Praise for M E T A H U M A N
“In his brilliant new book, Deepa k Chopra successfully argues that
consciousness is the sole creator of sel f, mind, brain, body, and the universe,
as we  kno w it. Deepak then teaches us  that truly grasping this revolutionary
idea will effectively remove the limiting belief systems and negativity that
may be holding us  back from achieving our maximum human potential. Highly recommended!”
— D R. R UDOLPH E . T ANZI,  Professor of Neurology, Harvard
Medical School; and bestselling coauthor of The Healing Self,
Super Brain,  and Super Genes
“ Metahuman  is  a brilli ant vision  of human potenti al and how we can move
beyond the limitations, concepts, and stories created by the mind. If we wake
up an d drop our usual habits of con sidering ourselves as finite, localized
beings, the potential exists in each on e of us to be one with our very true
nature, or quoting Huxley, to be one with the Mind at Large.”
— D R. M ENAS C . K AFATOS,  New York Times  bestselling author
and Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational
Physics, Chapman University
“Deepak Chopra’s wonderful book Metahuman  points the way for all of us to
realize our full potential by showing us how to shed the constraints that hold
us ba ck from a life f illed with love and self-worth. I applaud how he roots his
recommendations in the latest research. As always, Dr. Chopra has written a
book filled with insight, an indispensable aid for anyone striving to have a
happy and fulfilled existence.”
— L EONARD M LODINOW,  bestselling author of Elastic:
Unlocking Your Brain’s Ability to Embrace Change
“This book  distills decades of personal practice and breadth of study, and boils
it all down to this: we are more than w e think, more even than the universe
itself, bec ause the universe is only one expression of the fundamental,
grounding, metahuman source that emanates, nurtures, and transcends us
all. The book reads as though an old, wise friend, away traveling for years,
collecting adventures and stories, comes home.”
— N EIL T HEISE, M . D .,  Professor of Pathology, New York
University School of Medicine
“ Metahuman  is a powerful wak e-up call! Brilliantly merging scientific and
holistic insights, Deepak Chopra allo ws us to go beyond illusory mental
constructs to witness reality without limits. Only then can we reach our full
potential!”— D R. L ARS B UTTLER,  cofounder and CEO of the Artificial
Intelligence Foundation
“Deepak Chopra reveals a fresh w ay of approaching special states of
consciousness and gives us new i nsights into ancient ideas in the
contemplative traditions. Highly recommended.”
— B ERNARD J . B AARS, P H. D .,  former Senior Fellow in
Theoretical Neurobiology, the Neurosciences Institute, San
Diego, California
“In Metahuman,  D eepak Chopra ex poses us to a new and exciting reality,
where we are all infinitely free to crea te the lives we yearn for. There is no
better guide to lead us to this phenomenal way of being.”
— B RUCE V AUGHN, CEO ,  Dreamscape Immersive; and former
Chief Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering
“For over thirty y ears, Deepak Chopra has been educating us on th e
extraordinary potential of the human being, focusing initially on our capacity
for ex ceptional physical and mental he alth, and then for spiritual wellbeing. Metahuman  t ake s us beyond health and wellbeing—and all such concepts of
the m ind—to a life based on our very own nature and that of the universe:
existence itself.”
— P AUL J . M ILLS, P H. D .,  Professor and Chief, Family Medicine
and Public Health; Director, Center of Excellence for Research
and Training in Integrative Health, University of California,
San Diego
“Reading Metahuman  is not just about  waki ng up, it is to wake up. I t is the
GPS for realizing your full potential. You need it, I need it, and we all need it
if we are to live on t his planet without destroying it and ourselves. The key is
in us—it is  us. And Deepak Chopra tells us how to reach it.”
— E RVIN L ASZLO,  author of Science and the Akashic Field  and
Reconnecting to the Source
“Deepak Chopra and I have had our differences on a few scientific issues, but
the one thing that I’ve always admir ed about him is how he applies the
methods and findings of science to soc ial progress, especially to help people
improve their lives. We all want to lead  happy and meaningful lives, but how? Metahuman  is  Deepak’s answe r to this deepest of all personal questions. I
learned something new in every chapter toward this important end. You will
be enlightened by the research and wisdom he brings together.”
— M ICHAEL S HERMER,  publisher of Skeptic  magazine;
Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; and author of
Heavens on Earth
“In public  health, we look for ways to m ake the healthy choice the easy choice. Metahuman  does this by mapping a direct path to a state of focused
awareness and to self-regulation mechanisms, based on growing evidence
from min dfulness research at Brown. This has the power to help thosesuffering from stress lower their blood pressure as well as reduce their risk
for anxiety, depression—even loneliness.”
— B ESS H . M ARCUS, P H. D .,  Dean, Brown University School of
Public Health
“Drawing upon examples ranging from medical science to parable, Deepa k
Chopra il lustrates how, like virtual reality technologies, the human mind
paints a layer of imagination atop of the physical world.”
— D . F OX H ARRELL, P H. D .,  Professor, Digital Media and
Artificial Intelligence; and Director, MIT Center for Advanced
Virtuality, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Reflecting on neuroscience, physics, cosmology, and anthropology—
everything from the molecular-level se nsitivity of our senses to an octopus’s
emotions—Deepak Chopra explains ho w the world of our experience is an
inner construct and not the thing in itself. In so doing, he offers a path
through modern life, guiding us to put suffering in perspective and perhaps
gain some control over it.”
— G EORGE M USSER,  author of Spooky Action at a Distance  and
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory
“It ta kes courage to  bridge the gap between hard-core ‘western’ science and
eastern es oteric quasi-mystical traditio ns. There is no one better equipped to
construct such a bridge than the erudite Deepak Chopra, who transmits the
‘wisdom o f the east’ to his audience. The result is this highly readable book
that w ill s timulate r eaders’ curiosity about human existence and the nature of
reality.”
— V . S . R AMACHANDRAN,  Professor of Neuroscience,
University of California, San Diego
“This book contains the quintessence of Deepak Chopra’s teachings. Everything comes forth from a conscio us source; our own consciousness can
link us back to it, if only we cease to separate ourselves from it. Chopra’s
argument is fluent, scientifically well-informed, and persuasive, as well as
eminently practical, with detailed instructions. How refreshing!”
— R UPERT S HELDRAKE, P H. D ., biologist and author of Ways to
Go Beyond and Why They Work
“ Metahuman  is  a reflective deconstruction of the everyday experience of
reality, away from the physical and t oward the mental and metaphysical. Here Deepak Chopra aptly explores the  evolution of consciousness and charts
a path for humans to become liberated and limitless.”
— M ICHELLE A . W ILLIAMS, S C. D .,  Dean of Faculty, Harvard T.
