Chopra on Lenses of Perception

By itself, nothing “out there”
Has any definition without a perceiver.
When scientists claim to have deciphered
The mechanics of vision,
All they have done is found a map,
Which must not be mistaken for reality.

Everyone has seen photographs
Of what the world looks like
Through the multiple eye of a bee, spider, or fly.
Each of these insects sees through more than one lens,
And the photographs therefore present a cluster
Of eight or ten of twenty images, generally of a flower,
And we are to suppose that the insect brain
Sees the flower that way.

These composites, however, do not really capture
The actual experience of insect eyesight,
They only indicate what a human being might see
If he looked through several camera lenses
At the same time.

If all perception is personal,
Where do the “real”
Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures begin?
We trust our eyes to see “real” photons
And our ears to hear “real” vibrations in the air,
But it is easy to show that
This trust rests upon a very shaky foundation.

Why don’t we all see voices,
Instead of restricting ourselves
To the same worn rut of hearing?
Many deaf people do “hear” the wind in the trees
When they see the branches swaying.
Some junction point in their minds
Converts a visual signal into an auditory one.
Many blind people can likewise “see” faces
By feeling them with their hands.

A mental junction point has taken the signals of touch
And converted them to sight.
Presumably our brains could do the same thing,
But we prefer to let habit and memory take over.
We see through our eyes and feel through our fingers
Because we have been conditioned to do so.

Chih-men's koan

What thing is not attained when painstakingly sought?

What thing comes of itself without being sought?

What thing does not break under the blow of an iron hammer

What thing closes by night and opens by day?

- Chih-men

Prajnaparamita

Subhuti asked: "Is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? 

Is it unimaginable and totally unique but nevertheless
Reaching the unreachable
And attaining the unattainable?"

The Buddha replied: "Yes, Subhuti, it is exactly so.

And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking?

It is because all its points of reference
Cannot be thought about but can be apprehended.

One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person

Into pure presence.

Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence

Of all things in the world.

And another is luminous knowledge

None of these points can sustain ordinary thought

Because they are not objects or subjects.

They can't be imagined or touched
Or approached in any way

By any ordinary mode of consciousness,

Therefore they are beyond thinking."

- Prajnaparamita

Chopra on the New Body Paradigm

Here are some vast assumptions,
The makings of a new reality,
Yet all are grounded in the discoveries of quantum physics
And made almost a hundred years ago.
The seeds of this new paradigm were planted by
Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg,
And the other pioneers of quantum physics,
Who realized that the accepted way
Of viewing the physical world was false.

1. The physical world, including our bodies,
Is a response of the observer.
We create our bodies as we create
The experience of our world.
2. In their essential state, our bodies are composed of
Energy and information, not solid matter.
3. The mind and body are inseparably one.
The unity that is “me” separates
Into two streams of experience.
I experience the subjective stream
As thoughts, feelings, and desires.
I experience the objective stream as my body.
At a deeper level, however, the two streams meet
At a single creative source.
It is from this source that we are meant to live.
4. The biochemistry of the body is a product of awareness.
Beliefs, thoughts and emotions
Create the chemical reactions
That uphold life in every cell.
5. Perception appears to be automatic,
But in fact it is a learned phenomenon.
The world you live in,
Including the experience of your body,
Is completely dictated by how you learned to perceive it.
If you change your perception,
You change the experience of your body and your world.
6. Impulses of intelligence create your body
In new forms every second.
What you are is the sum total of these impulses,
And by changing their patterns, you will change.
7. Although each person seems separate and independent,
All of us are connected to patterns of intelligence
That govern the whole cosmos.
Our bodies are part of a universal body,
Our minds an aspect of a universal mind.
8. Time does not exist as an absolute, but only eternity.
What we call linear time is a reflection
Of how we perceive change.
If we could perceive the changeless,
Time would cease to exist as we know it.
9. Each of us inhabits a reality lying beyond all change.
Deep inside us, unknown to the five senses,
Is an innermost core of being, a field of non-change
That creates personality, ego and body.
This being is our essential state–it is who we really are.
10. We are not victims of aging, sickness, and death.
These are part of the scenery, not the seer,
Who is immune to any form of change.

