Ray Dalio & Deepak Chopra on Life and Death

[Music] I'm Deepak Chopra, and I trained as an internist, medical doctor, endocrinologist, and neuroendocrinologist. My current journey is exploring consciousness and what we call reality.

If you don't know who Ray Dalio is, then you're probably asleep. He’s the most well-known figure in the financial world, an entrepreneur since the age of 12, and still grooming entrepreneurs not only in the United States, but his influence is global. He’s got these amazingly extraordinary books that I have been reading recently. This is the big one: "Principles" by Ray Dalio.

If you are intimidated by something this big, then this is a good summary of all the principles that have created the legend, the mythology, the story that we call Dalio. So thanks very much for joining me today.

"Oh, thank you for having me. It's a delight because as I read through your principles, I think you're the practical, ideal Western version of some of the deepest insights that come to us from the wisdom traditions of the world, both East and West. Bringing these two paradigms together, East and West, defining success, defining how we achieve our goals is what everybody wants."

My name is Ray Dalio. I come from an entirely different world from Deepak and have admired him from afar, and vice versa, because it’s remarkable that from these different worlds we learn that reality works the same way.

When you hear these descriptions of how reality works and how we should approach it to get the best results possible, I’m really excited about as we explore these common truths and we can share it with other people so that they can realize they're not just within our worlds. You're a contributor to the world, to the universe, to others in that way, and you're wise, so that you bring wisdom to other people.

You have what I would describe as the heart and the mind and the wisdom to be a net contributor to evolution and goodness, and so you're enlightening, as well as radiating qualities that feel good and also contribute to good.

Well, what I admire about you is you're authentic. You are not pretending to be who you're not. You have integrity; you have always displayed to the world that you live up to what you call your principles. You have a higher purpose, and you're real. I think that's the most important thing.

You know, one of the reflections we do in our daily meditation practice is: who am I? What do I want? What's my purpose? And what am I grateful for? So may I ask Ray who you are, what do you want, what's your purpose, and what are you grateful for?

Well, my purpose is to evolve and contribute to evolution, in a nutshell. In other words, I’m part of a greater ecosystem, and I change, and everything changes. The greatest force to me is the force of evolution, and so I'm part of evolution, and I'm evolving and trying to contribute to evolution.

You’ve been an entrepreneur since the age of 12. I was reading a biography, and you made your first investment at the age of 12 and you never looked back.

Well, life is a journey that we each bump into. You know, we start off, we have our nature. You have a nature, I have a nature, and then there's a journey. Things catch our attention, and we try to line our nature up with a path. So I stumbled on markets. I used to caddy and earned some money, and I stumbled on markets. I loved it.

What was your evolution up until 12?

My evolution, being brought up in India, up until 12 was being brought up by a father who was a colonel in the British army, but he was also an MD. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, so he was very Western. My mother was a storyteller. She had little education, didn’t go to college or anything, but she would read stories from, she would actually sing stories to me and my little brother, who later went on to become the dean for education at Harvard Medical School.

I remember even now, when I was five and he was three, sitting on her lap. She would sing stories of superheroes and superheroines from the great mythical traditions of the world. Then she would stop at night, this was before we went to bed. She would stop at what today the entertainment world calls a cliffhanger. Everything was wrong, everything was wrong and chaotic. The bad guys were winning and the good guys were losing, and there was no hope.

She would stop and say, "Now, I want you to dream of the rest of the story. Make it a love story for sure, because no story is good unless it's a love story, and it should have a happy ending." Believe it or not, in the morning, we had the solution to all the crises that were going on.

On the other hand, my father was very, you know, he was a data-driven cardiologist, and so I got exposed to both worlds. So, I’m sure it is for you, like me, when we look at it, this is a story that started an eternity ago that began with genetics and environments, correct?

So as you find yourself born, and then in this environment you have your genetics and your environment, and then that shapes you as part of the story. And then you go on, and we go on, and Destiny kind of brings us to where we are, and that is the process of our evolution.

When we look at it, we go above it and we look down on it. Our conversations do that.