H. Chan School of Public Health
“In Metahuman,  Deepak Chopra gives us a beatifically written understanding
of his views on consciousness, the universe, the body, and the mind. This
book is a t remendous resource—not only for providing a direct path to attain
true reality but, importantly, for enabling a healthier, more wholesome life.”— R ALPH S NYDERMAN, M . D .,  Chancellor Emeritus, Duke
University; and Director, Duke Center for Personalized Health
Care
“This book is a manual for living as nature intended us to, and it can’t be read
soon enou gh. Deepa k Chopra’s clarity a nd gentleness, and his ability to reach
people—despite the  maelstrom of nons ense and confusion we find ourselves
immersed in today—probably make h im one of the most important people
alive.”
— B ERNARDO K ASTRUP, P H. D .,  author of The Idea of the
World
“Deepak C hopra’s prose is a work of a rt, an inspired vision of the life of th e
mind and what it means to be human  and beyond. Science will continue to
explore th e true origins of consciou sness, but until we have definitive
answers, t his book provides practical tools for increasing human well-being. Even redu ctionists like myself will fi nd much to enjoy in Deepak’s latest
contribution to the philosophy of mind.”
— H EATHER B ERLIN, P H. D ., M . P . H .,  Assistant Clinical
Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine
at Mount Sinai
“Integrating recent discoveries in neuroscience, endocrinology, and
psychology, Deepa k Chopra demonstrates in concrete terms how
reductionistic and physicalistic constraints on human nature are simply
incorrect and seriously limit those who hold them. This book is a page-
turner.”
— A LLAN L ESLIE C OMBS, P H. D .,  Professor of Consciousness
Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies
“Deepak Chopra’s Metahuman  is a deep dive into educating or familiarizing
its readers with a fundamental understanding of self, consciousness,
enlightenment, and metareality,  i n the sam e way Stephen Hawkins’s A Brief
History of Time  a ttem pted to teach  the layman about the mysteries of the
origins of the physical quantum universe. A must-read.”
— D R. K ENNETH P . G REEN, D . M . D ., B . S .,  Commander, US
Navy (retired); Senior Vice President, Brain Mapping
Foundation; Vice President, Strategic Initiatives for
Government and Nonprofit Partnerships; and Member of the
Board of Directors, Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics
“In Metahuman,  Deepak Chopra provides us with a step-by-step guide for how
we can once again r eimagine the reality of the world we live in, a reality not
bound by  the beliefs and understandings we have about the material and
physical world, but by the boundlessness of our purpose and energy.”
— R OBERT L O C ASCIO,  founder and CEO, LivePerson
“What sets Deepak Chopra’s new book apart and makes it particularly valuable
and impo rtant is that it takes modern life and secular culture as its point ofdeparture, rather than being situated in the context of the spiritual wisdom
tradition o f some ancient and distant culture. Metahuman  does not shy away
from what  those approaches offer but, importantly, is also not bound by their
perspectives and approaches. This boo k, Dr. Chopra’s gentle and insightful
guidance, is a great blessing for its readers.”
— E DWIN L . T URNER , Professor, Department of Astrophysical
Sciences, Princeton University
“This book is another masterpiece from  the renowned endocrinologist Deepak
Chopra. It is an invitation to self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-
improvement. A must-read for those who seek to be better humans, live much
more fulfilling lives, and impact others.”
— B ABAK K ATEB, M . D .,  Chairman of the Board and CEO, Society
for Brain Mapping and TherapeuticsCopyright © 2019 by Deepak Chopra
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an
imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin
Random House LLC, New York. harmonybooks.com
Harmony Books is a registered trademark, and the
Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random
House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chopra, Deepak, author. Title: Metahuman: unleashing your infinite potential /
by Deepak Chopra. Description: New York: Harmony, [2019] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019004165 (print) |
LCCN 2019006154 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524762988 (e-
book) | ISBN 9780307338334 (hardcover: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Mind and body. | Spiritual life. | Self-
realization. Classification: LCC BF161 (ebook) | LCC BF161 .C458
2019 (print) | DDC 204/.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 
2019004165
ISBN 9780307338334
Ebook ISBN 9781524762988
International Edition ISBN 9780593136096
Cover design by Pete Garceau
v5.4
epC O N T E N T S
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
A Personal Preface: Going Beyond
Overview: Metahuman Is the Choice of a Lifetime
PART ONE
THE SECRETS OF METAREALITY
1: We Are Entangled in an Illusion
2: “I” Is the Creator of Illusion
3: Human Potential Is Infinite
4: Metareality Offers Absolute Freedom
5: Mind, Body, Brain, and Universe Are Modified
Consciousness
6: Existence and Consciousness Are the Same
PART TWO
WAKING UP
7: Putting Experience First
8: Going Beyond All Stories
9: The Direct Path
PART THREE
BEING METAHUMAN
10: Freeing Your Body
11: Recovering the Whole Mind
12: Choiceless Awareness
13: One LifeA MONTH OF AWAKENING:  
31 METAHUMAN LESSONS
A Final Word
Acknowledgments
About the AuthorTA PERSONAL PREF ACE
 
G O I N G  B E Y O N D
his book is an invitation to find out who you really are,
beginning with  two simple questions. In moments when you feel
very happy, do you also wat ch yourself being happy? When you
happen to get angry, is some  part of you totally free of anger? If
you ans wer “yes” to both qu estions, you can stop reading. You
have ar rived. You have gone beyond everyday awareness, and this
going b eyond is what it take s to know who you really are. Self-
knowledge wil l unfold for you every day. In time—or pe rhaps at
this ver y moment—you will see yourself living in the light. Like the
great Bengali poet Rabindran ath Tagore, you can say, “Tha t I exist
is a perpetual surprise.”
It would  be fascinating to me et you, because your existence no
doubt is quite unusual—you might even assume that you are
unique. You look around and  see that the vast majority of people
are simply happy when they are happy, and angry when they are
angry. But not you. You see beyond. When I began writing books thirty years ago, there was no
question that being happy and getting angry were normal, without
the add ed element of watching yourself. A word like mindfulness
wasn’t in the a ir; meditation was still considered dubiou s by the
average person, and the whole question of higher consciousnesswas vie wed with hard-eyed skepticism. I was a young Boston
doctor with a growing family, and my days were consumed with
work, s ervicing a large patient roster and traveling every day
between two or more hospitals. When I  was happy about a patient with a thyroid condition
getting well, did I watch myself being happy? Absolutely n ot. If the
wrong prescrip tion was filled by a careless pharmacist, was a part
of me not at all upset, standing by like a silent witness? No. In
common with everyone else I knew, I was happy or angry without
any mystery about it. But coming from India, I could reach back
into m y childhood for clues about a different state of being. According to an ancient Upa nishad, the human mind is like two
birds si tting on  a branch. One of the birds is eating the fruit of the
tree while the other lovingly looks on. Since I went for some years to a school run by an order of
Catholic brothers, there were other clues from a different source,
such as Jesus telling his disciples to be “in the world but not of it.”
