By Deepak Chopra, MD

The human potential movement deals in self-improvement, encouraging people to realize that they are not as limited as they think they are. This approach of overcoming limitations has benefitted many, but from a wider perspective, there should be an “infinite potential” movement. Let’s say that the proposition of infinite potential is viable. How would you prove that it exists?

The proof is much simpler—and far more surprising—than you might suppose. Consider yourself going to the supermarket to buy a dozen organic brown eggs. This everyday task is enough to open the door to infinity. “Dozen” is a mathematical concept. Not only are numbers infinite, but so are the equations that grow out of numbers. From equations grow scientific formulas, and science stands for the human capacity to experiment, measure, and rationally understand the world, which may not be infinite but shows no signs of doing anything but grow.

If you decide you want brown eggs instead of white, you are using your capacity for discerning colors, and the human eye can discriminate something like two million different colors. But far more significant is color itself. It is one of the qualities—sometimes called qualia—that we base our experiences on. Having no math or science background, you can still make your way perfectly well through the world by dint of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. The human capacity for experience through qualia is infinite.

But once you see that the world can be understood starting with counting, which leads to all the quantities in existence, from the number of stars in the universe to all the money in the world, you have a choice to use one model of reality (math, science, reason, logic) or the other (qualia, experience, sensation). Now a great secret enters the picture, because choosing between quantity and quality doesn’t happen on the level of either. You switch perspectives by going beyond quality and quantity. If someone asks you how many eggs you want and what color they should be, you automatically know which worldview the question comes form.

But this “going beyond” runs much deeper. If you “want” eggs but you “don’t want” apples, you have entered the world of desire, which has infinite expressions. If you refuse to accept apples when you asked for eggs, you’ve switched to will power. From will power grows work, diligence, endurance, resistance, and so on. So that gives you two more entirely distinct ways of switching from one perspective to the other. And in all cases, you choose to switch automatically, without even noticing that you are shuffling infinite possibilities around.

Let’s go even deeper. If you say of an intellectual that he is an egghead or compare a fat person’s shape to an apple, you have opened up two more infinities: symbol and language. Recognizing that things are egg-shaped uses the egg as a symbol for a lopsided ovoid. When you speak, you use a specialized set of symbols that includes alphabets, grammar, dictionaries, literature, and all the other aspects of language.

Thus, the wonder of human capacity doesn’t lie in a single infinity but as many as you like, for there is no reason for such creative possibilities to stop. In fact, “creativity” is another kind of infinity, leading to others: the infinite number of novels, poems, music and paintings that await to be created. I’m not expanding these categories to make your mind reel or to sound academic. I want instead to propose that there must be a source for these infinite possibilities. We cannot say that math is the source of how chocolate tastes, because counting a person’s taste buds, olfactory nerves, and sense of touch—all of which enter into the taste of chocolate—never crosses the line into the actual experience of how chocolate tastes.

The only thing that can determine whether you will choose at any given moment to refer to quality, quantity, reason, emotion, creativity, desire, or will power—a choice you make hundreds of times a day—is consciousness. Your capacity is infinite because you can play with consciousness without end. In fact, there is no such thing as the unconscious, because when you do something like shut out an annoying person, you make a conscious choice to be unconscious.

There are underlying processes that go on all the time, such as the regulation of breathing, digestion, and the immune system, that were once thought to be mechanical and therefore unconscious. Now we realize two things: first, the body has its own deeply complex intelligence, and with enough training, a person can consciously control a process like breathing or heart rate to an extraordinary degree.

I hope you get a sense of wonder at the power of consciousness, which is the very foundation of experience and existence. To be is to be conscious. Yet there is a final step. Consciousness cannot be counted, nor can it be described with language or symbols. You can be aware of a qualia like how hot the temperature is or how big your living room is, but the content of awareness isn’t the same as awareness itself. For example, there’s a rare medical condition where the person is deprived of all sensory experience. Unable to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, the person is still aware. Similarly, it is possible to be aware during deep sleep, an attainment associated with enlightenment but which we can label just another example of extended self-awareness.

Since consciousness cannot be defined or described, it has no limits, no beginning or end, no birth or death, no X or Y, no matter what X and Y stand for. Consciousness is simply One and All, for which the ancient Indians coined the Sanskrit word Brahman. Here’s the kicker: Because you are conscious, you too are the One and All. You are not one person among seven billion—that’s just a matter of counting. It doesn’t get at the real you, your essence. The real you is pure, infinite, indescribable, eternal, limitless consciousness.

