Science of Reality: Union with Yourself

Chopra’s fourth lesson expands on other ways we can start to experience the visible from its source in the invisible; the manifest from its source in the unmanifest, the physical and mental world from its source in awareness.

Remember the quantum vacuum? The quantum vacuum is not something you can experience. It is an emptiness. It is a void. It exists as the potential for information and energy, which ultimately becomes everything physical. As we go beyond the appearance of molecules, we enter the subatomic cloud, and when we go beyond the subatomic cloud we end up with… nothing.

Specifically, this lesson gets into yoga and meditation as methods that help guide us deeper into the source of existence and toward the law of least effort, which is: do less and accomplish more, and ultimately do nothing and accomplish everything, which is what is happening right now.

The word “yoga” has a root in Sanskrit that’s called “yuj.” Usually translated, yuj is union. Another English word that comes to mind when we speak of yoga is the word yoke, to be connected or yoked.

So yoga is union with yourself. There’s an expression in yoga, which is: the self of the individual is the self of the universe.

There is only one source: Everything. And that “everything” is the ground state modifying itself into experience. Your ground state and the ground state of the universe is the same because there is only one source: everything. The self of the individual is the self of the universe.

So, yoga, union with yourself, is the path to enlightenment. Yoga is one method for going deeper into the source, and it offers four paths:

• Raja yoga – includes the eight limbs of yoga and includes physical asana (body postures, seat of awareness) and practices of meditation
• Bhakti yoga – the yoga of devotion/love
• Gyana yoga – enlightenment through the process of reason, particularly through discrimination between what is real and what is not real
• Karma yoga – interpretation of past experiences, the performing of action without attachment to the outcome

These methods help guide us deeper into the source and toward the law of least effort. Do less, and accomplish more. Ultimately, do nothing and accomplish everything.

The eight limbs of Raja usually include: rules of personal conduct and common sense, care for self and relationships, withdrawal of the senses through meditation/awareness in sleep, influencing your biology by changing the patterns of your breathing and being aware of it, practicing the postures of physical yoga while being aware of the part of the body that is being activated to bring healing to that part of the body because awareness restores the connection of that part of the body to the source, focusing awareness to put attention on a particular idea or experience with an intention of how you want to change the experience, settling the mind so the fluctuations of the mind go to the source which is pure consciousness, and transcendence: going beyond subject/object split.

Bhatki yoga is about paying attention to emotional and social intelligence: being in touch with your feelings, being in touch with other people’s feelings, having empathy, having compassion, and experiencing love. Let love be the motivation for doing everything. Love moves you from separation to unity and ultimately to the source, which is oneness.

Gyana yoga is the yoga of the intellect accessed through reflective self-inquiry. Not just the “who am I” questions from the last lessons, but deep reflective self-inquiry. You can go deeper. Ask, “What is the nature of reality?”

Karma yoga means doing what needs to be done with impeccability, with spontaneous creativity and intuition, and disengaged from the outcome. Be in the process, disengaged from the outcome. Be process oriented instead of outcome oriented. If you are engaged in the process, the outcome is guaranteed.

You know, I went to yoga multiple times per week (twice per day depending on the day’s practices) the entire time I was in cancer treatment. But, of the yoga terminology Deepak Chopra uses in this lesson, I only recognized a few words. So few that I didn’t even try to figure out what most of them were or how to spell them in order to write down the yoga words all over this lesson. Instead, when I was taking notes, I focused on what those Sanskrit words meant.

I found almost every sentence of this entire lesson of interest, and I was a bit shocked that—without knowing much of anything about all these different yoga practices and paths to enlightenment—I have actually spent time in study of all of these concepts. I have spent many, many years studying and contemplating and practicing pretty much everything Chopra talks about in this lesson. That’s reassuring to me somehow, like hopefully I am doing the right practices for being an entity of light and love in the world.