Life

Deepak Chopra's Appeal

The rich New Age guru claims he can fly and halt aging. Why do people listen? What does he say to a skeptic?

By David Beers, 7 Jun 2010, TheTyee.ca

Deepak Chopra

Chopra: 'Keep increasing your desires.'

Text size:

Rate this:

Login/Register

Related

[Editor's note: On Friday, Chopra brought his 'wellness' teachings to Vancouver, charging up to $103 a ticket. This piece was published in 2001, as he made an earlier swing through B.C.]

I am reading How To Know God, by Deepak Chopra, as I sit in Helen's Grill, a greasy spoon near my home in Vancouver. Outside the window in the rain, framed within the newspaper vending box, is the face of a young, beautiful girl. Next to that face is headline type, big and black.

'Amazing' teen killed in Whistler crash.

The words, for some reason, reinforce the illusion that the little vinyl and formica world of Helen's Grill is a shared refuge, a place immune to life's random ravages.

What Chopra teaches

Deepak Chopra, the spiritual instructor who appears on Larry King and Oprah, the alternative healer with the handsome looks of a Bollywood movie star, the personal source of inspiration to Michael Jackson, Naomi Judd and Bill Clinton, has sold 10 million books.

Here is some of what Chopra, a former endocrinologist in Boston hospitals, believes and teaches.

That a person is a field of vibrating energy, information and intelligence connected to the entire cosmos.

That this view is substantiated by Ayruvedic medicine of ancient India as well as theories of quantum physics.

That all organs of the body are built up from a specific sequence of vibrations, and that when organs are sick they are vibrating improperly.

That certain herbs and aromas, when applied, can help restore proper vibrations to malfunctioning liver, heart, stomach, etc.

That certain gems and crystals can rejuvenate human skin. That good thoughts can heal the body and reverse the aging process.

That people can levitate and that he, while sitting and meditating, has flown a distance of four feet.

That one can know God at seven different levels corresponding to physical and psychological reactions in the brain, and that miracles, including visits by angels and reincarnated relatives, occur when a person leaves the material level of existence and intersects a "transitional" level called the "quantum domain."

That anyone following his methods can achieve "unlimited wealth" and a "brilliantly blissful life."

Chopra does not believe reports that he once described himself as "just a regular guy with the gift of gab." As Chopra told me in on the phone, "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 yet another 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, California.

Go to Web sites with names 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. 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 Aryurvedic 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., "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 a yearning to pull free of scientific rationality, or, more accurately, to escape the world without enchantment that two centuries of The Age of Reason has bequeathed us.

'The hunger for wonders'

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?

Yearning for meaning

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 is saying that...

No claim of the miraculous, the magical can be ruled out. "Some people vibrate at a frequency of consciousness such 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 set 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.

In laying it all out, Chopra makes use of the scientific precision of numbers, the ordering of stages, the listing of corresponding physical and spiritual traits. The "range of built-in mechanisms" that are "directly related to spiritual experience" according to Chopra are: 1. Flight-or-fight response. 2. Reactive response. 3. Restful awareness response. 4. Intuitive response. 5. Creative response. 6. Visionary response. 7. Sacred response. When mechanisms, traits, stages, etc. are listed in How to Know God, they usually add up to seven. And the seventh is always the most pure or complete or one with God and the universe. Chopra's message is the bedrock of New Age: All the screwed-up mess of life shall be resolved through an ordered progression towards harmony.

Spiritual transformation is readily procured. Deepak Chopra is the "regular guy" who asks why, if you can wiggle your toes, you can't stop aging, earn buckets of money, achieve bliss. At a moment when consumer choice equals democratic participation in many people's minds, Chopra's organization has innumerable products to sell you, from OptiWoman herbs sold under the Ageless Body, Timeless Mind logo, to seminars on "Time-based awareness, versus timeless awareness -- the path to immortality." You may purchase exactly what Chopra sells to Demi Moore. The secret to his acceptability on Larry King Live, on Oprah, on U.S. Public Television pledge nights, is that he presents himself not as exotic but as accessible, clean shaven in suit and tie. My mother-in-law finds him "charming."

Some academics like to describe and analyze public life as a matter of "competing discourses." They mean that behind the specifics of what anybody is talking about, whether it be sex, free trade or finding God, are the embedded assumptions, fears and desires that shape the lines of argument.

