Bestselling Indian-American author Deepak Chopra has called the UAE capital Abu Dhabi's emerging culture centre Saadiyat Island an "amazing combination" of cultural heritage and futuristic space.
Saadiyat Island, located 500 m off the coast of Abu Dhabi, is a planned multi-faceted island destination and an emerging cultural centre, offering artistic and diverse cultural spaces featuring architectural icons for visitors and discerning travellers.
"This is my first time in Abu Dhabi and it's quite astonishing what I see here. I don't think there's any place like this in the world. I think the Saadiyat vision embodies really two things: cultural heritage, history and post-modern, futuristic at the same time. It's an amazing combination," Chopra said.
Chopra, one of America's famous alternative medicine practitioners visited the Manarat Al Saadiyat (meaning the place of enlightenment), a 15,400 sq m arts and culture centre, designed to bring the vision of the island to life through the 'Saadiyat Story'.
Inspired by the rich local tradition of storytelling, The Saadiyat Story is an interactive experience made up of nine chapters that brings alive the historical and cultural vision behind the Island as well as its future plans.
He visited the island during his recent spiritual workshop in Abu Dhabi. The workshop, 'The Soul of Leadership', named after his bestselling book was attended by around 500 CEOs and executives, where Chopra called the vision of Saadiyat "not a personal dream", but a "collective dream".
"The meanings, the contexts, the relationships, the dreams, the memories, the archetypal stories that come from the past all go into creating this leader and their imagination is then triggered by the collective consciousness and they use it to manifest the collective dream.
"So it's not a personal dream, it's a collective dream, which is what we're seeing here [on Saadiyat]," Chopra said during his visit.
The 65-year-old author has written over 71 books, 21 of which are New York Times bestsellers including 'Seven Spiritual Laws of Success', 'Ageless Body Timeless Mind', among others.
