‘Ageless Body, Timeless Mind’ by Dr Deepak Chopra

Belle Odom a pint-sized Black woman hit the headlines when she turned 109. Even at that age her eyes looked clear and alert and, it was found, her mind was sharper than most of the younger residents at Houston nursing home. Born and brought up in rugged Texas farm country, she was raised on a marginal diet and grinding physical labor, yet she is one of the few “longevity elite” while most better-offs pass away sooner.

Science cannot predict the duration of a human life. Genetics, too, fails, because a centenarian may not have a centenarian parent. So the question is, what makes a person live for so long? The answer lies in simple physical processes that Dr Deepak Chopra prescribes in his “most optimistic book” 'Ageless Body, Timeless Mind – A Quantum Alternative to Growing Old' – a No.1 New York Times best-seller.

According to Dr Chopra: “Aging is much more of a choice than people ever dream” and for that, it is essential to reinterpret the concept of body and realize the “changeless I” inside of us, which the ancient sages in India simply called the Self (Soham).

The Outer “I”
The outer “I” wears clothes, eats, seeks and enjoys material wealth, socializes, engages in myriad other activities, “identifies with pain, pleasure, poverty, happiness, sadness, youth and old age – every time-bound condition that the relative world imposes.”

The Inner “Eye”
But the real “I” within is changeless and our goal is to link it to the world Spirit, i.e. “unity consciousness”. As Dr Chopra puts it, “we are victims of sickness, aging, and death by gaps in our self-knowledge” and this lack of awareness of the real I “leads to loss of control over the end product of intelligence, the human body.”

In a very interesting section of the book Three Ages of Man, Dr Chopra asks a common question – How old are you? – and cautions anyone who rushes to reply. He considers three distinct ways to measure someone’s age: “Chronological Age – how old you are by the calendar; Biological Age – how old your body is in terms of critical life signs and cellular processes, i.e., how time has affected your organs and tissues compared to other people of your chronological age; and Psychological Age – how old you feel you are.”

Marianne Williamson, author of A Woman’s Worth, aptly said, “Having read this book, I feel younger than when I started it.”

In the Chapter 'Defeating Entropy', the author talks of Stress, Sorrow, and Negative Emotions that lead to disease, aging, and death. However, he says, it is not stress that kills but the body’s coping mechanism that is to be blamed. Some people thrive under stress while some crumble. It is not the stressful event but “your inner appraisal of it and your body’s reaction” that allow stress to take its toll.

Meditation & Yoga
Meditation nullifies Stress; and Dr Chopra claims “Meditation lowers Biological Age.” He writes, Transcendental Meditation is “based on the silent repetition of a specific Sanskrit word, or Mantra, whose sound vibrations gradually lead the mind out of its normal thinking process and into the silence that underlies thought.”

The science of Yoga, in use for thousands of years in India, “unites the thinking mind with its source in pure awareness i.e., the quantum space, the silent, empty void that is the womb of all matter and energy… that exists in the gap between thoughts; the unchanging background against which all mental activity takes place.” Our minds are preoccupied with thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies, sensations and only Meditation “shows the mind its own origins in the quantum depths.”

Merely being a centenarian is not the triumph of life but to achieve pure wisdom at that stage is the true aim. Human body is subject to entropy and decay but with a little effort we can have an ageless body, a mature soul, and a timeless mind that are our “links to immortality.”

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind systematically, scientifically, and logically rationalizes the process of growing old, solves the mystery of aging of the biological body, eliminates the nagging fear of death, and revolutionizes the concept of ‘the new old age’ where people will easily live to be 100 and beyond. And all of this is packaged with a spiritual vision.