Chopra tends to play down some of the more bizarre practices of Ayurveda such as attributing diseases to demons and astrological influences, and using incantations, amulets, spells and mantras as remedies; ingesting goat feces washed with urine to treat alcoholism and indigestion; drinking milk mixed with urine for constipation; taking enemas of animal blood for hemorrage; taking enemas of urine and peacock testicles to treat impotence; and drinking ones own urine for the prevention and cure of various maladies. There is little doubt that Chopra believes in these remedies. His advice for preventing and reversing cataracts is to daily brush your teeth, scrape your tongue, spit into a cup of water, and wash your eyes for a few minutes with this mixture. This, of course, could cause a dangerous infection. Chopra also says that a savage beating can cure epilepsy. In reality, a head injury from a beating could cause epilepsy.
Chopra's book Return of the Rishi clearly illustrates the delusional nature of his thinking. Anyone who doubts that he has abandoned reason, science and reality itself should read Chapter 13 titled Flyers. His flights of fantasy reach a crescendo when he says that some fifteen thousand American TMers (including himself) have learned yogic flying by applying "the science of consciousness -- India's legacy to human knowledge." He says this science makes "the work of Galileo, Newton and Einstein pale by comparison," and asserts that "the evidence and proof (of TMers flying) are there in abundance." In fact, it is so easy that for TMers "flying is simply a habit."
Remove the "f" and the claim is true. Lying to the American public is a habit for this TMer and his publishers. The flying claim alone makes the book a hoax and there's lots more where that came from. The publisher Houghton Mifflin could have required a demonstration before proceeding. Chopra's failure to produce would have cast doubt on all of his fantastic claims, but rather than do a minimum of reality testing they chose to participate in his hoax. And the media have given Chopra a red carpet and a free pass.
Chopra's other books include Creating Health -- Beyond Prevention, Toward Perfection; and Quantum Healing -- Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. These and all his books are dedicated to the Maharishi "whose extraordinary insight into the nature of intelligence restructured my reality." The real value of the books is that they provide insights into the nature of delusional thinking and sheer madness. InCreating Health he states that disease and aging persist only because of myths and prejudices that propel people into decline; and that our beliefs about this grew through centuries of cultural conditioning and indoctrination. We get sick and die only because of this indoctrination. He doesn't explain how all human cultures throughout time (thousands in all) came to have the exact same myths that we age and die; or how homo sapiens came to be the exception to the biological norm of aging and dying as long as they don't think about being mortal.
Chopra claims that "TM scientists" have proved that group meditation, or even just the presence of regular meditators in a town or city, can cause crime rates to drop dramatically, decrease illness even among nonmeditators, and protect whole populations from falling bombs, presumably including nuclear bombs. This is called the "Maharishi effect." The most dramatic example of this effect allegedly occurred in the winter of 1983 when 7 thousand TM-ers meditated together in Fairfield, Iowa, the site of Maharishi International University (MIU). The result, Chopra claims, was a worldwide decrease in crime rates and international hostilities and an increase in stock market indices across the globe. He says that meditation can be used for national defense and to end war forever. According to Fairfield police reports, however, the crime rate in the county is comparable to that in comparable counties. Even MIU campus is a frequent target of burglars and other criminals.
Now let me introduce my good friend, the late Basava Premanand, scourge of India's godmen. As a boy growing up in India he believed in miracles and at age 19 he left home in search of God and miraculous powers. But all he could find were parasitical charlatans using conjuring tricks to defraud the gullible. These godmen have long been a plague across the vast Indian subcontinent, using their skills at deception to exploit the poor, the desperate and the superstitious. Some have become very wealthy and powerful. The late Satya Sai Baba, for example, one of the wealthiest people in India, who produced gold from thin air and brought the dead back to life, had millions of devotees, including some of the most powerful (and corrupt) people in the country. Premanand made it his life's work to expose the godmen (he did a bang-up job on Sai Baba -- just search online) and promote rationalism in a nation too long held back by a medieval mentality entrenched in all levels of society.