Putting things this way isn’t an exaggeration; it is the conclusion you must arrive at once you ask for a dozen organic brown eggs and stop a moment to examine what you are actually doing. All roads, so far as being human goes, lead back to our source. Instead of pure consciousness, you could just a rightfully call it the infinity of infinities—and it is you.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential available on iTunes or Spotify.  www.deepakchopra.com

For some people the number six is red and music evokes a range of colours and shapes. Seeing sounds and hearing colours is one type of synesthesia—where the senses are crossed.  Meet an 11-year-old girl who was surprised to find out that not everyone sees colourful auras around people, and who feels that numbers have colours and personalities.

If you love your pet dog, do they love you? This question intrigued Professor of Neuroscience Gregory Berns. He wanted to know what it’s really like to be a dog—if they feel the same emotions and have similar thoughts to us. So he persuaded his own dog to get into an MRI machine for a brain scan. He’s now trained 100 dogs to go into the scanner and they think it’s a fun game.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering,

it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.

What a relief.

Suffering is part of life,

and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. 

Pema Chodron, When Things fall Apart

An idea long restricted to the realm of science fiction could soon be going live within the next five years. The idea? A plan to augment human brains with a technological upgrade that grants “superintelligence” to those who can afford it.

Enter the “brain chip”–a concept that could vastly increase the gap between those considered elite and, well, the rest of us.

Dr. Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist and business professor at Northwestern University, is working alongside some of Silicon Valley’s top names–who actually remain nameless at the moment–to make implantable “smart” chips for your brain a reality.

Speaking to CBS Chicago, Cerf explained that the “brain chips,”  which are largely in the conceptual stage, would “make it so that it has an internet connection, and goes to Wikipedia, and when I think this particular thought, it gives me the answer.”

Continuing, he explains:

“Everyone is spending a lot of time right now trying to find ways to get things into the brain without drilling a hole in your skull… Can you eat something that will actually get to your brain? Can you eat things in parts that will assemble inside your head?”

Cerf also believes that those with boosted smarts (thanks to the brain chip) would have an IQ of roughly 200–about double the average IQ and a 35 percent increase over a genius-level IQ score of 140.

“They can make money by just thinking about the right investments, and we cannot; so they’re going to get richer, they’re going to get healthier, they’re going to live longer,” Cerf explained.

But Cerf is also aware of the risks of the concept. By creating technologically-boosted and vastly more capable minds, one risks exacerbating the already sharp social inequalities that exert themselves along the lines of gender, race and ethnicity, and social class.

Last November, a group of 27 neuroscientists underscored their concern over the disruptive potential of such new technologies in a letter to scientific journal Nature, when they wrote:

“The technology could also exacerbate social inequalities and offer corporations, hackers, governments or anyone else new ways to exploit and manipulate people … And it could profoundly alter some core human characteristics: private mental life, individual agency and an understanding of individuals as entities bound by their bodies.”

While around 40,000 people already have some type of brain chip in their heads, the augmentation primarily serves medical purposes and is only authorized for that purpose.

But what will happen to us when those who can afford it–including those who are truly ignorant and/or malignant–can afford a significant upgrade to their mental capacity?

The post Implantable ‘Brain Chips’ Could Soon Give People Superintelligence appeared first on The Mind Unleashed.

A New Jersey town is looking to crack down on dogs who bark too much with a new proposal that could see pet owners thrown in jail.

That’s right–residents whose dogs impede the “comfort or repose of anyone in the vicinity” in Saddle River, New Jersey, could face steep fines ranging between $100 to $1,000 along with possible sentences of community service or even incarceration for up to 90 days. In each case, the punitive consequences would be left up to the judge.

The Saddle River city council already had a single-sentence law on the books that barred loud dog barking but now hopes to prevent howls, yelps and barks with a far more specific law against canine cacophony.

The proposed ordinance states:

“No person shall own, keep, harbor or permit any dog to annoy neighbors or other persons living within the immediate vicinity of the Borough of Saddle River by loud, frequent or habitual continuous barking, howling or yelping for a period of more than 20 continuous minutes between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. or for a period of more than 15 continuous minutes between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.”

Saddle River municipal officials hope that the new language will help city officials finally enforce the ordinance, which had previously led to an unspecified incident that authorities were unable to clamp down on. The ordinance will also prohibit from trespassing and property damage by dogs.

Saddle River Borough Administrator Jerry Giaimis told NJ.com that the previous law “wasn’t enforceable” due to the lack of time restrictions.

In a separate interview, he told News12 that city residents are fine with the proposed change. Giannis explained:

“I have, since the introduction of this ordinance, not received one phone call from anybody in town… Every now and then when an issue comes before us and we realize we need to change an ordinance and make it better, we do that.”

Nobody likes a nuisance in the neighborhood, be it human or canine, but this new law, which will be up for a public hearing and vote on March 18, seems like a classic case of local government veering into absurd territory in an attempt to assert its authority.