Chopra on The Defense of Self-image and The Loss of Energy

Over the years you have built an idealized self-image
That you defend as “me.” In this image are packed
All the things you want to see as true about yourself;
Banished from it are all the shameful, guilty,
And fear-provoking aspects
That would threaten your self-confidence.

But the very aspects you try to push away return
As the most insistent, demanding voices in your head.
The act of banishment creates the chaos
Of your internal dialogue,
And thus your ideal erodes
Even while you are doing everything
To look good and feel good about yourself.

To really feel good about yourself,
Renounce your self-image.
Immediately you will find yourself being more open,
Undefended, and relaxed.

Much time is spent in self-help trying to turn
A bad self-image into a good one.
As reasonable as that sounds,
All self-images have the same pitfall:
They keep reminding you of who you were,
Not who you are.
The whole idea of I, me, and mine
Was erected on memories,
And these memories are not really you.
If you release yourself from your self-image,
You will be free to choose as if for the first time.

Self-image keeps reality away,
Particularly at the emotional level.
Many people don’t want to admit
What they are actually feeling.
Their self-image dictates that being angry, for example,
Or showing anxiety is not permissible.
Such feelings don’t accord with
The “kind of person I want to be.”

Certain emotions feel too dangerous to be part of
Your ideal image of yourself,
So you adopt a disguise that excludes those feelings.
Deep-seated rage and fear belong in this category,
But sadly so does immense joy, ecstasy,
Or freewheeling spontaneity.

You stop being ruled by self-image when:
You feel what you feel,
You are no longer offended by things,
You stop appraising how a situation makes you look,
You don’t exclude people you feel superior or inferior to,
You quit worrying about what others think about you,
You no longer obsess over money, status, and possessions,
And you no longer feel the urge to defend your opinions.

The Pearl of Great Price - I Ching

Remain silent, and you sink into a realm of shadows;
Speak, and you fall into a deep pit.
Try, and youre as far away as sky from earth;
Give up, and youll never attain.
Enormous waves go on and on,
Foaming breakers flood the skies.
Who has the bright pearl that calms the oceans?               

Deepak Chopra on The Gap Between Thoughts

Finding the silent gap that flashes
In between our thoughts
Seems relatively easy, but because it flashes by,
A tiny gap is not a doorway.
The quantum body is not separate from us–it is us–
Yet we are not experiencing it right now.
Sitting here, we are thinking, reading, talking,
Breathing, digesting, and so on,
All of which happens above the line.

Here is an analogy that brings the quantum mechanical
Body into focus: take a bar magnet and place a piece
Of paper over it. Next, sprinkle iron filings on the paper
And jostle it slightly.

What will emerge is a pattern of curving lines,
One inside the other,
That arch from the magnet’s north to south pole
And back again.
The overall design you have made represents a map
Of the magnetic line of force
That otherwise would be invisible, except that
The iron particles automatically align themselves
To bring out the image.

In this analogy, we see all mind-body activity
Above the paper and the hidden field of intelligence below.
The iron filings moving around are mind-body activity,
Automatically aligning with the magnetic field,
Which is intelligence.

The field is completely invisible and unknowable
Until it shows its hand
By moving some bits of matter around.
The piece of paper is the quantum mechanical body,
A thin screen that shows exactly
What patterns of intelligence are being manifested
At the moment.

There is more to this simple comparison
Than you might at first suppose.
It is really the hidden field that is generating
These lifelike appearances.
Here you have a picture of how the body-mind
Actually relates to the field of intelligence.
The two remain separated, but the division is invisible
And has no thickness whatever.
It is just a gap.

The only way one knows
That the quantum level even exists
Is that images and patterns keep cropping up everywhere
In the body.