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DEEPAK CHOPRA
1947-

NEW AGE GURU, DOCTOR, AUTHOR, ENTREPRENEUR

"The Bearer of True Enlightenment."

One of the more influential New Age writers, educators, lecturers, and gurus to the rich and famous was Indian-born Deepak Chopra. A medical doctor by profession, Chopra, through a series of best-selling books, tapes, and lectures, made believers out of thousands of Americans with a message that combines medical and spiritual advice. His words have helped to soothe the sense of emptiness that many Americans confess is now a part of their lives.

Setting the Stage

Chopra arrived in the United States in 1970 as a Western-trained medical doctor. Gradually, he became known as "The Lord of Immortality," a prominent spokesman for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation movement. Since that time he has emerged as a personality in his own right, having written nineteen books that have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He has given on average fifty lectures a year, and has been the personal spiritual advisor to many celebrities, including Demi Moore, George Harrison, Madonna, and the late Princess Diana. He has even been called in to advise the troubled National Broadcasting Company (NBC) about how to recapture the top rating among television networks.

The Deepak Empire

By the end of the decade Chopra had built a large and growing personal empire. His various enterprises include a proposed worldwide chain of Centers for Well Being, a monthly newsletter, CDs, study groups, herbal supplements, massage oils, lectures, seminars, and movie scripts. His pronouncements, such as the one made on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1993, that people did not have to grow old, spurred record sales of his then-current title Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old (1993). Chopra is not without his critics, however. They charge him with being nothing more than a modern snake-oil salesman with an M.D. Still, his influence cannot be underestimated as he answers the spiritual and medical longings of many who are searching for inner peace.