The post New Jersey Town Proposes Jail Time for Owners of Barking Dogs appeared first on The Mind Unleashed.

What makes a human being truly human?

A number of factors play a role: creativity, social connections, bonding, and empathy immediately come to mind.

And according to a new study by a team of Dutch scientists, psilocybin–the active ingredient in psychedelic or “magic” mushrooms–can play a strong role in boosting those benefits well after a user’s trip. In fact, the beneficial effects of psilocybin can last up to seven days after the acute effects of an hours-long mushroom trip wears off.

The study, recently published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, was written by a team of researchers from Maastricht University who recruited 55 members of the Psychedelic Society in the Netherlands. The recruits were split between those who had previously taken psilocybin and those who hadn’t.

After ingesting psychedelic mushrooms in tea form, the participants undertook a series of tests that gauged their empathy, creativity and overall sense of satisfaction with life three times: on the night before they drank the tea, the morning after their trip, and a week later.

Maastricht University PhD candidate and corresponding author of the study Natasha Mason told PsyPost:

“We found that psilocybin, when taken in a naturalistic setting, increased aspects of creativity and empathy the morning after, and 7 days after use. Furthermore, psilocybin also enhanced subjective well-being. Interestingly, changes in well-being correlated with changes in empathy after psilocybin use.”

The research offers further evidence of the therapeutic value of psychedelic mushrooms in the treatment of mental health disorders including clinical depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mason continued:

“The focus of such investigations has been on psychedelics capacity to reduce symptoms of these disorders, thereby improving mood and well-being. However, of equal importance are the higher-order cognitive processes that may be enhanced, or that may play a role in symptom alleviation of the disorders.”

“Examples of processes that have been found to be decreased in these pathologies include creative, flexible thinking and empathy. Specifically, individuals are characterized by repetitive and rigid patterns of negative and compulsive thoughts, as well as reduced empathic abilities. Thus we wanted to assess whether psilocybin enhanced these processes, and if so, how long effects lasted,”

“Furthermore, we wanted to see whether enhancement in creativity and/or empathy correlated with participants ratings of subjective well-being. This would give further insight into the potential underlying cognitive mechanisms of symptom alleviation that has recently been reported by clinical studies.”

The test also resulted in a marked improvement in users’ ability to devise solutions to given problems and to veer away from negative mental patterns, opening the potential for those suffering from disorders to break from traumatic or otherwise destructive cycles of thought and to “generate new and effective cognitive, emotional, and behavioral strategies,” the researcher said.

The study adds to a growing body of research that lays out the benefits of the psychedelic fungus. A separate study recently showed how a microdose of psilocybin–far from the level needed for a full-blown trip–could increase the creativity of participants.

It also comes as local governments, including the States of Oregon and Denver, consider bills that would lift the prohibition of psychedelic mushrooms, allowing for their legal cultivation and sale. Advocates note that psilocybin has shown great promise in psychotherapeutic settings, shattering the decades-old stereotype of magic mushrooms as some intoxicating and hallucination-inducing party drug that their drives users insane.

The post ‘Magic’ Mushrooms Can Boost Creativity and Empathy Seven Days After Use appeared first on The Mind Unleashed.

Critical comments by others are impossible to avoid.  How we deal with them, however, is entirely up to us. Keys to Processing Critical Comments By Karen Ulvestad     Words carry power and affect our day-to-day life. The challenge lies in acknowledging the words without internalizing them. Often, harsh and critical comments and words are behavior related as observed by another person. It’s our job to know the difference and grow from the experience. It’s easy to internalize critical comments made by other people and think it’s about our personality. There is a difference between behavior and the self. The self is our true essence. All the lessons from the behavior we have experienced in our lives, and other people’s issues we hang onto. The truth is that it is a challenge to recognize the difference between a behavior related issue or “self” issues when we don’t know any difference between the two. The more self-aware we become, the easier this is to see in an interaction with another person. Several steps can be used to differentiate between behavior issues and self.   Processing Critical Comments Key #1 – Knowing Self Knowing one’s self is the best way to change the effects of critical or harsh words. It’s the process of knowing our true essence is not what other people see. They see us through their filters and biases. The words are a reflection of what they feel about themselves, not us. When we know our self, we tap into the Universal Life force energies and know that we are part of everything. Our view changes, hence we change our “reaction” to the words of others. We see others as their entities, it becomes easier to look at their words, and we internalize less of the negativity.   Processing Critical…

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What does it take to haul yourself off the sofa and become motivated on a workout regime? In all areas of life, to be well inspired we will need to feel autonomous and find our own inner rewards. We hear from a renowned motivational psychologist and a fitness expert about what functions.