July 30, 1999–—–—– GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

All

you need is love

by Doreen Cudnik

"Desire is the most basic drive in human nature. It is the energy of Spirit.'

That is one of the many values that Deepak Chopra learned from the work of 13thcentury Persian poet Jalaleddin Mohammed Balkhi, popularly known as Rumi.

"Ever since I was a child, I was drawn to poetry," Chopra recalls in the liner notes of his new CD, A Gift of Love: Deepak and Friends Present Music Inspired by the Love Poems of Rumi.

"My grandmother would recite to me sacred verses from the mythic traditions of India where gods and goddesses frolicked in celestial playgrounds. Later in my childhood I was introduced to the poems of Rumi ..." It was his lifelong love for the messages found in Rumi's work that drove Chopra to bring the mystic and poet's words to the masses, first in book form in Chopra's 1998 The Love Poems of Rumi, and currently through A Gift of Love. Although Rumi lived and wrote in the 1200s, his work is timeless, Chopra said.

"Seven hundred years after he lived, he is the best-selling poet in America," Chopra said. "He's outselling Shakespeare."

Chopra, who is a medical doctor, is perhaps best known for his work in the field of mind, body and spirit medicine. He has sold over 10 million books which have been translated into 25 languages. His Chopra Center for Well Being, located in the seaside village of La Jolla, California, includes many programs for enhancing the immune system.

judgmental, they're easygoing... Their spirituality is one of tolerance, love, forgiveness and nonjudgement."

Instead of being looked at as something evil and something to be controlled, "desire," Chopra said, reflecting Rumi's beliefs, "is the most basic drive in human nature." And, he adds, "being desirable means being comfortable with your own ambiguity."

To understand this fully, one needs only to look at the relationship between Rumi and Shams, a warrior who "wandered the world looking for a companion." Shams prayed fervently that God's "hidden favorite would be revealed to him so that he could learn more of the mysteries of divine love." God revealed Rumi as the one Shams sought, the legend says, and directed Shams to the city of Konya, Turkey, where Rumi lived.

Sometime in the fall of 1244, Shams saw Rumi riding by on a donkey, surrounded by a crowd of students. Shams approached him, took hold of the bridle on the donkey, and began asking Rumi to unravel the mysteries of the prophets.

Rumi fainted when he heard the depth the questions came from, the legend continues, and fell

JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

Chopra said he sees his latest project as an extension of his work as a healer. "In the framework that I write about, love is more than an emotion or a sentiment or a physical experience," Chopra said in a July 14 interview with the Chronicle. “It's, a force of spirit. Therefore, love can do all the things which a spiritual experience can do, which is heal, renew, transform, make you feel safe, and bring you closer to God. A Gift of Love is about all those experiences."

For the project, Chopra gathered some well-known names from the world of entertainment, civil rights, and literature. Material-Girl-

turned-enlightened-one Madonna was the first to sign on, Chopra recalled, and all of the others among them Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Goldie Hawn, Debra Winger, Jared Harris, and Rosa Parks, all turned out to be Rumi fans themselves. Everyone he asked lent their name and voice to the project out of love, not for any compensation, Chopra said.

Rumi, he said, taught "that all our suffering comes because we have lost the intoxication of love." Many of the tracks on the CD reflect this theme.

"[Rumi] talks constantly about the intoxication of love," Chopra said, adding his own belief that our modern-day addictions are merely a substitute for that feeling of "drunkenness” that passionate love provides. “Ultimately, we're all looking for love."

Rumi's poetry transcends constructs like gender and sexual orientation, Chopra added.

"Rumi's basic premise is that if you can't find the experience of love in human relationships then you are not going to find love for God," Chopra added. "Rumi's whole philosophy is based on Sufism, and Sufis are a very interesting sect, they're really non-

ally died and was buried in Konya.

"Rumi said the most important thing for anyone in their life is to be a passionate lover," Chopra said. "If you don't know the experience of passionate love, then don't count your life as having been lived. If you're a passionate lover in life, then you'll be a passionate lover in death, a lover on the day of resurrection, a lover in paradise, and a lover forever."

to the ground. When he was revived, he and Shams went off together, closing themselves off from the rest of the world "for weeks and months at a time in a mystical conversation called sohbet."

In addition to teaching us about passionate love, Chopra believes A Gift of Love can be a part of an alternative approach to healing AIDS, cancer and other diseases.

Rumi's disciples became disturbed by their teacher's sudden absorption with the wanderer, and eventually became so jealous that they forced Shams to leave. Rumi sent his son, Sultan Velad, to bring him back. But in 1246, after more plotting by the disciples against Shams, he disappeared altogether. Rumi donned mourning clothes, and eventu-

Pointing to scientific information, Chopra said, "If you watch a videotape of Mother Theresa, the

talove

deepak

levels of antibodies that helps you fight infection and cancer in your body's immune system goes up-it is good for your immune system. If you feed rabbits a diet that is extremely high in cholesterol, but if you pet them and cuddle them before you give them that poisonous food, they don't get high cholesterol levels. Loving attention or physical touch can raise levels of things like a certain neuropeptide the blocks the entry of the HIV virus into cells. So the experience of affection, of love, of touching somebody-now we know why massage might work-is actually a healing experience.”

The more we learn about all this," Chopra adds, "the more we see that the people who meditate regularly, the people who are in loving relationships-it doesn't matter if it's same-sex or opposite-sex-people who have a loving relationship, people who have affectionate physical contact, people who feel secure about the fact that somebody cares for them they heal faster, they have better immune responses. The emotion of love itself directly affects your body's internal pharmacy, and does so within minutes."

Seven hundred years later, Rumi would have been pleased by his disciple Chopra. And, A Gift of Love is certain to make Rumi fans out of even the most cynical listeners. After all, who can argue with passionate love? It's really all we need.

"Instead of being looked at as something evil and something to be controlled, desire is the most basic

drive in human nature.”