If you Google that phrase, you’ll find a wealth of confusion about
what it actually  means, but th e kernel of the teaching is that there
is a  difference between buyi ng into worldly life and not  buying
into it. When you don’t b uy into it, Jesus teaches, you are
somehow with God. I wish I could say that these clues about higher consciousness
transfixed me and shaped my life. They didn’t. I stored them in the
back of my min d, never calling upon them in my busy, stre ss-filled
life. The re was no budding awareness of the Truth with a c apital T,
which is that I, and everyo ne else in the world, embody the
mystery of existence. This is  the reason, ultimately, why Tagore
found h imself perpetually su rprised. Once you wake up to  reality,
you face the m ystery of existence intimately and personal ly: there
could be no mystery without you. In a sentence  or two I’ve taken some giant leaps, I k now. There’s a yawning gulf between the things a person must do in a
day—beginning with waking up, getting dressed, going to work,
and so on—an d the mystery of existence. A society based on
reason and science looks with skepticism on any such notion as
being in  the world but not of it, or Truth with a capital T. We live
together in a reality that obeys the rule of “What you see is whatyou get .” The physical world confronts us; we come to grips with
its m any challenges; and, as  the rational mind probes t he dark
unknown, wha t emerges are new facts and data, not a sense of
wonder that we even exist. What first coaxed me into fa cing the mystery of life—and the
mystery of myself as a hum an being—was medicine. I practiced
endocrinology, a specialty th at fascinated me because hormones
are uniq ue chemicals. They can make you sluggish and du ll if you
have a thyroid  deficiency; they can make you run away or fight
when confront ed by a threat. A burst of adrenaline is responsible
for a common reaction to a street magician levitating before our
very eyes as onlookers jump back or run away. We are so used  to accepting t hat these behaviors are chemically
induced that almost everyon e connects adolescent behav ior with
“raging hormones.” Even whe n sexual drive is tamed somewhat, it
is never truly tamed, just as  falling in love is never rational. If I
had been satisfied to accept this commonsense con nection
between horm ones and the effects they cause, there would be no
more story. But there is a fly in the ointment, and it disrupts things far
beyond hormones—it potentially overturns reality itself. There is a
brain hormone called oxytocin that has gained the popular name
of the “love hormone,” because the presence of higher levels of this
hormone in the brain makes a person more affectionate and
trusting. But this one molecu le secreted by the pituitary gland is
much more complex than th at. Higher levels are secreted in the
mother during birth and breastfeeding, promoting a close bond
with the baby. If you pet your dog for a while, oxytocin goes up in
both you and y our dog. Oxytocin makes people love their national
flag more, while being indifferent to the flags of other countries. During sexual activity, oxytocin rises in women, making them
bond w ith thei r sexual partners emotionally, but the effect doesn’t
seem to happen in men. Something str ange must be going on, and yet these complex
findings don’t  shake the faith of most endocrinologists. I was
different. What bothered me was that oxytocin doesn’t actually do
anything it is c redited with doing unless the mind goes alo ng with
it. A woman won’t have more affection for a sexual partner if she iscoerced, fright ened, angry, or simply distracted by so mething
more important. Your oxytocin won’t go up if you pet a dog you
dislike. You won’t love your country’s flag if you are forced to
salute it by an authoritarian regime. I ca me to see the explosive effect of the mind-body connec tion. It w as as if we are two creatures, one a robot that can be
programmed b y chemicals, the other a free agent who  thinks,
considers, and  decides. These two creatures are se emingly
incompatible. They have no right to exist together, and yet they
do, as reflecte d in the setu p of our nervous system. One part
operates automatically, enabling life to go on without your
thinking about  it. You don’t  have to think to keep breathing or
have yo ur heart beat. But yo u can consciously take control, and
the voluntary nervous system allows you to alter your breathing
and even, with a little practice, slow down your heart rate. Suddenly, we are on the verg e of a mystery, because something
must decide whether to take a ction, or not. That something cannot
be the brain, because the brain is indifferent about whether it
employs eithe r side of the central nervous system. On the
involuntary side, the brain increases your heart rate if you run a
marathon, but it was you  who decided to run the marathon in the
first place. So who is this “you”? That ni ggling question is what disrupts reality. At any given
moment you—that is, the self—decide which nervous system to
call upon; therefore, you ca nnot be the creation of eith er one. When you see this simple fact, you are on the road to self-
awareness. You  can be happy and watch yourself being h appy at
the same time; you start to ex perience yourself completely without
anger, even as you are displaying anger. The rea son for this shift is simple: you have gone beyon d the
mechanical sid e of life. You have awakened to who you really are,
the user of the  brain but not  the brain, the traveler in a body but
not the body, t he thinker of thoughts who is far, far more than any
thought. As I will show in the following pages, your true self is
beyond time and space. When you identify with your true self, you
have fulfilled the dictum to be in the world but not of it. The Greekword meta  means “beyon d,” so I’m usin g it to describe the reality
that lies beyond “What you see is what you get.” When you occupy
metareality, you are metahuman. In fits and star ts, everyone is already there. Metareality is the
source o f all creativity, because without going beyond the old and
conventional, there would be no new thoughts, artworks, books, or
scientific discoveries. No mat ter how many thoughts you’ve had in
your life, there are infinitely more you can think; no matter how
many sentences writers have written, there are infinitely more to
write. Words and thoughts are not stored in the brain like
information in a computer, to be juggled around mechanically
when another thought is needed. Shakespeare wasn’t simply
juggling his Elizabethan vocabulary—he employed wor ds in a
creative way. Van Gogh didn’t simply combine the standard colors
in the spectrum; he used col or as a new way of seeing the world
around him. Going b eyond is how a per son decides if life is meani ngful
enough. When  you want mor e than your life is giving you, it’s not
your br ain that craves more meaning, nor is it the everyday person
going a bout the routine business of life. The self, viewing things
from a higher perspective, is deciding the matter. The self also
decides whom to love, what is  truth, whether to trust, and so on. If
a m other judges that a cranky  three-year-old needs a nap, she has
gone beyond a simple assessment of what the child is doing and
saying. Cranky children say all kinds of things, and if mothers
bought into them, they’d be no better than children. If g oing beyond has proven  so indispensable, why aren’t we
metahuman al ready? There is no reason to keep repeating the
same trite, tired opinions, follow the same outworn social
conventions, and surrender to conformist thinking. All pose traps
that we fall int o, and the res ult is more of the same strife, wars,
domestic violence, racial prejudice, and gender inequality that we
have been prey to throughou t history. We choose to be our own
prisoners. This paradox, playing the part of inmate and jailer at
the same time, has caused untold suffering for humanity. To brin g the whole sorry me ss to an end involves one thing:
shifting from human to met ahuman. Both states exist here and
now. There is nowhere to go  to reach metareality. Like the twobirds in  the tree, you are feasting on life while also looking  on. But
the looking-on part is being ignored, suppressed, overlooked, and
undervalued. T he transforma tion that makes you metahuman is
known in the world’s spiritual traditions as “waking up.” Once
someone rises to the state of metahuman, it seems as if the old
everyday self was a sleepwalker, barely conscious of life’s infinite
possibilities. To b e awake i s to embrace full self-awareness. Lots of other
metaphors com e to mind. Metahuman is like tuning in to the
whole radio band instead of one narrow channel. It’s like  a string
vibrating to a higher note. It’s like seeing a world in a grain of
sand. But like  is a limiting word. The real thing is indescribable
and must be ex perienced firsthand, just as sight is indescribable to
