| THE INTERVIEW : Deepak Chopra by Tim Miejan This inspiring and fascinating man, who has become the "spiritual guide" of Hollywood stars, really seems to live out many of the things he says. And it's always a pleasure to hear his words. Here, the release of his first musical CD fuels an intriguing discussion on various aspects of love. - Your latest work, A Gift of Love, is a powerful testament to love. Why Rumi? "Jalaleddin Rumi was born in 1207 and was a Sufi. He's revered within Sufi Islamic circles as a prophet." - He was a mystic? "Yes. What he spoke about more than anything else was the experience of love. He said that in true relationship, we can find the divinity in each other, and therefore, open the doorway to the experience of God. And the best way to find God is through relationship. "He says relationship involves getting in touch and communing with another soul, that relationship is the most important thing in existence-existence would be impossible without relationship. Communion involves not only trust, but equality and sensitivity and an open and honest and truthful level of communication. But that's only the prelude to stages of love that include attraction, infatuation, intimacy, surrender, passion and ecstasy. "The ultimate goal is the experience of ecstasy, which is our primordial and original state. And this ecstasy is literally a transcendence from the world of the ordinary and mundane into the world of the magical and mysterious. Ecstasy comes through love and through entering deeper stages of the understanding of love. "Love is not just a mere sentiment. Love is not just a mere emotion. "Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation. And the ultimate truth at the heart of creation is that there is only one of us, pretending to be so many of us. "When we speak about self-love, we're not speaking about love for our ego or our self-image, but we're speaking about intimacy with a greater part of our self. Once we get to that part of our self which is the ultimate ground of our being, we recognize there is an intelligence there that is orchestrating the activity of our minds and our bodies. And once we become more in tune with it, we recognize that it's the same intelligence that's orchestrating the activity of all minds and bodies, and, in fact, orchestrating the whole universe. " That's an experience of unity consciousness. And when we're in the experience of unity consciousness, we are Being in love. And Being in love is our original state. And finding that original state is to overcome the fear of mortality. The fear of mortality is the basis of all other fear. "Unity consciousness is the state of awareness where you have the experiential knowledge that we are one, that the seer and the scenery, the observer and the observed, the lover and the beloved, the knower and the object of knowledge are all the same being, in different disguises. Unity consciousness is the intelligence that actually is one of us, but differentiates into the seeming separateness of us." - And what's the connection of love to the energy that connects everything? "Love is the means to find that." - So when we fall into love, a doorway to that awareness opens to us. "When someone first falls into love, they have bumped into spirit. Internally, they lose their habitual certainties, and that's one of the first ways to explore the unknown, which is spirit. They become detached from trivial and mundane things. They are full of wonder. They are exposed. They are vulnerable. They are carefree. There is a lightheartedness. These are the signs that they are actually connecting with spirit. "It's also the state of innocence. Think of a child." - And it's being in the present moment. "When you're in love, you are in the present moment. When you're playful, you're in the present moment. When you have innocence, you're in the present moment. And in reality, that's the only moment that exists. The present moment is the only one that never ends. Everything else is in the imagination. It is our imagination that takes us away from being in love." - Are there keys to stay in that place, on a continual basis. "Yes. First of all, be comfortable with who you are. Be comfortable with the ambiguity of human existence. We're all sinners and saints. We're all sacred and profane. We're all divine and diabolical. That's the way God made us. When we try to not be who we are, when we're constantly putting on the social masks, then we take away our attractiveness. "Our attractiveness comes from our ambiguity, our comfort with our ambiguity. Our attractiveness comes from an inner security that to have weaknesses is not to be flawed, but to be complete. If you want to have the experience of love, the first thing you have to be is comfortable with who you are. It's another way of saying love yourself. "But you also have to learn to be non-judgmental of the behavior of others. You have to not expect anything in return for your loving behavior. Loving behavior is its own reward. You have to believe deep down inside that you are lovable. You have to learn how to be giving all the time. If