Yes, it’s a unique way of looking at it, but it’s really an accurate way of looking at it. When I think of both of us, we come from radically different worlds, radically different backgrounds, and yet we see almost everything identically, almost everything identically. That means we see how the world works and how the best ways of interacting with it are, by and large.

That’s what’s interesting about this, don’t you think?

It’s very interesting because two completely different stories and yet an intersection with those stories. A person is nothing other than a story. To be human is to have a story, and yet our stories interact, and we discover the same principles.

But that’s because they’re right. I mean, as you go above it—

I meditate.

Correct, and you meditate. I know that. As we both meditate, I think it helps us to some extent ascend and look at everything and down on it, and there it is. How does it work? How should one interact with it?

Yeah, that witnessing that comes with the ability to meditate and reflect. And that brings me to your book, where essentially you guide us on how this journal works, and the principle is to think for yourself, to decide what you want, what is true, and what you should do to achieve one in light of number two.

Then you go on with your first principle, which I really loved, and that is your first reflection here: that pain plus reflection is progress. So as I was reading your bio, I realized that you became very successful very quickly. Then you testified before the U.S. Congress that there was going to be a depression. You were wrong. You lost all your money, you had to borrow $44,000 from your parents, and that’s an example.

That was one of the best things that ever happened to me: pain, plus failure and reflection. So you had this huge failure after being wildly successful very early on in your life. You had to borrow $4,000 from your parents, and you started to reflect on this and you came up with this very interesting principle which we just mentioned: that pain plus reflection is equal to progress.

So, there is no such thing as failure. Failure is an opportunity for evolution, as you’ve been saying, and that mindset helped you create Bridgewater, right?

Yeah, I think it’s a journey for everybody, right? You start off and you encounter reality. And if everything goes well, then I suppose you don't need to learn much. But that's not the way it goes. It's boring, actually. It's almost like a pendulum swinging only one way.

Yeah, it would be boring. And it also isn't just the way it is.

Yeah, and so you encounter life. It’s almost like a video game, you know, except with real pain and real pleasure. So you encounter it, and then reflect on how does reality work and how should I interact with it?

I think one of the big problems about a lot of people is they form an expectation of how reality should be, and they get upset if it's not that way, which is so silly because reality is reality.

And so that process of struggling and falling and learning is just the way it is, right? Life is like that.

You know, I remember in the early days when I learned meditation, and you, I know, have practiced mantra meditation. I first met the man, the guru, who brought TM to the world. We were at a conference at Harvard with medical doctors, etc., and they all kept saying, “You know how to manage stress.”

Then what happened, very interestingly, is that after everybody left, he called me and whispered in my ear, "What is this thing that they're calling stress?"

And I said, "It's a perception of threat," which is our definition and sense, and he kind of looked up and he said something that you would relate to. He said, "Oh, you mean it's resistance to existence."

What a good quote!

There you are. So when you resist existence, then you're not being real. That's what he said. To be real is to go with existence. And existence and experience of existence, by contrast, you can't have an up without a down. You can't have a hot without a cold. You can't have pain without pleasure. You wouldn't know what it is.

So when you say that reality is what we confront, most people don't confront reality, and that's why they're stressed.

Yeah, very well put.

Yeah, I think it's all part of that evolutionary process. Expectations. Yes, the world doesn’t meet up to your expectations; you think that’s a problem.

Yeah, so as looking at your first reflection here: pain plus reflection equals progress, and that we have to confront reality in order to achieve our goals. I've always thought of success as the progressive realization of worthy goals, but also as the ability to love, to have compassion, but also always to be in touch with our own creative center.

And as I was looking again at your book, mentioning the F-STAP process for what it takes to get what you want out of life, looking at this diagram, which is very, very telling. Goals, and then you go from goals to problems, to diagnosis, to design, and then action, doing. That’s been your modus operandi. It’s obviously worked for you very much.

Well, first of all, I think that there’s no one path to success in life. I think there are common things, meaningful work, meaningful relationships, I think, which are obtained in certain ways. But what we each want is an extension of our nature as we pursue that.

