The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the hidden dimensions of your life

By Deepak Chopra

ISBN 1-4000-9834-3

Published by Three Rivers Press, 2004

Every life is a book of secrets, ready to be opened. The secret of perfect love is found there, along with the secrets of healing, compassion, faith, and the most elusive one of all: who we really are. We are still mysteries to ourselves, despite the proximity of these answers, and what we most long to know remains lodged deep inside.  We all want to know how to find a soul mate, what career would be most fulfilling, how to live a life with meaning, and how to teach our children well. We are looking for a personal breakthrough, a turning point, a revelation that brings with it new meaning. The Book of Secrets--a crystalline distillation of insights and wisdom accumulated over the lifetime of one of the great spiritual thinkers of our time--provides an exquisite new tool for achieving just that.  Because answers to the questions at the center of life are counterintuitive, they are often hidden from view, sequestered from our everyday gaze. In his ongoing quest to elevate our experience, bestselling author Deepak Chopra has isolated fifteen secrets that drive the narrative of this inspiring book--and of our lives. From "The World Is in You" and "What You Seek, You Already Are" to "Evil Is Not Your Enemy" and "You Are Truly Free When You Are Not a Person," The Book of Secrets is rich with insights, a priceless treasure that can transport us beyond change to transformation, and from there to a sacred place where we can savor the nectar of enlightenment.  "The Book of Secrets is the finest and most profound of Deepak Chopra’s books to date. Want the answers to the secrets of life? Let me recommend that you start right here." -- Ken Wilber, author of A Brief History of Everything.  

5 star must reading.   [The following is what I highlighted during my read of this excellent book -- I recommend it on my Top-ten List of Peace resources.  My purpose in providing them is to interest you, the reader, and hope that you will obtain and read the complete work.  To properly understand the highlights, you need to read the book to put them in the proper context.] 

Introduction: Opening the Book of Secrets

• The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self.
• Transformation means radical change of form, the way a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly.
• Finding the hidden dimensions in yourself is the only way to fulfill your deepest hunger.
• …there really is a mystery lying in the hidden dimensions of life…feel passion and dedication required to get there
• …your life is worth investigating with total passion and commitment.

Secret #1: The Mystery of Life is Real

            The Wisdom You Are Already Living

1. You have a higher purpose
2. You are in communion with the whole of life
3. Your awareness is always open to change. From moment to moment, it senses everything in your environment
4. You feel acceptance for all others as your equal, without judgment or prejudice.
5. You seize every moment with renewed creativity, not clinging to the old and outworn.
6. Your being is cradled in the rhythms of the universe. You feel safe and nurtured.
7. Your idea of efficiency is to let the flow of life bring you what you need. Force, control, and struggle are not your way.
8. You feel a sense of connection with your source.
9. You are committed to giving as the source of all abundance.
10. You see all change, including birth and death, against the background of immortality. Whatever is unchanging is most real to you.
• We are betraying our bodily wisdom, and worse, we are ignoring the model of a perfect spiritual life inside ourselves.
• Would the cells in your body accept such a defeatist logic? If where you are isn’t good enough, then love and healing and God will remain forever out of reach.
• The first secret is to let your body’s wisdom point the way. Every secret in this book goes back to the existence of an invisible intelligence that operates beneath the visible surface of life.

Secret #2: The World Is in You

• To solve the mystery of life requires only one commandment: live like a cell.
• …the precise, complete, and almost perfect wisdom that our bodies follow.
• …as convincing as the material world looks…no one has been able to prove that it is real.
• Everyone is a creator
• The debate on how to end war, for example, has proved totally futile because the instant I see myself as an isolated individual, I confront “them,” the countless other individuals who want what I want
• Violence is built into the opposition of us versus them. “They” never go away and “they” never give up. They will always fight to protect their stake in the world. As long as you and I have a separate stake in the world, the cycle of violence will remain permanent.
• …violence…is based entirely on a mistaken concept…no cure can be achieved without correcting the mistaken concept first.
• Getting serious about bringing violence to an end means giving up a personal stake in the world, once and for all.
• To defend any outside thing—money, property, possessions, or status—makes sense only if those things are essential. But the material world is an aftereffect. Nothing in it is essential. The only personal stake worth having is the ability to create freely, with full awareness of how reality-making works.
• Being a creator is more important than the whole world.
• Everything I am experiencing reflects myself
• My life is part of every other life: my connection to all living things makes it impossible that I have enemies. I feel no need to oppose, resist, conquer, or destroy.
• I have no need to control anyone or anything: I can affect change by transforming the only thing that I ever had control of in the first place, which is myself.
• …it’s possible to scan someone’s personal space and fairly accurately discern if that person is satisfied or dissatisfied with life, has a strong or weak sense of personal identity, is a conformist or nonconformist, values order over chaos, feels optimistic or hopeless.

