Deepak Chopra is an Indian-American author,
public speaker and physician. A prominent
alternative-medicine advocate and author of
several dozen books and videos, he has become
one of the best-known and wealthiest figures
in the holistic-health movement and has been
described as a New-Age guru.
Chopra obtained his medical degree in India
before emigrating in 1970 to the United States,
where he specialized in endocrinology and
became Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial
Hospital. In the 1980s he began practicing
transcendental meditation and in 1985 resigned
his position at NEMH to establish the Maharishi
Ayurveda Health Center. Chopra left the TM
movement in 1994 and founded the Chopra Center
for Wellbeing.
Combining principles from Ayurveda and mainstream
medicine, Chopra's approach to health incorporates
ideas about the mind-body relationship, a
belief in teleology in nature and a belief
in the primacy of consciousness over matter
– that "consciousness creates reality."
He claims that his practices can extend the
human lifespan and treat chronic disease.
This position is criticized by scientists,
who say his treatments rely on the placebo
effect; that he misuses terms and ideas from
quantum physics; and that he provides people
with false hope that may obscure the possibility
of effective medical treatment.
Biography
Early life and education
Chopra was born in New Delhi, India, to Krishan
Lal Chopra and Pushpa Chopra; his mother tongue
is Punjabi.
His paternal grandfather was a sergeant in
the British Army. His father was a prominent
cardiologist, head of the department of medicine
and cardiology at New Delhi's Mool Chand Khairati
Ram Hospital for over 25 years; he was also
a lieutenant in the British army, serving
as an army doctor at the front at Burma and
acting as a medical adviser to Lord Mountbatten,
viceroy of India. As of 2014 Chopra's younger
brother, Sanjiv, is a professor of medicine
at Harvard Medical School and on staff at
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Chopra completed his primary education at
St. Columba's School in New Delhi and graduated
from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences
in 1969. He spent his first months as a doctor
working in rural India, including, he writes,
six months in a village where the lights went
out whenever it rained. It was during his
early career that he was drawn to study endocrinology,
particularly neuroendocrinology, to find a
biological basis for the influence of thoughts
and emotions.
He married in India in 1970 before emigrating
with his wife that year to the United States.
The Indian government had banned its doctors
from sitting the American Medical Association
exam needed to practice in America, so Chopra
had to travel to Sri Lanka to take it. After
passing he arrived, penniless, in the United
States to take up a clinical internship at
Muhlenberg Hospital in Plainfield, New Jersey,
where doctors from overseas were being recruited
to replace those serving in Vietnam.
Between 1971 and 1977 he completed residencies
in internal medicine at the Lahey Clinic in
Burlington, Massachusetts, the VA Medical
Center, St Elizabeth's Medical Center and
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
He earned his license to practice medicine
in the state of Massachusetts in 1973, becoming
board certified in internal medicine, specializing
in endocrinology.
East Coast years
Chopra taught at the medical schools of Tufts
University, Boston University and Harvard
University, and became Chief of Staff at the
New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham,
Massachusetts, before establishing a private
practice in Boston in endocrinology.
While visiting New Delhi in 1981, he met the
physician Brihaspati Dev Triguna, head of
the Indian Council for Ayurvedic Medicine,
whose advice prompted him to begin investigating
Ayurvedic practices. Chopra was "drinking
black coffee by the hour and smoking at least
a pack of cigarettes a day." He took up transcendental
meditation to help him stop; as of 2006 he
continued to meditate for two hours every
morning and half an hour in the evening.
Chopra's involvement with TM led to a meeting,
in 1984, with the leader of the TM movement,
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who asked him to establish
an Ayurvedic health center. He left his position
at the NEMH. Chopra said that one of the reasons
he left was his disenchantment at having to
prescribe too many drugs: "[W]hen all you
do is prescribe medication, you start to feel
like a legalized drug pusher. That doesn't
mean that all prescriptions are useless, but
it is true that 80 percent of all drugs prescribed
today are of optional or marginal benefit."
He became the founding president of the American
Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, one of
the founders of Maharishi Ayur-Veda Products
International, and medical director of the
Maharishi Ayur-veda Health Center in Lancaster,
Massachusetts. The center charged between
$2,850 and $3,950 a week, offering Ayurvedic
cleansing rituals such as massage, enemas
and oil baths, with an extra charge of $1,000
for lessons in transcendental meditation.