And so we can't say that anything is the right thing, but as we look at reality, we can say that we have to accept reality, and then it's a fact that the world is a happier place and we are happier people if we love each other and if we're good to each other.

A win-win relationship is the best thing. I use the word love. I think different people mean different things by love, so I'm almost afraid to use it. But it's the notion that if your well-being is something that's important to me, and the well-being of us together is something that's important to us, and we contribute to that, we will get back more than we gave because we each can help each other in different ways.

Not only will we have a better functional existence getting whatever we want out of life in that path, but we will also have the joy of that. You know, it feels good to like each other; it feels good to be kind of in that environment.

I think that's a timeless and universal truth. You know, if you look at happiness studies, have shown there's no correlation in happiness related to money past a certain basic level.

The highest correlation with happiness is a sense of community, correct?

And so that’s a universal truth. We share that kind of view just out of observations of how it works, right?

Yeah, I was reading up. I mean, everybody has, of course, their version of truth, but you used the very nice expression universal truth. I think universal truth is that which never changes. Otherwise, our personal perspectives keep changing as we evolve, getting closer to universal truth.

But the fact that we're social beings in the matrix of relationships is a universal truth. There are timeless and universal truths.

Correct, and for example, I asked ChatGPT what would be the common religion. In other words, what is in common if I have Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and it tells the universal truths—in a sense, the universal beliefs—and those are not like ‘be good’ and so on; they’re very practical beliefs that some people believe are just kind of this flim-flam, theoretical flower-child thing rather than actual practicalities in terms of having a better life, correct?

So then you put down these what you were reflecting on, universal truths here in principles. There’s a lovely guide also. And what I realized is that you first put them on your website and the Bridgewater website and then slowly turned into a book.

Now, first of all, the principles were downloaded more than 3 million times, and in 2017 they were published as a book “Principles: Life and Work.”

But that's no different than you. Okay, then what's interesting is that they're the same truths we hope there are universal truths.

Well, as we look at it, yes, and I look and I look at your laws, okay? The law of pure potentiality, the law of giving, the law of karma, the law of least effort, the law of intention and desire, the law of detachment, the law of Dharma, meaning purpose.

And I go through those. They’re the same, and I just want to again have us and our audiences understand that those are practical. And so they're the same. When we talk about any of them, you could pick any of them.

We just talked about, for example, you can call it karma, or you can call it "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or you can call it by any other name, but it works better, almost whatever your goal is. It works better than selfishness, and it makes a better whole, and it’s more joyous. It just works better.

Yeah, you know, when I was writing that book as a practicing physician, I was looking at our biology as a model.

So we all start out as one cell, one fertilized egg, call it what you will, a stem cell, potential cell, but all it does is multiply 50 times, 50 times, only to produce the 60 trillion cells in your body, which are more than all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Now, you know, when I look at a body, I look at your eyes and your nose and your heart and your brain and your fingernails. They all seem very different, but they came from that one cell. Amazing!

So that one cell had almost infinite potential. In our case, it turned into a human being, but it could be a pluripotential cell for creating a monkey, or a primate, or a butterfly, or a snake.

So at the deepest level, we are that one, whatever mysterious entity—call it God, Spirit, Divine intelligence—but differentiation is not separation. You know, this thing doesn’t think it’s different from this; otherwise, your body would fall apart.

You know how does a human body think thoughts, play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, make a baby—all at the same time while tracking the movement of stars and planets because your biological rhythms are the symphony of the whole universe? That's what we call it, you name it, one song.

So as I was thinking about this, I said, "You know, if my cells can be like that, my cells have infinite potential; my cells are constantly giving to each other."

My stomach is not saying, "Why should I digest food for the heart?"

But the heart is not saying, "Why should I pump blood for the brain?"

Or the brain is saying, "Why shouldn’t I be the master computer for everyone? What's in it for me?"

So giving is there, karma is there, as you said: do unto others, least effort, you know, Jesus said, actually, “Do not worry about tomorrow” in one of his parables. You know that the birds and the bees have a better time than you because they’re not concerned about tomorrow, words to that effect.