Secret #3: Four Paths Lead to Unity

• All the spiritual secrets from this point on, meaning the vast majority, depend on your accepting the existence of one reality.
• …a co-creator with nature
• …the brain…is a quantum machine.
• …through the magic of consciousness…your brain is sending a signal to the very source of natural law. The simplest definition of consciousness is awareness; the two are synonymous.
• “Consciousness is the potential for all creation.”
• The more consciousness you have, the more potential you have to create. Pure consciousness, because it underlies everything, is pure potential.
• Depending on consciousness: creative, intimate with natural law, close to the source, boundaries dissolve, intentions turn into results, beyond time and space.
• “Who am I who is doing all this thinking?” that’s the question that leads to pure awareness…if you empty the brain of all thoughts (as in a state of meditation), awareness turns out not to be empty, void, and passive. Beyond the limits of time and space, one process—and only one—is taking place. Creation is creating itself, using consciousness as its modeling clay. Consciousness turns into things in the objective world, into experiences in the subjective world.
• …the human brain doesn’t have to stand outside the creative process. Just by paying attention and having desire, you flip on the switch of creation.
• The glory of the spiritual journey is the same as its irony: you acquire full power only by realizing that you have been using that power all along to thwart yourself.
• Even when wisdom is gained and you realize that your own brain is producing everything around you, finding the control switch to creation is elusive. But there is a way. Behind any experience is an experiencer who knows what is happening.
• Getting there is a process that starts here and now.
• Feelings
  A sense that all is well, that I am at home in the world
  A feeling of complete peacefulness
• Thinking
  “I know more than I think I do.”
  “I need to find out who I really am.”
• Actions
  I suddenly sense that my actions are not my own.
  I sense a greater power acting through me.
  My actions seem to symbolize who I am and why I’m here.
  I am acting out of complete integrity.
  I gave up control and what I wanted simply came to me.
  I gave up the struggle, and instead of falling apart, things got better.
  My actions are part of a plan I can barely glimpse, but I know it must exist.
• Being
  I realize that my life has purpose, that I matter.
  I sense that random events are not random but form subtle patterns.
  I see that I am unique
  I realize with wonder that life is infinitely worthwhile.
• My whole existence has been safe since I was born: I am safe.
• To master pure awareness, you must learn how to live it.
• …the epiphany is that you are that stranger—your experiencer merges with his.
• …it’s the sudden expansion that counts.
• No one else…sees the true significance of your private epiphanies.
• Bhakti yoga leads to unity by loving God
• Karma yoga leads to unity through selfless action
• Gyana yoga leads to unity through knowledge
• Raj yoga leads to unity through meditation and renunciation
• …meditation transcends the other three paths
• Your meditations go directly to the essence of your being. That essence is what love of God, selfless action, and knowledge are trying to reach.
• …unity is secretly present in every moment of daily life.
• …nothing is wasted or random in cosmic design.
• The Four Paths
  1. Feeling…The yearning heart finds ultimate peace by uniting with the heart of creation
  2. Thinking
  3. Action…Karma gives way to Dharma. In other words, personal attachment to your own actions is turned into nonattachment through performing God’s actions. This path reaches its fulfillment when your surrender is so complete that God runs everything you do.
  4. Being
• Internally, a crucial decision is made: I am starting over.
• When your heart grows sick of the violence and divisiveness in the world, starting over is the only choice. You stop looking at the reflections and turn instead to the source. The universe, like any mirror, is neutral. It reflects back whatever is in front of it, without judgment or distortion. If you can trust that, then you have taken the crucial step of renunciation. You’ve renounced the belief that the outer world has power over you. As with everything else on the path to unity, living this truth is what will make it true.
• Changing your reality to accommodate the Third Secret
  -love
  -accept
  -To promote peace is subtler than to promote anger and violence.
  -without judgment
• If you let yourself feel it, the subtler side of each experience puts the mind at ease, decreases stress, and results in less restless thinking and less pressure at the emotional level. Subtle experience is quiet and harmonious. You feel settled; you aren’t in conflict with anyone else. There is no overblown drama or even any need for it.
• …if you value it, it will grow. If you favor the grosser levels instead, the world will reflect your perception back at you: it will always remain divisive, disturbing, stressful, and threatening. The choice is yours to make at the level of consciousness because, in the infinite diversity of creation, every perception gives rise to a world that mirrors it.

