Chopra's Stunning passage

Those followers of the spiritual may be familiar with Deepak Chopra, another respected voice within the realm. His books are widely read and he is known as an authoritative voice within the community.

I have read his book The Book of Secrets, a former NY times bestseller. The book is good and touches on a lot of common themes, but there is one passage that I found particularly stunning, so much so I questioned whether it was true. I often wonder if such questioning is a defense mechanism, part of a cultural bias, or just an unwillingness to accept that which is radically different. It is probably a combination of all those things. Either way, it had an effect on me.

Anyway, the passage is in Secret #13, which is toward the end of the book. Chopra, who is originally from India, starts the chapter by conveying an episode where he listened to a traditional priest reading Jyotish, or Indian astrology, foretelling his future from a piece of bark with inscriptions on it. Chopra conveys his own severe skepticism at the nature of the proceedings, but agrees to sit through it due to the fact a friend had begged him to come. Chopra states in the chapter that he has avoided all brushes with this Jyotish because he considered himself a child of modern India that rejected such archaic traditional belief systems.

However, unlike traditional western astrological "chart" drawing and future telling, the point of this Jyotish priest was to foretell Chopra's present, past and future from ancient strips of bark, known as Nadi, that had been created many generations before anyone in the room had been born. Keep in mind, that Chopra had never met the priest before in his life, and did not understand his native tounge of Tamil, which is a completely different language than what he spoke.

Upon interpretation of the Nadi, he accurately gave information about Chopra's birthdate, his parents name, his wife's name and his children's name. The priest even managed to correctly read that Chopra's mothers' name had been changed earlier in her life, a fact that Chopra did not even know, but confirmed later upon speaking with his mother. Keep in mind that these Nadi's already exist, they are not created, and must be located as they can be scattered all over the country and may have been created over a thousand years ago. Furthermore, Nadi's do not exist for everyone, but ONLY for the people who will eventually show up for a reading at some point in time. They may also discuss past lives and future dates such as illness or death.

While one can debate endlessly as to the meaning of this, Chopra states that knowing the day and hour of his death had radically altered his outlook (fortunately, the date was far in the future) and the idea that someone centuries ago knew more about him than he knew of himself. He also floats the term 'nonlocal cognition' to describe such knowledge.

Take from it what you will, but I will be addressing this concept of nonlocal cognition and other ideas similar that have some limited basis in recent scientific discovery. For now, I hope you are all well. I have also included a link to Deepak Chopra's website for anyone who may wish to explore his work in more detail.

Deepak Chopra