Customer Reviews

The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life (Deepak Chopra)

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'm a long-time reader of Dr. Chopra's books, but this one is truly unique. It pulls no punches, telling the whole story of how he sees spirit and the path to enlightenment. In the past Dr. Chopra has used a lot of pop metaphors to get his message across and has been lumped with motivational writers like Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins, but in The Book of Secrets he is all spiritual, and for me that is really exciting. If you want to learn about everything from good and evil to life after death and the five illusions that create unreality, this is the book for you.

Part of me wants to dismiss Chopra as touchy-feely new-agey fluff, but I keep reading him because there are such profound resonant truths underneath everything he writes about. He goes a little off the uh, "deep," end now and again, but really, he does a fine job of relating ancient eastern principles in a very personal and understandable way. He's actually going over the same material with each new book, but to his credit, he finds so many different ways to relate it to the modern world, and to different mindsets -- each book is better than the last. I think of him as the Alan Watts of this era. There are a lot of "wow" moments in this one, and a very enjoyable journey. I've read through it several times already.

Chopra writing of death says to "imagine yourself into a new form with a new location in space and time."
Lewis in An Encounter with a Prophet instructs an adolescent to see his dead brother pursuing his favorite activity at a different location.
These authors do not see death as a end but as a continuation of the life here. Interesting concepts.

This book was one I had to read twice and will likely read again. It is a powerful book with so many insights into life and what we should be tuned into. I was somewhat depressed when I started reading the book and it gave me hope. Sandy H

A truly uplifting read, this is possibly the best book so far by the masterful intelligence of Deepak Chopra. The writing is of exceptional quality, his popular blend of scientific objectivity and poetic mysticism. It feels strongly as though the author was himself undergoing a major personal re-birth while writing "The Book Of Secrets".

Each chapter is given to a "secret" such as "The Mystery Of Life Is Real", "The World Is In You", "What You Seek You Already Are", "Evil Is Not Your Enemy" and "The Meaning Of Life Is Everything". At the end of each chapter Deepak gives some exercises and suggestions as to how one might accommodate the secret just discussed. Many of these boil down to simple honest and open awareness of oneself and others, together with practical advice of one kind or another. For example, in chapter 6 the author helps free you up from the fear of making mistakes. Right and wrong decisions are mental constructs, there is bad in the good choices we have made and vice versa.

On the cover Deepak asks three questions: "Who am I?", "Where did I come from?" and "Why am I here?". He answers them clearly and simply in the last chapter. A great book to help you WAKE UP!

I have listened to this book about three times. I think it takes that many times to really understand everything Dr. Chopra is talking about. I recently lost my father and listening to Dr. Chopra's insights into his fathers death and the secrets he learned about life was excellent. I highly recommend this book.

I bought this book on a whim having read Chopra's books off and on for years, and also because I need to keep pumping positive ideas and concepts into my head periodically to believe I am actually "evolving". I was very delighted to find that this is not about psyching yourself up to live in a fantasy land that is reserved for sages and gurus. This book is about what is going on right now both inside your body and outside in your reality (which are really both the same). Chropra draws on science and religion to expand on his "secrets" that really just require that you get out of your own way in order to access them. It is living in a dualistic world that keeps us separate from each other, our own divinity, etc. By merely paying attention and accepting responsibility for what is happening in your life, you can access the system that is already within you to create a profound change in your life.
I have already bought 2 more copies to give to friends who like to think about why they might be here and what all this is about. Both of them are also thrilled. So buy this book. Or don't.

What I love so much about Deepak Chopra's books, is that he takes these profoundly deep and spiritual concepts and brings them to us in such a way that they are tangible, livable, and practical. Like "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success," this is a book that I will read over and over again, and get something more out of it each time. There is so much Truth in "The Book of Secrets" - I highly recommend it!

Chopra has several great insights in this book. If you use his "unitary-world" approach, you accept whatever happens as what you need at the time: less conflict, strife, and alienation. Also, he has an intriguing notion about the on-switch and the off-switch of the universe: when it is in "off," one can reimagine the world to be the way you want it to be, and achieve much with little effort: sort of like using leverage in the physical plane. Much here that will improve your life. His central metaphor of the butterfly, transformed from the caterpillar, underscores the mysterious, unpredictable nature of transformation, which will work in your life too, if you carefully apply Chopra's precepts.

After Chopra's truly innovative and powerful HOW TO KNOW GOD, I didn't think anything following could come close to its quality, and still don't, but this book is often stunning in its insights and healing power -- the exercise on page 145, for example, and the commentary on pages 163-166. Priceless.

Still, it is important to remember that if something isn't true for you, it isn't true. Mr. Chopra seems (to me) on occasion a bit sweeping in his assessments (or doesn't say enough) and statements he makes which are true can be misleading...for example, on page 12 he writes "Others assume that they must leave where they are and find something they do not yet have...a new job, a new religion...If where you are isn't good enough, then love and healing and God will remain forever out of reach." Yet elsewhere he describes how he left an early position with a famous doctor because it was suppressive, and how glad he was he did because he found something far more validating, where he could grow. And many of us know at least one person who has moved from place to place until he finds he takes himself wherever he goes and nothing changes...but it took those moves to bring about that awakening...and perhaps the traveler makes other, important discoveries as a result of his travels to fulfill his destiny and arrives in a nicer location as well. (In HOW TO KNOW GOD Chopra similarly says, on page 101: "If you start out by rejecting this or that, how will you end up accepting it?" Well, by realizing, for yourself, what does and doesn't work for you to do to advance your freedom. Elsewhere, Chopra does say that spiritual progress is inevitable.)

Regardless of this caveat, I believe the BOOK OF SECRETS will reach you deeply and trigger many realizations, and that you will upwrap a world or worlds you recognize as real, and as your own creation. It is difficult to imagine anyone not benefiting immensely from reading and re-reading it.