Secret #4: What You Seek, You Already Are

• …seeking is another word for chasing after something.
• The spiritual secret that applies here is this: what you seek, you already are. Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source and realize who you are.
• The problem is that seeking begins with a false assumption.
• Seeking is doomed because it is a chase that takes you outside yourself.
• Don’t know where you’re going. Spiritual growth is spontaneous.
• Don’t struggle to get there…spiritual unfolding.
• Don’t follow someone else’s map…Fixed ways, even those devoted to spirit, are not the same as being free. You should glean teachings from all directions, keeping true to those that bring progress yet remaining open to changes in yourself.
• Don’t make this a self-improvement project…Expanded awareness comes at a price—you have to give up your limitations…
• Don’t set yourself a timetable…discipline is involved, no doubt, in remembering to meditate regularly, to keep up Yoga class, to read inspiring texts, and to keep your vision before you.
• Don’t wait for a miracle.
• The ego did you a terrible disservice by throwing you into a world of opposites. Opposites always conflict—that’s the only way they know—and who can feel at home in the middle of a fight? Awareness offers an alternative beyond the fray.
• …if the real you isn’t inside your head, you have been set free, like awareness itself. This freedom is limitless. You can create anything because you are in every atom of creation.
• …utterly clear: it’s all one thing.
• Follow the flow:
  …whatever brings a person deepest joy is a reliable guide to follow into the future.
  …desire and purpose are linked—if you follow your desire, the purpose reveals itself.
• Don’t resist what’s happening:
  Don’t resist this change—you are shedding the trappings of ego and moving to a new sense of self.
• Open yourself to the unknown:
  The unknown is outside the shell, and to encounter it, you have to be willing to welcome it in.
• Don’t censor or deny what you feel:
  The road to freedom is not through feeling good; it is through feeling true to yourself.
• The purpose of getting rid of emotional debt is to find your place in the present.
• Reach beyond yourself
• Be genuine:
  …truth has the power to set aside what is false, and doing so can set us free.
• At crucial moments, however, the truth speaks to us; it tells us how things really are…at this moment for us alone. This impulse must be honored if you wish to break free.
• …the silent witness is that level where you know yourself, without regard for what others think they know.
• Let the center be your home:
  Paradoxically, the center is everywhere.
  Instead of thinking of your center as a defined spot…be at the center of experience. Experience isn’t a place; it’s a focus of attention. You can live there, at the still point around which everything revolves. To be off center is to lost focus, to look away from experience or block it out.
• When I find myself being overshadowed by anything, I can fall back on a few simple steps:
  -I say to myself, “This situation may be shaking me, but I am more than any situation.”
  -I take a deep breath and focus my attention on whatever my body is feeling.
  -I step back and see myself as another person would see me
  -I realize that my emotions are not reliable guides to what is permanent and real.
  -…walk away.
• Your real self has qualities you are already experiencing every day. Intelligence, alertness, being tuned in, knowingness…

Secret #5: The Cause of Suffering Is Unreality

• Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It comes from the mind’s mysterious instinct to believe that pain is good, or that it cannot be escaped, or that the person deserves it. If none of these were present, suffering would not exist.
• …the steps that lead to suffering:
  - overlooking actual facts
  …confront the source of the suffering, the first step being a willingness to look at what is actually happening.
  - adopting a negative perception
  Reality is perception, and the suffering person gets trapped by negative perceptions of his own creation.
  Inner confusion and conflict are why the mind has such a hard time healing itself, despite all the power it holds.
  - reinforcing that perception by obsessive thinking
  Reality is whatever you identify with.
  Anywhere that life hurts we have locked ourselves into some kind of false identification, telling ourselves private, unchallenged stories about who we are. The cure…is to somehow pry a wedge between “I” and this powerful secret identification
  - getting lost in the pain without looking for a way out
  …pain has a subjective component but also that the way we assess pain is completely individual.
  in truth, suffering persists only to the extent that we allow ourselves to remain lost in our own creation
  - comparing yourself to others
  The ego wants to be number one…
  As long as you compare yourself to others your suffering will persist as a way of fitting in.
  - cementing the suffering through relationships
  Pain is a universal experience; therefore, it enters into every relationship.
  …denied pain is just another term for suffering.
  A healing relationship is based on awareness; in it both partners work to break old habits that promote suffering.
• A healing relationship maintains the proper balance. You both must remain alert and attentive; you must keep your eye on the spiritual vision ahead; you must be willing to have new responses every day. Most of all, you share a path that leads, step by step, out of unreality
• The ultimate goal, if you really want to be real, is to experience existence itself. “I am” is such an experience.
• …the five kleshas, the root causes of every form of suffering:
  -not knowing what’s real
  -grasping and clinging to the unreal
  -being afraid of the unreal and recoiling from it
  -identifying with an imaginary self
  -fear of death
• Theology tries to convince us that there is life after death, but since that claim has to be taken on faith, religion exacts obedience by holding the afterlife over our heads.
• Religious wars continue to erupt over this issue.
• A person fears death not for itself but for a deeper reason, which is the need to defend an imaginary self.
• Self-image is closely connected to self-esteem, and we know the high cost a person pays when self-esteem is lost.
• …we recoil from things that threaten our egos.
• Holding on to something is a way of showing that you are afraid it will be taken from you.
• Someone has stripped you of the illusion that you were untouchable.
• In the end, however, unreality alone is the cause of all suffering.
• In reality nothing exists outside the self. As soon as you begin to accept this one bit of knowledge, the whole purpose of life changes. The only goal worth attaining is complete freedom to be yourself, without illusions and false beliefs.
• …simply learning to be.
• Chaos is complicated, order is simple.
• List the major stresses in your life and work to reduce them until you know for certain that you are not overstressed.
• If you honestly cannot be in the presence of negative situations without taking on pain that isn’t yours, get away. Losing sight of your boundaries doesn’t make you a “good person.”
• …sources of negativity don’t have to be engaged in—walk away and put your attention somewhere more positive.
• Examine the routine of your suffering and break out of it
• …share my problems with those who want to help me.
• …put a distance between myself and those who want to hurt me.
• It is much simpler not to have beliefs, which means being open to life as it comes your way, going with your own inner intelligence instead of with stored judgments…ending your need to cling to these beliefs.
• By working toward a simpler state every day, you are doing the best anyone can do to bring suffering to an end by cutting out the roots of unreality.

