Chopra: Well, I think the mind-body revolution has unfolded in a very sequential manner with the first phase being preventive medicine, the second phase being quantum healing, and now the third phase, the ageless body, timeless mind. And the fourth phase, which has yet to come, will be a new kind of perception of what it means to grow old. I think getting old will soon be considered synonymous with becoming glamorous because we shall see a new era emerging where the elderly will become the springboard for a new kind of renewal and rejuvenation and creativity that civilization has never had. From time to time, people like Michelangelo and George Bernard Shaw and Picasso and Tolstoy and others have made major contributions to civilization in their later decades of life. I think that will become much more common and frequent. And the new book is just a natural outcome of the paradigm shift that is taking place in society that says that consciousness conceives and governs and creates and becomes physical matter, and that if we could understand the nature of consciousness, we would understand the nature of biological information as well. We need to dispel certain beliefs about the aging process that we've had in the past, such as aging is fatal; nobody dies of old age, really, people die of heart attacks and strokes and pneumonia and cancer and other diseases. The fact that aging is irreversible is not a fact. You can reverse all the biological markers of aging. There are 13 biomarkers of aging; each of them can be reversed. The fact that aging has a genetic component is not a fact at all. If your parents live to be over age 80, that adds about three years to your life, but how you think and how you behave and how you perceive yourself can influence your life by about 30 to 50 years. So, there are lots of myths that I've sought to dispel, but otherwise, essentially the book is about the spiritual quest. The aging is taken as an example to see how we can influence aging by finding our true spiritual essence.

R: I'm reminded of Native Americans and other cultures throughout the world that put a great emphasis on and value highly the wisdom of their elders. I think: in this country we tend to get away from that. It's easier to have an institution take care of our aging grandparents, for instance. But what you're saying is that we really need to start tapping into that wisdom?

C: Right, and also recognizing that its possible to have the wisdom of age along with the biology of youth. We are going to see a new culture where wisdom and physiological youth will be simultaneously present.

R: I was intrigued to observe that we as Westerners tend to think of yoga more in terms of a physical routine or exercises, you write more about the meditative aspects of yoga. Would you expand on that a bit?

C: The word yoga and the word yoke have the same root in linguistics and yoke or yoga means union and the union is the inseparability of mind and body and environment as one continuum of consciousness. A yogi seeks to find that essential core of himself or herself where he or she can find that perfect union and integration of body, mind, spirit, and environment. And resolve all conflicts, because the conflicts that one experiences in life, whether they're in relationships or in society or in one's own personal life, are a result of this disintegration of this memory of wholeness. So that's what yoga is.

R: So I think in Western culture we see that it's our tradition to compartmentalize everything; the body is in one compartment, the mind another place, the emotions, the soul, and so forth. As I understand what you're saying, then, yoga seeks to bring all of these things back into one, under one umbrella so to speak.

C: They're all different manifestations of awareness or consciousness.

R: Okay, now, something else we learn of with yoga is the concept of chakras in the body. Are these literal or is this metaphoric?

C: They're simultaneously both. I mean they're what they are and when you say literal, can you look at a chakra under a microscope, the answer is no. But can you understand a chakra in terms of a field of energy and information, the answer is absolutely yes. So in quantum mechanical terms, they're very literal. Is the universe a metaphor or is it literal? The answer is simultaneously both. You can touch it and therefore it's solid, but you know that in reality the solidity is an illusion. That underneath it is a pattern of energy and information. So as patterns of energy and information, they're absolutely literal.

R: So when we see the diagrams of the human form and they start with the chakra at the base of the spine .and essentially work up through the crown chakra in the head, this is more for illustration? In other words, I have this concept that they are physically seated in those specific areas of the body.

C: They are. They are physically seated as patterns of energy and information in those areas of the body, absolutely.

R: Would Western science have anything that correlates to these fields of energy? Is there anything at all like this found in Western understanding?

C: It has not yet graduated to looking at the body as a bundle of energy and information. It still talks in terms of biochemical processes or molecular biology and what you�re talking about here is a more abstract level of information and energy, so Western medicine so far has not looked at this.