you are that, then you certainly will have the experience of being in love." - And a society that is full of love would be something quite extraordinary. "A society that is full of love would heal the wounds of our souls, for sure, because that's what we're searching for. That's the basis for all the war that we have, all the racism we have, and even the desecration of our planet and our ecology. It all comes from an inability to get in touch with that part of ourselves which is full of love." - On your CD, you speak about the difference between Love and Attachment. There's so much attachment connected with love in our everyday society. "Yes, it's a tragedy that we do that. Attachment comes from self-concern and self-pity and self-sorrow and self-importance. Therefore, it's the very opposite of love. Attachment is about Me, it's not about You. And love, in it's true sense, is not about Me; it's about You. It's the ability to give, to allow, to let people be who they are. "You know, when you're truly in love, you don't feel the need to think of yourself. When you're in that state of awareness where you don't feel the need to manipulate or control or cajole or convince or insist or beg or seduce, then you are truly in love. Everything else is a mask for self-importance." - You mention in the accompanying CD booklet that one of your missions is to find healing and love. "My mission is more and more in that direction: healing, love and service." - The fact that you did this CD indicates that Rumi has been an inspiration for you. "Rumi has been one of the greatest inspirations in my life, ever since I was a child. I was brought up with a lot of poetry in my childhood, both Eastern and Western. I had a rich exposure, thanks to my parents who would read poetry to me every evening at bedtime. I was very much influenced by visionary poets. "Rumi was certainly someone we went to hear in the evening when people recited and danced to Rumi. And next to Rumi was Tagore, the Indian poet. Actually, I'm now doing a new translation of Tagore's poems, which deal with the phenomenon of death and how we can overcome the fear of death. They are just exquisite poems, and I'm in the process of translating them now." - And you referred to the connection of love with overcoming the fear of death. "Yes. Overcoming the fear of death comes only if you find that part of yourself that doesn't die. Your body dies and your mind dies and your emotions die and your intellect dies and your ego dies-hopefully-but there is a part of yourself that does not. Your soul is basically a bundle of love with a little karmic software written on it." - I wonder if in our evolution as human beings if we're undergoing an evolution of how we understand love. "I think we are. The stages of evolution in human consciousness are pretty well mapped out in the Vedantic tradition. It describes seven distinct stages of the evolution of consciousness, from deep sleep being the first stage, to dreams, waking, glimpsing the soul, cosmic consciousness, God or Divine consciousness and Unity consciousness. "As we evolve through these stages, we spontaneously get the attributes of love. We have the ability to be happy and have compassion and love. We have the capacity to have joy in the midst of turbulence. We have the capacity to spread that joy to others. We have a sense of connection to the creative part of the universe, the mystery that holds everything together. We also have a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. And all of this is woven together as an ever-expanding experience of love." - What is our greatest barrier to love? "Not knowing yourself. Distraction. Not being in touch with your own inner being. We spend more time with everybody except our own selves. We're indoctrinated or brainwashed or programmed to spend time with just about everything. We're distracted all the time by very ordinary concerns, and we live a very unconscious life. We become bundles of conditioned reflexes that are being triggered by people and circumstances to totally predictable outcomes. "When you look at television, all you see is the impeachment trial. And you look at the people on the screen, you see they are like little 5 year olds in old bodies. There has been no growth, no evolution, no maturity. And yet, these people have reached amazing levels of success in society. In fact, they govern our country." - I'm wondering when you, personally, are in an open and free space, what you love to do. "I love to write. I love to scuba dive. I love to jump out of an airplane. I love to hang glide. I love to just sit and read beautiful poems from Rumi." - I don't picture you as a hang glider. "Actually, I do it quite often with my children." - Many people have fear about such an experience. "Every fear is about the unknown. Once you start jumping into the abyss of the unknown, then you find there's an exhilaration there where the known cannot compete anymore." - And when you overcome one fear, it's easy to overcome all fears. "It's true, absolutely." Copyright © 1999 Tim Miejan | 
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