Secret #6: Freedom Tames the Mind

• Love your mind
• Buddhist psychology doesn’t aim to tame the monkey so much as to learn its ways, accept them, and then transcend to a higher awareness that is beyond the fickleness of the mind.
• …you have to find the actual experience of peace and calmness on your own. The secret for doing that is to free the mind. When it is free, the mind settles down. It gives up its restlessness and becomes a channel for peace.
• The mind is “wild” because we try to confine and control it. At a deeper level lies complete orderliness. Here, thoughts and impulses flow in harmony with what is right and best for each person.
• …the mind’s disorder…as a symptom.
• Control is the great mask of insecurity
• …perfectionist…
• Control begins to end when you admit that your way isn’t automatically the right way.
• Once you stop controlling them, the people around you begin to breathe easy. They relax and laugh. They feel free to be who they are without looking to you for approval.
• Denial is…so intimately linked to vulnerability.
• You get past denial by facing up to the painful truths. Honestly expressing how you feel is the first step. For someone in deep denial, any feeling that makes you think you are unsafe is generally one you have to face. Denial begins to end when you feel focused, alert, and ready to participate despite your fears.
  Each of these behaviors tries to prove an impossibility. Manipulation tries to prove that anyone can be made to do what you want. Control tries to prove that no one can reject you unless you say so. Denial tries to prove that bad things will go away if you don’t look at them. The truth is that other people can refuse to do what you want, can walk out on you for no good reason, and can cause trouble whether you face it or not. There is no predicting how long any of us will stubbornly try to prove the opposite, but only when we admit the truth does the behavior completely end.
• …none of us knows where our inner voices come from. We simply accept them…
• You must free yourself from decisions. The voice in your head will die down once you stop making choices.
• …the person who has found God has freed himself from choices. But what does it feel like to have God make your decisions for you? … you would have to be deeply connected to God to even come close to answering that question.
• Choiceless awareness is another name for free awareness. By freeing up the choice-maker inside, you reclaim your right to live without boundaries, acting on the will of God with complete trust.
• Choice should be a flow.
• Making the most of an experience.
  Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully.
  An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal.
  To experience this moment, or at any moment, fully means to engage fully.
• Right or wrong decisions: if you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another. This isn’t a correct assumption because the universe is flexible—it adapts to every decision you make. Right and wrong are only mental constructs.
  …to obsess over right and wrong decisions is the same as taking no direction at all.
• (Stop) Defending your self-image:
  To really feel good about yourself, renounce your self-image. Immediately you will find yourself being more open, undefended, and relaxed.
  “If you notice, you only have a self when you’re in trouble.”
  If you release yourself from your self-image, you will be free to choose as if for the first time.
• 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
• You no longer feel the urge to defend your opinions.
• Going beyond risks:
  You can only go beyond risks by knowing that there is infinite intelligence at work in the hidden dimensions of you life.
  …far more important factors, the very factors that are being weighed at the level of deeper awareness:
  - Does this choice feel right for me?
  - Am I interested in where this choice is leading?
  - Do I like the people involved?
  - Is this choice good for my whole family?
  - Does this choice make sense given my stage in life?
  - Do I feel morally justified in making this choice?
  - Will this choice help me to grow?
  - Do I have a chance to be more creative and inspired by what I am about to do?
• (make no decision) When in doubt:
  When you are in doubt…put the universe on hold for a while. It favors no particular direction.
  There is a good aspect to this pause and a bad one. The good aspect is that you are giving yourself room to become aware of more things, and with more awareness, the future can bring you new reasons to act one way or the other. The bad aspect is that inertia isn’t productive—without choices you cannot grow and evolve. If doubts persist, you have to break out of stasis.
  …doubt is destructive to the one quality that awareness is trying to bring to you: knowingness.
  Doubt is a symptom indicating that you aren’t in contact with the knower inside. It usually means that you are looking outside yourself…
  Find out who you really are…
  You have to be committed to expanding your awareness…If you turn inward and follow the path that leads to your inner intelligence, the knower will be there waiting for you.
• Seeing the possibilities:
  In the one reality there are no wrong turns, only new turns.
  If you don’t get what you expected or wished for, ask yourself, “Where am I supposed to look?” This is a very freeing attitude…every event in life can be causing only one of two things: Either it is good for you, or it is bringing up what you need to look at in order to create good for you. Evolution is win-win…
  Life is self-correcting in just this way.
  Principles:
  - To adapt to your desires
  - To keep everything in balance
  - To harmonize your individual life with the life of the cosmos
  - To make you aware of what you are doing
  - To show you the consequences of your action
  - To make your life as real as possible
• Finding the stream of joy:
  You won’t really let go of your self-image and your restless mind until you feel, without question or doubt, a palpable joy in yourself.
  …wake up every morning with a song in your heart.
• …break out of the mindset that your life consists of good and bad choices that set your destiny on an unswerving course. Your life is the product of your awareness. Every choice follows from that, and so does every step of growth.

