Welcome to Commune, where each week we explore the ideas and practices that bring us together

and help us live a healthy, purpose-filled life.

I'm your host, Jeff Krasno.

Right now, our human experience feels uncertain and mercurial, and this feeling of powerlessness

in an ever-changing and unpredictable universe can create stress and anxiety.

So when I feel this way, I meditate, if only to experience silence.

The silence is one of the few phenomena that human beings experience as infinite.

It exists outside of time and space, location, and form.

In other words, it doesn't change. Every day, I observe my body and I'm absolutely convinced that it is

real. But which body is real? The body in the photo of me as a little baby, or me as a strapping young

teenager, or is the real me that sleep-deprived young dad, or perhaps the more distinguished

version of my current self? The great Indian saint Mukdenanda was asked, what is real,

master? What is real? He replied,

That which is real never changes. Our body mind is constantly changing, and so it's a tree,

a cat, a car, a pair of pants. Every material object has a shelf life and is constantly shifting,

and according to Mukdenanda's axiom, is not real. It may just be that the source of all

material things, objects that take form, is immaterial, existing as mere projections of consciousness.

And it may be in this formless, timeless, spaceless, locationless place that one may discover

pure awareness, oneness with God, Brahman, Samadhi, whatever you want to call it.

So reflecting on this prompted me to revisit a podcast episode

from two years ago with Deepak Chopra when we sat down for a light afternoon chat regarding the

objective nature of reality. He needs little introduction, but for good measure,

...