It's all good: The appeal of Deepak Chopra

Theodore Roszak offered an interesting take on this impulse a couple of decades ago in an essay for Harper's titled "In Search of the Miraculous." He remembers being taught in college in the 1950s that God was dead, killed by the scientific revolution. But it didn't take with the wider public, where flourishes "highly personal, emotionally electrifying versions of Christianity" as well as the sort of New Age mysticism championed by Chopra and his ilk.

Roszak sees a great cultural divide. At the top stands "a secular humanist establishment devoted to the skeptical, the empirical, the scientifically demonstrable" which is out of touch with "a vast popular culture that is still deeply entangled with piety, mystery, miracle, the search for personal salvation."

There are two ways to interpret this split, writes Roszak. The first is to roll one's eyes, to blame "the hunger for wonders" on "incurable human frailty, an incapacity to grow up and grow rational." If so, "sadly one would have to conclude that the masses are not yet mature enough to give up their infantile fantasies."

But that's not how Roszak reads it. The second view, his own, is to see "the psyche at war" with itself. Each of us contains a critical intellect, but also "the innate human need for transcendence." Philosophy used to bridge the gap, but today's postmodernists have nothing to offer in that vein, having made a fetish instead out of "deconstructing" language rather than asking the questions of Socrates: What is the good? What is life's purpose?

Roszak argues that when super-rational scientists and academics "scorn and scold, debunk and denigrate more fiercely" the longing for wonder within each of us, it is "like scolding starving people for eating out of garbage cans, while providing them no more wholesome food."

Over the phone, Deepak Chopra demonstrates his grasp of the opportunity presented. "People have always wondered, 'Who am I? Where do I come from? What is the meaning of existence? Is there a God? Does he care about me? Is the Earth just a capricious anomaly in the junkyard of infinity? What the heck is going on?'"

Those indeed are questions that war within our psyches, even as they resist the withering skepticism of science as their answer. A further question, however, is this. Why do so many people believe the answers provided by Deepak Chopra?

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Part of the answer to that lies outside the window of Helen's Grill, in that terrifying haiku of a headline. "'Amazing' teen killed in Whistler crash." To read it is to want a reason, and a method of evading whatever cruelness kills teenagers who thought they'd kill a day snowboarding, whatever cruelness may next touch us.

In his many books, tapes, lectures, product catalogs and appearances, Chopra is saying what teenagers, among others, like to say these days: "It's all good." He's saying that . . .

No claim of the miraculous, the magical can be ruled out. "Some people vibrate at a frequency of consciousness such that that they can see an angel; far more can vibrate at a frequency to perceive an automobile," Chopra tells me. He explains that nothing is real except consciousness, and so whatever your consciousness experiences -- clairvoyance, astral projection, channeling, visits by ghosts or aliens -- is real for that person. I ask: "So there is no way for anyone else to evaluate whether that experience is real?" Chopra answers, "You have no way to evaluate it."

You need accept no limits, physical or financial. Noting that the title of one of his books is "Creating Affluence: Wealth Consciousness in the Field of All Possibilities," I tell Chopra I was raised by my Catholic mother to curb material longing, to remember Christ's teachings about the rich man and the eye of the needle. Growing up blue-collar in the Depression era, this teaching no doubt afforded her people some comfort. Chopra replies that "wealth is an expression of the spirit" and that because those without money always obsess about getting it, "the solution is to help everybody have wealth." But is there a conflict between desiring wealth, and seeking God? "Why should material success be an impediment to spirituality?" he responds. "Keep increasing your desires until nothing satisfies you except God. Wanting material wealth is part of that."

Chopra himself has the lifestyle and some of the problems of a rich celebrity. He's spent a lot of time in court fighting those he claims are out to ruin his good name and extort his money. In one case he won a $1.6 million dollar settlement and apology from the Weekly Standard magazine, which he says libeled him with a prostitute story. More recently, he dropped a lawsuit against a former co-worker he claims was trying to blackmail him. But Chopra is adamant that wealth has not changed him. "If I have the ability to create wealth, why would I think about it? Where my wealth comes from is inexhaustible. Consciousness is the source of anything, and that includes wealth. And consciousness is without limits."

You -- not nature, God or dumb luck -- determine your fate. "Happy thoughts change molecules" is one of Chopra's common declarations. Happy thoughts can defeat a specific disease like cancer, and they can stop the aging process. "If you can wiggle your toes with a mere flicker of an intention, why can't you reset your biological clock?" he has said. "The reason most people can't do it is because, first, they never thought of it and secondly they think that certain things are easier to do than other things. [But] the same principles apply everywhere in the body."

You -- and everything else -- shall fit together as one. As Chopra teaches, ancient folk medicine need not conflict with latest science; they can be melded into a seamless synthesis. As can differing dogma: Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, they all had it right in their own way. Similarly, a clean and ordered template can be stamped on each person's churning emotions and conflicting instincts.

Next Page: As discourses go, Chopra has either shrewdly crafted or innocently arrived at a real winner

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