Secret #7: Every Life is Spiritual

• One of the peculiarities of modern life is that people violently disagree over religious beliefs and then go on to lead similar lives.
• …it’s impossible not to lead a spiritual life.
• The universe is a mirror of consciousness.
• The events in your life reflect who you are.
• Awareness is collective. We all draw it from a common source.
• The people in your life reflect aspects of yourself.
• Awareness expands within itself.
• Whatever you pay attention to will grow.
• Consciousness creates by design.
• Nothing is random—your life is full of signs and symbols.
• Physical laws operate efficiently, with least effort.
• At any given moment, the universe is giving you the best results possible.
• The law of least effort.
• Simple forms grow into more complex forms.
• Your inner awareness is always evolving.
• Knowledge takes in more and more of the world.
• The direction of life is from duality to unity.
• Evolution develops survival traits that perfectly match the environment.
• If you open yourself to the force of evolution, it will carry you where you want to go.
• Chaos serves evolution
• The fragmented mind cannot get you to unity, but you have to use it along the way.
• Many invisible levels are enveloped in the physical world.
• You are living in many dimensions at once; the appearance of being trapped in time and space is an illusion.
• The cosmic joke is that the same laws will continue to uphold your life even though you don’t recognize them.
• Transformation and change are two different things…
• The key to true transformation is that nature doesn’t move forward in step-by-step movements. It takes quantum leaps all the time, and when it does, old ingredients aren’t simply recombined.
• While still remaining who you are, you can bring about a quantum leap in your awareness, and the sign that leap is real will be some emergent property you never experienced in the past.
• Emergent spiritual properties:
  - clarity of awareness
  clarity feels totally alert, and carefree.
  - knowingness
  knowingness feels wise, confident, unshakable, and yet humble.
  - reverence for life
  reverence for life feels warm, connected, and exhilarating.
  - absence of violence
  nonviolence means being in harmony with every action. There is no opposition between what you do and what anyone else does. Your desires do not clash with another person’s well-being. When you look around you see conflict in the world at large but not in your world. You emanate peace lie a force field that subdues conflict in your surroundings. Nonviolence feels peace, still, and completely without resistance.
  - fearlessness
  to be fearless feels, therefore, like yourself.
  - nonattachment
  - wholeness
  wholeness feels solid, eternal, without beginning or end.
• In order to see that your own existence is protected by the same intelligence, you have to align with it first. Then a universal law reveals itself: wholeness remains the same no matter how much it changes.
• “My deeper self created this situation.
  Whatever happens, there is a reason.
  I am surprised, but this change doesn’t affect who I am.
  My life is unfolding according to what is best and most evolutionary for me.
  I can’t lose what’s real. The external will fall into place as they need to.
  Whatever happens, I can’t be hurt.”
• Reality shifts as you do, and when you change your perception of being separate, the one realty responds by shifting with you.
• “This accident was no accident; it’s a reflection of myself.
  This stranger is a messenger.
  When I find out why this event happened, I will uncover some aspect of myself.
  I need to pay more attention to some kind of hidden or stuck energy. When I deal with it, I will be glad this accident happened.”
• The larger viewpoint holds no blame. It puts responsibility equally on every player and allows equally for growth. A car accident is neither right nor wrong—it is an opportunity to reclaim who you are, a creator. If you walk away with a result that moves you closer to your true self, you have grown.
• The good news is that no aspect of life is immune to transformation.
• the events in my life reflect who I am
• the people in my life reflect aspects of myself
• whatever I pay attention to will grow
• nothing is random—my life is full of signs and symbols
• at any given moment, the universe is giving me the best results possible
• my inner awareness is always evolving
• the direction of life is from duality to unity
• if I open myself to the force of evolution, it will carry me where I want to go
• the fragmented mind cannot get me to unity, but I have to use it along the way
• I am living in many dimensions at once; the appearance of being trapped in time and space is an illusion.

Secret #8: Evil is Not Your Enemy

• Idealistic and loving people who would never harm another person find themselves drawn into the maelstrom of war.
• More violence has occurred in the name of religion than for any other reason.
• There is also the more subtle failure of passivity—standing by and letting evil have its way.
• There is no cosmic Satan to rival God, and even the war between good and evil is only an illusion born of duality.
• …list the forces that shape every newborn child:
  Parental guidance or the lack of it.
  The presence of love or its absence.
  The context of the whole family.
  Peer pressure at school and social pressure throughout life.
  Personal tendencies and reactions.
  Indoctrinated beliefs and religious teaching.
  Karma.
  The tide of history.
  Role models.
  Collective consciousness.
  The appeal of myths, heroes, and ideals.
• …people who perform evil can trace their motives back to decisions that were the best they could make given the situation.
• Evil depends completely on one’s level of consciousness.
• What’s the worst evil? Seven perspectives
1. The worst evil it to hurt someone physically, or endanger their survival.
2. The worst evil is to enslave people economically, depriving them of any chance to succeed and prosper.
3. The worst evil is to destroy peace and bring about disorder.
4. The worst evil is to entrap people’s minds.
5. The worst evil is to destroy beauty, creativity, and the freedom to explore.
6. The worst evil is often difficult to tell from good, since all of creation is relative.
7. There is no evil, only the shifting patterns of consciousness in an eternal dance.