Least effort, intention—every cell has a unique intention. Without that intention, there would be no manifestation. If cells were attached to their performance, they wouldn’t be able to function. You know, cells work only in the present. There's no past or future of our cells, and every cell has meaning and purpose, and which is the integrity of the whole.

So that’s how I actually came up with these. And it was nothing original when I looked up the wisdom traditions. It’s all there, as you said, in every spiritual tradition in the world the same things exist.

Well, I saw this fabulous exhibition on the brain, which by the way was not the human brain; it was the brain of all species—the evolution of the brain at the American Museum of Natural History.

The brain is constructed the same way for all species, basically, in terms of the various layers to it. Then you go up to the prefrontal cortex, and you start to extrapolate.

For all animals, it’s like a car, okay? There are sports cars and there are SUVs, and all different. A bird's brain will have a better optical nerve and so on, but they’re basically all the same.

And if you look at the evolution of the brain over a period of time across species—and by the way, man is only one of 10 million species. Okay?

Now, as we have that evolution and there’s a commonality to it, which is what your thoughts have triggered to me, as that evolution happens, you see that you go to higher levels of abstraction and greater levels of the capacity to empathize and think of the greater whole.

So now I think it’s almost a trajectory toward what I would consider God, okay? We all define it differently, but in a sense, that greater consciousness in which we are looking at the whole and we look beyond ourselves.

So when we—if we can get there in that trajectory, that to me is an ascendancy that extends beyond humans, in a sense; it’s part of that evolutionary process.

And the real question is, can we look at the whole?

So you mentioned ChatGPT earlier. I also went to ChatGPT and some recently some other advanced AI, which they say is beyond superior to ChatGPT.

Yes, it’s just evolving. It’s evolving, right?

So I asked XYZ XYZ. So I asked, "What are the most healing emotions that we can have as human beings?"

Of course, empathy, compassion, love, joy, equanimity, which are in the wisdom traditions called divine emotions.

But then, you know, my AI said the most profound emotions are awe, or wonder, or mystery of bewilderment. And they came across this poem of Rumi that says: "Exchange your cleverness for bewilderment."

Oh yes! You know, once you're bewildered, there’s no choice but to be full of awe and mystery and humility, which you mention a lot in your books.

Many, many people, because of a sort of a screwed-up system of education and raising and so on, value knowing so much that it stands in the way of taking things in and curiosity.

In other words, people feel like almost guilty that they don’t know, rather than if awe and curiosity—you don’t know—people feel like almost guilty that they don’t know.

Rather than if yes, awe and curiosity, and it’s thrilling, and what we don’t know is much greater than what we do know.

Yes, we agree on that, right?

Awe is thrilling! Observing life, all the stages of life and nature—reality is incredibly beautiful, and it’s a wonderful thing to try to understand with others.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs, young people who come to me thinking I could mentor them, but they’re talking about exit strategy even before they’ve started a business. Like, you know, dividing the loot before there’s a train that can be robbed, and they talk about exit strategy, exit this, exit that.

You know, I said, "Where's the joy in all this?" They haven’t even thought of it.

I ask them, “Do you realize that there’s a final exit strategy called death? Are you going to be talking about all your exits, or are you going to be talking about having lived a joyful, meaningful life?”

It’s very surprising to me that they haven’t even reflected on that question.

Now I’m sure you’re a role model for so many young people who want to be like you. They’re thinking by being like you means extraordinarily rich, but they’re not looking at these deeper questions.

So what would you say to all these young entrepreneurs who are wanting to be successful businessmen, because you are one of the most successful?

The problem, I think, that I just ran into a game that I love, and it happens to pay well if you’re good at it. That’s all it was. I didn’t go after that.

I think here’s what I would say: Money has no intrinsic value. Money—what does it get you? You have to think, what does it get you?

I think you should pick whatever brings you the most happy life you have, and you should be what I call self-sufficient plus. That means you have to have enough money to have the life that you want to have, and maybe a little bit more so that you can help others and whatever.

