Chopra does not believe reports that he once described himself as "just a regular guy with the gift of gab." As he told me in a recent conversation, "I am just a regular guy. But I don't have the gift of gab. I wish I did." When not on the speaking circuit, Deepak Chopra is at work on his 27th book and adding to his more than 100 audio, video and CD-ROM titles, while presiding over the Chopra Center for Well Being in La Jolla, Calif.

Go to Web sites like Skeptic's Dictionary, The Shameless Mind and Quackwatch, and you will find all the ammunition of scientific rationalism aimed at Chopra.

He is said to have misconstrued quantum physics. "Deepak Chopra has successfully promoted a notion he calls quantum healing, which suggests we can cure all our ills by the application of sufficient mental power," writes Victor J. Stenger, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii, in the Skeptical Inquirer. Many words and diagrams later, Stenger concludes that "no compelling argument or evidence requires that quantum mechanics plays a central role in human consciousness or provides instantaneous, holistic connections across the universe."

Chopra's sweeping claims for Ayurvedic healing -- a 2,000-year-old tradition rooted in astrology, demonology and balancing energy through diet and exercise -- come under similar assault. "As far as I can tell," writes Stephen Barrett, M.D. in Quackwatch, "Chopra has neither published nor personally conducted any scientific studies testing whether the methods he promotes help people become healthier or live longer."

A lot of other credentialed scientists take their runs at Chopra's "factual errors" and "absurd ideas." All of them are wasting their time, because their angle of attack cleanly misses the appeal of Chopra today. What pulls people to Chopra is their yearning to pull free of scientific rationality, or, more accurately, to escape the unenchanted world that two centuries of the Age of Reason has bequeathed us.