• The one reality accepts all these definitions…
• Evil is part of hierarchy, a ladder of growth in which everything changes depending on the rung you happen to be standing on.
• Violence causes love to break down, turning it into fear and hatred. But evil doesn’t actually do this. The shaping forces on consciousness do.
• …the Stanford experiment suggests something more disturbing: evil exists in everyone as a shadow, for the very reason that the world is in everyone.
• The Stanford experimenters devised a list of conditions that cause people to do things we’d call evil…
• Incubating Evil: conditions that release shadow energies:

1. Removing a sense of responsibility
2. Anonymity
3. Dehumanizing environments
4. Peer examples of bad behavior.
5. Passive bystanders
6. Rigid levels of power
7. Prevailing chaos and disorder
8. Lack of meaning
9. Implicit permission to do harm
10. “Us-versus-them” mentality
11. Isolation
12. Lack of accountability

• …the shadow isn’t about who is good or bad. It’s about sealed-up energies looking for an outlet…
• Given the right circumstances, everyone’s shadow energy will emerge.
• You and I as individuals can’t solve the problem of evil on a mass scale…to grapple with evil, you have to look at it, not in horror or as spectacle but with the same attention that you’d give to any problem you are seriously interested in.
• In all of us, there are impulses fueled by a sense of injustice.
• …violence can be tamed by breaking it down into manageable bits.
• …reptilian brain…
• …televised news, after fifty years of displaying gruesome images of war and violence, has done little more than inure its viewers to such images, or worse, turned them into entertainment.
• …when it’s broken down, evil turns out to be a distorted response to everyday situations.
• …unconsciously harbor fears…no one can help harboring such fears…
• …evil is born in the gap between body and mind.
• Evil is born in the gap.
• When an entire society accepts the theme of “the outsiders” who cause all the trouble, then evil has everyone for a father and mother.
• When an entire society engages in mass evil, outer chaos reflects inner turmoil.
• When this happens, innocent victims are caught in the storm, not because they have some hidden karma but because the storm is so overwhelming that it engulfs everyone.
• Shadow energy is purified through the following steps:
1. the negative feeling comes up (anger, grief, anxiety, hostility, resentment, self-pity, hopelessness)
2. you ask to release it
3. you experience the feeling and follow where it wants to go.
4. the feeling leaves through breath, sound, or bodily sensations.
5. you have a sense of release afterward, coupled with an understanding of what the feeling meant.

• “shadow meditation”…begins the process of asking it to release.

Secret #9: You Live in Multidimensions

• The Invisible Domains:
1. Pure being
   Now I will catch myself rejecting inner peace and find time for it.
2. Conditioned bliss
   Now I will catch myself rejecting joyful appreciation and make time for it.
3. Love
   Now I will catch myself rejecting these opportunities to make love important in my life and make time for it.
4. Knowingness
   Now I will catch myself rejecting traditional wisdom and make time for it.
5. myth and archetypes
   Now I will catch myself rejecting the notion that a higher inspiration is necessary to find time for it
6. Intuition
   Now I will catch myself rejecting my first hunches and start trusting them.
7. Imagination
   Now I will catch myself rejecting my imagination and find ways to express it.
8. Reason
   Now I will catch myself being unreasonable and will stop to consider every point of view.
9. Emotion
   Now I will catch myself rejecting my real feelings and find a way to express them.
10. Physical body
    Now I will catch myself giving up on the physical side of my life and make time for it.
• So the real question is what domain you wish to live in. To me, the ideal life is lived on all levels of consciousness.

Secret #10: Death Makes Life Possible

• When you see yourself as part of eternity, however, this fearful snatching of crumbs form the table vanishes, and in its place you receive the abundance of life…
• When you are aware of being yourself without being attached to any particular age, you’ve found the mysterious observer within who doesn’t come and go.
• You are dying at every moment so that you can keep creating yourself.
• …the body leaves the soul…The soul can’t leave because it has nowhere to go…if you aren’t going anywhere when you die, you must be there already.
• You are the field.
• Akasha, or soul space, remains unchanged; it remains unbounded.
• If you are the unbounded field, then death is not at all what we’ve feared.
• The purpose of death is to imagine yourself into a new form with a new location in space and time.
• …you are clinging to an illusion of continuity. Give it up…You will realize that you have been discontinuous all along, constantly changing, constantly dipping into the ocean of possibilities to bring forth anything new.
• Why wait? You can be as alive as you want to be through a process known as surrender.
• Surrender is…
  full attention
  appreciation of life’s richness
  opening yourself to what is in front of you
  nonjudgment
  absence of ego
  humility
  being receptive to all possibilities
  allowing love