someone born blind and yet revelatory if that person gains sight. Editors encourage writers to coax readers, using a big promise
of some thing, new, fresh, and different. Waking up is as old as
being human. It’s impossible to promise something like waking
up, whi ch is indescribable in the first place. Looking bac k on my
previous works, I feel that I  was inhibited by how peculiar and
mysterious it is to wake up. T his time, however, I’ve taken a deep
breath and gone for broke. I’m trusting that the reader isn’t
someone born blind to whom sight is completely unknowable. With a modicum of trust, we can all be shown that we are already
metahuman and that metareality is here and now. I don’t know who will be persuaded and who won’t. In the end,
the mys tery of  being human obeys only itself. But one thing I do
have faith in. If in reading this book you connect with what it
means to wake up, you will realize the truth in much le ss time
than th e thirty years I look back on. The faster that met ahuman
dawns in our lives, the better.TOVER VIEW
 
M E T A H U M A N  I S  T H E
C H O I C E  O F  A  L I F E T I M E
here are many things people do to improve their lives. You
might s ay that  developed societies live in a golden age, as far as
standard of living goes. It has become realistic to look forward to
decades of good health, to eat organic whole foods available
around the corner, not to m ention having things that were once
out of reach for the average  person, such as owning yo ur own
home and retiring in relative security. It is  strange, t hen, that millions of people strive to imp rove
their lives without improving their personal reality. The two are
intimately entwined, and if you don’t improve your reality, there’s
something shaky and unreliable about improving your life. Reality
isn’t simply the world “ou t there”—it is very personal. Two
commuters going to the same job might look at the world entirely
differently, one feeling anxious about job security and the prospect
of bein g fired,  the other pla cidly content and optimistic . Giving
birth could be the same p hysical event, without any medical
complications, for two new mothers, but one might suffer from
postpartum depression while the other is filled with maternal joy.Personal realit y defines us. It consists of all the thing s we
believe in, the e motions we feel, our unique set of memories, and a
lifetime of experiences and relationships. Nothing is more decisive
in how a person’s life turns out. So it is peculiar—one might say
profoundly mysterious—that we build our lives on a deep  lack of
knowledge about who we really are. Delve into any basic issue
about human existence, and behind the façade of expert opinion
lies a blankness where understanding should be. We have no id ea why humans are designed to both love and
hate, preach peace and practice violence, swing between
happiness and despair, and lead lives governed by confidence one
moment and self-doubt the n ext. Right now you are acting out in
your own fashion all these c ontradictions. You are a mystery to
yourself, becau se everyone is a mystery to themselves. Wh at keeps
people moving  forward is the  routine of everyday life and the hope
that nothing goes horribly wrong. I’m not devaluing the things m ost people live for—family, work,
and relationships. But, to be blunt, we don’t manage even the most
important thin gs with any confidence that we know what we’re
doing. It’s no wonder that w e spend so much time wo rking to
improve our lives and so lit tle working to improve our reality. Reality is too c onfusing. We are better off ignoring the dee p water
and remaining where it is safe in the shallows. A handful of people, however, have ventured into deeper
waters, and in every culture t hey bring back reports that are alien
and ins piring a t the same tim e. It’s inspiring to love your enemies,
but who really does? Being told that divine love is infinite doesn’t
make it  so in y our reality. Eternal peace vies with the pro spect of
crime, war, and violence in every age. A handful of people are
cherished as saints, with a good chance they will be labeled as mad
instead, or simply dismissed as too good for this world. Yet one  thing is beyond doubt—personal reality is where the
whole game is played. It contains all the potential that humans
have fu lfilled, b ut also all the  limitations that hold us back . A New
York psychologist named Abraham Maslow, who died in 1970,
continues to be famous today because he swam against the tide. Where the typical career in psychology consisted of examining the
ills a nd defects of the psyche,  Maslow felt that human natu re wentfar beyond everyday experie nce. His core idea, which has now
blossomed far beyond anyth ing he could have imagined, is that
humans are designed for extraordinary heights of experience, and,
more t han that, we should be creating these experiences in
everyday life. It was as if the only cars that were on the road were
junky ru st heaps, and someone announced that you could trade in
your clunker for a Mercedes or Jaguar. If the only cars you see are junk heaps and the Mercedes and
Jaguars exist far across the o cean, your reality won’t change. But
Maslow, drawing on centur ies of spiritual aspirations, insisted
that the peak experiences in life are part of our design, that we
need and crave them. The key was to go beyond the everyday. The notion of going beyond became the motivation for this
book. To d iscover who you really a re, you must go beyond who  you
think you are. To find pea ce, you must go beyond f ear. To
experience unconditional love, you must go beyond conditional
love, th e kind that comes and  goes. I even thought for a time that
this bo ok sho uld simply be titled Beyond . Inste ad I chose
Metahuman , u sing the Gr eek word meta , which I noted earlier
means “beyon d.” My thesis is that becoming metahuman is a
major s hift of identity that a nyone can make. Being designed for
peak experienc es raises the question of whether we have a  choice. Often the most illuminating moments in life descend as  if from
another, higher plane by themselves. How do we know they aren’t
accidental? At a  recent conference on sc ience and consciousness, a young
woman introduced herself, t elling me that she was writing her
graduate thesi s on communicating with birds. I asked h er how
talking to birds was possible,  and she replied that it was e asier to
show me than to tell me. We went outside. It was a bright day, and
we sat quietly o n a bench. Sh e looked up at some birds sitting in a
tree nea rby, and one of them flew down and landed unafraid in
her lap. How di d she do it? Feeling no need for words, she gave me a
look that said, “See? It’s very simple.” My old Catholic
schoolteachers would have po inted to St. Francis of Assisi, who isoften po rtrayed beatifically w ith birds fluttering to him. F rom the
Indian tradition, I thought of a quality in consciousness known as
ahimsa , which means “harmlessness,” the empathy extended to all
living things. In e ither case, it wasn’t a m atter of talking to the bir ds or
knowing their language—the whole thing had taken place silently. It was a perfect example of going beyond—in this case, going
beyond my own expectation s. What the young woman did, she
explained later , was to have mental clarity and insert an intention
for the bird to come to her. In other words, it all happened in
consciousness. So few people have such experiences that it only magnifies the
need to  show how much choice we really have to go bey ond. My
strong f eeling i s that we have  much more control over life than we
currently realize. To me, metahuman is the choice of a lifetime. Peak experiences
are only the beginning, a glimpse at what is possible. The term peak experience  has become popular enough that
most p eople have a general sense of what it means. The term
describes mom ents when limitations drop away and life-c hanging
insights come our way or a superb performance happens
effortlessly. The quarterback in NFL football who approaches age
forty w ith multiple Super Bowl wins, the musical prodigy who
debuts in a Mo zart piano concerto at age eight, the math ematical
whiz who can multiply two e ighteen-digit numbers in a matter of
seconds—we d on’t have to search far to find stories of peak
performance like these that hint at enormously expanded human
potential. But these accomp lishments, astonishing as t hey are,
occupy a specific niche. Whe n fame and fortune are lavi shed on
the exc eptional few, we miss a much greater possibility that
applies to the many. Reality is much more malleab le than anyone supposes. Most of
the lim itations that you feel are imposed on you personally are
actually self-imposed. Not knowing who you really are keeps you
stuck in secondhand belie fs, nursing old wounds, following
outworn condi tioning, and suffering a sense of self-doubt and self-
judgment. No one’s life is fr ee of these limitations. The o rdinaryworld, and our ordinary lives in the world, are not sufficient to