Celebrity patients included Elizabeth Taylor.
Chopra also became one of the TM movement's
spokespersons. In 1989 the Maharishi awarded
him the title "Dhanvantari of Heaven and Earth".
That year Chopra's Quantum Healing: Exploring
the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine was published,
followed by Perfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body
Guide.
In May 1991 the Journal of the American Medical
Association published an article by Chopra
and two others on Ayurvedic medicine and TM.
JAMA subsequently published an erratum stating
that the lead author, Hari M. Sharma, had
undisclosed financial interests, followed
by an article by JAMA associate editor Andrew
A. Skolnick which was highly critical of Chopra
and the other authors for failing to disclose
their financial connections to the article
subject. Several experts on meditation and
traditional Indian medicine criticized JAMA
for accepting the "shoddy science" of the
original article. Chopra and two TM groups
sued Skolnick and JAMA for defamation, asking
for $194 million in damages, but the case
was dismissed in March 1993.
West Coast years
By 1992 Chopra was serving on the National
Institute of Health's ad hoc panel on alternative
medicine. In June 1993 he moved to California
as executive director of Sharp HealthCare's
Institute for Human Potential and Mind/Body
Medicine, and head of their Center for Mind/Body
Medicine, a clinic in an exclusive resort
in Del Mar that charged $4,000 a week and
included Michael Jackson's family among its
clients. Chopra and Jackson first met in 1988
and remained friends for 20 years; when Jackson
died in 2009 after being administered prescription
drugs, Chopra said he hoped it would be a
call to action against the "cult of drug-pushing
doctors, with their co-dependent relationships
with addicted celebrities."
Chopra left the Transcendental Meditation
movement around the time he moved to California.
By his own account, the Maharishi had accused
him of competing for the position of guru,
although Chopra rejects identification as
a "guru". Cynthia Ann Humes writes that the
Maharishi was concerned, and not only with
regard to Chopra, that rival systems were
being taught at lower prices. Chopra, for
his part, was worried that his close association
with the TM movement might prevent Ayurvedic
medicine from being accepted as legitimate,
particularly after the problems with the JAMA
article. He also stated that he had become
"uncomfortable with what I sensed was a cultish
atmosphere around Maharishi."
Chopra's Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The
Quantum Alternative to Growing Old was published
in 1993. The book and his friendship with
Michael Jackson gained him an interview on
July 12 that year on Oprah, which made him
a household name. Paul Offit writes that within
24 hours Chopra had sold 137,000 copies of
his book and 400,000 by the end of the week.
Four days after the interview, the Maharishi
National Council of the Age of Enlightenment
wrote to TM centers in the United States,
instructing them not to promote Chopra, and
his name and books were removed from the movement's
literature and health centers. Neuroscientist
Tony Nader became the movement's new "Dhanvantari
of Heaven and Earth."
Sharp HealthCare changed ownership in 1996
and Chopra left to set up the Chopra Center
for Wellbeing with neurologist David Simon,
now located at the Omni La Costa Resort and
Spa in Carlsbad, California. In 2004 he received
his California medical licence, and as of
2014 is affiliated with Scripps Memorial Hospital
in La Jolla. Chopra is the owner and supervisor
of the Mind-Body Medical Group within the
Chopra center, which in addition to standard
medical treatment offers personalized advice
about nutrition, sleep-wake cycles and stress
management, based on mainstream medicine and
Ayurveda. He is a fellow of the American College
of Physicians and member of the American Association
of Clinical Endocrinologists.
Teaching and other roles
As of 2014 Chopra serves as an adjunct professor
at Columbia Business School and at the Kellogg
School of Management at Northwestern University.
He participates annually as a lecturer at
the Update in Internal Medicine event sponsored
by Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center. Robert Carroll writes
of Chopra charging $25,000 per lecture, "giving
spiritual advice while warning against the
ill effects of materialism."
