Global Well Being

Deepak Chopra, M.D.

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Saionji, Mr. Sato, distinguished Ambassadors, and all the guests, as well as my family and my very special friends who have accompanied me from the United States and Europe. Thank you all for being here. It is also very important for me that my little grandchildren are here today.

 In the few minutes that I have, I am going to talk about the power of consciousness to create peace.

To start, it is very important to get some clarity on what we mean by “consciousness.” It is a word that we use all the time and very frequently there is quite a difference of opinion on the meaning of the word. To be very simple, I would like to state that “consciousness” is just “awareness.” It is the ground of our being. It is what makes thinking possible. It is what makes imagination or insight or intuition or choice-making or creativity possible. In Vedanta, the great wisdom tradition of India from thousands of years ago, it says “Consciousness cannot be imagined but it makes imagination possible. Consciousness cannot be cognized but it makes cognition possible. Consciousness cannot be perceived but it makes perception possible.”

Today I think we are entering a new era in science, where we’re beginning to recognize that consciousness is not just a byproduct of our brain. Although it does localize in our brain, consciousness is actually the ultimate ground of all creation. Consciousness is the ground of being that differentiates into everything that we call reality—spacetime, energy, information, the world of objects, and our very own biology and our environment.

I speak regularly to scientists who are in cutting-edge physics, mathematics and also biology. Amongst them is a friend of mine called Dr. Stuart Hammeroff, who heads the Center for Studies on Consciousness at the University of Arizona in the United States. He is also a colleague of Sir Roger Penrose, and according to Hammeroff and Penrose, if you go to the deepest levels of nature called the Planck scale spacetime geometry—which you might say is the basement of the universe from where the whole universe arises—then, at this level, everything coexists as possibility, and that includes the fundamental building blocks of the physical universe, like spin and charge and gravity and the curvature of spacetime. Also at this level are the fundamental building blocks of what we call mind—Platonic values, such as truth, goodness, beauty, and harmony. At this level, we experience our interconnection with each other, or rather our inseparability with each other, and that gives rise to feelings of love, compassion, peace, joy, and equanimity. At this level, there is also mathematical truth which describes the laws of nature. So, understanding consciousness and its contents is the same as understanding the whole universe.

With that as a little bit of introduction to the science of consciousness, I would like to offer you an understanding of how looking within at our own consciousness gives us a clue to what is called reality. Consciousness, the ground of being, is differentiating here into everything that we experience as reality. Our thinking, our behavior, our speech, our perceptions, our creativity, our imagination, our personal relationships, our social interactions, our environment—all these are interdependently co-arising from this deeper domain of existence.

With that as a background, I would like to address the topic that we have today, which is “Global Well Being.” Global peace is of course dependent on global well-being.

This mind map that you see on the screen is actually derived from data that was gathered at the Gallup Organization, where I happen to have the privilege of being a senior scientist. At Gallup, in the last few years, there has been an examination of what we might call total well-being across the globe, looking at over 150 countries. This data has been constantly reviewed and revised, based on information that we get on an ongoing basis, and the methodologies are a result of the thinking of 2,000 senior scientists at the Gallup Organization. It shows different aspects of global well-being, depending on the state of consciousness that we tap into.

If you look at what is called “career well-being,” the data shows that only 20% of people in the world can say that they are happy with what they do every day. In fact, one of the most astonishing statistics, at least in the Western world and in the United States, is that more people die on Monday morning at 9:00, because they hate their jobs. This is an extraordinary accomplishment for which only the human species can take credit, because presumably no other animal knows the difference between Sunday and Monday.

Another data shows that if your immediate supervisor or someone who you work with ignores you, then your rate of disengagement goes up to about 40%, and sooner or later you are also going to be falling sick. On the other hand, if somebody you work with doesn’t ignore you but criticizes you, then your rate of disengagement falls to about 20%, because as human beings we would rather be criticized than ignored. When we are ignored, it is almost a tacit understanding between people that we don’t exist. So, being criticized is actually a healthier state of mind than being ignored. But if the person you work with notices your strength and acknowledges what you are good at, then your rate of disengagement falls to less than 1% and your health also improves.

