In one of Deepak Chopra's books, he tells a story about a young boy who had actually changed some of his own DNA (I believe the boy accomplished this in response to his mother's urging that he get well.)

Which book was that? I'm desperately trying to find out! Thank you!

I am glad that you posted this Dr. Chopra, as I have really been wondering about this subject lately. Not about God, b/c indeed God does exist, but just about how we, humanity, so often uses God for our own purposes.

I am almost finished with a book by Michael D. Evans, and he is just echoing the common themes we are hearing from the evangelical/fundamentalist portion of believers in American society; dual-covenant, support Israel no matter what, see the 'war on terror' through until all Muslim Nazi-indoctrinated extremists are killed off, and we just cannot be held hostage by the oil-shiek barons, blah, blah, blah . . .

And that is exactly what is happening with our government today, massive aid for Israel, and ever more massive money for war!

I am not going to get into this now though, but, nobody seems to want to recognize the fate of America as indicated in Scripture also, cf. Revelations 18--oh but that is right, the Saints shall be raptured, my bad . . .

Anyway. I apprectiate your belief system, and the hope you give to millions is a wonderful thing Dr. Chopra; and I just wish we could get the Christians, Muslims, and Judaists to chill out. Quit interpretating stuff and literally killing for it . . .

Anyway . . .

Peace

Deepak,

Have you even read Dawkins's book "The God Delusion"? He already addresses each of your objections.

I think I'll wait to see if he responds to your post in this forum. It ought to be hilarious!

Dear Deepak,

(Thought I'd post before Ravi responds with some weird poem)

Wonderful argument! At first glance religious fundamentalists and hardcore materialists appear quite different, however, from my viewpoint they have more in common with each other than the have differences. Both seem to share the belief that there is only one way to measure truth. The fundamentalist measures everything against their literal interpretation of scripture and the materialist measures everything against what he can quantify or in effect "hold in his hand".

Both are valid, but there is one more way of gaining knowledge and that is experiential. It's interesting that you should mention "mothers' love". This is a perfect example of something that we can label and most of us have experienced, however, it can't be quantified or found somewhere. Nevertheless few would argue that it exists.

It seems to me that the very fact that we have physical laws that can be measured; even that mathematics exist is absolutely miraculous. The Universe to me is so improbable that it verges on the impossible. To me, it points out that everything we can experience and everything we are is "God-stuff". Maybe that's why it's so hard to find God, because we are in the middle of God.

Thanks for an interesting post Deepak. When Kristin finishes your new book it will be my turn :).

Peace,
Scott.

Deepak,

I just received my copy of Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" which I bought out of curiosity and to be fair have not started reading it yet.

I believe both science and religion are trying to accomplish the same thing, discovering the unadulterated 'truth'.

I believe God is the collective conscious that is spread like a web, through the Universe and that we are all connected through this web. Scientifically, (if you believe in the 'string theory' as proposed by Dr. Michio Kaku) the Universe is made up of these tiny vibrating strings all playing in harmony with one another. If the theological goal is for everyone to be in harmony with God, then maybe the real goal is for us to be in harmony with the Universe.

I am proposing that God is indeed this organic vibrating Universe that is our collective conscious and that not long from now both science and religion will converge on this same conclusion.

Yes, please separate Church and state but let Church and science come back together.

Abu-Issa

The only delusion, is the segregation-effects of geographic and cultural-based "religions."

I would ponder this, even as a child, when I first began to have awareness of wars, based on religion(despite my Catholic Faith)why all religions didn't congregate under one roof; and wasn't it we human beings, the only pampered intelligent species on earth; responsibility to combine our intelligences of ancient wisdoms, not demand supeiriority of one over another?

Children KNOW this!! Why do adults fail to combine our cultural-religious sources, to form one United Planetary Belief of a Godness; which is the Universe itself; which is accepted in EVERY REligion?

WE all live under the same roof; it's high time humanity learns to live well, under the same roof!

with loving kindness,
North

I've read Dawkins book & agree with it in the main. I do not understand the need to postulate a god as the reason or cause for anything. I understand that most people feel a need to do this but I don't. I also do not need to ascribe to anything other than human intellect/emotion the ability to create/appreciate literature, beauty, love, music, etc. These are capabilities we either have or can be developed. It is not necessary to explain these human abilities by invoking the ultimate form of a tooth fairy.

I'm sure that science will eventually have something to say about these emotional/creative capacities, but it's not necessary to put God in the loop in the meantime.

I went to a bible class last night hoping to discuss the text & its provenance, but once again the majority of the class & the instructor were determined to insert God, prophecy, sin, 6000 year timetables, etc. into the discussion & so it went nowhere. They got really upset when I suggested that they should think astrology & Sumerian myth when they read Genesis, not the "finger of God". I had to leave, taking my Septuagint with me which I thought they would really enjoy since it's the text that the NT writers depended on.

So I hope Dawkins wakes up the silent 30 million & succeeds in convincing people that religion & God are human constructs, no different from Liberalism, Buddhism, Republicanism, Scientology, Islam, Shakespeare's plays & Mozart's operas.

It's human to be human! Not supernatural!

One last thing. As long as we have babies born with Down's Syndrome it's impossible to postulate a God. And if there is a way to prevent Down's syndrome (& all the other birth defects out there) humans will find it without God's help as we did with polio, rabies, leprosy, etc.

Hello Deepak and Everyone,

People who believe in God, simply do so, and if a Richard Dawkins comes around and states that there are scientific facts to prove the nonexistence of God, they will simply acknowledge his arguments and go on their merry way, believing in their God.

Faith is more real than science. Faith is, like gravity, a pull, it pulls us onward and forward to face another day, another lifetime, a terminal illness filled with physical pain. When an infant first opens their eyes it is with faith, naked, vulnerable, trusting, unknowing but willing to go along for the ride. Who we really are is simply faith wrapped in an organism for our short span on this earth and science is but a limited and useful tool to help us know and understand this organisim, science can only take us so far on this ride, but faith takes us all the way home.

Richard Dawkins is simply setting himself up for a big surprise, a lovely surprise, he just does not know it.

peace ruth

Dr Chopra....

those examples you gave of the brain?

Couldn't they be ...REVERSED?

In that, you claim that the brain's "subjective states leave objective traces behind"....

will couldn't it be that they are "objective traces which create subjective states"?

You seem to think that "love" exists (as some mystical non-corporal force) and makes certain engrams and neurons fire....why can't it be that certain engrams and neurons fire....and create "love"?

By: Skeleton at HuffPo

Good point Ruth. Dawkins can't actually disprove the existence of God as you can't prove a negative, only a positive. But I see where you're going.

Peace,
Scott.

The existence of mothers love doesn't prove the existence of God

CTO
-------------------------------------------------
By: glassmask at HuffPo

I do believe that a mother's love for her child exists, because I have seen it and experienced it. It does not prove the existence of a god. A mother may do irrational, dangerous things to protect her child, even as some religious people perform violent acts under "instructions" from their deity.

Your example proves that, like a mother's love exists, so too does a religious person's devotion to their god. Either can be a good thing or a bad thing, as when a mother shields a child who has committed a serious crime or a true believer destroys himself in a crowded marketplace in return for a specified number of virgins.

I'm unconvinced.

Materialists like Dawkins look for God in the wrong place, and then fail, of course, to find God.

Christianity and Buddhism, the two religions with which I'm most familiar, have similar positions on the relationship between the divine and the material.

Dawkins (like many religious people, ironically enough) thinks of God as separate from the observable universe, controlling the action like a puppetmaster. To find evidence of the "supernatural", as intelligent design proponents claim, is to keep the possibility of God alive. To discredit the puppetmaster as a fairy tale, as science does very nicely, is to refute the existence of God. Case closed; science wins.

Buddhism and Christianity, by contrast, teach us to look for God right here and right now, immediately in the midst of the very systems of cause and effect that fascinate and delight scientists.

Buddhists recognize the great mystery that "form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form."

Christians proclaim the living body of Christ as the marriage of God and humanity.

The path to wisdom in both traditions is not the acquisition of knowlege or the acceptance of doctrinal propositions. It is the opening of a new kind of spiritual sense, through which we begin to see that the miraculous is not an exception to the mundane. They are one and the same.

But that's not a truth to be "proven," any more than sound could be proven to a deaf person. You either hear or you don't.