In 2005 Chopra was appointed as a senior scientist
at Gallup, analysing the results of health
and well-being surveys. In 2009 he founded
the Chopra foundation, a tax-exempt 501(c)
organization, to promote and research holistic
medicine; the Foundation sponsors annual Sages
and Scientists conferences. He sits on the
board of advisors of the National Ayurvedic
Medical Association and the tech startup State.com.
Since 2005 he has been a board member of Men's
Wearhouse, a men's clothing distributor, and
in 2006 launched Virgin Comics with his son,
Gotham Chopra, and entrepreneur Richard Branson.
Ideas
Consciousness
Chopra speaks and writes regularly about metaphysics,
the study of consciousness and Vedanta philosophy.
He is a philosophical idealist, arguing for
the primacy of consciousness over matter and
for purpose and intelligence in nature – that
mind, or "dynamically active consciousness,"
is a fundamental feature of the universe.
In this view, consciousness is both subject
and object. It is consciousness, he writes,
that creates reality; we are not "physical
machines that have somehow learned to think
... [but] thoughts that have learned to create
a physical machine." He argues that the evolution
of species is the evolution of consciousness
seeking to express itself as multiple observers;
the universe experiences itself through our
brains: "We are the eyes of the universe looking
at itself." He opposes reductionist thinking
in science and medicine, arguing that we can
trace the physical structure of the body down
to the molecular level and still have no explanation
for beliefs, desires, memory and creativity.
Approach to health care
Chopra argues that everything that happens
in the mind and brain is physically represented
elsewhere in the body, with mental states
directly influencing physiology by means of
neurotransmitters such as dopamine, oxytocin
and serotonin. He has stated, "Your mind,
your body and your consciousness – which
is your spirit – and your social interactions,
your personal relationships, your environment,
how you deal with the environment, and your
biology are all inextricably woven into a
single process ... By influencing one, you
influence everything."
Chopra and physicians at the Chopra Center
practise integrative medicine, combining the
medical model of conventional Western medicine
with alternative therapies such as Ayurveda.
According to Ayurveda, illness is caused by
an imbalance in the patient's doshas or humours,
and is treated with diet, exercise and meditative
practices – there is, however, no scientific
evidence to show that Ayurveda is effective
in treating any disease.
In discussing health care, Chopra has used
the term "quantum healing," which he defined
in Quantum Healing as the "ability of one
mode of consciousness to spontaneously correct
the mistakes in another mode of consciousness."
This attempted to wed the Maharishi's version
of Ayurvedic medicine with concepts from physics,
an example of what cultural historian Kenneth
Zysk called "New Age Ayurveda." The book introduced
Chopra's view that a person's thoughts and
feelings give rise to all cellular processes.
Physicists have objected to Chopra's use of
terms from quantum physics; he was awarded
the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physics in
1998 for "his unique interpretation of quantum
physics as it applies to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of economic happiness." When Chopra
and Jean Houston debated Sam Harris and Michael
Shermer in 2010 on the question "Does God
Have a Future?", Harris argued that Chopra's
use of "spooky physics" merged two language
games in a "completely unprincipled way."
Interviewed in 2007 by Richard Dawkins, Chopra
said that he used the term quantum as a metaphor
when discussing healing and that it had little
to do with quantum theory in physics.
Chopra wrote in 2000 that his AIDS patients
were combining mainstream medicine with activities
based on Ayurveda, including taking herbs,
meditation and yoga. He acknowledges that
AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, but claims
that, "'[h]earing' the virus in its vicinity,
the DNA mistakes it for a friendly or compatible
sound". Ayurveda uses vibrations which are
claimed to correct this supposed sound distortion.
Medical professor Lawrence Schneiderman writes
that Chopra's treatment has "to put it mildly
... no supporting empirical data."
In August 2001 ABC News aired a show segment
on distance healing and prayer, in which Chopra
attempted to relax a reporter in another room;
the reporter's vital signs were recorded in
charts said to show a correspondence between
Chopra's periods of concentration and the
subject's periods of relaxation. Health and
science journalist Christopher Wanjek, calling
it "an instructive example of how bad medicine
is presented as exciting news," argued that
the experiment could prove nothing, and said
that in any case a more detailed examination
of the charts showed the correlations were
not as close as claimed. After the show, a
poll of its viewers found that 90 per cent
believed in distance healing.
