Secret #1: THE MYSTERY OF LIFE IS REAL

THE LIFE YOU KNOW is a thin layer of events covering a deeper reality. In the deeper reality, you are part of every event that is happening now, has ever happened, or ever will happen. In the deeper reality, you know absolutely who you are and what your purpose is. There is no confusion or conflict with any other person on earth. Your purpose in life is to help creation to expand and grow. When you look at yourself, you see only love.

The mystery of life isn't any of these things, however. It's how to bring them to the surface. If someone asked me how to prove that there really is a mystery of life, the simplest proof would be just this enormous separation between deep reality and everyday existence. Ever since you and I were born, we've had a constant stream of clues hinting at another world inside ourselves. Haven't you ever fallen into a moment of wonder? Such moments may come in the presence of beautiful music, or at the sight of natural beauty that sends a shiver up your spine. Or you may have looked out of the corner of your eye at something familiar—morning sunlight, a tree swaying in the wind, the face of someone you love as he or she sleeps—knowing in that moment that life was more than it appears to be.

Countless clues have come your way, only to be overlooked because they didn't form a clear message. I have met an astonishing number of people whose spiritual beginnings were nothing short of amazing: As children, they may have seen a grandmother's soul leave at the moment of her death, witnessed beings of light surrounding on a birthday, traveled beyond their physical bodies, or come home from school to see a beloved family member standing in the hallway, even though the person had just died in a terrible auto accident. (One man told me he was a "bubble boy" for the first ten years of his life, journeying in his bubble high over the city and away to unknown lands.) Millions of people—this is no exaggeration but testimony from public polls—have seen themselves bathed in a pearlescent white light at times. Or they heard a voice they knew came from God. Or they had invisible guardians in childhood, secret friends who protected them while they slept.

Eventually, it became clear to me that more people have had such experiences—truly secret voyages into a reality separated from this one by a flimsy veil of disbelief—than not. Parting the veil means changing your own perception. This is a personal, totally subjective, yet very real shift.

Where would you begin to solve a mystery that is everywhere, yet somehow never forms a whole message? A great sleuth like Sherlock Holmes would start his search from one elementary deduction: Something unknown wants to be known. A mystery that doesn't want to be known will just keep retreating the closer you come to it. The mystery of life doesn't behave that way: Its secrets are revealed immediately if you know where to look. But where is that?

The body's wisdom is a good entry point into the hidden dimensions of life, because although completely invisible, the body's wisdom is undeniably real—a fact that medical researchers began to accept in the mid-1980s. The former view was that the brain's capacity for intelligence was unique. But then signs of intelligence began to be discovered in the immune system, and then in the digestive system. In both these systems, special messenger molecules could be observed circulating through every organ, bringing information to and from the brain, but also functioning on their own. A white cell that can distinguish between invading enemy bacteria and harmless pollen is making an intelligent decision, even though it floats in the bloodstream apart from the brain.

Ten years ago, it would have seemed absurd to speak of intestines being intelligent. The lining of the digestive tract was known to possess thousands of nerve endings, but these were just remote outposts of the nervous system—a way for it to keep in touch with the lowly business of extracting nutrition from food. Now it turns out that the intestines are not so lowly after all. Their scattered nerve cells form a finely tuned system for reacting to outside events—an upsetting remark at work, the threat of danger, a death in the family. The stomach's reactions are just as reliable as the brain's thoughts, and just as intricate. Your colon, your liver, and your stomach cells also think, only not in the brain's verbal language. What people had been calling a "gut reaction" turned out to be a mere hint of the complex intelligence at work in a hundred thousand billion cells.

In a sweeping medical revolution, scientists have stepped into a hidden dimension that no one had ever suspected. Cells have been outthinking us for millions of years. In fact, their wisdom, more ancient than cortical wisdom, could be the best model for the only thing more ancient than they, which is the cosmos. Perhaps the universe has been outthinking us, too. No matter where I look, I sense what cosmic wisdom is trying to accomplish. It is much the same as what I myself want to accomplish—to grow, expand, and create—the main difference being that my body is cooperating with the universe better than I manage to.

Cells have no problem fully participating in the mystery of life. Theirs is a wisdom of total passion and commitment. So let's see if we can link the qualities of bodily wisdom with the hidden dimensions we want to uncover:

1.You have a higher purpose.

2.You are in communion with the whole of life.

3.Your awareness is always open to change. From moment to moment, it senses everything in your environment.

4.You feel acceptance for all others as your equal, without judgment or prejudice.

5.You seize every moment with renewed creativity, not clinging to the old and outworn.

6.Your being is cradled in the rhythms of the universe. You feel safe and nurtured.

7.Your idea of efficiency is to let the flow of life bring you what you need. Force, control, and struggle are not your way.

8.You feel a sense of connection with your source.

9.You are committed to giving as the source of all abundance.

10.You see all change, including birth and death, against the background of immortality. Whatever is unchanging is most real to you.

None of these items are spiritual aspirations; they are facts of daily existence at the level of your cells.

Copyright © 2004 by Deepak Chopra