Synesthesia
"Metahuman" by Dr. Deepak Chopra
The first step in becoming "Metahuman" is fine-tuning the senses, he says.
Posted September 26, 2019 Reviewed by Kaja Perina
In his new book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, Dr. Deepak Chopra recommends the senses as a pathway to enrich one's life and become more conscious and aware.
![Courtesy Dr. Deepak Chopra Courtesy Dr. Deepak Chopra](https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/article-inline-half-caption/public/field_blog_entry_images/2019-09/metahuman.jpg?itok=M6lRzbpU)
"Meta" is the Greek word for "beyond," and Dr. Chopra is asking us to step into a richer reality and a form of wakefulness.
"The experience of the physical world is a result of perceptual activity in consciousness. The five senses have been recently shown to provide quantum information to the brain," Dr. Chopra told me in a recent email exchange, referencing the series Dr. William C. Bushell and I have done in this space.
"How this turns into the experience of that we call 'the physical world' and how quantum information becomes the experience of both the perceptual activity that we interpret as a physical world is part of what usually is referred to the hard problem of consciousness,'' he explained, noting the work of David Chalmers, Ph.D., (who was a synesthete until early adulthood).
Dr. Chopra continued that in his view and that of many cognitive scientists, atoms, molecules, and force fields are human constructs for modes of knowing and experience that arise from perceptual activity. "The human sensory experience is a narrow band of perceptual activity which is species-specific. The phenomena of synesthesia is that sensory information that gives rise to the physical world... Every sensory input is entangled within a specific bandwidth of experience, and refining our senses at a very subtle level has been a practice in many contemplative and meditative traditions of the East."
He said that having subtle sensory experience mentally, "is tapping into the most fundamental activity of consciousness and can give us insight into the fact that matter, energy, information force fields and atoms are human constructs for modes of knowing and experience in human consciousness that are perceptual and mental modifications of consciousness which modulates itself into the experience of mind body and universe."
![Source: Courtesy Dr. Chopra Source: Courtesy Dr. Chopra](https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/article-inline-half-caption/public/field_blog_entry_images/2019-09/drchopra.jpg?itok=9PNMITpM)
In the book, (Harmony, dropping Tuesday, Oct. 1), Dr. Chopra describes how everything we think we see is created inside our visual cortex, which he notes, is completely dark. "The picture you take to be a snapshot of the world was fabricated by your mind."
Similarly, "the other four senses are just 'clicks' on the surface of other kinds of cells," he explains. "There is no explanation for why the nerve endings in your nose should turn the bombardment of molecules floating around into the scent of a rose or the stink of a garbage dump. The entire three-dimensional world is based on a magic trick no one can explain, but it is certainly not a true picture of reality. The whole thing is mind-made."
In fact, in the book's closing workbook section, in which he gives specific exercises for fine tuning one's awareness, the first eight lessons involve the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.
Some of the exercises include turning off the lights and attempting to walk about your space; covering your ears to experience muffled sound; putting a grain of salt or sugar on your tongue; more closely examining moving images across a TV or computer and poking a hole in a sheet of paper and holding it closer or farther away from one's eyes.
In this way, Dr. Chopra is asking us to be in the moment of sensory awareness and to carry that heightened awareness of each of the senses forward.
It is significant to me that he believes realizing the potentials of the senses are foundational to a higher level of consciousness. As someone working daily with people with exceptional sensory experiences, I highly recommend this latest offering from Dr. Chopra.