A spiritual perspective on the tsunami

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Deepak Chopra interview on Larry King Live regarding God and the Tsunami
1/7/05

KING: Deepak Chopra, how can you have faith when you see something like this?

DEEKAPK CHOPRA, AUTHOR: Hi, Larry. In fact, your faith increases, Larry.
Because faith is trusting that God is all the forces, the forces of creation, the forces of protection and the forces of destruction. This is an opportunity for us to transcend our religious differences, our ethnic boundaries, and create a new humanity which is based on love, sharing, compassion, giving.

And we are seeing that. The militaries of the world are getting together to bring relief. People are losing their differences in Sri Lanka. The Buddhists and the Hindus and the Muslims are getting together. This is our opportunity.

You know in historical traditions, in religious traditions, God rained on the earth for 40 days. And from that came Noah's Ark and the creation of a new humanity. Can we create a new humanity that is not based on militarism ethnocentrism, racism, bigotry, hatred, and prejudice?

KING: Deepak, if he loves us why does he bring us such pain that could be prevented?

CHOPRA: I think, Larry, one of the problems right now is we keep referring to God as him and his. We have a very sexist, male identity that we've given to God. I agree with Michael Lerner, that our idea of God, our concept of God, our experience of God, changes as we evolve. I think the idea of sin and punishment is very, very primitive. And we have to ask ourselves right now, are we going to choose between sin and compassion? Compassion is the way to go right now.

And you know, there's lots of evidence, even scientific, that the earth is a living organism. The gaia (ph) hypothesis. Is it possible that our consciousness and the turbulence in our consciousness has anything to do with the turbulence in nature? Michael Lerner just referred to that. One of the very interesting things that happened with the tsunami was, no animal died. The elephants. The hares. The rabbits. The birds. They were so tuned in to the forces of nature that they escaped. They ran. Some of the elephants broke their chains and ran to the high level mountainous area where the tidal waves could not reach. We have lost that connection. Is there a way that we can collectively transcend to a level of consciousness where we see that the turbulence in our collective mind, possibly, is inseparable from the turbulence in nature? Because we are part of nature.

KING: Is it hard, Deepak Chopra, to stay up? In other words, is it hard to ground that feeling of good will when you see a tragedy like this?

CHOPRA: No, it in fact helps you ground that feeling of good will, Larry. You have to remember, as again, Rabbi Lerner said something very profound. The actual figure is 40,000 children are dying every day of preventable causes. 23 million people have died since World War I due to war and related violence. Right now there are 35 wars going on in our world. This is an opportunity for us to say, the cataclysmic events in nature are so big, but the inhumanity of man to man is even bigger. And can we learn from this, that at least there are certain things that we can do to make this a better world? What can we do? This is our opportunity to go beyond our religious differences because of what's happening. It brings out the essential goodness of man.

CALLER: The question is, do you have any advice as to the masses, exactly how to keep this a little more balanced?

KING: Good question.

CHOPRA: It's a very good question. You know, the idea here is that if we quiet the turbulence in our collective mind and heal the rift in our collective soul, could that have an effect on nature's mind, if nature has a mind? The gaia hypothesis says nature does have a mind, that the globe is conscious. So a critical mass of people praying or a critical mass of people collectively engaging in meditation could conceivably, even from modern physics point of view, through non-local interactions, actually simmer down the turbulence in nature. And there are precedents for this in all the religions. That when you pray, that you quieten your mind, that you go into deep silence, you change the way nature behaves. That it's not a cause/effect relationship; it's the inseparability of one consciousness that manifests itself in the diversity of creation.

KING: Deepak, do you doubt?

CHOPRA: No, Larry, I don't doubt. But I do feel sorry sometimes that we have allowed God to be hijacked by religious dogma. For example, right now on the show there aren't any women. You know, why is that? Every time we do a show on God, religion, it's always us males representing these different traditions. We need to realize that when we share our suffering, out of that comes compassion. And out of compassion comes love and understanding. And from that comes healing. As long as we stick to "my" version of God, we're going to have problems. I say that right on the show.

(As an aside, Chopra's comment about the absence of women led King to ask the other participants whether he was right and if there was a religious show on television the next night, would they expect to see a woman. The responses led King to suggest a program just on that issue.)