Premanand, ironically, could easily have been one of the most successful and wealthy godmen. With his slender frame, simple dress, long beard, cheerful face, melodious voice and amazing repertoire of magic tricks, he could charm and fool anyone. But his other traits, compassion and love of truth, led him on a different path, and he lived very modestly while promoting rationalism and crusading against the con men. A target of many death threats and at least one assassination attempt, at great danger to himself Premanand succeeded in exposing and discrediting scores of godmen and essentially putting them out of business. He represents the best of India, with the traits that need nourishing if India is to fulfill its potential.
Contrast this with Deepak Chopra, who lives in a luxurious California mansion. Chopra has forsaken rationalism and become a godman with a difference. Instead of fooling people with sleight of hand, he fools them with sleight of tongue. And instead of scamming superstitious Indian peasants, he scams the superstitious American middle class. This recipe has brought him great wealth. His shtick is exactly that of the godmen, but much more grandiose.
Chopra never provides evidence to support his fantastic claims, just loads of gibberish about quantum physics. Matter does not exist, only energy, therefore the mind can intercede at an atomic level and manipulate the flow of energy and events. Professional quantum physicists don't believe a word of it, and his quantum mysticism is reminiscent of the distortions of relativity and evolution theories by previous sophists and demagogues. Americans fall for this rubbish because they are poorly educated about these things. They know science is important and that profound truths are involved, but since they don't understand the concepts they are easy prey for those who would exploit their ignorance and their innocence.
The titles of Chopra's many books and audio recordings are sprinkled with the words magic, miracle, mind-body, healing and, of course, quantum. His stock in trade is sophistry, which he uses very skillfully to create illusions of understanding and delusions of grandeur. Chopra is one of the greatest sophists of our time and Americans have spent millions of dollars on his promise that, through the miracle of scientific mysticism, they can have all the things they want: perfect health; reversal of the aging process; eternal life (on earth, not in Heaven); amazing weight loss; sound sleep; well-behaving kids; and spectacular wealth.
If you want to understand Chopra without spending weeks wading through the dreary nonsense common to all his expensive books and lectures, a little volume titled Creating Affluence best epitomizes the prolonged hoax he has been perpetrating on the public. The book is about 100 pages with about 100 words per page, less text than on a page and a half of the New York Times. Moreover, each of the minichapters says much the same thing, that quantum physics makes anything possible if you wish for it long enough and hard enough.
To justify such a tiny book selling for $12.95 Chopra inserted "A Note From The Author: The material in this book is extremely concentrated and has to be literally metabolilzed and experienced in the consciousness of the reader ... Upon completing the book, start again. Make this a lifelong habit and wealth in all its forms will follow you wherever you go."
Like some laundry detergents and fruit juices, you pay more for this fairy tale because it's concentrated. Notice how Chopra uses "metabolized" in a way that scientists who study metabolism every day would never use the word. He does this with "energy", "quantum" and other scientific terms throughout all of his books and talks. This deception by mystification of science is his whole shtick and gullible Americans fall for it. Testing the limits of their gullibility, Chopra has a large print edition available for 50 dollars.
Notice also that Chopra unintentionally misuses the word "literally" to hilarious effect. There is only one way to "literally metabolize" the book: you must eat it. Make this a daily habit, preferably using the large print edition. Have an assortment of Ayurvedic drugs ready for your daily belly ache.
Actions speak louder than words and Chopra's actions provide a much better lesson on creating wealth than the book does. The lesson is this: Millions of Americans are hopeless suckers for "Eastern wisdom", especially when it's presented with a veneer of pseudoscience. Any Indian with a glib tongue and some facility with scientific jargon can fool and exploit them. He can promise them the moon and they will believe, and they will pay a premium price for any scrap of paper bearing his words of widsom.