Medical anthropologist Hans Baer argues that
Chopra has not explored the potential benefits
of a truly holistic approach to health, ignoring
factors such as air and water pollution, racism
and inequality, and failing to encourage people
to become part of reform movements. Instead,
Baer writes, Chopra offers an alternative
form of medical hegemony by offering products
and services to more affluent members of society.
Aging
Chopra believes that "ageing is simply learned
behaviour" that can be slowed or prevented
and Chopra himself has said he expects "to
live way beyond 100". He states that "by consciously
using our awareness, we can influence the
way we age biologically. . . . You can tell
your body not to age." Conversely, Chopra
also says that aging can be accelerated, for
example by a person engaging in "cynical mistrust".
Robert Todd Carroll has characterized Chopra's
promotion of lengthened life as selling "hope"
that seems to be "a false hope based on an
unscientific imagination steeped in mysticism
and cheerily dispensed gibberish".
Spirituality and religion
Chopra has likened the universe to a "reality
sandwich" which has three layers: the "material"
world, a "quantum" zone of matter and energy,
and a "virtual" zone outside of time and space,
which is the domain of God, and from which
God can direct the other layers. Chopra has
written that human beings' brains are "hardwired
to know God" and that the functions of the
human nervous system mirror divine experience.
Reception
In 1999 Time magazine included Chopra in its
list of the 20th century's heroes and icons.
The following year Mikhail Gorbachev referred
to him as "one of the most lucid and inspired
philosophers of our time." Cosmo Landesman
wrote in 2005 that Chopra was "hardly a man
now, more a lucrative new age brand – the
David Beckham of personal/spiritual growth."
As of 2014 Chopra has written 75 books, 21
of them New York Times bestsellers, which
have been translated into 35 languages. According
to Paul Offit, writing in 2013, Chopra's business
grosses around $20 million annually, built
on the sale of courses, books, videos, herbal
supplements and massage oils; a year's worth
of anti-aging products can cost up to $10,000.
Chopra himself is estimated to be worth over
$80 million as of 2014. As of 2005, according
to Srinivas Aravamudan, he was able to charge
$25,000–30,000 per lecture five or six times
a month.
English professor George O'Har argues that
Chopra exemplifies the need of human beings
for meaning and spirit in their lives, and
places what he calls Chopra's "sophistries"
alongside the emotivism of Oprah Winfrey.
Paul Kurtz writes that Chopra's "regnant spirituality"
is reinforced by postmodern criticism of the
notion of objectivity in science, while Wendy
Kaminer equates Chopra's views with irrational
belief systems such as New Thought, Christian
Science and Scientology.
Several scientists have criticized Chopra's
mix of spirituality and science. According
to Ptolemy Tompkins, the medical and scientific
communities' opinion of him ranges from dismissive
to damning; criticism includes claims that
his approach could lure sick people away from
effective treatments.
Select bibliography
Books
Articles
(2014) "Reality and consciousness: A view
from the East: Comment on 'Consciousness in
the universe: A review of the "Orch OR" theory'
by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose", Physics
of Life Reviews, 11(1), March, pp. 81–82.
(2013) with Attila Grandpierre, P. Murali
Doraiswamy, Rudolph Tanzi, Menas C. Kafatos,
"A Multidisciplinary Approach to Mind and
Consciousness", NeuroQuantology, 11(4), December,
pp. 607–617.
(2011) with Menas Kafatos, Rudolph E. Tanzi,
"How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe",
Journal of Cosmology, 14.
(2011) with Stuart Hameroff, "The 'Quantum
Soul': A Scientific Hypothesis," in Alexander
Moreira-Almeida, Franklin Santana Santos,
Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship,
Springer, pp. 79–93.
(2011) "Medicine's Great Divide – The View
from the Alternative Side", Virtual Mentor,
American Medical Association Journal of Ethics,
13(6), June, pp. 394–398.
(2000) Foreword in Amit Goswami, The Visionary
Window: A Quantum Physicist's Guide to Enlightenment.
Quest Books.
(1997) Foreword in Candace Pert, The Molecules
of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine.
Scribner.
See also
List of people in alternative medicine
Andrew Weil
Hard problem of consciousness
Panpsychism
Spiritual naturalism
References
Further reading
Official website