R: How is meditation different from hypnosis or self-hypnosis?

C: Hypnosis is a form of conditioning. Just like everyday life is a hypnosis also. It�s the hypnosis of social conditioning. And hypnosis, self-hypnosis, is another form of conditioning. You take yourself out of this conditioning and put yourself in another conditioning. But meditation is to go beyond all conditioning, no matter what it is, whether it is hypnosis of social conditioning of self-hypnosis or any other altered state of consciousness. Meditation is the baseline state of consciousness from where all other states of consciousness emerge.

R: We�ve read in your books where you talk about the experience of meditation as expanded awareness, that it�s not unusual for people to literally feel larger than their physical bodies. Is this accurate?

C: As they identify themselves with other levels of their existence, it is only the artifacts of sensory experience that gives you the impression that you're a skin-encapsulated ego that's enmeshed in a bag of flesh and bones and squeezed into the volume of a body in the span of a lifetime. In reality, your true identity is not being physical. It's not contained within the volume of your body, so your true identity is nonlocal. Nonlocal means it does not occupy space; it doesn't occupy a position in space, and it doesn't occupy moments in time.

R: So then what comes to me next is the concept or the idea of what we are calling astral projection here in the United States. Are these one and the same, then, where we have just a different name for the same phenomenon?

C: No, I think that astral projection and all are really misconceptions of the basic understanding, just like out-of-body experience is a basic misunderstanding of the reality. The reality is that you are having an in-body experience but the experience is in fact being spaceless and timeless. It is totally nonlocal, which means that what you're experiencing now is your body, is a form of projection, but your real state is nonlocal, therefore not anywhere in particular and everywhere in general. The spirit is nowhere in particular and everywhere in general. You have an in-body experience. You know, people talk about what an out-of-body experience is. If you understand the realities and the real mysteries, how can we have an in-body experience when we're not there? And the analogy is how come you hear Beethoven symphony on the radio when Beethoven is not inside the radio? Same thing.

R: Right. Are you familiar with Edgar Cayce?

C: Sure.

R: And have you read much about what he described when he was in what he called his trance state? The fact that he, on several occasions, described that he physically went to a room, for instance, or he went up a column of light, things of this nature. What are your impressions of that?

C: I have a problem with words like trance because, you know, no matter who uses them, including Edgar Cayce, the word trance seems to imply an altered state of consciousness when the very reason for true knowledge is to get out of all altered states of consciousness, to examine your essential reality, which is a field of pure potentiality. What you see out there, on the street, people walking on the street, they're all on altered states of consciousness.

R: From their real self?

C: From their real self. Under a hypnosis that is part of the conditioning process of culture and religion and ideology and dogma and belief.

R: This is an interesting point we come to now because we at Connexions are interested in spiritual ideas, even religious ideas, although we're not partial to any particular one. As a very general statement, do you think that modern religions, especially in the United States because that's what we're most familiar with, are hindering the evolution of consciousness or are they growing with it and helping to facilitate it?

C: I think all religions in all times have been the bastardization and corruption of spirituality. When spirituality becomes corrupt, it becomes religion because religion as we have experienced it throughout the course of history, and this is true of Hinduism and Buddhism and all kinds of current religions, have been bastardized into dogma, ideology, and belief systems. And as long as the religion has a belief system, and all religions have done, all without exception, then they hinder man�s evolution. So I think religion is toxic to society, all religions. And that includes the Eastern religions. The Eastern religions, before they became religions, they were spiritual devices or you might say spiritual styles of living with an exact science and methodology to find the truth about one�s own nature. But when they became institutionalized, they became a set of rules and regulations and beliefs and ideas and dogmas and ideologies and there is no religion that I know of, whether it is from Judeochristianity or it is from the East, that has not propagated war and destruction and murder and killing. We have this popular myth in society that Hinduism is a nonviolent religion. Well, the Hindus are burning the Buddhists in Sri Lanka and the Buddhists are doing the same in southern India, so, you know, religion is a very dangerous force, as far as I'm concerned.

