The answers to humanity’s most urgent questions are often hidden from view, maintains Deepak Chopra. This is because the revelations that engender breakthroughs and turning points are often counterintuitive—hidden from our everyday gaze. In The Book of Secrets, Chopra distills decades of insights and observations into fifteen secrets that are intended to transport readers to transformation. Chopra asserts that feelings of dissatisfaction and deep spiritual hunger contain within them the longing for a secret—the “pearl beyond price.” This pearl has been called our essence, the water of life, the breath of God, and so on. In this scientific age, Chopra says we would simply call this pearl transformation. Transformation goes beyond change, to a radical change of form—much like a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. In human terms, this transformation occurs when fear, doubt, and hatred turn into their opposites. To begin this transformation, however, one must find the hidden dimensions that are within. A few of the secrets that Chopra shares in this book include:

• Ultimately, you have to believe that your life is worth investigating with total passion and commitment. It took thousands of tiny decisions to keep the book of secrets closed, but it takes only a single moment to open it again.
• On the surface, everyday life has become much more comfortable than ever before. Yet people still lead lives of quiet desperation. The source of this desperation is repression, a sense that you cannot be what you want to be, cannot feel what you want to feel, cannot do what you want to do. A creator should never be trapped in this way. No authority looms over you to enforce repression; it is entirely self-enforced.
• Every change you make, however small, will be communicated throughout existence—quite literally, the whole universe will be eavesdropping on you and lending you its support. From its point of view, the formation of a galaxy is no more momentous than the evolution of a single person.

After the layers of the onion are peeled away, Chopra says we come face to face with the indescribable—the secret at the core of life. To enter this unknown world is much like being pushed through the birth canal once again—even to the extent of registering shock, surprise, and pain—but the second birth comes from looking at life as it already is, seeing it from the stillness inside. The Book of Secrets offers compelling answers to the age-old questions:

• Who am I?
• Where did I come from?
• Why am I here?