Fear of aging
Bestselling author and endocrinologist Dr. Deepak Chopra for the past decade has been at the forefront of a holistic healing. He has dramatically influenced many people in traditional medicine and helped bring the enormous benefits of holistic approach to the general public’s attention.
Hailed by Time magazine as one of the 100 icons of the century, and credited as “prophet of alternative medicine,” Chopra is the author of more than 55 books that have been translated into 35 languages and sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Chopra combines ancient mind/body wisdom with current anti-aging research to show that the effects of aging are largely preventable.
Our mind and aging: interview with Dr. Chopra
Questioner: By changing one’s perception of aging, we can change our age. How?
Dr. Chopra: Well, most people think that aging is fatal and scientific data shows that that’s not true. People don’t die of old age, they die of diseases that accompany old age, and they are preventable. The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. People have to change their concepts of aging. When they change that, then their perception of aging will change and it will become clear to them to grow old means to become wiser and to become more creative. Once your perception of the whole phenomenom changes, your reality will change, because reality is nothing other than your perception of it.
Questioner: You have stated that if we could effectively trigger the intention not to age, the body would carry it out automatically. Could you explain that?
Dr. Chopra: If you can wiggle your toes with the mere flicker of an intention, why can’t you reset your biological clock? The reason most people can’t do it is because, first, they never thought of it and secondly, they think that certain things are easier to do than other things. It’s just that we have been indoctrinated into believing that some things are easier, some things are more difficult. Expectations determine outcome, always!
Questioner: You have also said that our bodies are our experiences and belief systemtrans formed into physical expression.
Dr. Chopra: Right, so if you are having the experience of anxiety, your body is making adrenaline and cortisone, if you are having the experience of tranquility, your body starts making valium, if you are having the experience of exhilaration and joy, your body makes interleukins and interferons which are powerful anti-cancer drugs. So, your body is constantly converting your experiences into molecules. The body is a field of ideas and it is a field of interpretations and when you change your experience of your own identity to a spiritual being, the body expresses the physical manifestation of that spiritual reality.
Questioner: Is it so important to live with passion, to have a dream, a reason for living, even if that dream is only for our own joy?
Dr. Chopra: I think that is a very important component, to have passion, to have a dream, to have a purpose in life. And there are three components to that purpose, one is to find out who you really are, the second is to serve other human beings and the third is to express your unique talents, and when you are expressing your unique talents, you lose track of time.
Questioner: Most people think of time as linear and some of us feel that there is only so much of it, and that it is continuously running out. Almost as though our entire life is like an hour glass and the sand is running through, and we don’t know how much sand we have left so we’d better enjoy every single moment.
Dr. Chopra: There is a part of ourselves that is not subject to change, it is the silent witness behind the scenes. That is essentially your spirit, the spirit being an abstract but real force. It is as real as gravity. It is as real as time. It is incomprehensible. It is mysterious but it is powerful and it is eternal. It is without beginning, without ending. It has no dimensionality, it’s spaceless, timeless, dimensionless, eternal, forever. When you can get in touch with that part of yourself, then you will in fact see that present moment existence, even an entire lifetime is nothing other than a flicker in eternity.
What happens with that knowledge, with that experience, is that you begin to experience mortality as quantified immortality, you begin to see time as quantified eternity and when you see it against the backdrop of who you really are, then the anxiety of daily existence disappears. So, one ceases to be troubled by, as well as influenced by, the trivial things of daily existence, the little hassles that create stress in most people. So, it becomes much more joyful and you realize that the present moment is as it should be, there is no other way. It is the culmination of all other moments and it is the center point of eternity. So, you pay attention to what is in every moment. And when you do that, then you realize that the presence of God is everywhere. You have only to consciously embrace it in your attention. And that’s what creates joyfulness. You have to know the reality and the reality is that we are eternal.
Living in the present moment creates the experience of eternity. Every moment in time contains the flavor of eternity, if you could live in that moment, but most people do not live in the moment which is the only time they really have. They either live in the past or the future. If you could live in the moment, you would see the flavor of eternity and when you metabolize the experience of eternity, your body doesn’t age.
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