As discourses go, Deepak Chopra has either shrewdly crafted or innocently arrived at a real winner. His "It's all good" discourse steamrolls over the assumption behind competitors like, say, traditional Christianity that preaches modesty and acceptance of this difficult world in order to inherit the next. Or social justice advocates, who want us to see that wealth is distributed unfairly through wile and the brute power of institutions. Or Roszak's "secular humanist" rationalists, who would have us be an accident of evolution.

The tough sell for these discourses, unlike Chopra's, is that they want us to bow to limits, accept uncertainty, give up individual power and control, to imagine that any real spiritual progress must come through hard choices, hard work. Even then, you will never achieve absolute perfection. Nor absolute protection.

'Amazing' teen killed in Whistler crash.

'Who knows?'

Plain mean. That's how you look if you laugh at Chopra's ideas, or any belief system that allows people need to feel safe within, yet capable of transcending, this world, this life, this vinyl and formica refuge from the rain.

Then again, the more earnestly you contest the message of Deepak Chopra, the more you invite a patronizing smile from his believers. You have not made the leap yet, you have not opened yourself.

Even among the unconverted, you will likely encounter that admirable spirit of tolerance essential to making a pluralistic society go. "Who knows?" you will hear. "He may be right."

It's all good now, or it might be, at least. Which means that to grouse about the guru is to be out of step with the times. This is the era of the libertarian shrug, as well as the therapeutic reluctance to give offense. So perfectly does the current mood accommodate and reward the ambition of Deepak Chopra, you have to wonder. Maybe we're all but a perfect figment of the guy's imagination. [Tyee]

David Beers is editor of The Tyee. Versions of this essay first appeared in the Vancouver Sun and Salon.com.

36 Comments:

Login or register to post comments

  • Jeffrey J.

    1 year ago

    More Coolaide for the Citizens

    As our elites pursue their real interests (expansion of the monopolies/oligarchies based on oil, military, banking, insurance, real estate and the MSM media) someone must entertain and boondoggle the rest of us.

    How else to manage the majority of citizens (known as the Great Beast)? We can be dangerous if we start to think--and act--for ourselves. So the endless stream of snake-oil salesmen, complicated religious organizations, hucksters, boosters and scam artists, are unleashed on the population, with the full support and encouragement of the social structure that determines our reality.

    But most citizens in fact aren't anywhere near as gullible as we look. Most people are kind, generous, liberal and would vote to raise taxes on the super rich and invest the money in health care and education.

    Therein lies the problem....

    Great article which originally appeared in the Vancouver Sun in 2001. Ahh, those halcyon days!

  • anarcho

    1 year ago

    Scientific rationalism must share the blame

    Deepak Chopra's popularity is also an aspect of the failures of scientific rationalism. Rather than being truly scientific, it became an ideology in its own right. With this came some of the greatest intellectual horrors of the ages such as "race science", eugenics, and social Darwinism which led us to Dachau. There is literally no crime that can not be rationalized scientifically whether it is keeping cannibis illegal or the clutch of climate change deniers "scientists".
    Unfortunately for all the babble about "holistic thinking", few people actually practice it and thus they throw the scientific rationalist baby out with the bath and fall for new age hucksters.

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    The message is lost in the price tag.

    For me the people who are deserving are those who make great sacrifice to improve the human condition. Mother Theresa, and Gandi come to mind. Less Know are the people who are shown on the ten part series "Extreme Clergy". Anyone who gets rich at $103 a pop for a lecture doesn't rate any higher than a snake oil salesman or the guy who flogs a green hanky to heal everything that ails you if you send him a chunk of money. If his message is so good for humanity then it should not be delivered for profit.

  • Groucho

    1 year ago

    the message is NOT lost in the price tag

    As a discerning person who has experienced and rejected organized religion, I have to voice my support for Deepak Chopra despite not being able to afford to attend his talk at the Queen Elizabeth theater.

    His talks ARE expensive, but I believe that is because of the Oprah marketing machine that draws wealthy people who are trying to fill their empty lives with something. Organic food from California at twice the price of local produce? No prob. $500 a night for yoga at the Wikaninnish Inn? No prob.

    The funny thing is that I have been able to enjoy his works by borrowing his books from the library without spending a dime.

    He is an inspirational person with a lot of good things to share and if you don't believe in yogic flying, well, there is a lot more worthwhile stuff to take in. Just use your common sense.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    Groucho ...

