What Makes Us Human? - The rabbit hole with deepak chopra

[music] [music] What makes us human? The great Sufi poet Rumi suggested that consciousness sleeps in minerals, dreams in vegetables, wakes up in animals, and starts to become self aware in humans. Self awareness gives us the ability to realize that our minds are conditioned by experience, and by cultural, religious, and historical circumstances.   This awareness itself gives us the ability to break out of the conditioned mind. Being human means having the ability to find the true self, beyond our personality and to experientially know and feel that the self of the individual is the self of the universe. As we gradually peel away the layers of conditioning, we return to a pure or unconditioned mind, which is the original mind and the field of infinite possibilities.   Seers and sages throughout the ages have perfected modalities for achieving this state of un-conditioning.  These include: self awareness which is awareness of body, mental space, relationships and the five senses, self reflection which is asking questions like “Who am I?  What is my purpose?”, transcendence which is going beyond the subject/object split, and conscious choice making. We are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality. It is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity.  This pure essence is distinct from ego and personality. Experiencing pure potential is the exhilarating transformation of consciousness, or enlightenment, in which we feel with complete and utter conviction, that we are the total energy of the universe playing itself out as this body and this mind. So let me ask you something, are you a human being? Or are you being human?