http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/02/28/magazine/DEEPAK28.htm
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/02/28/magazine/DEEPAK28.htm
A mystic spinning words into gold
Deepak Chopra’s books are best sellers, his lectures pricey.
Deepak Chopra comes to Valley Forge next week, promoting his 26th book.
Related Links
•If You Go •On the Net | Deepak Chopra site •On the Net | The Chopra
Center for Well Being •On the Net | Shameless Mind offers independent
research about Chopra
By Jim Remsen
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Deepak Chopra, citizen-mystic, has caught God in a bottle, distilled the
spirits, and - poof! - come out with his 26th book.
How to Know God: The Soul’s Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries is a
marvel of metaphysics and feel-good spirituality. Its lofty claim -
“Your brain is hardwired to find God” - is classic Chopra, and it
floated him to his customary spot on the New York Times best-seller
list.
The charismatic godfather of the New Age movement recently left his
California base for a nationwide swing to promote the book’s paperback
release. The tour will bring him to the Valley Forge Convention Center
next Wednesday for a pricey public lecture.
“I don’t consider myself a religious or spiritual leader,” Chopra said
in a recent phone interview. “I consider myself a writer who explains
some of the ancient wisdom traditions in contemporary language. . . .
And it so happens my books do very well.”
Chopra, 54, born in India and trained at Harvard in endocrinology, may
try to shrug off the leader’s mantle, but his public isn’t letting him.
His holistic blending of psychology, science, health and Hindu-based
spirituality has brought him millions of enthusiasts and dollars,
prompting Time magazine to name him one of the top 100 “icons and
heroes” of the 20th century.
To many, he is simply Deepak. That moniker puts him on a pop-culture
plane with Hillary and Jesse and perhaps even Oprah - who might as well
give him an endowed chair for all the times she’s had him on her show.
It also makes him high-priced, with a speaking fee of about $25,000 and
earnings put at $10 million to $15 million a year.
As a self-styled sage, Chopra has his share of critics. Christian
monitors bristle at his mixing of Eastern and Western beliefs. Medical
watchdogs scowl at his embrace of Eastern ayurvedic medicine, which
teaches that illnesses are largely self-generated. Other commentators
deride him as the stereotype of the honey-voiced New Age seer who
peddles therapeutic theology (with boxed tapes) to a restless generation
in search of contentment.
Chopra has weathered it all. How has he not only survived but thrived
for nearly 20 years? The answer lies in his audience as much as him.
He feeds the proclivity, deeply rooted in the American psyche, for faith
centered on the transcendental self. Social critics have long noted a
widespread public belief, stemming from Protestantism and a sense of
American destiny, that the individual American is as old as God and
loved personally by God.
Harold Bloom, in his 1992 book The American Religion, said these
Americans are modern Gnostics, the pre-Christian believers who extolled
individual divinity. According to this world view, salvation “cannot
come through the community or the congregation, but is a one-on-one act
of confrontation.”
While this does not apply to all Americans, it resonates with Chopra’s
public, who tend to be religious free agents or seekers lightly tethered
to the religion of their birth, like kites on a string.
Much of How to Know God, in fact, reads like a Gnostic gospel. Chopra
states, “In general, to be spiritual in these times means going it
alone, far more than in the past. In a society with misguided
perceptions of God and no tradition of masters, you are responsible for
setting your own intentions.”
He elevates private encounters even above ethical behavior: “A spiritual
person is a good listener for silent voices, a sharp observer of
invisible objects. These traits are more important than trying to act in
a way that God would reward with a gold star.”
In How to Know God, Chopra tries to equip readers with an inner eye to
see what he says is God’s multifaceted nature. He posits that God has
seven ascending stages - from God the Protector to God of Pure Being -
that are like a divine flow chart. God responds on all the levels,
Chopra writes, and the key is to find your level of response.
The soul, he says, aspires to the equipoise of level seven: “The state
of ‘I am’ forgoes pleasure and pain” and is one’s ultimate yearning.
This is Hindu high concept. Though Chopra rarely invokes its
terminology, Hinduism suffuses his work. Specifically, it is Advaita
Hinduism, which holds that the soul is not separate from the ultimate
but is of the same substance as God.
Chopra conveys Advaitic belief accurately, said K.L. Rao, chief editor
of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Rao, a retired Harvard religion
professor, said Chopra is well regarded by Hindus and has been an
adviser to the encyclopedia.
In the interview, Chopra said his personal teacher is a Himalayan guru
from the Shankara tradition - whom he visits in his mountain abode every
year. Chopra was a longtime apostle of transcendental meditation ™,
and said he still worships not in a congregation but in private
meditation.
The Christian Research Institute, a watchdog group in California,
cautions Christians about Chopra’s Advaitism, which it calls “occultic.”
Medical watchdogs also have been on Chopra’s trail. One is Stephen
Barrett, a retired physician in Allentown who operates a nonprofit
service called Quackwatch. He warns that Chopra, in early writings, said
TM meditators could fly; that he wrote a piece for the Journal of the
American Medical Association praising a line of TM herbs and failed to
divulge that he was the sole stockholder; and that he “oversells” the
benefits of folk medicine.
Barrett said that when Chopra moved his operation from Massachusetts to
Southern California in 1993, he did not renew his medical license so he
could still “speak in medical generalities” and not be held
professionally accountable.
Jude Hedlund, spokeswoman for the Chopra Center for Well Being in La
Jolla, confirmed that Chopra does not hold a California medical license
or see patients anymore. “It wouldn’t be in the best interest of
patients because of his writing and speaking engagements,” she said.
The center grosses between $7 million and $8 million, Hedlund said.
Chopra, as a stakeholder, gets a cut of that, and she confirmed that he
has said he is worth $15 million.
In the interview, though, Chopra said that “I have no savings to speak
of.” He said he plows his money back into the center and into other
enterprises - his latest is the Web site mypotential.com - and donates
about 10 percent to charities.
The criticisms don’t faze Chopra’s local fans. A $125-a-ticket reception
has sold out, and 800 of the 1,200 lecture seats were sold, at $35 to
$65 per ticket, as of yesterday.
Lorraine Calhoun of Doylestown is a newly minted “Magic of Healing”
instructor, one of 650 to be trained at the La Jolla center.
“He doesn’t call his work a religion but more of a personal evolution,”
she said. “More of your own personal journey and path to evolve.”
Jim Remsen’s e-mail address is
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When was i for real?
I am myself a dream
I always see you
watching me tenderly