    Common sense and Deepak Chopra are two phrases that simply do not go together. The man is a liar, a charlatan, and a fool.

    However pleasant his demeanour, however soft spoken his voice, he is, quite somply, a mendacious opportunist who puts people in serious jeopardy on a daily basis.

  • Kevin Dale McKeown

    1 year ago

    On The Other Hand ...

    On the other hand, there's the view that Mother Theresa ensured that millions would be born into grinding poverty in India by her campaign against contraception, and The Ghandi Nobody Knows by Richard Grenier certainly offers a refreshing perspective on that old fraud.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    We've been on homeopathics

    We've been on homeopathics for years and reaped the benefits, still working hard 7 days a weeks, never any holidays, designing, building machinery, construction, artwork, in our mid 80s, without a single prescription medication in our house.

    We've seen many of our old friends go down the drain with dozens of bottles of medications on their tables and we're keeping away from that garbage.

    Years ago, the largest percentage of my professional customers have been medical doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists, and even then, over 30 years ago, I was surprised how many told me that up to 70 % of real, physical illnesses have psychosomatic origins, when the human body just gives up under the stresses of our phony economic/political systems and virtually "creates" some problems to destroy itself.

    Which means that Chopra may just have something in his teachings. I've never read anything from him.

    Ed Deak.

  • mopled

    1 year ago

    Chopra is a showman

    but Quackbuster Stephen Barrett is hardly the person to be consulting about him.

    "Read delicensed MD Stephen Barrett's website "quackwatch.com," and his resume, and you'll see what I mean - and he's their chief propagandist. Everything he says is like he was simply filling out a form someone, with a higher intelligence, gave him. His mouthings are boringly the same, each and every time.

    Keep in mind that Barrett, although claiming to be a retired Psychiatrist, was never able to become "Board Certified." He failed his test. Also, Barrett gave up his MD license in 1993. I suspect he just couldn't keep up with new things. His employment record shows he NEVER was able to hold a full-time job - and his claim to "Psychiatric fame" was his part-time (4 to 8 hours a week) employment at a Pennsylvania Mental Hospital - from 1978 through 1993. From 1976 through 1978 he COULD NOT GET a paying job."
    http://www.quackpotwatch.org/index.html

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    Kevin Dale

    At least Mother Theresa and Gandi put their money (energy) where their mouths were. That is worth a lot more to humanity than someone getting rich on the message he delivers. That is the point. If more people were prepared to do the same, the world would be a better place. It is the sacrifice made in order to deliver the message that benefits humanity that is a reflection of the person.

  • paisley

    1 year ago

    When one has junked good old

    When one has junked good old time religion there is the spiritualism back up to fall on. Healing with the aid of a book might not work but maybe this rock can help me out. One comment points to Mother Theresa as a guide to improve the human condition but I think closer inspection may provide that she is probably a better example of evil. Christopher Hitchens was requested by the vatican to argue against her sainthood, of which he does a bang up job.

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    the anti-rationalists

    And to top it off, Chopra is a creationist. On the bright side he is not practicing actual medicine, something for which he is completely unqualified.

    Among the scientific community Chopra is an ongoing source of amazement over how seemingly intelligent people will actually buy what he's selling. For someone with medical training his knowledge of basic biology is shockingly slight, and almost always wrong. He does, however, have a polished shtick that works on millions of people who are attracted to this kind of woo.

    For a full fisking of this idiot, check out Respectful Insolence:

    http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/10/the_trouble_with_deepak_chopra_part_2.php

    I must also object to Anacho's Hitler gambit above. The road that led to Dachau was neither scientific nor rational -- it was just the opposite. The fact that there were a few scientists involved is irrelevant. There were philosophers involved too (Heidegger), and musicians, (Wagner), carpenters, bricklayers, and watercolour painters. We don't condemn those professions as responsible for the horror. The road that led to Nazism was anti-rationalist, Romantic, a Triumph of the Woo.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    The road that led to Dachau

    The road that led to Dachau was caused by the fact that "Wealth can not be created, only taken from others, the environment and the future"

    Carried on with the present Middle East conflicts, Afghanistan, and generally by the so called "free trade agreements" and "globalization", to set up a worldwide corporate dictatorship, through the removal of people's democratic decision making powers and steal them blind.

