The Doctor and the Cosmos, with Dr. Deepak Chopra

In this first half of a two-part Parvati Magazine interview, Dr. Karen Ho asks Dr. Deepak Chopra about medicine, interconnection and the cosmos.

Parvati Magazine: How can your latest book, You Are the Universe, help people to improve their health and well-being?

Dr. Deepak Chopra: By understanding their connection with all that exists they will experience more love, joy, compassion, and equanimity.

PMAG: You are still actively practicing and teaching medicine. How has that experience evolved for you as you now reach a wide audience outside the clinical setting?

DC: As a professor at UCSD Medical School and in collaboration with them we are offering CME credits to health professionals and thus bringing integrative medicine to the mainstream.

PMAG: Your medical background is in endocrinology. Has that choice of specialization influenced your approach to the body and how it relates to the cosmos?

DC: My background in endocrinology definitely helped expand awareness into the connection between what happens in consciousness and how it influences our biology. Since our biology is also an activity of the cosmos any scientific understanding of mind, body, universe as a unified activity in consciousness helps bring the knowledge of wisdom traditions to a more mainstream audience.

PMAG: What is the relationship between personal health and planetary health?

DC: Planetary health is the sum total of the well being of the sentient beings that populate it. It is our responsibility to be healthy personally so we can create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier and happier world.

PMAG: Do you foresee a time where scientific and metaphysical understanding will finally merge?

DC: I think it is happening right now.

Deepak ChopraDeepak Chopra, M.D., founder of the Chopra Foundation and cofounder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He is also the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including 25 New York Times bestsellers. The WorldPost and HuffingtonPost global internet survey ranked Dr. Chopra #17 of the most influential thinkers in the world and #1 in medicine. Visit him at: discoveringyourcosmicself.com