Lisa Schneider:

There’s been a lot of talk about the influence of conservative values after the presidential election. Do you believe that this New Age movement is a sort of silent majority?

Deepak Chopra: I hope so. If it’s not, it will be soon. You need a critical mass of connectivity for that to happen. So it could be a majority but unless you get to that critical mass of connectivity, it may not really take that jump.

Americans have just re-elected a president who took the country to war. What signs do you see that make you hopeful the world is moving toward peace?

Well, first of all, whenever there is a faith transition in society, the forces of inertia and resistance also come forth as we rise in consciousness; our shadow also rises to meet the challenge. So I would say, just like water boils into steam, we have the same thing happening. There’s a lot of turbulence. I would interpret this and the actions of our president, and [the] fear of our collective psyche as part of the transition. We’re seeing the dying carcass of the old paradigm.

At the same time that we are seeing the rise of alternative and New Age spirituality, we are witnessing a surge in religious fundamentalism. How would you convince the fundamentalists to join this New Age movement toward peace?

You can’t convince anybody. You know, what happens is consciousness operates in mysterious ways. One of those ways is that the old paradigm suddenly starts to die. Just like when the Berlin Wall fell: it reached a critical mass of collective consciousness that [removing it] was no longer a terrible idea. And boom, it happened, and that’s the way this will happen. — Beliefnet.com