reveal who we really are—qu ite the opposite. The ordinary world
has dec eived us, and this deception runs so deep that we have
molded oursel ves to conform to it. In law, tainted evid ence is
known as the “ fruit of the poi sonous tree.” It’s not an exaggeration
to say that as good as life ca n get, there is still a taint st emming
from the deceptions we mistake for reality. Nothing, however
beautiful and good, has completely escaped this taint. Going
beyond is the only way to escape it. A m etahuman is someone whose personality is based on higher
values; not just peak experie nces, but love and self-worth. After
finishing this book I was delighted to find that Maslow had
actually used the term metahuman  i n exac tly this  way. (He didn ’t
associate it with comic book superheroes, and neither do I. While
fantasy metahumans are persecuted as freaks and threats to
society, this is a connotation to be avoided completely.) It’s all well and good to consider certain experiences so exalted
that they seem divine, which is where Maslow placed metahuman. It w as a n impo rtant step to d eclare that aspiring to reach God or
eternal peace and love is just  as real as driving in a nail. But I will
argue th at becoming metahu man is an urgent necessity. It is the
only way out of the illusions that play out in our lives as inner
suffering, confusion, and conflict. T h e  F a n t a s y  o f  E v e r y d a y  L i f e
Everyone woul d agree that it  is better to live in reality th an in
fantasy. So it will come as a shock that you have been living in a
fantasy all your life. It’s an all-embracing illusion you bou ght into
from e arliest childhood. Even the most practical, hard headed
person is immersed in fantas y all the time. I don’t mean f lights of
fancy or erotic fantasies or  dreams of getting rich ov ernight. Nothing you perceive is as it seems. Everything is an illusion from
the ground up.Take out your smartphone an d look at any photo you’ve saved
on it. The image is several inches across, whether the photo is of
the Gra nd Can yon, a mouse, or a microbe. Your eyes are a bout as
far apa rt as the screen of a smartphone, but you perceive the
Grand Canyon, a mouse, and a microbe as hugely differen t in size. How do we au tomatically adjust the size of what appears on a
smartphone? N o one knows, and this becomes even more puzzling
when you consider that the r etina at the back of the eye is curved
and the  image projected on it is upside down. Why doesn’t the
world look as distorted as in a funhouse mirror? You cou ld shrug your shoulders and ascribe the whole my stery
to the brain, w hich massages the raw data reaching the eye and
gives us  a realistic picture of the world. But this only deep ens the
illusion. When  we say that our eyes respond to “visible light,” we
conveniently s kip over the f act that the elementary particles of
light—photons—are invisible . A photon has no radiance , luster,
color, or any o ther characteristic we associate with light . Like a
Geiger counter that clicks madly in the presence of high levels of
radioactivity and emits only a few clicks at low levels, the retina
“clicks” madly when millions of photons trigger the rods and cones
that line it and clicks faintly when light levels are low (which we
call darkness). Either way, everything you t hink you see has been processed
inside your brain, in a specific region known as the visual cortex,
which i s totally dark. A flashb ulb blinding you in the eye is just as
black in the br ain as the faintest glimmer of stars at night. Nor do
the sign als reaching the visual cortex form pictures, much less 3-D
images. The picture you take  to be a snapshot of the wo rld was
fabricated by your mind. In the same fa shion, the other four senses are just “clicks” on
the surf ace of other kinds of c ells. There is no explanation for why
the ner ve endings in your no se should turn the bombardment of
molecules floating around int o the scent of a rose or the stink of a
garbage dump. The entire three-dimensional world is bas ed on a
magic trick no one can explai n, but it is certainly not a true  picture
of reality. The whole thing is mind-made. A neuro scientist would stop and correct me, claiming that the
world w e perc eive is brain-made instead. A few simple e xamplesdisprove this contention, h owever. As far as your brain is
concerned, the  letters on this page are black specks, no different
from sp ecks you might scatter randomly with flecks of i nk off a
brush. B efore you learned to read the alphabet, letters were only
meaningless sp ecks, while after you learned to read they became
meaningful. Y et you had the same brain from three y ears old
onward, as far as processing information goes. The mind learns to
read, n ot the brain. Likewis e, anything you see around you—an
elm tre e, a Belgian chocolate bar, a church, or a cem etery—
acquires meaning because your mind gives it meaning. Another example: When children who were born blind are
given si ght through medical means, they are baffled by things we
take for  grante d. A cow in the distance looks the same size to them
as a cat close u p. Stairs look p ainted on the wall; their own  shadow
is a mys terious black patch th at insists on following them around. What such children have missed—and need to catch up with—is
the lea rning curve by which we all learned to shape o rdinary
reality. (So discomfiting is the visible world that newly sighted
children and adults often pre fer to sit in the dark to regain a sense
of comfort.) The lea rning curve is necessary to make your way in the w orld,
but you have adapted yourself in strange and unexpected ways. Take pe rspective. If you are lying in bed and someone touches
your shoulder to wake you up, you don’t see the person having a
very wi de body  with a small head on top. But take a photo from a
position lying in bed and re ality is revealed. The person’s torso,
being le vel with your eyes, i s unnaturally wide, while the head,
being farther away, is unnaturally small. Likewise, when you are
talking to someone right nex t to you, his nose is swollen out of
proportion, and if you compare it to a photo, his eyes might be
bigger than the hand resting in his lap. We automatically block out how things really look in
perspective, and through an act of mind we adjust the data. The
data reaching your eye reports that the room you are sitting in has
walls that converge closer to gether at the far end, but you know
that the  room is square, so you adjust the data accordin gly. You
know that a n ose is smaller than a hand, requiring a  similar
adjustment.What causes real shock is that everything  yo u perceive is
adjusted. Floating molecules in the garden are adjusted into
fragrances. Vi brating airwa ves are adjusted into sounds you
recognize and identify. There is no escaping that we live in a mind-
made world. This is both the glory and the peril of being human. Walking the streets of Lon don two hundred years ago, the
visionary poet William Blake lamented over what he saw:
[I] mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear
It’s a woeful picture, still bei ng repeated today. Humans have
wandered into every kind of suffering and hardship out of  a deep-
seated b elief that we are destined to lead such an existence. There
is n o al ternative until you accept that what the mind has made, it
can unmake. W e l c o m e  t o  t h e  H o u s e  o f  I l l u s i o n s
While participating in the everyday world, it isn’t possible to
see beyond the illusion. Goin g beyond is needed, which is why the
shift to metahuman is needed. The only way an illusion can be all-
encompassing is if everythin g about it is deceptive, fooling us
about t he big things and th e little things alike. That’s the case
here. The human mind has constructed everything to su it itself
from th e groun d up. In a sense, this book was written simply to
convince you that your personal reality is totally mind-made, and
not just by you r mind alone. Having spent a lifetime ada pting tothe artificial reality you inher ited as a child, you have to un dertake
a journey to discover the difference between reality and illusion. To a nyone who accepts the ph ysical world “out there” as t otally
real, the notion of a mind-made world seems absurd. It’s one thing
to be struck by  an idea, but quite another to be struck by lightning. The difference  is so obvious that you’d distrust anyone w ho told
you that the two events were the same. But some of the greatest minds have said just that. This is
where the real fascination be gins. Max Planck, a brilliant German
physicist, was a major figure in the quantum revolution; in  fact, he
coined the term quantum mechanics . In a 1931 interview with the
Observer  n ewspaper in London, Planck said, “I regard
consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from
consciousness. We cannot ge t behind consciousness. Ev erything
that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing,
postulates consciousness.”