And that could be the simplest, most beautiful life. Never lose sight of what you want because if you define success in that way, it’s terrible.

In other words, then you're going to create an obsession which has no purpose and no ending.

And no ending, yeah.

Is it a status thing? Is it a self-indulgent thing? So think about it. As you acquire more and more money, what are you going to do with it?

Are you going to overindulge with it and just become, you know, “Oh, I need more and more”? If you get more money and you do that, that’s not healthy.

There’s the curse of having too little money, and there’s the curse of having too much money.

So when you think about what you're going to do with the money, it’s very selfish and very decadent to possibly consume a lot of money.

So what’s this all about? Right? I think you have to think, what's it all about? Look at happiness. Look around you for happiness. Who has happiness and what in its various forms?

Don’t be blinded by this commerciality, monetary status, glitziness, okay? Because you won’t achieve a happy life, but—and the stat is all like ephemeral.

So that would be what I would try to convey. Life is a journey. Find out your path.

I have a principle: you know, make your work and your passion the same thing, and don’t forget about the money part. You need enough money to make that work well, but self-actualize.

You know, I wrote a book recently called "Abundance," which was inspired by a lyric from Bob Marley, where he said, "Some people are so poor, all they have is money."

Some people are so poor, that’s right!

And I was looking at, you know, all the data on happiness, and it came down to very few simple things: your attitude towards life, number one.

Money, but that was 10% of the happiness that you get every day is 10% is from money.

Yeah, but it's only a function of the marginal. Like if you're causing a lot of pain and you have a little bit of money, that's one thing.

But it diminishes in value as you get more of it.

As you get more, and then after a while, you know, you’re more concerned about your net worth than your self-worth; it becomes a blind obsession about it.

And then the last part of the data: if you win the lottery, you'll be ecstatic for about six months, then it'll plateau. In one year, you'll be back to your old self. In two years, you may be actually more unhappy because now you’re worrying about taxes, Bahamas, this, that, and the other.

Money adds a certain amount; extremely poor doesn’t help, extremely rich probably doesn’t help. Ultimately, it boils down to do you know how to make other people happy?

Basically, I don’t know that I know much, but I would say happiness, by and large, is how things transpire relative to our expectations.

That's correct, not the absolute level of our conditions.

That's correct.

So I feel you. Somebody who doesn’t have much money and they get $10,000, they’re elated. Somebody's got billions, and they lose a hundred million or something, and they’re still very rich—they’re depressed.

So happiness is, I think, how that develops relative to our expectations.

It creates a dilemma because we can become very attached to our expectations, and as distinct from letting that go and just experiencing the journey, which I think produces more joy than being attached to our expectations.

I agree. Wouldn't it be great if you could count happiness?

One of the things is you can count money.

Yeah, but if we could count happiness, I think everybody might focus in on it and say, “How much happiness do you have?

Yeah, how much joy, happiness do you have? How much love do you have? How much affection, attention, appreciation, acceptance, gratitude?” Those are the things that make us happy according to all the research I’ve read.

You have something here called Principles You, a personality assessment, and you have something called an archetype—Archelos, that’s the right pronunciation.

You define these archetypes as creators, seekers, enthusiasts, leaders, advocates, architects, fighters, givers, and producers. You know we are here in a temple, and when people look at these statues, they think these are some gods and goddesses out there in the ether, but actually these are archetypes that represent the themes that you mentioned.

How interesting!

These are archetypes, and archetypes are defined as states of energy and information and awareness. If we embody them, then we become superheroes or superheroines.

So that’s the theory. How interesting. And these are actually the most important archetypes in all these wisdom traditions.

How interesting! Wow!

Everybody has a nature, and that nature determines their pull. Discovering one’s nature is very important, and also discovering the nature of the people around you is very important because it’ll define how your relationship is.

So I created, I’ve been doing this for decades in my company. I notice people are different. There’s somebody who’s the big picture thinker, somebody the detail thinker, somebody who’re going after things, and their nature is different.

It’s so important to know your nature and then find your path for that nature and to work well with others, given a different nature, because you individually can’t have it all.

