The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [44]
UNIVERSAL
4. Consciousness creates by design.
PERSONAL
4. Nothing is random—your life is full of signs and symbols.
The war between religion and science is old and nearly exhausted, but on one point, neither side is willing to budge. Religion sees design in nature as proof of a creator. Science sees randomness in nature as proof of no design at all. Yet, there has never been a culture based upon chaos, including the subculture of science. Consciousness looks at the universe and sees design everywhere, even if the spaces in between looked disorganized and random. For the individual, it’s impossible not to see order—every aspect of life from the family outward is based on it. Your brain is set up to perceive patterns (even an inkblot looks like some kind of image, no matter how hard you try not to see one) because it took patterns of cells to make a brain. The mind is ultimately a machine for making meaning, even when it flirts with meaninglessness, as the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries have done so well.
UNIVERSAL
5. Physical laws operate efficiently, with least effort.
PERSONAL
5. At any given moment, the universe is giving you the best results possible.
Nature loves efficiency, which is very odd for something supposedly working at random. When you drop a ball, it falls straight down without taking unexpected detours. When two molecules with the potential for bonding meet, they always bond—there is no room for indecision. This expenditure of least energy, also called the law of least effort, covers human beings, too. Certainly our bodies cannot escape the efficiency of the chemical processes going on in each cell, so it is probable that our whole being is wrapped up in the same principle. Cause and effect aren’t just linked; they are linked in the most efficient way possible. This argument also applies to personal growth—the idea is that everyone is doing the best he or she can from his or her own level of consciousness.
UNIVERSAL
6. Simple forms grow into more complex forms.
PERSONAL
6. Your inner awareness is always evolving.
This principle is baffling to the religious and scientific alike. Many religious people believe that God created the world in his image, which implies that creation had nowhere to go after that (except perhaps to devolve from its initial perfection). Scientists accept that entropy is inexorable, entropy being the tendency of energy to dissipate. Thus, in both systems it’s a problem that DNA is a billion times more complex than the first primordial atoms, that the human cortex has vastly increased in size over the past 50,000 years, that life appeared out of inert chemicals, and that new thoughts appear every day out of the blue. Entropy still makes us grow old; it still causes cars to rust and stars to grow cold and die. But the drive of evolution is equally inexorable. Nature has decided to evolve, whatever our opinions about that may be.
UNIVERSAL
7. Knowledge takes in more and more of the world.
PERSONAL
7. The direction of life is from duality to unity.
According to a commonly held idea, ancient cultures saw a unified creation, while we moderns look on a fragmented and divided world. The decline of faith has been blamed for this, as has the absence of myth, traditions, and social bonding. But I believe the opposite is true: The ancient way of understanding could barely explain a sliver of all the phenomena in Nature, while physics today is on the verge of a “theory of everything.” The eminent physicist John Wheeler makes a crucial point when he says