In other words, consciousness is fundamental. If that’s true,
then ro ses blooming in an E nglish garden spring from the same
source as a painting of a rose. That source is awareness, m eaning
your awareness. Without consciousness, nothing can be proven to
exist. S imply by being conscious, you participate in the mind-
made world and help create it every day. The beauty of this
understanding is that if creation springs from consciousness, we
can reshape reality from its source. Planck was not alone in his  reinterpretation of reality, away
from th e physical toward the mental. The whole drift of the
quantum revolution was to dismantle the commonsense view that
the wo rld is first and foremost material, solid, and t angible. Another brilliant quantum pi oneer, the German physicist  Werner
Heisenberg, said, “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature
exposed to our method of questioning.”
The implications of this statement are astonishing. Gaze out
your window, and you might  see a tree, a cloud, a swath of grass,
or the sky. Plug any of those  words into Heisenberg’s sentence in
place of the word nature . Y ou see a tre e because you ask to see a
tree. Yo u see a mountain, a cloud, the sky for the same re ason. As
an observer, everything outside your window comes into beingthrough the questions you ar e asking. You might not be aware of
asking question s, but that’s only because they were asked so early
on. Wh en toddlers spy their first tree, they test to see wh at it is,
basically asking, “Is this hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Tall or
short? What are those green things on the branches? Why  do they
ripple in the breeze?” In this way, by applying human
consciousness to everything in the universe, we get answ ers that
fit human consciousness. But we don’t get reality. Physics
dismantles eve ry quality of a tree—its hardness, height, shape, and
color—by revea ling that all objects are actually invisible ripples in
the quantum field. If this discuss ion seems too abstract, it can be brought very
close to  home. Your body is being created in consciousne ss right
this minute; otherwise, it couldn’t exist. Again, Heisenberg can be
credited with getting there early: “The atoms or elementary
particles themselves are n ot real; they form a world of
potentialities o r possibilities .” But in the commonsense world,
where the body is our shelter, life support system, and personal
vehicle for getting around, defending it becomes necessary . It’s too
disturbing to think of our body as a mental illusion. T h e  A n t i - R o b o t  A r g u m e n t
Shifting away from the false assumption that the world is solid
and phy sical runs counter to a trend I find increasingly disturbing. Science persistently tries to prove that human beings are
machines, and where this was once just a metaphor for how the
body works in all its comp lex parts, man-as-machine is being
taken more and more literally. We are told that the complexity of
human emotions can be reduced to rising and falling levels of
brain h ormones. Brain area s that light up on an fMRI scan
supposedly indicate the causation or mechanism behind a person
feeling depressed or being prone to criminal behavior and much
else. Besides being brain puppets, we are supposed to believe that
our genes program us in po werful ways, to the point that “bad”
genes d oom a person to a hos t of problems, from schizophrenia toAlzheimer’s. T hose examples of predisposition are then e xtended
to behaviors and traits like being prone to anxiety and depression. Metahuman ha s many implications, but one of the strong est is
to re buff the notion that hum an beings are primarily mechanisms. Even though science has a wealth of findings about both genes and
the bra in, that doesn’t make that notion any more valid. The
general public  isn’t aware, for example, that only 5 pe rcent of
disease-related genetic mutations will definitely cause a pa rticular
illness. The other 95 percent of genes raise or lower a person’s risk
factors and, in complex ways, interact with other genes. The public is s till stuck on a misconception that a single gene,
like the  so-called “gay gene” or the “selfishness gene,” exists and
creates an irresistible predisposition. This misconception was
obliterated when the human genome was mapped. The current
picture of DNA is almost th e opposite of the public’s misguided
image. DNA isn’t fixed; it  is fluid and dynamic, constantly
interacting with the outside world and with your inner t houghts
and feelings. The notion that your genes run your life is ingrained, even
among educated people, so it is eye-opening to review a recent
experiment pu blished in the December 10, 2018, issue of Nature:
Human Behavior . R esea rchers in the psychology department of
Stanford University took two groups of participants and tested
them fo r two genes, one asso ciated with higher risk of becoming
obese, t he other with higher risk of performing badly in physical
exercise. First I’ll focus on the obesity  gene. The participants ate a meal
and aft erward were asked how full they felt; in addition, their
blood was tested for levels of  leptin, the hormone associated with
feeling full after a meal. Th e results were about the s ame for
people genetically prone to obesity and those who weren’t. The
next week the same group r eturned and ate the same meal, but
with a differen ce. Half the gr oup was told, completely randomly,
that the y had the gene that p rotects someone from risk for obesity
while the other group was told they had the higher-risk version of
the gene.To the surprise of researchers, there was an immediate and
dramatic effect . Simply by being told that they had the protective
gene, su bjects showed a blood level of leptin two and a ha lf times
higher t han be fore. The group who were told they didn’t have the
protective gene  didn’t change from their earlier results. What this
indicates is that simply being  told about a genetic benefi t caused
people to exhibit the physiology associated with that gene. What
the par ticipants believed to be true overrode their actual genetic
predisposition, because in some cases the people who thought
they were genetically protected actually weren’t. The same dramatic results occurred in the exercise experiment. People who were told that t hey had a gene that produced poor
results from exercise displaye d the cardiovascular and respiratory
signs th at such a gene is supposed to produce. Even though they
didn’t have the at-risk gene, m erely by being told they did reduced
their lung capacity and made them too exhausted to continue
running on a treadmill. In shor t, the body conforms to mind-made reality. If your
physiology produces genetic effects simply by hearing that you
have a certain  gene, the my th of genes controlling our lives is
seriously chal lenged. It’s not that genetic programming is
irrelevant (for the full picture, refer to the book Super Genes,
which I cowrote with Harva rd geneticist Rudy Tanzi), but the
reality is as co mplex as human life itself. Genes are among the
host of causes and influence s that affect us. How stron gly they
affect any given person is impossible to predict, and in every area
of behavior and health there is wide latitude for personal choice. Given an either/or choice, see yourself as a free agent capable
of c onscious change, rather t han a robotic machine run b y genes
and brain cells. Life is rarely as simple as either/or, which is true
here as well. B ut despite the public image fostered by popular
science articles , it’s not true that a human being is a biological
puppet. Far closer to the truth is the view that we are conscious
agents whose potential for creativity and change is unlimited. We
become metahuman by making the life-altering choice to be
metahumans.A t  t h e  M e t a h u m a n  C r o s s r o a d s
I do n’t expect you to accept this conclusion—not yet, anyway. The overall picture needs to be sketched before you make up your
mind. W ithout realizing it, we are all embedded in a preformed
reality that we began to ad apt to in infancy. Everything you