R: Outstanding!...(next few questions and comments deleted: dated, politically oriented)

R: If you had to prioritize, as very general, and if you choose not to answer this I can understand, what would you say would be the single most important life-style change that a typical American would want to consider to enhance their longevity?

C: That's not an, you know, that's very American. (laughs)

R: (laughs) I'm trying to relate this to the readership we have here, but I can understand that it's a pretty vague question.

C: I don't know how you're going to do it, but you have to find your own happiness, your freedom. You have to be self-fulfilled, discover your spiritual nature, and find out who you really are. The single most important life-style change, if there is such a thing, is to find your dharma, your purpose in life, why you are here. And dharma has three components; number one, to discover who you really are; number two, serve humanity; and number three, express your unique talents. Because you do have a unique talent and when you express it, you know you're expressing it because you lose track of time.

R: Very good. I like that. So maybe we could talk a bit about karma. Where does karma come from?

C: Karma is very complicated and totally misinterpreted by Western interpretations and also by many Eastern traditions. Karma is that which gives rise to the probability amplitude of the next space-time event in the field of all possibilities, which is who you really are. Karma gets engendered as a result of memory and desire. And memory gets engendered as a result of karma. If I drink a glass of orange juice, I create the memory of orange juice, that memory of orange juice then may become the potentiality for desire which means that I might want to drink orange juice again and that desire becomes the potentiality for karma again which is the physical act of drinking the orange juice.

R: Right. But are you speaking of karma only in terms of this particular incarnation?

C: No, I'm not. I think, Im just trying to explain this. Your soul is nothing other than the spirit, which is conditioned by the seeds of memory, desire, and action which then create a certain type of operational software in that field of all possibilities. So, karma gives rise to the statistical likelihood of a certain space-time event in a certain situation. Let's say we come to a crossing. The statistical likelihood may be that I'll take a right turn and you'll take a left turn and somebody else might take a helicopter and go right up into the air ...

R: Right.

C: ... Karmic, statistical probability amplitude. It gives rise to a certain element of determinism in a universe of free will. And whether you 're a victim of that determinism or whether you have complete free will depends on your state of awareness. If you are in a heightened state of awareness, then you use memory but you do not allow memory to use you. And you transcend karma therefore. But if you're not in that state of awareness, then you become a victim of karma.

R: So it comes to us, then, that we do have a great deal of control over our outcomes?

C: Right.

R: It's just a matter of awareness, which we can gain through such practices as meditation?

C: Right.

R: Very good. There's another concept floating around that we hear a lot of today and that is the idea of past life regression. Would you like to comment on that?

C: I don't believe that in the vast majority of cases, I don't believe in psychoanalytic methodologies, whether they relate to this lifetime or other lifetimes, I think they're a waste of energy and time. Occasionally they may be helpful. I don't need to remember what I had for breakfast last Wednesday and similarly I don't need to remember the affairs I had two lifetimes ago. It is not in the interests of the economy of expenditure of my energy which I would rather not dissipate in past and future but have concentrated in life and present moment awareness which gives me access to divinity and anything else doesn't. It takes it away. So, in general, with a few exceptions, I believe in the theory of past life regression but I do not believe in its usefulness.

R: My reason for asking is that often times people have situations in their lives that they are aware of, yet the outcomes are the same and often times they are advised that a past life regression will give them some kind of insight that might help them deal with it. But you're saying that's not necessarily true.

C: It's like fighting darkness with darkness. You should go to the light and the light is the absolute and divine and why waste your time with these episodes when you can find divinity and bring in the light?

R: One more question, and that is the idea of detachment and to go with that, are detachment and nonattachment one and the same?

C: Detachment can be with involvement. Nonattachment can be cold and impersonal. Detachment can be very personal. In fact, in order to truly love, you need to be detached because as long as you're attached your ego is in the way and true love is possible only with total detachment. However, nonattachment is, again, maybe egocentric. It may be because you're so concerned about your own ego that you do not wish to get involved. So, involvement, true involvement requires detachment.

R: Then would you say that detachment is allowing other people to experience their lives without injecting your ego onto their experience?