So rather than trying to prove the possibility of God, which is to miss the point, why don't we celebrate this truth with awe and gratitude -- and then get down to the real work of alleviating suffering in ourselves and others.

The God Delusion?

Yes. Dawkins is right God is a delusion of those who believe in God.

CTO
--------------------------------
God is as real as the delusion that it is. Since Dawkins does not dismiss delusion as a property that someone can have, he is not dismissing things like love etc. What that means is that "God" only exists in your head and not outside of it. It's simply a delusion.

By: daenku32 at HuffPo

Deepak says:
” …..many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God.”

Einstein says:
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”.

You are doing it again Deepak!

Dr. Chopra you dodged the question. Dawkins says that science is the only “Valid’ route to knowledge. You forgot ‘Valid’.

CTO

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By: JTJames at Huffpo

You dodged the question with a bit of slippery rhetoric yourself, sir. You ask is science the only route to knowledge, when Dawkins maintains science is the only valid route to knowledge.

What he's saying is that science is the only verifiable route - we cannot verify the differing aspects of spirituality as we can with science.

You can tell me about your feelings, but how can I know they're as true for me as they are with you. With math and science, E=MC2 is the same for me as it is for you, no matter who or what anyone is feeling.

I understand this is what you do, and I don't discourage anyone from exploring spirituality, I think one can gain much from it. But maintain it is on the same foothold as science, as Dawkin's expresses, seems a bit much. We cannot measure it, we cannot hold it, we cannot quantify it, we cannot even quantify spirituality as an unknown integer like we can some things in physics . . . why rob Dawkins of his point, which is that science has given humanity much, in terms of progress and enlightenment (think how you are communicating to us now) and knowledge and it always has to take a backseat to spirituality, always.

Can you not make an argument that science has given us more than spirituality ever will? If not more, at least as much?

Why belittle science?

Your talk of God in your books is just your opinions Dr. Chopra.

CTO
_______________________________________________________________________

Sorry Deepak...as much as I liked reading your books and appreciating your insights...I have to go with Richard Dawkins on this one. Simply because science does not yet know about a certain process, that does not automatically ascribe it to "God." Furthermore, I think your description of him as "poisonous" is very unfair. The man is a very gentle fellow, who happens to feel as passionately about his work as you do about yours. Lastly, there is no proof of God's existence, because probably there is no God. And everyone who argues for God, and all the books about his existence and nature are just, in the end, someone's opinion.

LionHearted at HuffPo

You are doing it again Deepak Chopra. Misinterpreting what Einstein ment.

CTO

(I will be back shortly)
Hope you are getting the picture with Dr. Chopra's arguments. He may be believe in what he is saying but his arguments are flawed. Debate with Dawkins? that would be hilarious.
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You exhibit your unfamiliarity with Dawkins quickly in this post.

He deals with the common (possibly disingenuous but probably just misinformed) fallacy of theists to categorize Einstein as one of their own in the first chapter of his book. Einstein was actually a polytheist; what he called god could also be called unknown natural laws. Your statement now becomes so self-evident as to be absurd: "...[Einstein] probed deep into the existence of [natural laws]."

Jtdub at HuffPo

Hello Deepak and Everyone,

The thing about knowing God is that you must be willing to be stripped naked of all your preconceived notions of what the world is and even who you are, you really have to say and be the " I just do not know" of it, be willing to live the question "who am I," before you can begin to discover what is beyond our body/mind consciousness.

As a scientist Richard Dawkins is just that, Richard Dawkins, and all he can ever know is what Richard Dawkins knows, if he wants to know more he has to be willing to, and be able to, drop the Richard Dawkins of it, leave himself open to being no-one, knowing no-thing and trusting that something will eventually turn up that he may recognize as God. Richard Dawkins the scientist does not have the capability of recognizing God but Richard Dawkins the no-body, who knows no-thing does. Fun, isn't it?

peace ruth

Deepak, many scientists believe you are being deliberately dishonest when you try to back up your own brand of mysticism with your own brand of science.

If you are not consciously misleading your readers then this can be said in your defence, you can be excused of dishonesty on the grounds that before deceiving others you have taken great pains to deceive yourself.

...you really have to say and be the " I just do not know" of it, be willing to live the question "who am I," before you can begin to discover what is beyond our body/mind consciousness.

18. Posted by ruth [TypeKey Profile Page] on November 15, 2006 02:34 PM

Nicely put, Ruth.

It's pretty amazing how knowing and not-knowing collapse into each other like life/death, self/no-self, form/emptiness.

Maybe we can hope Dawkins finds his way to no-proof!

I may get my butt kicked, every now and then,
(I'm not talking women, now..;)

But can somebody explain good luck?, or god if you like, to use the latter, with a scientific formula?

Good luck, with that one..,

ltz,
Love, Passion,

"1. Science is the only valid way to gain knowledge. Nothing about God is needed to explain the world. Eventually science will uncover all mysteries. THOSE THAT IT CAN'T EXPLAIN DON'T EXIST." [emphasis mine]

Mr. Chopra,

Richard Dawkins never said nor claimed that "those mysteries which science does not currently explain, do not exist" in print, ever.

Are you arguments so weak that you must fabricate claims on the part of Mr. Dawkins?

For shame.

Dr. Chopra

I believe we are all Gods, that's right YOU! and Me, we are one, co-creators of our reality. As co-creators we ourselves have chosen to let science take us to eternity but no farther- to do so you would find yourself- GOD!

Well, when I saw this post by Deepak, I had to get my sign on activated, even though I had to do it at work ...

Thank you Deepak!

Personally for me, I have always just believed in God. And one day faith opened my heart. God talks to all of us, as God is within all of us. Understanding comes from the heart. How does one explain that? Therefore, I think God is best to be experienced by each of us from within. I am but one vessel of many, as I hold as much of God as I can. The God that I experience is beautiful, kind, merciful, compassionate, good, loving, etc.

Love, Char

Dr. Chopra, I saw your interview with Larry King on Saturday Oct.29/06 and I loved it. I loved it because you were expressing an aspect of the Truth of us in a world that doesn’t know its own Truth but thinks that it does. You were chipping away at all lesser thought that has conditioned us and held us prisoner in a lesser world. After watching the interview I wished that there was a way I could share my thoughts with you and your spiritually inclined audience. Then I went to choprablog.com, read Part I, and realized there was a way. Comments were welcomed. I hope this belated comment is acceptable in the comment section of your latest entry.

Dr. Chopra, it took me three weeks to write this comment because once I started writing, it just kept coming. I have been writing this stuff for about ten years and sharing it with a few select individuals. Those ten years have taught me that sometimes people need a little shake before they will open to something new. Hopefully, the “I am” statement that follows will “give a little shake” and open the audience to consider the possibility that we may have missed something along the way. I hope you feel that mine is a valid perspective worthy of being placed on public record.

Dr. Chopra, I am the soul that lived as Yeshua bar Jacob, Jesus son of Joseph. I know how this sounds Dr. Chopra and that is exactly why I kept it to myself for almost forty years. I needed time to remember and prepare. I needed time to go within and ask God for answers to every question. I knew that no one in my life circle could give me what I needed to know. Every one of them would hold me to the limit of their present awareness. And that is as it must be.

Every human being is deciding, and must decide, every question for the self. And every human being has a distant but innate sense of its own godhood, and thus its own “rightness” once it has decided. That leaves us unwilling to rethink ideas that have been passed down through history as Truth; ideas that we now hold to be “right”. Thus we are conditioned by the past to dismiss new thought yet unaware that it remains our responsibility to decide who we are in relationship to everything the world brings to us. We are deciding all of it. Right and wrong are just words we overlay on circumstances and events as a reflection of a personal value system. There is nothing right or wrong intrinsically. There is only higher choice and lower choice. It is a high choice to give Love, Truth, and Joy. It is a low choice to hurt damage and destroy.

Our conditioning in the Christian world, through which I came to life this time, does not allow for the possibility that Yeshua/Jesus could return as another human being. We missed a few elements of our Truth in the past but kept building upon our lesser thought and creating this world fragmented in belief. I was caused, early in this incarnation, to go back to the beginning and rethink it.