Secret #11: The Universe Thinks Through You

• Karma…means “action”…
• Your mind can be.
• The ultimate reality could be Being itself. Being doesn’t act; therefore, it is never touched by karma.
• …if you can identify with a state that has no Vasanas, free will and determination merge; they become mere instructions in the manual of karmic software. In other words, both are tools to be used by Being rather than ends in themselves.
• Can you see yourself as the point around which everything is now revolving?
• …the evolutionary force is called Dharma…
• Being in the Dharma:
  you were ready to move forward
  you were ready to pay attention
  the environment supported you
  you felt more expanded and free
  you saw yourself as in some way a new person
• The single best way to align with Dharma is to assume that it is listening. Give the universe room to respond to you.
• The eleventh secret is about escaping the bondage of cause and effect.
• Today, begin to adopt the following habits:
  talk to the universe
  listen for its reply
  be on intimate terms with nature
  see the life in everything
  carry yourself like a child of the universe

Secret #12: There is No Time But Now

• …the mind’s burdens come from the past.
• To live in the present moment means dropping the suitcase, not carrying it with you.
• The trick to dropping the past is to find out how to live now as if it were forever.
• Tagore is reflecting on what it means to race through your life as if you haven’t time to spare, only to find at the end that you always had eternity.
• The misuse of time:
  Being anxious about the future
  Reliving the past
  Regretting old mistakes
  Reliving yesterday
  Anticipating tomorrow
  Racing against the clock
  Brooding over impermanence
  Resisting change
• The misuse of time is only a symptom for misplaced attention.
• When the present moment becomes filled with a presence that is all-absorbing, completely at peace, and totally satisfying, you are in the now
• Presence is felt whenever awareness is open enough.
• Ecstasy changes everything.
• The secret of ecstasy is that you have to throw it away once you’ve found it. Only by walking away can you experience the present moment again, the place where presence lives.
• Spiritual sobriety: getting serious about being in the present
  - catch yourself not paying attention
  - listen to what you’re really saying
  - watch how you react
  - remove yourself from the details
  - follow the rise and fall of energy
  - question you ego
  - immerse yourself in a spiritual milieu
• Just as there is an ebb and flow in every marriage, your relationship to the universe rises and falls.
• Only the thing you are doing now is real.
• When you find yourself in the present moment, there is nothing to do. The river of time is allowed to flow. You experience the eddies and currents, shallows and depths, in a new context: innocence. The present moment is naturally innocent. The now turns out to be the only experience that doesn’t go anywhere.
• To go along for the ride we need do nothing but remain absolutely still.
• The best use of time is to reconnect to your being. The misuse of time comes down to the opposite: moving away from your being
• If timelessness is part of you being, the wish will come true spontaneously without delay. You have the power to play with time as you would any other part of the world.
• I believe that the universe brings you whatever you need. Certainly that’s true in my life. I’m amazed to find that my every thought brings me some response. If I don’t get what I want, I realize that something inside me is blocking it. I spend time working on my inner awareness far more than struggling with outside forces.
• I will let time unfold for me
• I will keep in mind that there’s always enough time
• I will follow my own rhythm
• I will not misuse time by procrastinating and delay
• I will not fear what time brings in the future
• I will not regret what time brought in the past
• I will stop racing against the clock

Secret #13: You Are Truly Free When You Are Not A Person

• The one fact that turned out to have a deep impact was the day of my death. As soon as I heard it, I felt both a profound sense of peace and a new sobriety that has been subtly changing my priorities ever since.
• The notion of detachment…troubles many people, who equate it with being passive and disinterested. But what’s really implied is the same detachment any creator has once the work is done. Having created an experience and then lived it out, one finds that detachment comes naturally.
• Metanoia…Greek for having a change of heart.
• Metanoia is very close to what we’ve been calling transformation
• True freedom occurs only in nonlocal awareness.

The Source of Happiness is:

• Nonlocal
  when you reframe the question as “What will we get out of this?” or “What will everyone get out of this?” your heart will immediately feel less confined and constricted.
• Detached
  You work toward the outcome you believe is right, yet you remain detached enough to shift when your heart tells you that you should
• Impersonal
  If you can, realize that a cosmic plan is unfolding and appreciate the incredibly woven tapestry for what it is, a design of unparalleled marvel.
• Universal
  “…expand the sense of ‘I’ from your little ego to the cosmic ego.”
• Beyond change
  …happiness, which is always present in awareness without having to precipitate every moment—it shows itself as conditions change.
• Made of essence
  Happiness is not a unique thing. It is one flavor of essence among many.
  “Your job right now isn’t to be happy…Your job is to become real.”
  If instead you devote yourself to a total shift in awareness, happiness arrives as a gift freely bestowed by consciousness

