The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [63]
Instead of a passionate humanitarianism, this man advocated detachment and withdrawing from the material world. Like the first woman, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t catch on—it was obvious to him that trying to change the world by confronting it was hopeless.
Strangely enough, I agreed with both of them. What they represented was a secret: Each of us lives in multidimensions. We can choose where to focus our attention, and wherever that focus goes, a new reality opens up. Even though they disagreed with each other, both of these people were trying to solve the same problem, which is how to be spiritual despite the demands of materialism. And the answers they found are both viable, without either one being the answer.
When I speak of other dimensions, I’m referring to domains of consciousness. Consciousness is the maker of reality—we’ve been talking about that for some time here—but maker really means “chooser.” The one reality already possesses every possible dimension; no one needs to make new ones, or could if they wanted to. But through our attention we bring these dimensions to life: We populate them, add new meaning, and paint unique pictures. Let me name these domains first.
THE INVISIBLE DOMAINS
How Awareness Unfolds from the Source
Pure being: The domain of the Absolute, pure awareness before it acquires any qualities at all. The state before creation. This is not actually a separate domain since it permeates everything.
Conditioned bliss: The domain of awareness as it begins to become conscious of its own potential.
Love: The motivating force in creation.
Knowingness: The domain of inner intelligence.
Myth and archetypes: The collective patterns of society. This is the domain of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, male and female energy.
Intuition: The domain where the mind understands the subtle mechanics of life.
Imagination: The domain of creative invention.
Reason: The domain of logic, science, and mathematics.
Emotion: The domain of feelings.
Physical body: The domain of sensation and the five senses.
Which of these realms is truly spiritual? They all interconnect, yet you can observe quite often that people camp out in one realm or another, and having found their special place, they also find spirit there.
The woman with a conscience found her place in emotions and the physical body—it was the physical struggle of day-to-day poverty that moved her heart. But, of course, one can’t exclude love from her set of motives; perhaps she also intuitively knew that this kind of humanitarian work was the path of greatest growth for herself.
The man who healed from a distance found his place in the realm of intuition. This is where the subtle energies play. His brand of spirituality called for manipulating the invisible forces that hold the physical world together. One can’t exclude love from his set of motives, and there’s also the realm of myth and archetype to be considered since he called on angels and spirit guides to do his work.
A skeptic might argue that these realms simply don’t exist. That’s a hard argument to settle because if something doesn’t exist for you, it might as well not exist. This might be the moment to look at a simple example.
A car is found run into a snowbank after a winter storm. The driver is unconscious at the wheel. People stop to see what’s wrong, and they ask each other, “How did this happen?” One points to the tire tracks in the snow: “The car veered off course—that’s how this happened.” Another observer points to the steering wheel, which is wrenched to one side: “The car’s steering mechanism was faulty—that’s how this happened.” A third observer smells the driver’s breath: “He was drunk—that’s how this happened.” Finally, a neurologist happens to stop by with a portable MRI machine, and he points to the driver’s brain scan: “His motor cortex exhibits abnormalities—that’s how this happened.”
Every answer depends entirely upon the kind of evidence used. The same question was asked at different levels