Also, because of their childish love of things magical, many Americans enjoy being told that their great heritage of modern science is inferior to India's legacy of godmen and miracle makers.
Equally important, the cynical American media are eager to provide a fortune in free promotional publicity to this godman and other entertaining charlatans. Chopra is one of the darlings of the American media, among the most sacred of the New Age sacred cows. For years he has had an open invitation from every television talk show in the country, and has appeared on most of them. No matter how ludicrous his claims, he is always treated as a great wise man, even a saint, and never seriously challenged or asked to demonstrate his ability to levitate and fly. Moreover, his critics are shunned and blackballed. The mainstream mass media, now thoroughly tabloidized, have once again deliberately created a mass delusion.
In my book on "alternative medicine" I challenge Chopra to undergo some reality testing: Show me one person who can levitate and I will donate the royalties from the book to Maharishi International University or the American Association for Ayurvedic Medicine. The demonstrator need not even fly or levitate. All he has to do is sit on an industrial or veterinary scale and decrease his body weight by 5 percent for 15 seconds using mental power alone. He will have one hour to accomplish the feat. All I ask is that one TMer do 5 percent of what Chopra claims thousands do as a matter of habit, but he ignored the challenge.
The media also ignored my challenge. The book was sent to more than one hundred media outlets, including every national talk show that has featured Chopra, and I made myself available to the shows and to reporters. Not one of them would talk to me about it, even after follow-up letters emphasizing the challenge. Not a single one! There are scores of other Chopra critics in the scientific community, including physicians and quantum physicists, but because of media bias and censorship the broad public never hears what they have to say.
It is abundantly clear, and I can say this without fear of a libel lawsuit, that Chopra must be either severely delusional or a pathological liar -- a psychotic or a psychopath. Or perhaps both. Since neither he nor anyone else can levitate and fly as he claims, there can be no other conclusion. This is just one obvious example of his delusional or dishonest nature. There are many others. Some day the media, including the likes of PBS and NPR, will have to explain why their relationship with him is like that of a gaggle of obedient lap dogs to a sacred cow. It's a disgusting abdication of professional responsibility and a symptom of the irrationalism endemic to the mainstream mass media these days.
If you think modern scientific medicine with its high-tech diagnostic machinery and sophisticated surgery and drugs is expensive, wait until you see what Ayurveda can do to your bank account. "Detoxifying" massages, a week in an Ayurvedic center, a year's worth of the recommended "purification" treatments and herbs, the introductory seven-session TM course, crowded seminars with Chopra, a yagya -- a sacrificial ceremony to please Vedic gods. These can set you back tens of thousands of dollars a year. I have not seen prices for the ass-urine treatment for epilepsy, the elephant-urine treatment for constipation, or the bloodletting treatment for impotence, but they are probably very expensive.
For more detailed critiques of various forms of quackery, including naturopathy, see my book A Consumer’s Guide to “Alternative Medicine”. It was expertly edited by legendary quack buster Stephen Barrett, MD. The critics say:
"Superb!" -- Dr. Victor Herbert in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Excellent" -- National Council Against Health Fraud.
"Five Stars" -- Cooking Light.
"Thought provoking; a great book" -- American Journal of Health Promotion.
When the book was published almost 30 years ago it was strongly praised by responsible health experts and the rare responsible media, but trashed by new-age critics and even vandalized in bookstores by new-age fanatics. It is as true and relevant as ever, and has been mostly vindicated by time. Yet my courageous and far-sighted publisher, the venerable Prometheus Books, is still sitting on lots of copies. Please help validate their integrity by buying a copy. Or two or more as gifts. Perhaps 10 for your local school library and health classes. See their website for assorted discounts. Make them an offer. (My royalties are insignificant; this little promo is for the benefit of one of the world's great publishers, Prometheus Books.)
Maui's future foretold: Barbarians In Paradise -- Terror Comes to Maui. This is a prophetic flash novel about a future police state and those who rebel against it. Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com.