perceive at this moment through the five senses—the solid walls of
your ro om, the  faint movement of air in your lungs, the brightness
of th e li ght stre aming in through the window or emitted by a lamp
—is a simulation, a construct that engulfs you in a virtual reality. On the one ha nd, we are se t up—brain, body, and min d—to
conform to virtual reality, the result of a collective hoodwinking
that ha s taken many thousands of years to create. This makes
things v ery tri cky. A prisoner has an incentive to dig a tu nnel to
the outs ide wo rld, because he knows that there’s something lying
beyond the prison walls. The virtual reality you now experience
offers n othing on the other side that you can touch, taste, feel,
hear, or smell. But someth ing does lie outside virtual reality,
which I’ll term metareality . M etareality is the worksho p where
consciousness creates everything. It is our source and origin, a
field of pure cr eative potentia l. Metareality is not perceived by the
five sen ses, be cause it has n o shape or location. Yet it is totally
accessible, and it offers our only means to escape si mulated
reality. Once you realize that you are engulfed in a simulation, it d awns
on y ou how infinite the crea tive power of humans really is. We
fashioned our world using not bricks and mortar but one invisible
material: consciousness. In a scientific age, this assertion seems
incredible, if not absurd. From inside the simulation, creation can
be viewed like a movie of the universe unfolding from the big bang
onward, along a time line th at has taken 13.7 billion years. How
can this mind-boggling arena, bounded by time, space, matter,
and energy, be essentially fake? To find out, it w ill take a pers onal sense of curiosity and a touch
of adventurousness to go beyond conventional wisdom. Consciousness is present in every second of our lives, yet
conventional wisdom takes it for granted. This isn’t like missingthe forest for the trees. It’s like living in the forest without seeing
any trees at all. Take t he enormously pop ular book Homo Deus , whose
overarching th eme is the invention of the future. The author,
Israeli historia n Yuval Noah Harari, wants to offer a n ew and
better s tarting point for the f uture. Age-old burdens from the past
once seemed inescapable, Harari writes:
The same three problems p reoccupied the people of
twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of
ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at
the top  of the list….Many  thinkers and prophets
concluded that famine, plague and war must be an
integral part of God’s cosmic plan or of our imperfect
nature. In a burst of o ptimism rare among futurists, Harari goes on to
write that these problems are essentially solved, even though they
persist in pockets around th e globe: “[A]t the dawn of the third
millennium, hu manity wakes  up to an amazing realisation…. [I]n
the last few de cades we have managed to rein in famine, plague
and wa r.” Eagerly his readers want to accept Harari’s vision that
“on the  cosmic  scale of histor y humankind can lift its eyes  up and
start looking towards new horizons.”
And what are these horizons? In Homo Deus , Ha rari takes the
reader on a jou rney through all the existing problems and  a roster
of poss ible solutions that futurists love to explore. Only on page
409 do es he arrive at consciousness, and then he touts a future
dominated by “techno-religions”—in other words, our evolution is
leading toward  artificial intelligence and supercomputers that
upgrade the raw material o f the human brain. Faced with a
stupendous intelligence that towers over us, what can we do but
worship it? Harari’s vision  winds up in the wrong place because it started
in the wrong place. Consciousness belongs on page 1, and the
future that evolved consciou sness can lead to is where humanity
should be heading. Every future that has unfolded throughouthistory has been based on a d irection taken by the mind. A rtificial
intelligence, after all, is just another notch on the belt of human
intelligence; therefore, predicting that we will be surpass ed by a
Frankenstein race of supercomputers is very premature. We need
to know  our full capacity be fore taking bets on any future. Until
metareality becomes a common experience, being human has not
reached its full creative capacity. Settling for a better dream isn’t
good enough—an upgraded illusion is still an illusion. I n  Y o u r  L i f e
THE MET AHUMAN SUR VEY
The bes t evidence we have f or going beyond is that everyday
people are already experiencing metareality. One measure of this
is a twenty-qu estion survey developed by John Astin and David
Butlein, which  goes by the awkwardly academic title of Nondual
Embodiment T hematic Inventory (NETI). On a scale from 20 to
100, NETI assesses how people rank themselves on qualities long
considered spiritual, psychological, or moral. They include
metahuman traits we already value highly because they  are so
meaningful, as well as other traits that make life easier  to cope
with, such as the following:
Compassion
Resilience
Propensity to surrender
Interest in truth
Lack of defensiveness
Capacity to tolerate cognitive dissonance (i.e., having
inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes)
Tolerance for emotional discomfort
Gratitude
Low anxiety level
AuthenticityHumility
These t raits de scribe human nature liberated from second hand
social norms and conditioning. When you possess these qualities,
you are free to reach the metahuman state of awareness. Take a moment to participate personally. Here’s the NETI
questionnaire that was used to assess what are often called
“nondual experiences,” meaning a heightened state of
consciousness. You will give yourself a total score from 20 to 100,
and we’ll proceed from there. NETI Questionnaire*1
 
To download, go to http://prhlink.com/9781524762988a002
Instructions: Please indicate how often the following things
occur fo r you. Circle only one answer (note: scores are reversed for
questions 4, 8, 14, and 16):
1. Never
2. Rarely
3. Sometimes
4. Most of the time
5. All of the time
1. An inner contentment that is not contingent or dependent
upon circumstances, objects, or the actions of other people. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time2. Accepting (not struggling with) whatever experience I may
be having. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
3. An interest in clearly seeing the reality or truth about
myself, the world, and others, rather than in feeling a
particular way. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
4. A sense that I am protecting or defending a self-image or
concept I hold about myself. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
5. Deep love and appreciation for everyone and everything I
encounter in life. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time6. Understanding that there is ultimately no separation
between what I call my “self” and the whole of existence. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
7. Feeling deeply at ease, wherever I am or whatever situation
or circumstance I may find myself in. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
8. A sense that my actions in life are motivated by fear or
mistrust. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
9. Conscious awareness of my nonseparation from (essential
oneness with) a transcendent reality, source, higher power,
spirit, god, etc. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time10. Not being personally invested in or attached to my own
ideas and concepts. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
11. An unwavering awareness of a stillness/quietness, even in
the midst of movement and noise. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
12. Acting without assuming a role or identity based on my own
or others’ expectations. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
13. A sense of immense freedom and possibility in my moment-
to-moment experience. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time14. A desire to be understood by others. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
