What Will Save Humanity: Going Multi-Dimensional.

There are many complex ways for human beings to take the wrong path and to drag the planet with us. But the overriding reason isn’t complex. What mainly endangers us is being one-dimensional. This habit has caused terrible destruction in the past. The common thread that links racism, tribalism, toxic nationalism, and every other “ism” is their power of self-delusion. If you were a Christian and nothing else in the Middle Ages, dying for God in the Crusades made sense—you pushed your single dimension to the limit.

Shutting down the vast scope of human potential is a tragic misuse of self-awareness. The simple formula, “I am X” has unending ways to fill in the X, but if you narrowly fixate on one aspect of human nature, you are applying what Aldous Huxley called a “reducing valve” to your awareness. Fanaticism of every kind does that, but once you notice the phenomenon, every decision that constricts awareness moves a person and whole populations of people, to the brink of delusion.

Billionaires who live only for their second billion are as deluded as religious fundamentalists in this one regard: Both are living as if being one-dimensional is a good thing, something to be desired. Your fixation raises you above anyone without wealth, prestige, status, power, or religious conviction. The picture is upside down. Living your life as a vehicle for discovering your true self far surpasses any one-dimensional existence.

This vision has the power to save humanity and the planet. Consider the frustrating failure to curb climate change. Progress is stymied by economic competition and greed, by special interests cloaked as climate change deniers, and by nationalism. Narrow agendas obliterate the common need to save ourselves from ecological catastrophe. Every form of resistance can be traced to one-dimensional thinking: I own a coal mine, or I’m in oil, or I don’t want my taxes to go up, or I am a conservative. Pick a tag, latch it to climate-change resistance, and all possible solutions are blocked.

It is time to realize that we are multidimensional beings. This is our truth and our birthright.  Think about the different kinds of intelligence that are widely recognized. There is a standard IQ, which applies to how advanced a person’s intellect is. But to succeed in life, it is actually better to have high emotional Intelligence (EQ), because this enables you to connect, empathize with, and persuade other people. EQ puts you on another person’s wavelength.

There is also social intelligence, which allows you to fit in with group interests, from the tribe to the nation. Politicians cannot succeed without it. More aspirational is spiritual intelligence, which attunes you to higher values that transcend self-interest, for example, love, compassion, altruism, and devotion.

Yet in a sense, these are just tags whose main use is to classify and catalog. In reality, experience is multi-dimensional here and now. Human language reflects the situation perfectly. Consider the following brief exchange.

A: Hi, we were supposed to meet an hour ago.

B: Sorry.

A: Did you forget?

B: No.

A: Then where were you?

B: I don’t know, out and about.

Almost no information has been exchanged, but it is hard not to read an apparently empty exchange without sensing its implications. A is probing, impatient, wanting to connect but feeling resentful. B is evasive, noncommittal, does not want to connect, and is closed off. Given a little more context, this might be a very fraught exchange. Maybe A is afraid of losing B’s love, trust, or sense of being needed. Maybe B has found someone else. Or is this simply an exasperated parent trying unsuccessfully to grill a teenage boy?

Our minds aren’t linear, which is the fate of being one-dimensional. Like a quantum particle, we are capable of being in more than one possible location. Yet we are more slippery than any particle because we aren’t destined to land anywhere specific and measurable. Our awareness is a cloud of possibilities, and several can be entertained at once (as in the famous love-hate relationship).

If you turn your back on the reality of who you are, the future becomes like a railroad track heading to a single point in the distance when the actual future is a multitude of timelines that change with every thought, word, and action. No matter who you are, right at this moment you are actualizing a timeline, selecting it from all other possible timelines. The process isn’t passive but creative—at least that’s what it is meant to be.

Obviously, you create a timeline through major decisions like choosing who to marry and what job to take. But life, contrary to popular belief, isn’t a series of choices. It is a state of awareness. Making very good choices is desirable, certainly better than making very bad choices.  But any choice brings in the reducing valve. Once you grasp this, you have a clue about why Eastern spiritual traditions esteem choiceless awareness as the highest state of consciousness. As a concept, choiceless awareness makes no sense. What is life but a series of choices, large and small?

No one denies this. The point is the level at which a choice is made. The ideal choice takes all factors into account. This cannot be done,  certainly not from the level of the thinking mind. Many causes, both conscious and unconscious, predictable and unforeseen, apply to any choice. But when they looked deeper, the seers of Vedic India discovered a level of decision-making that doesn’t place the burden on the thinking mind of even the individual self.

Instead, the true or higher self is relied upon to make the right choice in any situation, meaning that the outcome is universal. One can immediately see that reversing climate change is just such a choice. At the same time, we have failed because we keep choosing as individuals with narrow, focused interests. What will save us is the realization that solutions lie at the level where multi-dimensions are calculated by cosmic consciousness, or to put it another way, by the higher consciousness that unites humanity. This sounds confusing only because we are in the habit of seeing ourselves as separate egos driven by isolated desires.

If we undo this habit, it becomes obvious that humankind has acted like multi-dimensional creatures for millennia. No one individually evolved to create art, writing, agriculture, tools, or the inner values of love and altruism. Instead, humanity tapped into the deeper reality that is us. Once you unfold the implications of being multi-dimensional, the future looks very different from what we fear today. Fortunately, achieving a better future requires only that we evolve enough to be who we really are.

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation.  Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution for the last thirty years. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Digital Dharma: How to Use AI to Raise Your Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”  www.deepakchopra.com