The author of the current bestseller Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
(Harmony;1993), Chopra is creating a stir on the talk-show circuit. Who
wouldn't, with statements such as "Human aging is changeable...it can
even reverse itself" and "Everything that happens to you is a result of
how you see yourself"? Yet how much of this have we heard before, in the
familiar form of " you're only as old as you feel"? Can aging actually be
reversed, or is it merely the rate of its progression that is
slowed?
JAMES MAURO FOR PSYCHOLOGY TODAY What you're saying seems to be
pretty important/radical. What do you mean, for instance, when you say,
"Aging is nothing but a set of misguided transformations"?
DC: What I'm saying is that aging can be influenced in the reverse
direction--through exercise, through meditation, through the removal of
toxins from the body. People say aging is non-reversible, but we have no
criteria for what is normal aging. Some people are burned-out at 25 and
have the body of a 50-year-old; while others in their 60s seem more like
40. And there is a big difference between chronological and psychological
age.
PT: Aren't you really talking about a redefinition of aging?
Getting people to think differently about growing older?
DC: Yes, you are right. I think ultimately the solution to the
so-called problems of aging are spiritual solutions. My book is about
shifting your internal reference point--the way you think about yourself
and how you see yourself--to the spirit instead of the ego. By the ego I
mean your self-image, your social mask, the different physical identities
you use to describe yourself.
For instance I have an image of myself as a child, an adolescent,
an M.D., a husband and a father and a teacher. And of course that
external image keeps changing. But what does not change is a constant
sense of presence. The sense that I exist. The feeling of who I am in
spirit has always been the unchanging constant absolute against all those
other fields of change. In the sense that someone at 80 feels essentially
he is the same person he was at 20.
PT: So by focusing on what doesn't change, you in a sense don't
age?
DC: Right, because you are refocusing your attention on the
timeless factor in every time-bound experience, which is the experiencer.
That eternal presence, the constant sense that I am.
You can also refocus your attention by avoiding the need to
constantly label your experiences or define them or judge them. When you
shed that burden, then you actually go into the reality of
timelessness.
PT: What about illness? You state in your book that we're made
victims of sickness and aging by "gaps in our selfknowledge." Does that
mean it is our fault if we get cancer?
DC: You know, we are all participants in the whole process of
illness. There are two levels of responsibility: one is individual, the
other is shared, If I smoke cigarettes then I am to a great extent
responsible for the carcinoma that is statistically more likely to occur.
But what about the innocent 12-year-old with leukemia? That is where is
the level of the collective responsibility comes in.
PT: But what if, for example, we inherit a bad gene?
DC: We have the ability to change the morbidity of future
generations--because what is genetic information other than the sum total
of the metabolism of the experience of our ancestors? Every stress that I
inherit is genetically there because it is an end-product of how my
ancestors metabolized their own experience. And if we gain self-knowledge
and change our behavior now we can affect future generations. If we don't
then we share the responsibility for it.
PT: What about death?
DC: Again, if your internal reference point is eternity, then you
transcend the fear of death by seeing your life all of its events against
a backdrop of awe and sacredness.
PT: What role does religion play in that?
DC: Religion has had more devastating effects on civilization than
anything else--more wars, more people have been killed. I personally
think if you could remove religion from the face of the Earth, we would
all be much happier people and really become spiritual in the true
sense-- where irrespective of the color of your skin and where you come
from or which God you worship, I feel that I am connected to you, that I
feel compassion and love for you. Religion may have said those things,
but it never practiced those things, ever.
PT: What are some of the implications of reversing or slowing down
the aging process?
DC: What I hope is that we will have a different perception of what
it means to age. But we would also have a different perception of the
elderly. We will begin to honor them, respect them and venerate them and
love them and nourish them as we have never done before, because they
will be, when this science reaches its ultimate expression, the
caretakers of society. They will have the exquisite combination of wisdom
and psychological youth.
PT: But if people begin to stay, in effect, younger and live
longer--can it have a negative effect on society?