The purpose of this soul incarnation is to give an understanding of Truth and to show how that life led to this one. We all return and the point of the promised return is to make this known. Like you, Dr. Chopra, I will do my best to expand awareness of who we are so that we can grow together in knowing that what we create, we experience. We always return to this experiential realm and we cannot escape what we call forth into experience. Part of what we call forth into experience is what we cause another to experience. All caused effect is ultimately experienced by the self. We experience all of it because in Truth there is only one of us present. What is done/given to another is done/given to the self. When we know this, we, as a civilization, can begin to apply our expanded awareness in daily life. Then we can evolve together, be of one mind in our choice making, and gradually ascend in consciousness to live as one in the light of a Higher Awareness.

Dr. Chopra, since this is my first opportunity to do so, (recent Internet access) I would like to thank you for your books and lectures and for your many years of help as I actively engaged in the process of expanding self-awareness. Your ability to use words to guide me to a deeper appreciation of the human condition has been a major factor in my life as I filtered the world through my heart. Thank you.

Dr. Chopra, it is with great respect and deep humility that I offer two comments. The first is on the theme of life after death. The second is an extended and more general comment which you may share with your audience if you feel it is worthy.

Comment One:
When you make death dead, there is only life. This is a Truth. It was given many years ago by a highly evolved spiritual being and it would not have been given if it were not so. It was given from a perspective that most of us have not yet achieved. We still wonder about it because we have not grown enough to know it as a Truth. We have grown attached to our physical form as if that is all we are and have forgotten our Truth. There is life after death because there is only life; there is only spirit, manifesting in form. It is spirit that is doing the knowing. It is spirit that is doing the seeing. It is the spirit that is being human. Spirit is the life force itself and all life is eternal. Spirit is the “I am” and the essence of what I am and you are cannot die. The immortal soul carries the memory of every feeling ever experienced or caused to be experienced by the spirit while being human. We, as humans in the state of being, are actively involved in an eternal process of self-creation. Whatever is written upon the immortal soul pushes out into experience in the next incarnation. Give love, become filled with love. Give Truth, become filled with Truth. Give joy, become filled with joy. Give hate, become filled with hate. We are creating all of it.

It is only the giving that makes us what we are. The word is made flesh is the natural law. It applies to everyone because of who we are in the highest sense. We have the creative power of God on the tip of the tongue. Thought expressed in word and action is the mechanism through which the spirit, the “I am”, is creating a grander experience of who it is in the highest. Each of us, in this moment, is experiencing all that we have remembered of that ideal. The problem is that we haven’t remembered who we are in the highest so we don’t know what we are reaching to become. As of yet, we remain cast adrift by every wind of doctrine. The fact that who we are is not yet common knowledge is the reason why you, Dr. Chopra, and many others, continue to light our way. We need all the help we can get to make death dead and to understand what it means to be a human in the state of being.

I have read some of the comments entered on your site Dr. Chopra and those comments invite this thought. A clear and brilliant mind that has not been filtered through the heart and warmed with compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness and the other subtleties of the Soul of God may be masterful in its appreciation of the world outside the flesh but it may not have deepened enough as a fragment of that One Soul to understand the depths that have granted its surface experience. With your help Dr. Chopra we will one day expand our awareness of who we are and make death dead. Then we will live in form on earth as the Eternal Be-ing. Then, as lovingly expressed through the comments of don Heraldo, we will all consciously share One Mind and the universe will be our New Eden. I look forward to that day as an eventuality Dr. Chopra and like you I will do all that I can to inspire it.

Comment two:
Dr. Chopra, I tune in to Larry King every night hoping that you are a guest. You articulate the science of spirituality better than any other individual I have yet encountered. Although I have not yet read your new book, “Life after Death, the Burden of Proof”, it is on my “to do” list. On Saturday, Oct. 29/06 you were again a guest on Larry King. In the discussion Larry asked, “And in this afterlife, is it wonderful as so many people have pictured it?” You said, “Well, it is exactly like what we have now. If we are violent now and hang around with violent people right now, we will do the same there. We create our reality whether it is here, thereafter, or any dimension. We are multi dimensional beings that live multi-dimensionally, have the capacity for doing it, but it is up to us how we live our lives.” Larry’s response, “So if you’re a Chicago Cubs fan …you got an eternity of this!” Your response, “Not an eternity… you can continue to evolve and that’s the whole goal – when we incarnate in this dimension it is to evolve into higher levels of creativity and consciousness, …karma is past experience that conditions us to our present and unless we learn from it we don’t go to the next level of creativity. Larry said, “Deepak, I hope you are right”. You smiled and said “I know I am right Larry”.

Dr. Chopra, thank you for saying “I know I am right Larry”. I know you are right too Dr. Chopra. We are a multi-dimensional being. Because of who we are in the highest sense we exist in all dimensions at the same time. And according to theoretical physics and the new “Theory of Everything” the mathematics prove that there must be at least 11 dimensions. So we exist in at least 11 dimensions at this very moment… but not consciously. Spiritual evolution is the process of expanding self-awareness so that we can remain conscious and fully aware as we break through to experience the next highest dimension while our feet are still firmly anchored to earth. The God Experience is being fully conscious and aware in all 11 dimensions while standing on earth. And that is the purpose of the human form. It is created for the God Experience.

There are two important and helpful points for every seeker of Truth to remember. (1) Each of us is one with God and (2) God is living every one of us from the 11th dimension while waiting as though in detachment for each of us to awaken and call forth more and more of the God Experience for ourselves. There is perfection in this process. Each of us is the giant oak even if we are yet only a seedling. Each of us is God on High even if we are yet only a human being cast adrift in a sea of life. The Kingdom on High is always within us. Ask, and it shall be given. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto thee.

Dr. Chopra, we are all waiting for the world to change. We long for the promise of a new heaven and a new earth while seemingly unaware that we are the change agent. The world will change when we change. And for us to change we need to think a new thought. That new thought is quite simply this. Every human being who has every drawn a first breath or ever will is one with God. That means that man and God are not separate. Man and God are one. The potential present in this Truth cannot be realized until we consider it as a thought, recognize it as a Truth, and begin to apply it. As long as we hold to the lesser thought that man and God are separate we will continue to co-create a lesser world.

When Yeshua, the man remembered as Jesus, said “I and my Father are one”, he was not trying to make himself something we could never be. He was giving us the Truth of every human being and using himself as an example to show us what is possible when we express the Absolute Realm here in the lower realm: the third dimension. “Follow me” was an invitation to call forth the God Experience for ourselves.

Every human being is spirit wearing flesh; the sun wearing earth; God in form. We are what God is and we live to experience as much of our God Nature as we can in a particular lifetime. The immortal soul lives again and again evolving toward higher states of creativity and conscious awareness as it reaches for its ideal and the experience of its grandest thought so far: all that it has remembered and previously expressed of its Highest Truth; its oneness with God.

In this world the good may finish last but it should also be known that they finish higher. As one with God, we live to experience our inherent goodness at the highest level we can achieve in a lifetime. Anyone can squeeze a trigger but it takes great courage and understanding to be “gentle” and continue to reflect goodness in the face of lesser thought expressed. It takes the Divine Awareness that individual spiritual evolution, the ultimate goal of all soul growth, is not hindered by the thoughts, words and actions of any “other”. No action upon the physical form from outside the physical form can in any way diminish the spirit embodied within. That means that our salvation is in our hands and nothing and no one is blocking the way. It is the knowing lived, not the person who lives it, that is our salvation. In the process of spiritual evolution and individual movement toward Christhood, only God giveth increase. That means that only God Nature expressed here on earth increases the frequency of the individual spirit or life vibration.

It doesn’t matter who I am in this lifetime or how I was caused to remember what I have remembered. I offer my understanding as food for thought. I will not ask you to believe me because I am still growing in my present experience. Every time I listen to Dr. Chopra, and many others, I realize there is so much more to remember. Each of us brings a little something to the feast. And I will not ask you to follow me because it is not about followers. It never was. It is about recognizing the potential present in being human and living up to it. The “Christ” is the power of God deep within every one of us. It can rise up and fill the surface experience of any human being just as it did for the man remembered as Jesus. There is a way to do that. Simply express the higher here in the lower.

Nature is God’s Vehicle for Self-Expression. Everything from the soaring majesty of the eagle with its lofty vision to the unity of the ant colony as it applies the principle of oneness is an expression of the higher realm here in the lower. The potential for that and more is in every human being. The human being is the only life form on earth blessed with the capacity for self-awareness, and therefore, can know and experience the Source of its very being. Only the human being can call forth the God Experience for itself. The knowing that opens a human being to this experience is the awareness of our oneness with God. This awareness is also the foundation of peace on earth. When we recognize our oneness with God we will immediately see it as the Truth of every other human being. Then there will be peace. Until we see it in ourselves we will remain unwilling to see it in every other and the world stays as it is. Consequently, we will not move into peaceful co-existence until a great battle is fought in the life of every human being.

