Meditations With A Sex Offender
Deepak Chopra tried to help Jeffrey Epstein get some sleep
“Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself.” – Deepak Chopra
When you’re in the business of spiritual enlightenment, you should at least try to maintain a facade of moral integrity.
Unfortunately, that’s difficult when your name appears at least a dozen times on Jeffrey Epstein’s calendar.
Celebrity guru Deepak Chopra told CBS News he was just trying to help the world’s most notorious sex offender get some sleep.
Oh, and then there was the money. You always need more money on the road to Shambala. Here’s what else Chopra said:
“Jeffrey Epstein was introduced to me by Barnaby Marsh, former CEO of the Templeton Foundation, as someone who could potentially fund research on the brain and consciousness.”
Emails between the two suggest there was more.
“Lat night was a blast. Ended 1 AM,” Chopra emailed Epstein in 2017. To which Epstein replied, “I’m glad.”
Who knows what “a blast” means to a guy who once told me that the self is but a hallucination.
Worse was a 2016 exchange in which Chopra asked about a lawsuit filed by a woman who claims Epstein sexually abused her:
Chopra: “Did she also drop the civil case against you?”
Epstein: “YuP.”
Chopra: “Good.”
Yeah, that must have helped Epstein sleep.
Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of Epstein’s emails, exposing the pedophile’s creepy reach into the lives of the rich, famous and powerful.
Epstein was quite the networker even though he’d been a registered sex offender since 2008. But anyone maintaining a “professional relationship” with him after that date has explaining to do.
Read More: Networking With A Pedophile (Business Blunders)
The email dump shows Chopra was carrying on with Epstein from 2016 until 2019 – the year Epstein was finally jailed for a second time and ended up dead in his cell.
The conversations don’t indicate any wrongdoing on Chopra’s part. But why is anybody seeking wisdom and spiritual guidance from a guy who carries on for years with a convicted sex offender?
Author Liz Bucar has done an insightful job parsing this folly in a recent Substack article:
“As a scholar of religious ethics, I’m less interested in whether Deepak Chopra is a ‘good person’ or a ‘bad person’ than in what his success reveals about American religious culture. What does his popularity tell us about ourselves?”
Read More: We Made Deepak Chopra Rich. Then He Befriended a Predator. (Religion, Reimagined)
What does it tell us? I think it says most Americans are in metaphysical kindergarten and anyone with a shard of charisma and a grasp on ancient scriptures can sell them cookies.
I suspected as much in 2006 when Chopra told me that I didn’t exist. I was writing for The Denver Post at the time and nearly 20 years later you can still find the column online.
Read More: Going to the wellness, I come up dry (The Denver Post)
Here’s some of what I wrote then:
“Renowned spiritual guru Deepak Chopra gave me a metaphysical news flash.
“You don’t exist,” he told me in a recent telephone interview. “So what are we talking about, anyway?”
Chopra is the author of nearly 50 books on everything from knowing God to playing golf. He used to be an endocrinologist. Now, after selling 20 million books worldwide, he’s “one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time,” according to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Chopra spoke with such authority that I had to look in the window bordering my desk to be sure my reflection was still there. Thankfully, it was. But this trick of light was hardly proof of my existence.
“The idea of a separate self is a very convincing hallucination,” Chopra said. “The sooner we get over it, the better.”
Chopra is a master of professional success. He has made millions regurgitating ancient ideas. He has even sold his name to a chain of spas, as well as to some condominiums planned for Westminster.
“In America, you never apologize for being too successful,” said Chopra, who was born in New Delhi, India.
I asked Chopra why – given his material success and spiritual enlightenment – he keeps doing seminars. He’s 59 years old. He’s been in Time magazine. He’s got world leaders singing his praises. Why can’t he just be blissfully content?
“I get high when I speak to people,” Chopra said. “It’s my drug, you might say.”
So imagine my confusion. First, I learn that I don’t exist.
Then I discover that the renowned spiritual guru who gave me this insight is addicted to podiums.
Chopra has been feeding Americans with a steady diet of New Age bullshit for decades. We don’t really exist, so who cares?
His emails with Epstein will likely swirl into oblivion like a raked-over sand mandala.
His encounters with Epstein probably won’t hurt his multimillion-dollar guru empire because there’s always another lost soul seeking bliss.
As Bucar writes: “The market rewards charisma, not ethics.”
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Disgraceful behavior on Chopra's part.
The first I heard of Chopra, he was a 'speech and hearing' pathologist. I was in a speech and hearing pathology class (go figure). This was before I met you. Later, when he became big as a philosopher, 'activist,' etc, I wondered: why does anyone listen to the platitudes of a speech and hearing pathologist? I still wonder. There are so many wiser souls out there. That don't charge money.