Changing your reality to accommodate the thirteenth secret

• Today, start to act as if your influence extends everywhere.
• To meet the day before it begins means that you are present when it is born. You open yourself to a possibility.
• The meditating monks and the people at prayer want to add their influence of consciousness at that critical moment, like being present for the beginning of a baby’s life.
• Let all this move in and out of awareness as it wants to. Have the intention that you want this tangle of images and words to clear.
• At this point you’ll find that, instead of images, your mind settles into a rhythm of feelings.
• When you meet the day, you add the influence of your awareness in silence.
• Your presence is enough…you are also adding a subtle level of intention by meeting the day…You’ve showed up with open mind and open heart.
• You feel new. This day is going to be unique.
• You feel at peace. This day is going to settle some stressful issue.
• You feel in harmony. This day is going to be free of conflict.
• You feel creative. This day is going to show you something never seen before.
• You feel loving. This day is going to soothe differences and include those who feel left out.
• You feel whole. This day is going to flow seamlessly.
• …precipitate reality onto the earth. You are opening a channel in your own awareness through which renewal, peace, harmony, creativity, love, and wholeness get a chance to be here.

Secret #14: The Meaning of Life Is Everything

• “The meaning of life is everything?”… “Everything” is just another way to embrace the infinite range of possibilities.
• This brings us to a new principle that is crucially important, called “simultaneous interdependent co-arising.” Simultaneous because one thing doesn’t cause another. Interdependent because each aspect is coordinated with every other. Co-arising because every separate part comes from the same source.
• Maybe we are putting on the whole show ourselves.
• Understanding is a skill developed in awareness. It’s what you’ve made out of your potential.
• …it’s not one skill we are talking about but a true quantum leap…
• Understanding changes the whole picture of reality.
• There is no limit to how far your influence can reach but to find that out you must engage life with passion.
• Passion releases all the energy you possess.
• Going into a situation to conquer all obstacles.
• “I mastered what I set out to do. People look up to me and consider me the old pro. I know the ins and outs of this whole thing, and I feel deep satisfaction about that. I rarely have to think anymore about what’s involved. My intuition carries me along. This area of my life is a major passion.”
• Winning doesn’t have to look good.
• Being passionate about something looks good from the inside, which is where it really counts.
• Looking good from the inside isn’t an image. It’s a feeling of satisfaction.
• You won’t be satisfied as long as image is on your mind.
• I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I stay centered and watch how I perform in any situation. Each response shows me a new aspect of myself. I want to understand everything, and from that perspective each experience is like turning a new page in the book of evolution.
• Aim for detachment and expansion beyond this limited self.
• …withdraw from shaming others.
• In reality, all you are doing is immersing yourself in the culture of shame. Step away; you can’t afford to be there any longer.
• Passion replenishes itself.
• Energy is the carrier of awareness; it allows awareness to come out into the world. By devoting more energy to any endeavor you increase the reward of understanding that will come to you.

Secret #15: Everything is Pure Essence

• I exist, I am aware, I create.
• …four conditions that must exist if you want to find reality:
  - Contentment
  This is the quality of restfulness in the mind. Someone who is content exists without doubt and fear.
  - Inquiry
  Layer by layer, you keep inquiring until you reach something that is completely trustworthy, and that thing must be real.
  - Self-awareness
  This quality tells you where to conduct your inquiry—not outside in the material world, but in yourself…For every challenge there are always two solutions—inner and outer. Only by working through every reason to look outward are you left with why you should look inward.
  - Strength
  Because you are looking inward, no one from the outside can help you. This implies a kind of isolation and solitude that only the strong can accept…Your inner strength grows from experience…You grow in resolve and certainty…The journey itself makes you strong.
• Essence is love…the sheer love of being here. By comparison, the emotional kind of love is confined, doubtful, full of fear, and driven by dreams that never get fully realized.
• …the secret of universal happiness…has three parts: freedom from all limitation, complete knowledge of creation, and immortality.
• …live from essence…
• …one piece of advice: “You are the unborn and the undying ‘I am.’ Remember that, and if your mind wanders from this truth, bring it back.
• …sees infinity in every direction.
• …overcome all limitations…As one turns away from the notion of “I” and “the world,” one finds liberation.
• Unity is more like music.
• Music is a glorious pursuit on its own, comparing yourself to no one.
• Look for a moment of contentment every day. …in the cosmic design, you are safe and cared for. Be content not with your lot in life but with being here in the flow of life.
• Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are.
• Every day is filled with the potential for expanding your awareness, and although each new addition may seem tiny, overall the accumulation will be great.
• Never forget that you are not in the world; the world is in you.
• When anything happens to you, take the experience inward. Creation is set up to bring you constant hints and clues about your role as co-creator.
• Be as committed and passionate about spirituality as you can be. Strength is the foundation for passion…

Epilogue: Second Birth

• Awareness has become fully aware of itself. When we reach this stage of freedom, life starts over, which is why enlightenment is rightly called a second birth.
• Who am I? You are the totality of the universe acting through a human nervous system.
• Where did I come from? You came from a source that was never born and will never die.
• Why am I here? To create the world in every moment.

If you are interested in becoming involved in either the Alliance for the New Humanity or The Chopra Foundation activity, please log onto www.chopra.com and visit The Chopra Foundation Web page for more information.  You may also send an email to foundation@chopra.com .