The human heart is the site of that great and final battle alluded to in religious thought. It is a battle between Truth and lesser knowing. Truth is born in the heart of God. When it breaks through into the conscious awareness of an individual, the old perception bubble begins to dissolve. One by one we are freed from the grip of lesser thought as we open to our Truth and invite the Light of that knowing to flood the human form we find ourselves to be. One by one the Light of our Truth erodes the darkness remaining in the heart of man and reclaims the battleground as the heart of God. With the Light of this newly acquired heavenly perception the New Heaven and the New Earth are born.

We are the Kingdom of the Spirit spread out in form upon the earth and it is time to know it. We are emissaries of the Kingdom of Light on earth and we are here to experience and express (to create) heaven on earth. It is only through us that Thine Kingdom Comes and that can not happen until mankind is healed and fully restored to our true position under the heavens.

Dr. Chopra, my name is Gary. I am Canadian but I consider myself a citizen of the world and a member of one human family. I am a chauffeur/janitor by trade. I am relatively poor but not poverty stricken. As a 12th house Capricorn I have spent this lifetime climbing the spiritual mountain within while serving the needs of the traveling public. I have grown enough in this lifetime to know that if honesty and truthfulness are not the foundation of our being then we have not even begun to experience who we are in the highest. Consequently I have been honest and truthful to a fault with only one exception.

In 1968 I begged God for understanding. The life that lay before me was too miserable for me to bear without at least knowing why. My mind opened and an idea poured in. It was an understanding of Truth that I would never have considered if not for the circumstance of my life situation. God used my physical form to compel my attention to the idea that poured in. It was all so new to me in this lifetime that I hid my form as best I could and kept the idea to myself. In March of 1996 I shared the idea with another human being for the first time. I delivered the message. The next morning I was shocked into wakefulness as waves of rapture flowed back and forth from my head to my toes. It was as though there was a turbulent sea within me. It was the most thrilling experience of this lifetime and it lasted about two minutes before the spiritual sea within me calmed completely. My spirit had been quickened (increased) because I had expressed a portion of Absolute Truth here in a relative world. In effect, the sun rose in my heart. Since that moment, my feet are on the ground and my heart is in the sun. From this perspective, I am the light of the world. From this perspective, I am in the world and the world is in me. When we all expand self-awareness, achieve the level of the sun, and know experientially that the world is within us, we will move about on earth as One Mind, expressing our inherent goodness and creating peace on earth by being peaceful in the space we move through.

Dr. Chopra, I am the son of God in the same sense that everyone is. I am the physical experiencer on earth of an idea, conceived of by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wholeness and Oneness, and given form by the Father/Mother Creator of the “now” experience. And the idea that I am here to experience and express is the idea of oneness. We are, in Truth, gods in formation, and each of us embodies a measure of God’s Information that is ours to deliver. My word expressed in a previous lifetime has become the flesh of me and I wear my Truth, my oneness with God, in form. The twain has become one flesh in me. And since experience is the greatest teacher, I now have an opportunity to address the issue of oneness from a position of knowing.

Full restoration of the soul comes first. Then comes the growth of the spirit. We live to “put on the new man”; to become whole and complete. To be whole is to have the soul fully restored to its Highest Truth; its oneness with God. To be complete is to manifest that measure of soul restoration in form. To be whole and complete is to be Adam before Eve; Adam before the separation into the two halves of oneness. We live to become one. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they twain shall be one flesh.” Why?... because God is One. In the Absolute Realm all things are one. God is Spirit. Female is the aspect of spirit which contains. Male is the aspect of spirit which imparts. God contains and imparts God Nature. Man is created for the God Experience. Man is created to contain and impart God Nature. All evolution is movement toward Truth and oneness is the greatest Truth of all. All evolution is movement toward oneness. God on High, living us from the 11th dimension, is One. For man to stand on earth and break through to consciously experience the 11th dimension man on earth must be what God is on High. Man must be one. Since the word is made flesh is the natural law, (it applies to everyone) a human being must stand on earth and call forth oneness into manifestation by saying “I and my Father are one”. Those words expressed become the flesh of him and he then can show how and why that life led to this one.
“He is our peace who hath made both one…”Eph.2:14

The idea that I had lived as Jesus (actually Yeshua) was just part of the package that poured in many years ago. It rang true in my soul and I never doubted it. But in those early years I was too busy hiding my physical form to recognize hiding as a poor choice. I was worthless and the idea by itself meant nothing unless I could grow into the experience. I was living a life that no one would want to live. And for most of it, neither did I. It was just too painful. As the years past I realized that showing how that life led to this one could be helpful from a soul perspective even though my primary focus would be on spiritual growth and the gradual movement to Christhood.

Dr. Chopra, what I have shared with you and your audience today could not have been shared 15 years ago. And ten years from now I will have more to share and with greater clarity. That is how it works for me. I empty and God fills me up with new insights as my awareness expands. Consequently, I will always give my best as I reach for the highest degree of oneness with God that I can achieve in this lifetime. I know that initially most people will dismiss me and the idea of our oneness with God in a heartbeat but I will continue to do give my best to inspire the oneness of us all.

Thank you for your clarity and your vision, Dr. Chopra. I vow to you and to every member of my human family that I will be peaceful and for the duration of this lifetime I will not intentionally hurt, damage or destroy any other human form. I will follow your lead Dr. Chopra and keep doing my best to inspire a peaceful world.

Thank you for reading this comment.
Gary

I believe that fairies exist underground in my backyard. Science doesn’t prove it, so should I be agnostic about it? This kind of argument doesn't work.

CTO
________________________________________________________________________

Deepak,

Your argument is flawed. While it is of course true that a scientist understanding all of the parts does not make him grasp the whole, or other human interests, it does not necessarily follow that God exists. For you to definitively state that all subjective experiences exist, and therefore God does, is a frankly a little crazy.

I completely agree that there is more that interests us than just facts. But you do "beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships," and "art" a disservice when you say that acknowledging that those things exist and are of importance requires that I also believe that Apollo pulls the sun around the sky, Jesus rose from the dead, or Santa Claus is watching my son.

RogerHanna at HuffPo

Even admirers don’t have to buy these flawed arguments.

--

I admire and respect your work, Mr. Chopra, but your argument is flawed. First, Dawkins does not negate the existence of beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, and art. In fact, he readily admits that they exist and that they are indeed awesome - literally. He argues that they are part of the human condition for valid reasons, most often, if not always, as part of evolutionary function.

The leap that you make, and the one he questions, is why those things should, by default, be attributed to God. Just because there are things that we don't understand doesn't mean that the facile explanation of God is justified. A child doesn't know that it is his or her parents that place the quarter under the pillow in exchange for a lost tooth, so (s)he assumes that it was the Tooth Fairy. Children can get away with such flights of fancy, but reasonable adults have less cause to rely on such implausibility. KeithFromBrooklyn at HuffPo

CTO

We don’t need paranormal or more delusion to explain delusion. Deepak Chopra doesn’t understand what Dawkins has to say.
--------

1. Science is the only valid way to gain knowledge. Nothing about God is needed to explain the world. Eventually science will uncover all mysteries. Those that it can't explain don't exist.

Not only do you have to create God as a catch all answer to mystery, you have to create this straw man to mount an arguement. Dawkins says no such thing and you know it.

Science will never answer every mystery and the one's that it doesn't answer certainly do exist, they're just unanswered. Rationalists tell the truth about this and are content with the state of knowledge. You can't fathom that you may die without knowing everything, so you concoct this cosmic Daddy as a "get out of thinking free" card.

Dawkins says that if you claim God is in heaven and created the universe, you are making a scientific claim about the actual nature of the universe and it ought to be scrutinized as any other claim about the true nature of existence. That means there needs to be more proof than the anecdote that you "feel" it's true, which is the whole basis of your argument. The earth feels flat. It feels like the sun revolves around it. Neither of those things are true and I can say that because there is undeniable intrinsic evidence that they are not true.