In America, 15% of the workforce is actively disengaged, which means people are not only unhappy with what they do, but they make it a point of making other people unhappy as well. And this 15% of actively disengaged people actually cost the United States about $380 billion in its economy. So there is direct link between our engagement, our passion, our physical health, and the economy. Whether it is passive disengagement, which means just counting time, or active disengagement, it has huge implications.

Next, when we look at “social well-being,” the data shows that if you have a happy friend, then your likelihood of being happy goes up 15 times. If your happy friend has a happy friend, whom you don’t know, it goes up another 10 times. And if your happy friend has a happy friend who has a happy friend, whom you don’t know, it goes up another 7%.

If your best friend, for example, is obese, your likelihood of being obese goes up by 57%. On the other hand, if your best friend happens to be active and has a good diet, your likelihood of being active, healthy and in good state goes up 7 times.

In other words, consciousness and our emotions are contagious; they spread. And this is very significant. For example, we now know that women with breast cancer who support each other, their survival rate doubles. Happiness networks improve economics and well-being in many ways.

These social networks include networks through Twitter or Facebook, and social networks where people email and text each other. In fact, the healthiest people are those who do not disengage from other people, whether it is through social networks or in actual face-to-face meetings.

This part of the mind map shows “physical well-being,” which is dependent on good quality of sleep, a healthy diet, exercise, breathing, Yoga—things that we all know about. However, physical well-being is actually drastically dependent on other things like career well-being, social well-being, and community well-being. How engaged are you in your community? How many hours do you willingly volunteer? Do you have a cause bigger than yourself? All these seem to have a direct impact on our well-being, and financial well-being also plays a huge role. Financially healthy people are usually people who know how to manage their finances. They do not usually buy things that they don’t need with money that they haven’t earned, just to impress people they don’t like. They also make sure that they do not get into debts, and pay their taxes in time, and are socially responsible.

So this is a very interesting mind map that shows the inter-connectedness between different aspects of our well-being. It’s no longer your physical well-being by itself. Your physical well-being is dependent on a deeper understanding of consciousness as a field.

It was Erwin Schrodinger, one of the great pioneers of physics in the last century known for his Schrodinger equation, who first articulated a very deep insight into the nature of consciousness. He said that consciousness is a singular that has no plural. The plural experience of consciousness—in other words, to think that I have a mind of my own is really an illusion. We are part of a collective consciousness, and that collective consciousness is part of a universal consciousness. And just like everything in the universe, consciousness not only recycles, but also evolves and takes leaps of creativity.

Our bodies and our minds and our consciousness are all part of the recycling of the universe. We are members of a single energy field, and members of a single information field. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to surf the information highway on the Internet. We are members of the same atmosphere. We breathe the same molecules from the atmosphere. We are members of a single body. It’s the same molecules that are recycling through you and me.

In fact, you can do radioactive isotope studies and prove without a shadow of doubt that right at this moment, you have in your physical body at least a million atoms that were once in the body of Buddha or Jesus Christ or Genghis Khan. Our only real physical body is the total universe, and our only real single identity, the “I” within me, is a universal “I.” And that has been the great quest of all great spiritual traditions.

So when I saw the Goi Peace Foundation’s map showing the network of Sustainability, Systems, Science, and Spirituality, with consciousness as the foundation, I thought it is a very deep insight into the nature of consciousness, which is a singular that has no plural; universal that has no single expression.

With that, I would like to show you another mind map, which takes us a little bit beyond social well-being, physical well-being, financial well-being, and ecological well-being, into a deeper realm which we can only call “spiritual well-being.” Spiritual well-being is not just a result of simple positive thinking or making up your mind to live spiritually, but rather it comes from a deeper understanding of our reality.

Recently, there are a lot of very interesting data on what makes people happy. What you see here is something called the happiness formula: H = S + C + V (The level of happiness that you experience (H) is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life (C) plus the voluntary activities (V) that you do.) Recent studies show that happy people are those who have a brain mechanism which finds opportunities where other people see problems, and that this brain mechanism is actually a learned phenomenon and we can change the brain set point if we want to. Studies also show that material conditions of living add only about 10-12% to your overall happiness experience. Your overall happiness experience depends on whether you have moved from money to meaning, up the hierarchy of needs that Abraham Maslow, the great transpersonal psychologist, spoke about. And your happiness depends on various choices that you make on a day-to-day basis.