So how you work with others, with the nature, so that there’s a commonality of values, but there are different skills that come together.

As a result, I worked with psychometricians, and I wanted to put it out there for everybody free. So Principles You: it’s online, free, quick, and easy way.

I’ll take it, and then share it with you, and you can share yours with me.

Great! Let's do it!

Let's do it!

Ray, one of the things that has made you who you are is you're not in a rush to conform. You’re not a conformist. You’re not rushing to be like everybody else. In fact, now people are rushing to be like you.

So do you agree that we have to discover truth for ourselves and not necessarily be following maps, doesn’t matter who the map was created by—Einstein, or Jesus Christ, or even the Buddha?

Your view on this and mine are exactly identical, I think again, which is to say that while you can learn, you cannot let others have the experiences and the choices for you. Only you.

You can’t be hostage to that. I watch people accept and seek approval, and that cripples them because they lose the sense of what they feel and enjoy.

How does it taste? Rather than, “What am I supposed to think about how it tastes or who wrote the review for the restaurant?"

So you have to go through your life and experience it and say, “What does it mean?” without a bias.

And so that’s why you need to think independently. Of course, you can learn; is that true? We’re exchanging thoughts and so on, but you have to think independently because you will not have the experiences. You will not, and there will be no conviction until you discover.

Okay, so Deepak, what we’re talking about is the same thing. And you also have the spiral staircase. I have what I call these loops.

In other words, life looks like this to me. You know, you start off, and you head in a direction, and you evolve, and then you have your setbacks and the pains and so on, and ideally, you learn, and you readapt and go on, and you have another one of those.

It’s that process through life of learning through the mistakes and the setbacks, and you keep evolving in that way all the way through.

Yeah, tell me about your staircase.

I think it’s exactly the same. What you call failures or experiences that we call painful are always recycled unless we learn from them.

Now, we use it in a different way—the terminology karma recycles. Karma means all the lessons that you needed to learn; if you didn’t learn them, they would recycle.

Once you learn them, then you transcend them, you move to the next level, and you evolve, and you keep evolving. Evolution is a never-ending horizon. It’s the journey, isn’t it?

Funny how we discover these things. It’s just—and it’s not because we’re unique.

No, it’s because you look at it, and it’s real. You said earlier that when we look at the wisdom traditions, spiritual traditions, it’s not about me and mine and selfishness; it’s about how we belong to a larger ecosystem of interdependency or inseparability.

You also said everybody defines love in their own way, but that love is to see that it's not me and the world; it's the world in us, in you and me. It includes everything.

This prefrontal cortex has given us the ability for insight and intuition and creativity and archetypal consciousness and transcendence.

To me, that is love.

Yes, that's—that to me is love too because there’s a life arc. Yes, and we know what the life arc is like.

And we know that that’s just a minor thing.

Minor, and but that evolution continues. Like, we’re vessels for our DNA, correct?

And it goes beyond. So there is that constant life arc of which we’re a part of, and we accept it for what it is, and then if we can go above it and think, "Okay, where's my joy?"

Enjoy that, enjoy that. Appreciate that reality, and then when you look above that and so on, "How do I do that? Well, so I evolve well and contribute to evolution."

It seems like it’s just part of that process, and almost every step we should enjoy because it is what it is, and just look at the beauty of it.

Okay, so let’s talk about principles for a moment. I think we agree that there are timeless and universal realities. Reality works in a certain way, and I view it as essential to understand how reality works and having principles, which means ways of dealing with reality to have the best outcome.

What do you think about principles? How do you think about principles?

I think exactly the way you think about principles. How reality works, then I ask myself how can I incorporate these as my inner values?

I usually ask myself questions such as, "Who am I? What do I want? What’s my purpose? What am I grateful for? What brings me joy? Can I remember big experiences and how I felt and why? What is a meaningful relationship? What do I give? What do I receive?"

And from that, I have created what you call principles. I call it my soul profile.

It's the same thing.

We had a very interesting conversation about our age.

Yes, and approaching death.