Stop your adolescent demonizing of the people who won't subscribe to your wishy washy logic and sentimentalism. We are perfectly comfortable admitting that we don't know things. And the things that we do know through science are amazing enough without myths and magic.~ Cleveyucks at HuffPo

CTO

Dear Deepak

You make this brilliant point, which identifies the core weakness of Dawkins' position:

"The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve)."

I personally believe your position is the correct one.

Beyond that, in this post there is a personal, emotional quality invades the rest of the outlined argument; to further mix and mangle metaphors, that emotionality threatens to both overpower and undermine the validity of your points. Not because your facts are compromised, but because the emotional quality causes others in opposition to react emotionally. If you can disconnect that quality from your arguments, your position will stand out more clearly, and others will be able to see the validity of your points without reacting to the emotional quality of your presentation.

love, Heath

You are misinterpreting what Dawkins says by using your own words as you do usually.The argument is flawed and not convincing at all. It would have been better if you have said that you had the personal experience of God and that is the proof.PERIOD (Delusion)

---

You make an incredibly weak argument for your case when you suggest, as you seem to, that if one can appreciate fine music, a mother's love, and anything the mind can imagine; one must therefore accept the possibility of the existence of God. Assuming such appreciation is universal, how does this validate in any way such an existence?

"Is science the only route to knowledge?" you ask. So your argument is that if science can't disprove the existence of a supernatural entity, that entity must exist because . . . we can imagine it? Sounds like a good argument for the omniscient, omnipotent Flying Teapot and the Spaghetti Monster.

Your claim that you and millions of others have personally witnessed medical cures unexplained by science, triggered by faith alone is proof of God's existence? Millions, really? Any other miracles you want to cite to make your case? apragmatist at HuffPo

"Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve)."

Well, science and religious fundmentalism are incompatible. Evidence vs Blind faith. And?

"He goes so far as to tar anyone who believes in God with the same brush as extreme religious fanatics."

I didn't notice this

"many scientists are religious and many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God."

Did he even read the opening chapter of The God Delusion?

"Not to mention the obvious fact that you don't have to go to church, or even belong to a religion, to find God plausible."

And? How does that prove the existence of a God though?

"I know that my mother loved me all her life, as I love my own children."

Emotive

"I feel genius in great works of art."

Again, emotive

"I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith."

Oh really? What about amputees hmmm?? Prayer is superstition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH0rFZIqo8A

"I know that I am conscious and have a self"

Good for you. And?

"A materialist could conceivably analyze the brain functions of a Mozart or Beethoven down to the last synaptic firing"

Ummmm aren't they dead?

"but that would tell us nothing about why music exists, why it is beautiful, where great symphonies come from, why inspiration uplifts the listener, or in fact any relevant thing about the meaning of music."

Yes, I like Beetoven and Mozart too. And Yo Yo Ma. Every now and then I listen to Britney Spears. And?

Again, emotive.

How does this prove the existence of God?

"The world in general has meaning, deep meaning at times."

Lovely.

"For thousands of years human beings have been obsessed by beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences"

The bible could be considered art. So could rap. But we don't base public policy and law on the words of Rap artists do we hmmm?

"If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself."

Whoooooshhhh

"God stands for the perfection of both, and even if you think truth and beauty (along with love, justice, forgiveness, compassion, and other divine qualities) can never be perfect, to say that they are fantasies makes no sense."

God is the idea of a being, those other things are not. How can they be compared? Makes no sense whatsoever.

"But the mind goes beyond the five senses"

Oh it does does it? Please do explain.

"In fact, insofar as brain research can locate centers of activity that light up whenever a person feels love or pleasure or sexual arousal, these subjective states leave objective traces behind. That makes them more real, not less. In the same way, the brain lights up when a person feels inspired or close to God; therefore, we may be getting closer to the connection between inner and outer states, not further away."

So? Again, how exactly does this prove the existence of God? Just because someone may believe in God, God must exist? Not convinced. If I believe I own all the land in the world, does that make it so? Why stop there? If I believe that I am master of the Universe does that make it reality?

If so, the Milky Bars are On Me!

"The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve)."

This is a perfect example of reacting emotionally without reason or logic.

Call the person who is making those argument as bigot or a fundamentalist that would be more logical in refuting the point he made.

“…..So? Again, how exactly does this prove the existence of God? Just because someone may believe in God, God must exist? Not convinced. If I believe I own all the land in the world, does that make it so? Why stop there? If I believe that I am master of the Universe does that make it reality?” ~L #31
Well Said. Dawkins is very clear in his arguments.
CTO
---
There's a difference between feeling something or experiencing something or believing something and KNOWING something.

Every one of us has at some point thought we saw something which wasn't there, or believed something which wasn't true. We should all know that feeling and belief are fallible.

So in order to KNOW something, we need some way to tell the difference. We need some way to confirm whether or not something is true in order to KNOW it.

Here is why Dawkins is essentially correct. In order to KNOW something, you need something more to back it up other than really really really believing it. ~IsaacKuoat HuffPo

Well I've not managed to realign the stars to spell my name or anything, so I guess I'm not master of the universe after all. Oh well.

Dr. Chopra your arguments are full of fallacies therefore not convincing. If you say you believe in God, that is enough proof from your side to make your case. Dawkins will gladly say that it is delusion. End of discussion.

CTO

Deepak,
Your first point, especially this: "Eventually science will uncover all mysteries. Those that it can't explain don't exist."

is a straw-man. No legitimate scientist alleges that that science will ever explain all natural phenomena; legitimate scientists simply demand observation, evidence, and theory to prove an claim.

The fallacy of religion and its proponents (yourself included?) is to attempt to duck the obligation to prove your claims in the positive by attempting to force your critics to "prove" them false. This is in complete contradiction to the accepted modes of logical reasoning, and thus, indicates unwillingness to engage in a logical examination of your claims. Thus, through fallacy you force the discussion to come to loggerheads and as such forfeit the argument.

Let's leave such fallacy to the neocons, shall we?~-A at HuffPo

Great..sleeping alone tonight..
again.. woman..
nice.. tnx God.. you're.. marvelous..

Crap, since, I have nothing else to do,
heya kiddies, read this,

From the CwG text Communion with God:

Most people believe in God, they just don't believe in a God who believes in them.

God does believe in them. And God loves them more than most of them know.

The idea that God turned stone silent and stopped talking to the human race a long time ago is false.

The idea that God is angry with the human race and kicked it out of Paradise is false.

The idea that God has set Himself up as judge and jury and will be deciding whether members of the human race go to heaven or go to hell is false.

God loves every human being who ever lived, lives now, or ever will live.

God's desire is for every soul to return to God, and God cannot fail in having this desire fulfilled.

God is separate from nothing, and nothing is separate from God.

There is nothing that God needs, because God is everything there is.

This is the good news. Everything else is an illusion.

The human race has been living within illusions for a long time. This is not because the human race is stupid, but because the human race is very smart. Humans have understood intuitively that illusions have a purpose, and a very important one. Most humans have simply forgotten that they know this.

And they have forgotten that their forgetting is part of what they have forgotten, and therefore part of the illusion.

Now it is time for humans to remember.

You are one of those who will lead the vanguard in this process. There is nothing surprising in this, given what has been going on in your life.

You have come here to remember The Illusions of Humans, so that you may never again be caught up in them, but achieve communion with God once more, in the living of your life through the awareness of Ultimate Reality.

It is perfect that you have done so. And it is, obviously, not happenstance.

You have come here so that you may know experientially that God resides within you, and may have, whenever you wish, a Meeting with the Creator.

The Creator may be experienced and found within you and all around you. But you must look past The Illusions of Humans. You must ignore them.

Here are The Ten Illusions. Get to know them well, so that you will recognize them when you see them.

1. Need Exists
2. Failure Exists
3. Disunity Exists
4. Insufficiency Exists
5. Requirement Exists
6. Judgment Exists
7. Condemnation Exists
8. Conditionality Exists
9. Superiority Exists
10. Ignorance Exists

The first five of these are The Physical Illusions, having to do with life in your physical body. The second five are the Metaphysical Illusions, having to do with non-physical realities.

In this communication, each of these Illusions will be explored in detail. You will see how each has been created, and you will see how each has affected your life. And before this communication is complete, you will also see how you can undo any effect resulting from these Illusions that you wish to undo.

