Spring Break
Deepak Chopra on "The Soul of Leadership"
Renowned author Dr. Deepak Chopra reflects on the question, "What is a leader?"
Nick Will, Editor In Chief
Issue date: 4/16/02 Section: News
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On Friday, as the keynote speaker for the Mobius Forum, Deepak Chopra spoke to a crowded Spangler Auditorium on the subject of "The Soul of Leadership." Chopra, a world-renowned author on the subject of spiritualism who often relates principles of quantum physics to Eastern philosophy, told the crowd that "a leader is the symbolic soul of a group, and that group can be a family or a nation."
Chopra contrasted the "visionary leader" model with the "tyrant king" model of leadership. Of the tyrant king leader, he said, "Through enslaving others, he becomes the most miserable of slaves."
On how thoughts manifest into reality, Chopra explained, "Thoughts, dreams, and fantasies translate themselves into electrical storms in our synapses" that ultimately determine and shape "what we do as sentient beings."
Spirituality, Chopra said, is often confused with religious officials and icons that eventually and inevitably become defiled, making a parallel to Boston's Cardinal Law and the current sex-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Rather, he argued, spirituality is "a domain of awareness where we experience our universal nature," and continued, "At the level of our souls, we are all sinners and saints...we all have in us the divine and the diabolical," and that those "ambiguities" are indicative of humanity's shared commonality.
This awareness, he said, "allows us to realize that the sinner and the saint are just exchanging notes," and that "at one level we are all the same." He separated conceptually the soul, the mind, and the body by saying the "soul is the observer, the process of observation is the mind, and the body is the object of observation experiencing the world through the five senses." Chopra charged, "Our academic world has ignored the role of the observer, which has been relegated to the role of theologians."
The concept of "tangled hierarchies" featured prominently in Chopra's remarks, a concept he said is well grounded in both quantum physics and Buddhism. In each paired relationship, Chopra said, "Each creates the other." He listed seven: observer and observed, messenger molecules and receptors, sensory apparatus and the physical world, organism and its environment, and followers (and their needs) and leaders (and their responses). To illustrate, Chopra said that common debates such as the one about "nature versus nurture" ask the wrong question because "they are part of the same continuum."
Chopra contrasted the "visionary leader" model with the "tyrant king" model of leadership. Of the tyrant king leader, he said, "Through enslaving others, he becomes the most miserable of slaves."
On how thoughts manifest into reality, Chopra explained, "Thoughts, dreams, and fantasies translate themselves into electrical storms in our synapses" that ultimately determine and shape "what we do as sentient beings."
Spirituality, Chopra said, is often confused with religious officials and icons that eventually and inevitably become defiled, making a parallel to Boston's Cardinal Law and the current sex-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Rather, he argued, spirituality is "a domain of awareness where we experience our universal nature," and continued, "At the level of our souls, we are all sinners and saints...we all have in us the divine and the diabolical," and that those "ambiguities" are indicative of humanity's shared commonality.
This awareness, he said, "allows us to realize that the sinner and the saint are just exchanging notes," and that "at one level we are all the same." He separated conceptually the soul, the mind, and the body by saying the "soul is the observer, the process of observation is the mind, and the body is the object of observation experiencing the world through the five senses." Chopra charged, "Our academic world has ignored the role of the observer, which has been relegated to the role of theologians."
The concept of "tangled hierarchies" featured prominently in Chopra's remarks, a concept he said is well grounded in both quantum physics and Buddhism. In each paired relationship, Chopra said, "Each creates the other." He listed seven: observer and observed, messenger molecules and receptors, sensory apparatus and the physical world, organism and its environment, and followers (and their needs) and leaders (and their responses). To illustrate, Chopra said that common debates such as the one about "nature versus nurture" ask the wrong question because "they are part of the same continuum."