Correct.

As we look above it, here we are. We know where we are; we know what's going to come and how it’s going to come.

And it’s as we think about it, we have—how do we go through that, even together? How do we deal with that and what are our principles?

In other words, the acceptance and just dealing with it in the best possible way, those are our principles.

That would be an example of principles approaching death, right?

In the tradition I come from, there are four phases of life. We call them ashrams. Ashramas, which means the place we identify as home.

The first 25 years in that wisdom tradition is education. The second 25 years is family, taking care of your family, and also fame, fortune, success in the traditional sense—money, abundance.

The third 25 years is giving back; we’ve been there, both of us. And this fourth 25, which should be at least 25 if you’re in good health, is what in our tradition is called self-realization to know, actually, because now in hindsight it’s all a dream.

It’s all a dream. If you ask me what happened to your childhood, that’s—it’s a dream!

What happened to your teenage years? It’s a dream!

Yesterday is a dream! This morning is a dream! Five minutes ago is a dream!

By the time you hear these words, they don’t exist.

So both in the East and West, Weinstein, you know, the German philosopher, said our life is a dream; we are asleep.

But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming.

The Buddha said the same thing: this lifetime of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.

To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.

So when he was dying and his disciple Ananda said, "Who are you? Are you God? Are you a messiah? Are you a prophet?"

He said, “No, none of the above. Who are you?”

And his last words were, "I’m awake."

I think that’s now the call of the hour for the whole world to wake up from the nightmare we have created.

Literally, it’s so funny. But grab that little red book. Look, because I’ve thought almost identically: three phases of life with transitions, and they're identical.

Okay, in other words, I say there’s the first phase in life, which is when you're dependent on others and you’re learning.

Then there’s a transition, and there’s a second phase of life when others are dependent on you and you’re trying to be successful.

Then there’s a transition. The transition is the thing I’m in, which is when you pass things along to others.

Then there’s the last phase in life, which is the phase of freedom and letting go, and so on.

And it’s so funny because when, as you describe this, this is the book in terms of these phases of life, and it’s so amazing to me.

As you go down for little details in under each phase, you can know what that phase is like in a quite detailed way.

Okay, at this age, then I don’t know, you have your first kiss, and then you graduate from school, or then you maybe get married, or whatever, you have a partner, and so on.

If you look at that arc of life, not only in the three phases but in the details of that arc of life, you can imagine what your next 10 years of life is.

So you can see a script, and you can imagine—not only for yourself but the people you care about. You can say, "Where will I be in 10 years? Where will you be in 10 years?"

We can almost visualize that, and by doing that it can help us along our arc of life.

So I think that it’s another good example of from our various different worlds we see basically kind of the same thing together.

We see how to navigate it similarly as we talk about where we’re going to be, and maybe together, as we approach our end of life, we are able to approach that well.

You said that very clearly here: the last few phases of our existence.

I saw actually a sign on a grave site a while back, and it’s you know, there’s a sign and there’s a grave, and the sign says: where you are, I once was, where I am, you shall soon be.

That’s a good one! Yes!

So I think if we remember that, we can live a more conscious life.

I’ve thought about death since I was six years of age. I was living with my grandparents, and that was me about six years. My little brother at that time was three and a half.

And we were living with my grandparents, and one day we got a telegram that my father, who was in England, had passed all his exams. He was now member of the Royal College of Physicians, etc., etc. Telegram.

And my grandfather, who was a World War I veteran in the British Empire in those days, very proud: you know, “My son is now member of the Royal College.” That was the colonial thinking.

So he went on the rooftop, got a rifle, and shot some rounds in the air—that was his way of celebrating.

Then he took me and my little brother to see a movie. I still remember the name of the movie: Alibaba and the 40 Thieves.

Then he took us to a carnival. Then he took us to a fancy restaurant.

Then, in the middle of the night, he died.

And, you know, they took him to cremation the next day, and all we saw was a bunch of ashes in a jar. One of my uncles said, “What’s a human?”

Yesterday was celebrating, today’s a bunch of ashes.