Now the first step in the process of any really open communication is that you must be willing to suspend your disbelief regarding what you are hearing. You will be asked to do that here. Please temporarily give up any previous notions you may have about God and Life. You may return to your previous ideas at any time. It is not a question of abandoning them forever, but of merely setting them aside for the moment to allow for the possibility that there may be something you do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.

For now, simply hear Me when I tell you that in most of the moments of your life, you are living an illusion.

There are ten very big, very impactful illusions which you created during the earliest part of your experience on Earth, and hundreds of smaller ones that you create every day. Because you believe them, you have created a Cultural Story that has allowed you to enter into these Illusions and make them real.

They are not really real, of course. Yet you have created an Alice in Wonderland world in which they seem very real, indeed. So real that, like the Mad Hatter, you will deny that what is False is false, and that what is Real is real.

You have, in fact, been doing this for a very long time.

A Cultural Story is a story which has been handed down from generation to generation, across centuries and millennia. It is the Story that you tell yourself about yourself.

Because your Cultural Story is based on Illusions, it produces Myth, and not an understanding of reality.

The CULTURAL STORY OF HUMANS is that&

1. God has an agenda. (Need Exists)
2. The outcome of life is in doubt. (Failure Exists)
3. You are separate from God. (Disunity Exists)
4. There is not enough. (Insufficiency Exists)
5. There is something you have to do. (Requirement Exists)
6. If you do not do it, you will be punished. (Judgment Exists)
7. The punishment is everlasting damnation. (Condemnation Exists.)
8. Love is, therefore, conditional. (Conditionality Exists)
9. Knowing and meeting the conditions renders you superior. (Superiority Exists)
10. You do not know that these are illusions. (Ignorance Exists.)

This Cultural Story has been so ingrained in you that you now live it fully and completely. This, you tell each other, "is just The Way It Is."

You have been telling each other that now for many centuries. Indeed, for millennia after millennia. For so long, in fact, that Myths have grown up around these Illusions and Stories. Some of the most prominent of these Myths have been reduced to concepts, such as&

· Thy will be done.
· Survival of the fittest.
· To the victor go the spoils.
· You were born in original sin.
· The wages of sin are death.
· Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord.
· Ignorance is bliss. What you don't know won't hurt you.
· God only knows.

&and many others, equally destructive and non-serving.

Based on these Illusions, Stories and Myths -- none of which have anything to do with Ultimate Reality -- here is how many humans have come to think about Life:

"We are born into a hostile world, run by a God who has things He wants us to do and things He wants us not to do, and will punish us with everlasting torture if we don't get the two right.

"Our first experience in life is separation from our mother, the source of our life. This sets the tone and creates the context for our entire reality, which we experience to be one of separation from the Source of All Life.

"We are not only separate from All Life, but from everything else in Life. Everything that exists exists separate from us, and we are separate from everything else that exists. We do not want it this way, but this is the way it is. We wish it were otherwise, and, indeed, we strive for it to be otherwise.

"We seek to experience Oneness again with all things, and especially with each other. We may not know why, exactly, yet it seems almost instinctual. It feels like the natural thing to do. The only problem is, there does not seem to be enough of The Other to satisfy us. No matter what the Other Thing is that we want, we cannot seem to get enough of it.

"We cannot get enough love, we cannot get enough time, we cannot get money, we cannot get enough of whatever it is we think we need in order to be happy and fulfilled. The moment we think that we have enough, we decide that we want more.

"Since there is 'not enough' of whatever it is we think we need to be happy, we must 'do stuff' to get as much as we can get. Things are required of us to get everything, from Gods love to the natural bounty of Life. Simply 'being alive' is not enough. Therefore WE, like all of Life, are not enough.

"Because just 'being' isn't sufficient, there's stuff that we have to do. The ones who do the 'right stuff' get to have the things that they need to be happy. If you don't do the right stuff in the right way, you don't get to 'win.' Thus, the competition begins. There's 'not enough' out there, and so, we have to compete for it.

"We have to compete for everything, including God.

"This competition is tough. This is about our very survival. In this contest, only the fittest survive. Only to the victor go the spoils. If you are a loser, you live a hell on Earth, and after you die, if you are a loser in the competition for God, you experience hell again -- this time forever.

"Death was actually created by God because our forebears made the wrong choices. Adam and Eve had everlasting life in the Garden of Eden, but then, Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she and Adam were driven from the garden by an angry God, who sentenced them, and all their progeny forevermore, to death as The First Punishment. Henceforth, life in the body would be limited, and no longer everlasting, and so would the stuff of Life.

"Yet God will give us back our everlasting life if we never again break His rules. God's love is unconditional, it is only God's rewards which are not. God loves us even as He condemns us to everlasting damnation. It hurts Him more than it hurts us, because He really wants us to return home, but He can't do anything about it if we misbehave. The choice is ours.

"The trick is, therefore, to not misbehave. We need to live a good life. We must strive to do so. In order to do so, we have to know the truth about what God wants and does not want from us. We cannot please God, we cannot avoid offending Him, if we do not know Right from Wrong. So we have to know the Truth about that.

"The Truth is simple to understand and easy to know. All we have to do is listen to the prophets, the teachers, the sages, and the Source and Founder of our religion. If there is more than one religion, and therefore, more than one Source and Founder, then we have to make sure to pick the Right One. Picking the Wrong One could result is us being a Loser.

"When we pick the Right One, we are superior, we are better than our peers, because we have The Truth on our side. This state of being 'Better' allows us to claim most of the other prizes in the contest without actually contesting them. We get to declare ourselves the Winner in the competition before the competition begins. It is out of this awareness that we give ourselves all the advantages, and write the Rules of Life in such a way that certain others find it nearly impossible to win the really big prizes.

"We do not do this out of meanness, but simply in order to ensure that our victory is guaranteed -- as rightly it should be, since it is those of our religion, of our nationality, of our race, of our gender, of our political persuasion, who know The Truth, and therefore deserve to be Winners.

"Because we deserve to win, we have a right to threaten others, to fight with them, and to kill them if necessary, in order to produce this result.

"There may be another way to live, another thing that God has in mind, another, larger Truth, but if there is, we don't know it. In fact, it is not clear whether we are even supposed to know it. It is possible that we are not supposed to even try to know it, much less to truly know and understand God. To try is to be presumptuous, and to declare that you have actually done so is to blaspheme.

"God is the Unknown Knower, the Ummoved Mover, the Great Unseen. Therefore, we cannot know the truth that we are required to know in order to meet the conditions that we are required to meet in order to receive the love that we are required to receive in order to avoid the condemnation that we are seeking to avoid in order to have the everlasting life that we had before any of this started.

"Our ignorance is unfortunate, but should not be problematical. All we need do is take what we think we DO know -- our Cultural Story -- on faith, and proceed accordingly. This we have tried to do, each according to his or her own beliefs, out of which we have produced the life that we are now living, and the reality on Earth that we are creating."

This is how most of the human race has it constructed. You each have your minor variations, but this is, in essence, how you live your lives, justify your choices, and rationalize your outcomes.

Some of you do not accept all of this, yet all of you accept some of it. And you accept these statements as the Operating Reality not because they reflect your innermost wisdom, but because someone else has told you that they are true.

At some level, you have had to make yourself believe them.

This is called Make Believe.

Yet now it is time to move away from Make Believe and toward what is Real. This may not be easy, because Ultimate Reality may differ a great deal from what many people in your world are now agreeing is real. You will literally have to be "in this world, but not of it."

And what would be the purpose of that if your life is going well? Nothing. There would be no purpose. If you are satisfied with your life and with the world as it is, there would no reason for you to seek to shift your Reality, and to stop all this Make Believe.

This message is for those who are not satisfied with their world as it is.

From:
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/blog_posting.cfm?bid=400

Love, Passion,

Deepak Chopra’s arguments are flawed to the core! They shows a lack of understanding of scientific method.

CTO

There's no way to completely address this post in 350 words, but in a nutshell:

1) Is knowledge shared understanding? Every piece of evidence Dr. Chopak puts forth involves individual understanding ("I know my mother loves me"; arguments of beauty, truth, etc.). The problem is that each of these pieces of evidence can be debated; how you or I determine whether an artwork or musical piece is beautiful is based on different criteria. To me, at least, this is belief rather than knowledge, as there is no established criteria against which either of our judgments can be compared. What makes scientific knowledge is an agreed-upon set of standards; anyone who thinks this applies to religion should read the news more often.