    When we were taken to nazi Germany for military training in late 1944, we were examined by SS doctors, who took great care, looking at the hairs on the top of our wrists, looking for Jewish
    blood, or genes, or whatever.

    Some science !

    Ed Deak.

  • anarcho

    1 year ago

    More subtle than that

    Booker, my comment is a lot more subtle than that. Nazi ideology was compounded of social darwinism, eugenics and "race science" all of which were considered "scientific" one hundred years ago. Once again - scientific rationalism became an ideology - one that was used to rationalize all kinds of crimes. Scientific rationalism was thought to be both rational and scientific but it was not. The task is not to throw away science and cling to new age fantasies but to become more genuinely scientific. I hope you now understand what I an driving at...

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    paisley

    The guide is not the person. The guide is the sacrifice made for others less fortunate. I also should include Albert Schweitzer, Dr. David Livingston and others. You can always find detractors who themselves are not willing to make that sacrifice. I mean, so Mother Theresa had some views we find objectionable. Even with that her contribution is greater than any current TV personality selling warm fuzzy feelings at a cost of $103 a show.

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    anarcho

    Okay, if you are saying that it (racialism, eugenics, etc.) was considered, by some, to be scientific and rational, I would agree with that it was. I would not agree that scientific rationalism was, or is, and ideology. It's really a method of inquiry. Since it's done by humans the method can be warped by ideology and bias, but that doesn't invalidate the value of the method itself. Today, Creationists claim to be scientifically rational, but their claiming it doesn't make it so (see Dembski and Behe, or Rupert Sheldrake).

  • Groucho

    1 year ago

    @John Greg - Take a step back from the anger

    Sad to see such an angry comment in response to mine.

    If you actually read some of Chopra's stuff, you will immediately see there is real value to much of it. Your own common sense will guide you to which parts apply to you.

    If you don't want to read a self-help book, read some of his fiction. You might learn something from that.

  • Dr Alexander

    1 year ago

    Chopra is only a dude peddlin' a book

    .... as much as pharmaceutical companies and physicians are only companies and individuals out to line their own pockets.

    Caveat emptor for both.

    Still, I give Deepak credit for something of great value: question conventional wisdom and common practice.

    To the existing governmental, corporate and charity (as witnessed in recent MS shenanigans) establishments, that is a very dangerous thing.

  • oldstyle

    1 year ago

    It's not too difficult to

    It's not too difficult to understand no matter which side of the equation you prefer. It is simply a matter of preference. If you believe science will prove to be correct in all matters then you will find evidence to support your belief. If you believe that spirit will triumph above all odds then you will find evidence to support your belief.

    Some say that a good theory will be supported by the facts while others say that a good theory generates its own facts. In other words, "its all good."

    How many scientist set about to prove a theory and they either fail to do so or they are successful? But it hardly matters in the "real" world, which is the world you believe in because ultimately what matters is what you believe to be true. No one can take that away from you.

    There is never any proof. Try and prove God exists, or try and prove that God does not exist. Searching for proof is highly overrated. But determining which beliefs have a greater value to you and your life is a worthwhile endevour.

    Earl Nightingale says that the best things in life are free, and we pay little attention to them. Instead we focus on poverty by worrying about th need for mor money. We focus on poor health while worrying about every little ache and pain that comes along. And yet our intelligence, sense of humour and the love in our hearts are all free and they can form the basis of our greatest beliefs.

    Why do we even care about skeptics or Depak? There will always be dichotomies to argue over. But it won't be clear to any of us until we raise our awareness beyond the dichotomy we're in so that we can see something far more important than the limited perceptions we leave behind.

    Eldrige Cleaver said that "You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem." This statement may sound right but it is simply a limited perception that forms a dichotomy, and there is no way to escape a dichotomy by argueing for one side or the other.

    It does appear to me that the game that gets played out in this comments section is one that could be called... "If I can't have it - then you can't have it." And this becomes a really limiting dichotomy to be wrapped up in.

    Personally, I would find the world a boring place if we all thought about, and believed in, the same things. It's a pretty rich experience living in the world at this age and stage of things and so I'm inclined to go with Depak and say... "It's all good."

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    Or as Bertrand Russel

    Or as Bertrand Russel allegedly said: "Nobody knows anything".

    The worst example are modern wars. In the old days wars have been fought to kill, conquer, steal and colonize. The biggest criminals an murderers have been called "Great",and "Defenders of the faith"

    Modern wars are fought for "Freedom and prosperity" on all sides.

