Doctor Timeless: In Conversation With Deepak Chopra
I finally got to question Deepak Chopra
I am early for this 10 a.m. doctor's appointment. As I wait, I'm rereading Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, which distils ancient Indian values, placing them in modern contexts. I liked it so much, I used to give copies of it as gifts to friends.
I did go on to a few more books by Dr Chopra. I found them readable and thought provoking, although quite at odds with science as I'd learnt it. Naturally, I had questions.At three minutes to 10, I check with a receptionist—I'm at a Mumbai hotel-who calls the doctor's room. "No answer," he says, "it looks like he is not in." But at 10 sharp, a smiling Deepak Chopra in jeans and waistcoat materializes, his hand reaching out warmly to shake mine. Dr Deepak Chopra, 67, is a sought-after speaker, physician and holistic-health advocate who integrates spirituality and Ayurveda with mainstream medicine. He's also a prolific author of several bestselling books such as Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Book of Secrets. His Seven Spiritual Laws … alone has sold over three million copies since its publication in 1994.
Growing up in New Delhi, Deepak Chopra never wanted to be a doctor. So his father, an Army physician, gave him several books with doctors as their heroes. Deepak went on to graduate from the city's All India Institute of Medical Sciences and, in 1970, ended up in the US, where the Vietnam War had led to a severe shortage of medical personnel. He rose to become chief of staff at a major Boston hospital but gradually grew disenchanted with Western medicine and its reliance on drugs.
Today, he still practises in California and teaches. He also runs The Chopra Foundation, which studies the mind-body connection and, among other things, trains doctors in integrated medicine and funds research and charitable causes. Time magazine placed Dr Chopra among the "top 100 heroes and icons of the 20th century," descr...
I am early for this 10 a.m. doctor's appointment. As I wait, I'm rereading Deepak Chopra's The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, which distils ancient Indian values, placing them in modern contexts. I liked it so much, I used to give copies of it as gifts to friends.
I did go on to a few more books by Dr Chopra. I found them readable and thought provoking, although quite at odds with science as I'd learnt it. Naturally, I had questions.At three minutes to 10, I check with a receptionist—I'm at a Mumbai hotel-who calls the doctor's room. "No answer," he says, "it looks like he is not in." But at 10 sharp, a smiling Deepak Chopra in jeans and waistcoat materializes, his hand reaching out warmly to shake mine. Dr Deepak Chopra, 67, is a sought-after speaker, physician and holistic-health advocate who integrates spirituality and Ayurveda with mainstream medicine. He's also a prolific author of several bestselling books such as Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and The Book of Secrets. His Seven Spiritual Laws … alone has sold over three million copies since its publication in 1994.
Growing up in New Delhi, Deepak Chopra never wanted to be a doctor. So his father, an Army physician, gave him several books with doctors as their heroes. Deepak went on to graduate from the city's All India Institute of Medical Sciences and, in 1970, ended up in the US, where the Vietnam War had led to a severe shortage of medical personnel. He rose to become chief of staff at a major Boston hospital but gradually grew disenchanted with Western medicine and its reliance on drugs.
Today, he still practises in California and teaches. He also runs The Chopra Foundation, which studies the mind-body connection and, among other things, trains doctors in integrated medicine and funds research and charitable causes. Time magazine placed Dr Chopra among the "top 100 heroes and icons of the 20th century," describing him as "the poet-prophet of alternative medicine." Seated across a table from Dr Chopra, I finally got my answers:
You've written, "This moment... is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past." So what were your early influences?
A lot of things. I went to St Columba's School in Delhi and was much influenced especially by English literature. I read the classics. I was into Chaucer and Shakespeare in a big way. I think I wanted always to be a writer from school itself.
Was it hard at first to get something published?
Yes. In 1985 my first book, Creating Health, had no takers, so I had it self-published. It then got picked up by an agent whose son happened to gift it to her. She took it to a publisher and it became a [US] national bestseller. I then did two other books, which also became bestsellers. Now I have 81 books.
How did you study Ayurveda?
I was practising in Boston and doing research in neuroscience, in the molecules of emotion-neuropeptides. I met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1985. He introduced me to some Ayurvedic scholars like Brihaspati Triguna in Delhi and I spent about three years with him. I never took any formal training and I've never actually adopted Ayurveda in its entirety.
Many doctors of modern medicine look down on Ayurveda as an alternative system.
First of all that word is not fortunate. It doesn't mean integrated. So I never use the word alternative. A lot of modern doctors are reductionists, meaning they look at the body in a mechanistic way—like a machine. But you know the human body is more than a machine: it is emotions, mind, intellect, ego, soul, spirit. So that modern view is very good if you have an acute illness—if you have pneumonia, you better take an antibiotic to save your life. But, if you have heart disease or any other chronic illness and if you don't change your lifestyle, modern medicine alone is not going do anything for you. I just wanted a more integrated way of treating the human body.
Do you think regular doctors are ever going to accept all that? Will it reach them someday?
It will through science, so at our institute [The Chopra Foundation] we look at genetics, we look at epigenetics, the brain, at cell biology, and we see what the effect of simple things like sleep, meditation, yoga, breathing techniques, healthy emotions, food is. And then we go deeper. We do that sort of science.
Read the full article in the May 2015 issue of Reader's Digest.