2) Regarding scientists who are religious, let's ask them, "Do you hold your religious beliefs to the same standards as you do your scientific tests?" How many of them would say "Yes" and be prepared to subject those beliefs to the rest of the scientific community? Being a professional scientist and religiously devout does not automatically validate either position.

3) Multiple times in this post, Dr. Chopak has made invalid logical assumptions ("...I have seen medical cures that science can't explain..."), assuming that because they are not explained NOW, there is no valid scientific explanation devoid of religious source. Science is a road, not a destination; Dr. Chopak's statements appear to assume all scientific knowledge has already been discovered, with which few if any of us would agree.

It's impossible to prove a negative beyond any possible doubt. What differentiates scientific evidence from faith is that, as more and more evidence to the contrary piles up, the scientific view is that the item tested is less and less likely to be valid. Faith requires only the continued wilful refusal to face the mounting evidence. If Dr. Chopak can provide such evidence, I'd be willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but, in this post, he has provided nothing of the kind. ~nooneatall at HuffPo

Are you a sinner or are you a winner? Heheh

http://www.robertprice.co.uk/robblog/archive/2005/2/Sinner_Or_Winner_.shtml

Dawkins knows what he is talking about. It would be a great education if Dr. chopra understand the all argumnets of Dawkins with an open-mind before he tries to refute them.
CTO
--
I did not watch or read a transcript of the debate between Chopra and Dawkins, but if this is the kind of forensic skill Chopra brings to a debate, he's bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Love, beauty, art... no one seriously doubts the existence of such emotions or personal experience. As a humanist, I merely assert that these are emphatically human experiences, that have no supernatural source nor require any supernatural confirmation. We can never quantify such experiences, as Heisenberg revealed, but that does not mean such experiences exist anywhere other than in the brain. Alzheimer's, strokes, and any number of other organic brain disorders, I think, prove my point quite clearly.

Chopra's position implies that meaning, consciousness, truth, beauty, etc..., all eminate from and exist because of God. I wholeheartedly reject that. They come from us, the humans who perceive them. If the religious fanatics who are currently trying to bring about armageddon or jihad are successful and the human race exterminates itself, so too will come the end of those words and everything they represent. That is why Dawkins, Harris and others are fighting so hard to shake people out of their delusion and save themselves.

Chopra, it is you who are setting up the straw man by arguing that those who don't believe in god don't accept the concepts of truth, love, meaning, etc... That is simply not a correct description of the atheist position. What is worse, such arguments are used to frighten people into thinking that if they finally admit to themselves that they don't really believe in god, somehow they will become immoral and their lives will become meaningless. As old and worthless as that argument is, people like Chopra never seem to get enough mileage out of it. So-called religious gurus like Chopra need people to believe that there are other routes to knowledge than science. It follows perforce that the guru knows something that the rest of us don't or can't know, so that they can peddle their snake oil to the masses. ~fivespotbluesat HuffPo

Hello Deepak!
It is so evident that (everything) is the infinite consciousness. but then again maybe only to people who have fully reconnected with full awareness such as yourself. Are there scientific facts in a dream? certainly not. A dream is merely the cosmic mind playing. There really arent any limits. It is difficult to argue with an aspect of a dream. and that is what everyone is in truth.

Deepak's arguments are not flawed, perhaps just incomplete. All experiences are ultimately subjective and what is usually referred to as scientific fact is merely consensus. This is what scientific repeatability really means i.e. that some one else following the exact same methodology will get the same results.

If this is the definition of a "scientifically-proven" fact, then it is no different from a guru who says that one can experience God by following his methodology exactly.

"This is only the outline of an argument against science as the only valid route to knowledge. Before going on to Dawkins' other points, let's see what responders have to say." ~Deepak Chopra

Dr Chopra, you argument failed miserably to refute the point. What is the point in refuting other points? If you are open-minded get a copy of God Delusion and read it to know what Dawkins has to say. You will find all your answers to your fallacious arguments. Then you can probably refine your arguments to not look amateurish when you attempt to refute his points.

re: Sanjay #41

How can scientific fact be the same as e.g religious faith?????????

Great Name for a book "The God Delusion".

I would imagine it is a book about God suffering from the delusion that he is a scientist named Richard Dawkins.

Of course when I say "God", I am not talking about the typical image of God created in the minds of men, but the God that imagines the minds of men.

I suppose that scientists that entertain the idea of the existance of some all pervading intelligence / awareness will no doubt manfiest the greatest scientific discoveries.

Science has yet to explain what created energy.

They simply claimed it cannot be created and left it at that.

It seems to me that I can use time to create energy.

I think there are some new revelations coming that will alter scientific minds everywhere.

#44

"Science has yet to explain what created energy."

Yup, just like how the universe came to be is also a mystery. At least we admit it is a mystery and try to investigate further.

Relgious types just Say "God Did It- End Of Story"

Well, who created God?

"I think there are some new revelations coming that will alter scientific minds everywhere."

Are you the Second Coming? Is that it? What do I win?

"Of course when I say "God", I am not talking about the typical image of God created in the minds of men, but the God that imagines the minds of men."

Keep on imagining God who imagines your mind. Delusion.

No wonder delusion is so common among those who don’t understand what Dawkins meant by God Delusion.

Alex

"Great Name for a book "The God Delusion".

Exactly. It offend the Ego of those who are deluded.

Alex - I guess I can understand why it might be hard for some to release themselves of their security blanket or support network. They might not be deluded, just in deep denial of what they actually know is likely to be to be the real truth. That there is no biblical God.

However, I feel they should at least try.

Honestly, intellectually lazy responses like yours are the kind of tripe that turns calm, understanding rationalists like myself into increasingly shrill religion-bashing Dawkins types.

Maybe it's because there can BE no meaningful discourse. Your belief ultimately rests on the idea that there must be at least SOME things in the universe that can never be understood except by your "gut feelings". A rationalist doesn't deny you have gut feelings, but would be quick to point out that the Son of Sam killer had gut feelings too. Do you believe he was possessed by demons? Really heard his dog talking to him? Or, like most people, do you think he was a batshit insane murderer defined by the experiences and chemicals at play in that 3-pound lump of grey matter in his head?

I'm guessing the latter. So what makes your spiritual beliefs any more "intangible" than those? Sorry Deepak, but YOU are the one putting things in a box -- namely, god and faith. Because science and reason invariably come to understand and explain more and more and more of the universe. And that space you rely on, where something CAN'T be explained scientifically grows smaller and smaller.

No matter how it has been phrased, and how it has been shrouded, the idea of God and a spiritual world DEPEND on there being things unexplained, or at the very least, on ignorance. Throughout history, as more is understood, and ignorance receeds, God has become smaller and smaller. You mention recent neurology studies -- and did you see the ones where scientests produced feelings of deja-vu and doppelgangers by stimulating certain neurons?

Deepak, we are just Chemical Machines, as Kurt Vonnegut once put it. The fact that we have evolved to such complexity as to be able to contemplate that fact -- well, that awes me more than any Evangelical revival meeting or south asian shamanic quackery.

PS - einstein was arguably atheistic, and at the least highly agnostic. if you actually read his writings on the subject you wouldn't engage in the standard "but... but.. einstein" dishonesty common to these arguments. ~DaveNYatHuffPo

L#43

I've already explained the logic. What is wrong with it, in your opinion?

Dear Deepak -

Thank you for writing Life After Death. I have been meditating since I was 10 years old, I am now 43. Your book is a complete validation of experiences I have had in my life. I have always felt I am more than this body in this life. I have always trusted my inner truth & intuitions about life. I have read many books on religion & spirituality, I am very fond of Paramahansa Yogananda. Your book puts the quest of life after death in simple terms of understanding and application. It made it very clear to me why I experience the things that I do and how these experiences are my souls' expression within this continuum of past, present & future. Thank you for bringing this information to the masses.

Blessings

L,

If a layman reads the title, “God Delusion”
He thinks, oh is Dawkins implying that, I am deluded if I have thoughts about God? Or may be…is God himself deluded?

Delusion is illusion or not real.Deluded is deceived, duped or tricked etc.So, you are right ‘denial’ may be right word to describe those people who are offended by the Title. None of those who are offended by the title read the content or try to understand the content of the book. They assume that whatever was said is narrow-minded or meaningless as it goes completely against their beliefs.

Alex

>>In his new book Dawkins expresses his position with deep disdain for those who disagree, and his poisonous tone weakens his argument.