    In other words, to conquer, steal and colonize and the biggest criminals are called "distinguished business leaders".

    So, what has changed ? Having lived under every known ideology, I have heard exactly the same words and promises by all.

    Ed Deak.

  • Healer

    1 year ago

    Deepak Chopra

    I may not have believed what Chopra and others teach that is similar had I not experienced such strong benefits. When my MD told me that I would not get well -- the current opinion in Western medicine--I went exploring holistic health. I am well now and the illness has never recurred and this is 24 years later.
    There's a reason so many people are learning how to meditate, do yoga, tai chi or qigong. Quantum physics can explain how the energy works and learning about the energy, how to use it to heal myself and to help others ...., I am so thankful...to be well and to know how to be happy which is a choice.
    So don't knock it until you've tried it...and consider that in the USA all the major medical schools now offer alternative/complementary courses.

  • Healer

    1 year ago

    spirituality

    Church membership in Canada continues to decline but the
    small 's' spiritual community is rapidly growing. There are many brilliant teachers and as in any field, some less than wonderful.
    But why is spirituality capturing the attention of so many? Perhaps others like myself have found the inner peace that the teachers talk about.

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    You Are What You Eat

    http://www.kingmaker.net/trustme.html
    Then there’s the subject of meditation and Yoga, this, of course, was brought to the United States in the 60’s and 70’s by the hippies and flower children, and it looks like there might be some grownup hippies in this room tonight. You know, about the right age group. This kind of died out for awhile, during the 70’s and 80’s, and during the 90’s this concept of meditation and Yoga has been reawakened by a best-selling author by the name of Depak Chopra who lives not too far away from here. He has his clinic and so forth. But there is no proof in the pudding that meditation and Yoga has any longevity benefit. It certainly can calm you down during tax week and calm you down during finals week and that sort of stuff, but not longevity.

  • paisley

    1 year ago

    Skywalker

    It is not Mother Theresa's views that are objectionable it was her actions. She purposefully informed the poor and vulnerable that condoms caused AIDS. One can only guess at how much grief that celebrity status statement caused. This was not just a casual comment it was a policy statement that was repeated vigorously. Yes it is easy to find detractors of those who will perpetuate fear and ignorance for the purpose of keeping the faithful, fearful and ignorant.

  • Healer

    1 year ago

    reply to Rick

    Is it about quality of life .....? To learn meditation and yoga relieves stress. Stress causes illness.

  • paisley

    1 year ago

    oldstyle

    Why is it people try to pass off science as some type of religion/spiritualism. Science has nothing to do with having belief or faith to make it work. There are no equations involved with belief. Belief and faith are just that which involves no evidence, just belief. In Israel there is an institution that serves the purpose of housing persons that show up believing that they are speaking as the voice of God or they are the second coming etc. I suppose it is real to them though they have had their freedom taken away.
    The search for proof is never over rated and surely if this search had wholly been prevented by the zealots( by murder and incarceration) we would not have the knowledge and technology we have today. Science is not a religion and has nothing to do with belief and faith.

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    "Alternative medicine"

    Ragarding the effects of so-called alternative, or complementary, or integrative medicine (it has been re-branded a number of times since the seventies); its big supporter in the U.S. Congress, Senator Tom Harkin (D -- Iowa) promoted the establishment of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. It's a part of the Dept. of Health. Its mandate is to scientifically test the so-called "alternative" modalities of health that have been passed on from folklore (acupuncture, various herbs), or have been invented out of whole cloth (homeopathy, reiki, chiropractic). The NCCAM is run by believers in alternative modalities, yet since 1991, after spending more than $2.5 billion on clinical studies, they have not found a single "alternative" treatment that works better than placebo, including acupuncture and homeopathy.The only partial positive found is that chiropractic may help as much as standard physiotherapy for minor lower back pain -- and for that only. It seems that "alternative", "integrative" and There is a lot of money, sadly, in providing people with placebos. In 2007 Chopra was ranked #57 in pay on Forbes's list with an annual income of $22,000,000. The alties are making a killing.