15. Concern or discomfort about either the past or the future. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
16. A sense of fear or anxiety that inhibits my actions. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
17. A feeling of profound aliveness and vitality. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
18. Acting without a desire to change anybody or anything. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
19. Feelings of gratitude and/or open curiosity about all
experiences. 1 . Never
2 . Rarely
3 . Sometimes
4 . Most of the time
5 . All of the time
20. A sense of the flawlessness and beauty of everything and
everyone, just as they are. 1. Never
2. Rarely
3. Sometimes
4. Most of the time
5. All of the time
Total score _____ _____ 
EVALUA TING YOUR SCORE
If you have never  ex perienced any traits of  metahuman
awareness, you r score will b e 20. If you experience met ahuman
awareness all the time , your score wil l be 100. Either one would be
extremely rare . The average scores are as follows for three  specific
groups drawn from the therapeutic community:
Psychology graduate students: 52
Psychotherapists: 71Psychotherapists self-reporting as being established in
nondual (i.e., metahuman) awareness: 81.6
What d oes this say about people in everyday life? Most
important, can  we all develop higher consciousness here and now? To f ind out, a research team that I was part of conducted  a study
on short-term awakening. We  got 69 volunteers who were healthy
adults, ranging in age from 32  to 86 (the average age was just over
59). Th ere wer e two requirements: that they would largely abstain
from alcohol for a week (one drink per day was allowed) and that
they had not been on a meditation or yoga retreat within the past
twelve months. The participan ts were divided randomly into two groups at the
Chopra Center  in Carlsbad, California, which offers a spa setting. One gr oup was told to spe nd the next six days relaxing and
enjoying the spa experience. The other group underwent an
Ayurveda-based mind-body program aimed at improving overall
well-being. This included a special diet (primarily vegetarian but
also geared to specific body types), massage, meditation, and
instructions in  leading an Ayurvedic lifestyle. The approach is far-
reaching in that it covers em otional and spiritual well-being. We
already recognized from years of offering the program, known as
Perfect Health, that participants would report afterward that they
felt healthier, less stressed, more relaxed, and generally happier. The spe cific angle in this ne w study was to compare the two
groups on how they answered the NETI questionnaire before and
after the six days were up . The mind-body group showed a
significant im provement in  their scores, compared with the
control group, and the results were sustained on reevaluation one
month later. *2
In the Chopra Center study, participants started out with
above-average scores, averaging 62, which is 10 points higher than
the typi cal psy chology grad student. After being divided into the
two groups, the group that  went through the Perfect Health
regimen had a mean score of 74 (higher than the average
psychotherapist), while the g roup that went through six days of
relaxation in a spa setting improved only marginally, with anaverage score of 68. When evaluated a month later, ther e was a
small increase  among the Perfect Health group, from 74 to 76,
while the score for the relaxation group remained flat. Your score is meant to give you a rough idea of where  you
stand, with the caveat that this was just one small study. It is
striking and hopeful to find that a weeklong focus on mind and
body in creases these experie nces, and the road ahead is open to
anyone who wants to develop even better training programs. I’m not suggesting that the P erfect Health approach based on
Ayurveda is the last word fo r reaching higher consciousness. It’s
the overall implications that matter the most. Met ahuman
experiences ar e everywhere, but people differ in how of ten they
have them. Some people are well established in these expe riences,
which h ave occurred frequen tly over the course of a lifetime. Such
people may take for granted an experience like feeling blissful
energy in their bodies. The same experience would astound
someone else if it came out of the blue and was totally new. The ran ge of consciousness is far greater than a question naire
can mea sure, obviously. Still, an enormous question is posed: Why
live in limitation when expanded awareness offers such great
rewards, such as the sense of  peace and understanding that come
when y ou know who you re ally are and the unlimited creative
potential that you were designed to fulfill? *1  Developed by John Astin and David A. Butlein. *2  Complete research details were published in a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of
Alternative and Complementary Medicine  in December 2017. The coauthors come
from a range of institutions, from the University of California–Davis, Harvard Medical
School, Duke University, and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Very quickly the article
became widely cited. Its lengthy title is “Change in Sense of Nondual Awareness and
Spiritual Awakening in Response to a Multidimensional Well-Being Program.”S1
 
W E  A R E  E N T A N G L E D  I N
A N  I L L U S I O N
omewhere in prehistory Homo sapiens  cro ssed over into
virtual reality, when a mind-made simulation became essential in
our evolutiona ry path. The e xact era will never be known , or the
reason, if any, why one species should acquire such powers and
know th at it had them. No other creature consciously sh apes its
future. No other species tells  stories and convinces itself t hat they
are tru e. The re are many mysteries in our past. So mehow,
following whatever tortuous path, we managed to make our
simulation so convincing that we got lost in it. Although this simulation is very convincing, on a daily basis it
breaks down. There are times when life goes out of kilter and the
world doesn’t seem real and substantial anymore. Such
experiences oc cur regularly, either to ourselves or to other people.
Meta_Humans_-_Unleashing_Your_Infinite_Potential_by_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Praise for M E T A H U M A N
“In his brilliant new book, Deepa k Chopra successfully argues that
consciousness is the sole creator of sel f, mind, brain, body, and the universe,
as we  kno w it. Deepak then teaches us  that truly grasping this revolutionary
idea will effectively remove the limiting belief systems and negativity that
may be holding us  back from achieving our maximum human potential. Highly recommended. ”
— D R. R UDOLPH E. T ANZI,  Professor of Neurology, Harvard
Medical School; and bestselling coauthor of The Healing Self,
Super Brain,  and Super Genes
“ Metahuman  is  a brilli ant vision  of human potenti al and how we can move
beyond the limitations, concepts, and stories created by the mind. If we wake
up an d drop our usual habits of con sidering ourselves as finite, localized
beings, the potential exists in each on e of us to be one with our very true
nature, or quoting Huxley, to be one with the Mind at Large.
Deepak Chopra
Who wrote the book "Metahuman"?
The book argues that consciousness is the sole creator of self, mind, brain, body, and the universe.
What is the main argument presented in "Metahuman"?
The book aims to show readers how to transcend the limitations of their current reality and achieve their full potential.
What is the purpose of "Metahuman"?
The book explains that our own consciousness is the fundamental source of reality, and that we can use this understanding to create a new reality.
What is the core idea of the book "Metahuman"?
The book explores the idea that our reality is constructed by our consciousness, and that we can change this reality by becoming aware of it.
What is the main theme of the book "Metahuman"?
The author argues that our genes do not control our lives, and that we have the power to change our reality and our lives.
What is the author's claim about the relationship between genes and our lives?