If we can understand the mechanics of happiness, we will also understand the true meaning of what Eastern wisdom traditions have called yoga: the yoga of self-reflection, the yoga of contemplative meditation, the yoga of stillness, the yoga of relationship, the yoga of intellect, and the yoga of love and compassion and what I call Platonic values of truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, and evolution. We will understand that before subject and object split, there is a deeper unified state of consciousness, and that nature is one.

However, our science has divided nature into subject and object, into genes and epigenes, into biological organism and environment. These are very artificial splits and they are a product of dualistic thinking, which has given rise to a science that has brought us a lot of wonderful technologies and great comforts, but a science that can also create weapons of mass destruction, mechanized deaths, nuclear warfare and other diabolical technologies, which give us the capacity to destroy ourselves.

When we have ancient primitive habits and modern capacities, that’s a very devastating combination that could spell our doom. Therefore, we need to revise our science. We need a holistic science that not only asks the “how” of creation and the “how” of evolution, but asks the “why” of creation and the “why” of evolution.

A deeper understanding of consciousness has the ability to literally give us answers to some of the deepest questions of our existence. Why is there something instead of nothing? Why do we exist at all? What is the meaning and purpose of our existence? Do we have a soul? What is the meaning of death? Why do we have a diabolical shadow self? Is there divinity or god? And if there is, then why is it important? Does that divine intelligence even care about us? Is our planet a single spec of dust in a mindless void somewhere in the junkyard of infinity? Or is our mind actually part of a deeper cosmic mind? These are the questions that human beings have asked for thousands of years, but I think today, for the first time, we may have the ability with our technologies to really understand them.

A lot of people complain about technology these days, that it is taking us away from each other and making us emotionally blunted. But the fact is, technology is part of our evolution and technology is unstoppable. In ten years, our technology will have a billion times capacity of what it is today. In two decades, it will be beyond our imagination.

If technology is part of our evolution and it is not going to be stopped, how can we use this new technology to bring about a deeper healing, a deeper healing of our ecosystem, a deeper healing of the drift and separation of our collective souls, and a deeper understanding of the relationship between science and spirituality?

This is a map that I created just on my way to Japan, which contrasts the difference between the old science and the new spirituality (See below). The new spirituality goes beyond the dualistic subject-object split and the dualistic understanding of biological organism and environment, which are the views of the old science. What we call the environment is actually our extended body. The trees out there are our lungs. You depend on your existence as much on your heart and liver as on the stars and the sun and the moon. The rivers and waters circulate as our blood. The Earth recycles as our body. The atmosphere is our breath. We have a personal body and a universal body and they are both equally ours. When we attain a deeper sense of “Who am I?” we will understand that the only physical form that I can call my own is the whole universe. And when that deeper understanding takes root as an emotional understanding, we will have the potential to create a new science and a new spirituality that will evolve into a really deep understanding.

With that as the background, our organization, the Chopra Foundation, has as its goal almost the same as the Goi Peace Foundation, to help create a critical mass of consciousness which will accelerate the development of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world. Peaceful, just, sustainable—they are all linked. You cannot have peace in the world when 50% of the world lives on less than $2 a day, and when 20% of the world lives on less than $1 a day. Peace, social justice and economic well-being of those who are less privileged than us are all inseparable. And that understanding of inseparability is the only thing that can make a difference in our personal, social and planetary healing.

We must now develop a deeper understanding of “holism.” The word “holism,” the word “health,” the word “holy,” and the word “healing,” are all actually the same word, because healing is nothing other than the memory of wholeness—the memory of who we really are.

It is interesting to me that we have the capacity to make this new understanding spread virally almost with the rapidity of an epidemic or a global pandemic. I use “global pandemic” in a healthy sense—a global pandemic of health, joy, peace, and sustainability. This is a great opportunity for us to use our capacity to link with each other and create networks of social well-being, networks of economic empowerment, and networks that give us a deeper understanding of how social justice is linked to peace. If we can hang in there for a little bit and create a new conversation, I think we may turn the tide so that nature doesn’t end up saying the human species was an interesting experiment that did not work. I think the experiment will work, but we have to put our collective intention behind a new way of thinking, a new imagination and a new creativity.

I thank you very much for this opportunity, and for the great privilege of receiving the Goi Peace Award. Thank you.

Goi Peace Award TOP