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    Healer

    That too. But it's about the mechanics of stress. Many "new age" gurus would have us believe in the magic and mystery of it all, when there is a much more mundane road to wellness:
    http://stress.about.com/od/dietandsuppliments/a/stressnutrition.htm

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    copy edit

    Third to last sentence above should have read "It seems that "alternative", "integrative", and "complimentary" are synonyms for "useless" "

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    paisley

    Quote:
    Science is not a religion and has nothing to do with belief and faith

    In a kind of inverse relationship, many people have come to distrust science, because they don't understand it. So it is "the tool of the devil" and sometimes requires "pitchforks and torches" to keep it in line.

    Mary Shelley wrote about this a hundred years ago in Frankenstein:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

  • Healer

    1 year ago

    Booker says integrated medicine is useless

    If so, then why did Dr. Rogers who founded in Vancouver an integrated medicine centre get the Order of BC award for his pioneering work with cancer?
    http://www.inspirehealth.ca/
    and why is this kind of treatment centre for cancer being copied
    in other major cities?

  • Booker

    1 year ago

    Healer, so what?

    That's an argument from popularity. The BC government has endorsed acupuncture too, without any evidence that it is better than a placebo. What alternative therapy has been proven to fight cancer in double-blinded, randomized trials? None.

  • Healer

    1 year ago

    Booker....

    Acupuncture can't be a placebo if in China they are able
    to use it in surgeries instead of anaesthetic. In China tai chi
    is mandatory for pre-natal.
    I"ve not had much experience of acupuncture but a Dr. of Traditional Chinese Medicine removed a pain from behind my eye using just
    one needle.
    Would there be more integrated medicine centres established if
    patients had not found them to be beneficial? Word-of-mouth
    works.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    A Quiet, Well Spoken Monster

    There are several very well researched, accurate, and authoritative websites that do a very good, very sound job of debunking charlatans like Deepak Chopra. I herein present just three.

    For a perusal of something much closer to "truth" than Chopra can possibly deliver, visit any one of the following and search Deepak Chopra:

    - Skepticblog at http://skepticblog.org/
    - Science Based Medicine at http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/
    - James Randi Educational FOundation at http://www.randi.org/site/

    The principal difference -- the most important difference -- between these sites and the information they provide, and Deepak Chopra and the information he provides, is that when asked to prove it these sites can do so. With science; with evidence; with proof. Chopra can do no such thing. The closest he can come to proof is to say "Because I believe it."

  • oldstyle

    1 year ago

    Paisley

    Awareness - that is the key. Science, religion, spiritual revelations all depend on awareness. And where does awareness come from?

    Scientists believe they will find a solution for a specific issue or they would not invest a moment's time in research. Believing in something is everywhere, just as your post demonstrated.

    It would appear that you choose to put your faith in science. Maybe this is because you believe in a rational and logical world. Maybe you have other "reasons" for believing in science, but there are many people that will trust their heart more than they trust their head, especially when it comes to personal and business relationships.

    How many personal, scientific or business decisions are actually based on logic? Scientists have hunches too. They even disagree with one another. Business decisions often favour a bias of some sort. The average person has a whole host of preferences from which they never vary, regardless of logic. And still life goes on. How dangerous is it to have non-logical beliefs?

    To find an answer to that question you could take logic to the extreme and imagine what kind of world that would be like when everything is based on logic.

    Take emotion to the extreme and imagine what that kind of world would be like when EVERY decision was based on the emotion of the moment.

    Perhaps the best life is one of balance where emotions and logic each have their place and function in our lives.

    What do you think? What do you believe? What do you place your faith in? It's all good.

  • John Greg

    1 year ago

    oldstyle ...

    Quote:
    It's all good.

    Yes, of course it is. Female circumcision; the crusades; suicide bombers; woowoo merchants taking old age pensioners' life savings and returning nothing; G. W. Bush; Ann Coulter; Rush Limbaugh; stoning female adulterers to death; killing rape victims; the moon is made of cheese....

    It's all good.

  • melanyor

    1 year ago

    Very thought-provoking book

    How to Know God is a very thought-provoking book, and for anyone with an open mind it will at least give them a new way of looking at the nature of reality and how it might be possible to "know" God. Because Chopra takes a fresh approach and does not follow any particular dogma, some may have a bit of a knee-jerk response and write him off as "New Age." The search for a deeper understanding of God, however, is as old as humankind itself, and hardly started with the "New Age" movement in the modern world. Hinduism and Buddhism are two of the world's great religions, and each has contributed great insights to that ancient search.

    • The discussion for this story is closed. No more comments can be added.