In this book you have learned fundamental practices for achieving the spontaneous fulfillment of your desires by harnessing the infinite power of coincidence, or synchronicity. These techniques, particularly the sutras, are drawn from one of the world’s most ancient wisdom traditions, Vedanta. In Sanskrit the word veda means “knowledge.” Vedanta is the culmination, the peak, or the end of all knowledge. In other words, Vedanta is the cream of the Veda.
The core premise of this ancient body of knowledge is that spirit, or consciousness, is the ultimate reality. It is the nonlocal ground of being, which differentiates into objective and subjective reality simultaneously. Subjective reality exists as your thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, imagination, fantasies, memories, and deepest aspirations. Objective reality is your physical body and the world you experience through your senses. Both these realities coexist simultaneously and interdependently. They do not cause each other, yet they are interdependent. They are acausally related to each other. Just as a single cell in the womb differentiates into brain cells, nerve cells, and retinal cells, and through them gives us an experience of the world, so too the single nonlocal spirit becomes both observer and observed, the physical senses and the physical world, the biological organism and its environment, thoughts as well as emotions.
Your inner and outer worlds are both part of a continuum, a single, unified field of activity. The outer world is a mirror of who you are at any particular point in space-time. Many have expressed this idea in various ways. Spiritual teachers tell us if you want to know the state of your personal consciousness, just look around and see what is happening to you. If you want to know the state of the collective consciousness, just look around at what is happening in the world. At any given point in time your personal reality is synchronistically, coincidentally orchestrated by your sense of self.
If your sense of self is constricted, then it expresses itself as a tight and constricted body, a fearful outlook, and an insecure environment. On the other hand, if your sense of self is expanded, it experiences a relaxed body and a friendly, open environment where your intentions synchronistically fulfill themselves. Your expanded self always feels a sense of worth, feels at peace, feels free and unbounded, feels in flow, and feels a sense of awe at the mystery of existence. Sense of self also determines attitude. Greed, arrogance, aggression, and a demanding, disgruntled, and unhappy disposition all arise from a constricted sense of self. Sharing, humility, nurturing, a conciliatory, gracious, and fulfilled disposition all arise from the expanded self.
In the broader sense of self, a critical mass of people in societies, communities, and institutions also determines the attitude of these larger bodies. When a culture has a constricted identity, its emphasis is predominantly on profit-making, ruthless competition, economic imperialism, extreme nationalism, military conflict, violence, and fear. If a critical mass of people were to express their expanded selves, not only would they spontaneously fulfill their personal desires, they would change the very way culture articulates itself. In such a transformed culture the emphasis would be on service rather than on greed, cooperation instead of competition, open hearts instead of only markets. Cultural hallmarks would be nonviolent conflict resolution, compassion, humility, peace, and social and economic justice.
If we look at the world today, we see a tangled hierarchy of interdependently co-arising events. Social scientists claim our collective behavior is creating an unsustainable environment due to depletion of timber, minerals, and fossil fuels, leading to other devastating effects such as the greenhouse effect, changing weather patterns, hurricanes, and rising ocean tides. On the surface these different events don’t seem related, but they are. They are the result of our constricted collective sense of self, and they synchronistically, simultaneously co-arise. Religious conflict, pollution, terrorism, depletion of topsoil, nuclear plants, drug addiction, extinction of species, poverty, crime, drug wars, the gun industry, floods and famine, dangerous chemicals in the food chain, and wars are all acausally related.
If each of us could aspire to express the expanded self, and if we could share the knowledge and experience of our expanded selves with one another, perhaps we could create an environment based on respect for life, and achieve a restoration of balance in the oceans, the forests, and the wilderness. This transformed environment would, in turn, result in the simultaneous co-arising of events that would lead to a completely new world. On this ideal planet we would find peace of mind, a sense of the sacred, economic partnerships and prosperity, efficient and clean energy industries, a scientific understanding of the new reality, a flourishing of the arts and philosophy, and a true awareness of our inseparability. In such a society we would see clearly that love is the ultimate force at the heart of the universe.
Your ability to spontaneously fulfill your desires is directly proportional to your experience of your nonlocal self. Although the wisdom traditions, particularly Vedanta, give us deep insight into the nature of nonlocal reality, only recently have scientists begun to explore this domain of existence. Throughout this book I have emphasized this new, scientific basis for the understanding of synchronicity and the spontaneous fulfillment of desire. The Chopra Foundation is actively involved in collaborative studies with scientists to further explore the scientific basis of nonlocality.
The following is a subjective, selected list of references for further reading on nonlocality. Some of the entries, including certain scientific journals, are quite technical, and may not be easy to understand without a scientific background. Other sources, such as Larry Dossey’s book Healing Words, are very accessible. In either event this list is offered in the hope that you will use it to deepen your understanding of the world where we are all instantly connected, where we are, in fact, inseparably one.