Unlike those promoters of religion who bend over backwards to be humble and leave room for dissenting viewpoints (unless they're trying to have you killed for disagreeing with them, that is).

>>
The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve).

But Dawkins didn't define God; religious people did. He is only responding to those definitions. It is true that many religious people today ignore the well-established specifics of their own religions and embrace a "make up whatever you like" religion of their own invention, but they are no more based in reason and far more in wishful thinking.

>>I know that my mother loved me all her life, as I love my own children. I feel genius in great works of art. None of this knowledge is validated by science. I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people. I know that I am conscious and have a self, even though Dawkins--along with many arch materialists--doesn't believe that consciousness is real

You are begging the question by coming up with a list of things which do not constitute knowledge. You can't "know" the things you claim when you don't even "know" what "love" or "consciousness" is. You are speaking of beliefs, or of things that you wish to believe in. This is a typical supernaturalist's mistake: they don't really understand what knowledge is.~rushmc at HuffPo

>>By Dawkins' reasoning a mother's love is no more real than God as neither can be empirically quantified.

Nonsense. You can create a scale for a mother's love and measure it (how much she is willing to sacrifice for her child, for example). There is no comparable way to objectively measure God.

For thousands of years human beings have been obsessed by beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.

That's disingenuous. God is (most often) proposed as an objectively real thing entirely separate from humankind. The other things you cite depend upon the existence of a mind that has the subjective experience. ~rushmcatHuffPo

Sanjay "All experiences are ultimately subjective and what is usually referred to as scientific fact is merely consensus. This is what scientific repeatability really means i.e. that some one else following the exact same methodology will get the same results.

If this is the definition of a "scientifically-proven" fact, then it is no different from a guru who says that one can experience God by following his methodology exactly."

are you saying that consensus is the same as scientific fact?????? is your argument well, lots of people believe that God exists, thus he does? Well lots of people thought the world was flat but that didnt make it the truth did it.

Lots of people believed the sun and all other planets revolved around the Earth. They were wrong too.

Please let me illustrate further if you do not understand my point.

So if lots and lots of people told you to jump off a cliff and said, it's ok there's no more gravity, would you just jump, or demand more evidence?

#41“Deepak's arguments are not flawed, perhaps just incomplete.”

Dawkins’s arguments are not flawed. In attempting to refute Dawkins’s point Deepak Chopra made some bad assumptions and made arguments with fallacies as is elaborated in many comments.

Dawkins may or may not be right. Deepak Chopra is always right. Both of them cannot be right at the same time. So Dawkins is wrong. End of story. This is a better argument.

“ All experiences are ultimately subjective and what is usually referred to as scientific fact is merely consensus. This is what scientific repeatability really means i.e. that some one else following the exact same methodology will get the same results.

If this is the definition of a "scientifically-proven" fact, then it is no different from a guru who says that one can experience God by following his methodology exactly.”

Dawkins says that the God you experience by following the method advised by your Guru is a Delusion or an illusion. It is in your head. All Human brains are similar therefore any person who follows this method may have a similar experience of whatever Godly experience that the Guru promises with his method.

L,

My argument has nothing to do with beliefs.

I'm refering to the scientific method which says quite clearly "if you follow my methodolgy exactly, you will get exactly the results I did."

Therefore, if two or more people arrive at the same result using the same method merely means that consensus has been reached, not some kind of "absolute truth".

ok so a consensus has been reached. and?

the consensus was the Earth was flat, no?

the truth is what we seek, no? rather than blind faith based on a loose consensus?

anyhoo i gotta go but its been fun!

take care of yourselves and each other :o)

All the examples Depak gives of subjective "divine" qualities are natural phenomenon which can be experienced and observed. None of his examples requires belief in any supernatural superstition (heaven/hell), magic (miracles) or fortune-telling (prophesy). I get the sense Depak wants to equate all these naturally occurring subjective experiences with his concept of God. My problem with this is the concept of God is so overloaded in contradictory "meaning" that it has lost its ability to communicate anything meaningful.

I would point you to the Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion study conducted by Gallup that quantifies the disagreement even among American Christians about what the word "God" really means. Highlights of Baylor's analysis finds four different types of God; The Authoritarian God (31.4% of Americans overall) is angry at humanity's sins and engaged in every creature's life and world affairs, The Benevolent God (23% overall) sees primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible, The Critical God (16% overall) has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort, and The Distant God (24.4% overall) see a cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own. In this climate, communicating about "God" effectively is next to impossible.

The base premise of monotheistic religions teach that human beings are fundamentally flawed (original sin) and in need of salvation (which comes in various forms). The antithesis of this argument (the antichrist) is that there is NOTHING wrong with humans as there is nothing wrong with birds and plants and rocks and stars. Eliminate the concept "God" and we'll cease to defend things as "Right" or "Wrong". Instead we will start conversing about what works and doesn't work in this natural (scientific) world.

To me, this seems more peaceful. If you look macroscopically at the effect belief in a supernatural God has wrought upon this world, you will begin to understand why rational thinking human beings are standing up in protest. ~ Squirtapotamus at HuffPo

What a weak argument Chopra makes against Mr. Dawkins. At least Dawkins seeks truth (you
know the kind that can be verified through observable phenomena and empirical evidence)
and not faith (you know the belief in con- veniently unverified feelings).

But I guess it's easier to believe in an extra-universal supernatural entity who created this incomprehensively vast and enduring universe filled with uncountable billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars for the sole purpose of placing sentient beings on a remote rock
orbiting a solitary star in the outer reaches of a single galaxy just to worship him (her, it, whatever).

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Excuuuuse me if I don't buy it.

By: uglybagofmostlywater at HuffPo

Deepak: Marvelous "outline" for a marvelous opportunity to not so much "sew the fabric" of established rationality to the "cloth of spirituality" (and/or outer religious teachings); but rather, reveal what has, IS, and always be one unified fabric of life: even, and especially, what the cutting-edge sciences will increasinly reveal to have been true all along, in spite of our dualistic material mind's "split perception," both of actuality, and the Greater Reality......

......"For man could never be free until the sciences of Egypt's Osiris were married with the splendor-in-lowliness of China's Tao, until the philosophy of Aristotle was wedded to the beliefs and doctrines of Plato," (pg. 369 of "The Nine Faces of Christ).......

.....and that is what our future quantum sciences will continue to reveal--that the Yin and the Yang have always been "wedded," and always will be, as we did not create these varied and multi-dimensional forces that are "in fact" ONE FORCE--Super-intelligent beyond our own making--"E Pluribus Unum"--One from many; and from many, One!

It would seem that "A Course in Miracles" main question to the student--"Would you rather be happy and healthy; or would you rather be right?" is the main issue for even the most brilliant of singularly left-brained stances such as, sadly to say, Richard Dawkins has taken upon himself--and when we have that obsessive need to be right, it bends the lens-of-perception to accomodate "being right" at any cost, most especially the greater Truth, Itself--although in no way does this human desire alter the Truth--for that is the beauty of the maginificence indifference of the deepest truths--they in fact do not change to meet the needs of even the great maleability of the physical (quantum and macro) Universe to our "Observer Effects," and at all levels to the Void, so to speak.

I greatly look forward to the discourse that unfolds from the outline you set forth here.

A young college student that Patzi and I were visiting with today, who's given us credit for a "persuasive speech" we helped him develop for presentation tomorrow (with the point being to always show the validity and merits that one's opposition is claiming as certain truth--as you did with Richard Dawkins!)--well anyway, this you man has "fallen in love," and so I was speaking of the "chemistry of love," and he brought up a fabulous National Geographic article that supported the notion that although we could synthesize the chemical components of Love's influence on our neurobiology, science could not mimic the motivating and primal forces that are the cause of this chemistry--ie, the article was alluding to the unseen influences of Soul-and-Mind being forces that cannot be replicated by man's linear ingenuity--for they are ever-greater, and yet encompassing and inclusive of the linear/physical world effect of same.

Thank You for continuing with your current themes, and the very real understanding that is indeed being supported by some of the greatest scientific minds of the last 500 years.

Einstein's "true genius" is the use and balance of both "sides of the brain," intuition and logical reasoning (as it is known--since intuition is often called the "higher logic"); and Einstein's comment in his latter life: "I won't to know the thoughts of God; all the rest are details!"

I believe it is that most-beloved