness, then the mob goes crazy.
Ron Bennington: Fascinating stuff. And the fact that we’re all still far away from this, but even that gives you joy that this is something to chase.
Deepak Chopra: It’s something to chase. It’s an adventure. When we stop wondering because of these self-appointed vigilantes with a suppression of curiosity, then we lose our soul.
Ron Bennington: Yeah. So, you want to be open to all kinds of curiosity, not matter what it is.
Sanjiv Chopra: There’s a wonderful saying. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it’s open.
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Ron Bennington: Thank you so much for being here guys. Very interesting stuff. I’ll see you next time coming through.
Deepak Chopra: Thanks very much.
Sanjiv Chopra: Thanks very much Ron.
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