By Deepak Chopra Expert Content
In the New York Times column covering the results, the headline read, “Paranormal flexibility,” which may reflect common prejudice but is entirely misleading. Spiritual experience is normal. As a catch-all, “paranormal” covers fringe experiences like seeing ghosts and being abducted by aliens. For that reason, skeptics like to lump deeply meaningful religious awakening into the same basket. We would be better off leaving all loaded words out, including the words “religious” and “mystical.”
The other word in the headline, “flexibility,” is the valid and important one. In larger numbers than before, believing Christians report they have absorbed aspects of Eastern and New Age thought. Whenever I hear that narrow dogma and secondhand belief systems are being replaced with more expanded awareness, I feel encouraged. Expanded awareness is the whole story. Without it, not just spiritual experience is closed off; so are the deepest aspects of love and personal insight.
At the moment, such findings seem exotic, but they shouldn’t. Our remote ancestors didn’t speak complex languages (so far as anyone knows), do mathematical calculations or delve into quantum physics, but as soon as modern humans wanted to pursue those areas of inquiry, the brain kept up and adapted to make math, physics and every language in the world possible. The same is true of spiritual experience. If you want to have it and believe that higher consciousness is real, your brain will be able to allow the kinds of advanced spiritual experiences that traditionally belonged only to saints and sages.
I have never thought of saints as another species of human but rather as scouts into an unknown territory. The role of a scout is to show the way to others, not to ride back to camp and prevent anyone else to cross the frontier. Happily, we seem to have reached a spiritual divide. If more people are peering into the field of consciousness (that’s how I’d describe it without using loaded words like “religious” and “mystical”), then the field itself is opening up. As it opens, more and more seekers will venture in. The great thing is that in the future, and hopefully the near future, there will be much less confusion, struggle and resistance about consciousness. No longer stuck in outworn religious assumptions, expanded awareness will become something unheard of in prior generations—it will become normal.
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his current best-seller, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, and The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, which are available now. You can listen to his show on Saturdays every week on SiriusXM Channels 102 and 155.