I remember at the age of six going into my first existential crisis. My brother, who later went on, as I said, to become dean of education at Harvard—but at the age of three and a half, he started losing his skin; it started peeling.

And my grandmother and uncles, with whom we were living, they took him to every doctor, you know, and no one could make a diagnosis until one indigenous healer said, “He’s missing his parents.

He’s feeling vulnerable and shedding his skin. That’s a metaphor for his vulnerability. When his parents come back, he’ll be fine.” And so it happened.

I went to medical school thinking I’ll figure out life. The first thing you encounter in medical school is a corpse. You’re supposed to understand life by looking at a dead body.

So it became an obsession for me: the mystery of death.

In biology, there’s a term called apoptosis, which is programmed cellular death.

So every cell in your body knows to die. Your skin cells die once a month, so new ones can be born. Your stomach cells die every five days. Your skeleton recycles every three months.

Even the DNA, which you mentioned: genetic memory holds the memory of millions of years of evolution and, and evolutionary biology—that genetic memory.

But the cells that code it, the atoms that code it, come and go every six weeks like migratory birds.

So death became, for me, the ticket to life. And I realized that death is not the opposite of life.

Death is the opposite of birth. Life is the continuum of birth and death.

And now, of course, when people hear me and they say, “He's Indian; he's thinking of reincarnation.”

Well, you could think of it because what recycles is memory. You know, the stomach cells recycle their memory of how to digest food, the immune cells recycle their memory of how to take care of the rest of the body, etc., etc.

So we are the recycling of memory, but we are also the evolution of that. It’s like a spiral staircase.

You know, recycle information, energy, matter—everything recycles. Even plastic, if you look deeply, even plastic recycles.

So everything recycles. Why wouldn’t our consciousness recycle? That would be the one and only exception.

So I believe that what we call this dreamscape, which is our projection of our awareness, continues; the dream continues in a different form. That’s all, and this continues, but in a different form.

Rumi said: “When I die, I will soar with angels, but when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine; you’ll need the imagination of an angel.”

So these archetypes that you talk of, these are our guides, actually.

Very interesting.

I would say it's somewhat similar, but maybe different. I believe that we’re all part of nature.

The little bits and pieces of us, and matter and energy as it keeps evolving through time, the bits and pieces fall apart and coalesce and evolve.

And I think there’s that force of evolution and nature. I think nature is perfect and evolving. It’s as perfect as I can imagine.

I don’t know what comes after. However, I think the only issue is whether you’re attached to what came before.

And it’s understandable to be attached.

Then you have to go through that.

I had my personal thing, I lost my 42-year-old son. It’s the most difficult thing.

I mean, I would rather die than lose everything I have in a sense.

But it’s like I think about the serenity prayer: “God, give me the serenity to accept that which I can’t control and the power to control that which I can.”

And it evolves.

And so as I go about it, it’s this issue of attachment to something that we—it’s normal we feel.

And so I think that at my deathbed, my attachment for others and who I love will be there, but that also I’ll look at it as, in a sense, this adventure that I’m going on to the next stage of this adventure.

Because there’s that ambiguity in whatever it is, and I have a sense that it’s perfect, or almost perfect, and it’s only the issue of the attachment that becomes the challenge.

I think you're absolutely right. There’s no choice. Mystery and surrender to mystery, yeah.

And savor it!

Also, one of the things I learned, particularly there, but I mean I learned it in different ways, but particularly when it comes home, is to savor what you have and what you have had.

And just like you’re describing the dream, that the movie that exists, I say, “Wow, have I been so lucky to be able to have had that?”

I’m open to whatever comes next.

What an adventure!

You can't have form without formlessness, so the two go together in the same way as up and down, and hot and cold; form and formlessness go together.

I think consciousness is cosmos; they go together as well.

I think that's true.

There’s so much, so much that I'm really eager to discuss with you that we can’t complete.

We can go through certain practices which will help you because you are already doing mantra meditation.

But if we combine that with some of this witnessing of awareness, reflection and a journey to formlessness, that’s freedom.