We forget sometimes that there are saints living among us. When we meet them, we are reminded, not just of the presence of pure divinity right here on earth, but also of our own potential, and of the responsibility we have to try to live up to it, for our own sakes and for the very future of this planet.

Your body, which is very physical, is under the influence of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your dreams, your fantasies, your desires, your instincts, your drives, your imagination. All these things orchestrate themselves - all these internal activities that are in the invisible domain that we call consciousness actually have very precise physical effects both in our biology, but they also influence our perception of the world.

This moment - the one you're experiencing right now - is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.

Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. His story is full of adventure, intrigue, betrayal.

Where nature goes to create stars, galaxies, quarks and leptons, you and I also go to create ourselves.

We've just done a five-day retreat at the Chopra centre and people who went to the meditation retreat saw their anti-ageing enzyme increase by 40 per cent. We looked at their 23,000 genes and the self-healing genes were up regulated and all the genes related to heart disease, cancer and inflammatory diseases, diabetes, they all went down within five days.

No matter what advantages you are born with-- money, intelligence, an appealing personality, a sunny outlook, or good social connections-- none of these provides a magic key to an easy existence. Somehow life manages to bring difficult problems, the causes of untold suffering and struggle. How you meet your challenges makes all the difference between the promise of success and the specter of failure.