296: The Chopra Files

Summary

Conspirituality Podcast

Episode 296: The Chopra Files
Date: February 19, 2026
Hosts: Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

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Overview

Main Theme:
This episode critically investigates Deepak Chopra’s deep entanglement with Jeffrey Epstein as revealed in newly released DOJ files, examining what this relationship reveals about ethics, spiritual brand-building, and the cultic dynamics within the wellness and New Age spheres. The hosts discuss the implications for public health, spirituality, and politics, using Chopra and his network as a lens to expose the dangers of conspirituality—the fusion of conspiracism and New Age spirituality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Deepak Chopra’s Place in Wellness Culture

[02:18–06:12]

• Chopra is described as a "saturated figure" in the wellness industry—a celebrity spiritualist who fades into the cultural background like a corporate brand.
• He built an empire off Oprah Winfrey's 1993 endorsement, selling hundreds of thousands of books in a single week after appearing on her show (“Ageless Body, Timeless Mind”).
• Oprah’s track record of boosting dubious spiritual gurus is highlighted, including figures later associated with scandals or harm (James Arthur Ray, John of God, Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins, etc.).
  • Quote:
    "Once again, we have Oprah making the career of a spiritual figure who turns out to be shady as hell." – Derek Barris [05:34]
• Chopra, despite his massive brand, is questioned: "Who does he actually influence? … He just kind of lost it for me." – Derek Barris [04:20]

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2. Details of the Chopra-Epstein Relationship: Emails & Events

[08:45–17:17]

• Newly revealed DOJ files show Chopra’s name appearing in over 3,200 entries, far eclipsing his public claims of “limited contact” with Epstein.
  • Quote:
    "God is a construct. Cute girls are real." – Deepak Chopra in email to Epstein [02:47/11:30]
• Email exchanges between 2016–2019 expose overtly intimate, inappropriate banter, invitations to bring “your girls” to events, and exchanges that trivialize serious accusations against Epstein.
  • Quote:
    “Come to Israel with us. Relax and have fun with interesting people. … Use a fake name. Bring your girls.” – Deepak Chopra in a 2017 email [10:20]
• The hosts analyze a particularly notorious exchange:
  • Epstein: "Did you find me a cute Israeli?"
  • Chopra: "They are militant, aggressive, and V sexy." [12:26]
• Examples of locker-room banter, sexual objectification, and disturbing jokes, including discussions about picking up women, with redacted participants commenting:
  • Quote:
    "I liked watching you zero in on your prey. Made me smile." – Redacted [13:41]
    “I not a predator, just a lover.” – Deepak Chopra [13:53]
• In discussing the Katie Johnson civil suit (an accuser of Trump/Epstein), Chopra’s responses are disturbingly blasé:
  • Epstein: (Case dropped)
  • Chopra: "Good." [15:02]

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3. The Non-Apology: Chopra’s Public “Statement”

[16:55]

• Chopra issued a bland, minimizing statement after the files became public, emphasizing limited contact and regretting “poor judgment in tone,” but not addressing the substance of accusations.
  • Quote:
    “Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity. Some past email exchanges have surfaced that reflect poor judgment in tone. I regret that and understand how they read today given what was publicly known at the time.” – Deepak Chopra [16:55]

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4. Consequences—Or Lack Thereof

[17:27–19:00]

• Despite the damning documents, Chopra faces minimal consequences:
  • Dropped by the Heart Mind Institute
  • Shut off all social media commenting ahead of the file release
  • No major cancellations or refunds for his $1000+ online courses
  • "He'll be fine." – repeated refrain on his brand's resilience [17:48]
• The hosts express frustration that other countries seem to take these revelations more seriously than the US.

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5. Chopra’s Career, Brand Formation, and Pseudoscience

[19:39–27:26]

• Biographical sketch: Born into privilege in India, trained as a doctor, arrived in the US in 1973, attached to Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Ayurveda through Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and swiftly commercialized both.
• Accused of “cutting the line” in Ayurveda, lacking deep traditional knowledge despite “selling” authenticity.
• Syncretized Western medical credentials, Indian spiritual flair, and quantum jargon:
  • "He gives outrageous, magical thinking, metaphorical whimsy about mind, body, relationships..."
  • The “Wisdom of Chopra” quote generator lampooned his pseudo-scientific, endlessly abstract pronouncements:
    • “Intuition creates unbridled reality.”
    • “Perception gives rise to boundless possibilities.” [28:31]
• Chopra’s philosophies enable wealth worship and victim blaming, framing all hardship as a failure of consciousness ("wealth is a state of consciousness").
  • Quote:
    "There is no external enemy ... No one realized how smart the ego is because it created the devil so you would have someone to blame." – Deepak Chopra [29:01]

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6. “Spiritual Bypass,” Moral Relativism, and Enabling Abuse

[29:29–32:11]

• Chopra’s public statements and direct communications frequently use “spiritual bypass”—minimizing or denying real harms as illusions, and discrediting moral judgment as a sign of “confusion.”
  • Quote:
    “The play of these responses is a symptom of why the war between good and evil as a concept is at once never ending and futile.” – Deepak Chopra [30:26]
• His teachings, emails, and “selfie sermons” even sent directly to Epstein, repeatedly avoid acknowledging abuse or atrocities.
  • “The biggest obstacle to knowing yourself is to confuse yourself with your name and your current experience of that which you call your body mind.” – Deepak Chopra (to Epstein) [32:11]

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7. Network & Complicity in Power Circles

[33:27–37:27]

• Confirmation of networking for profit and influence: e.g., Chopra pitching an ETF to Epstein, arranging intros for his VC son-in-law (with the parenthetical: “can’t talk about girls” [34:17]).
• Notable figures in Epstein-Chopra orbit: Paul Tudor Jones (financier, yoga funder), Woody Allen, Michael Jackson—each with allegations of abuse or pedophilia.
• Chopra is seen as “willing to be a participant in banter that objectified women and girls,” with none of the high-status men in Epstein’s circle challenging this culture.
  • Reflection:
    “Rather than just letting it slide or playing along with Epstein, it comes across to me as a form of grooming.” – Julian Walker [39:03]

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8. Pseudoscience, Alt-Health, and Indian Politics

[41:41–48:29]

• Deep dive into Chopra’s—and broader India’s—role in COVID-19 denialism:
  • The Modi government’s use of Ayurvedic/alt-health at the height of the pandemic
  • Chopra’s collaboration with Sadhguru Vasudev to minimize COVID concerns, mock vaccines, and romanticize the protective power of Indian “spiritual” lifestyles
  • The dangerous consequences when metaphysical beliefs take precedence over empirical public health [46:14]
  • Quote (paraphrasing Sadhguru):
    “Poor people in the villages...are actually less vulnerable to disease because of their natural and simple lifestyles.” [49:07]
• Both Chopra and Sadhguru are described as “playing Vedic Liberace to Sadhguru's passive aggressive Santa Claus” [49:19].

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9. The Philosophy Behind Chopra: Neo-Vedanta, Nonduality, and Class

[50:35–59:25]

• Analysis of how Chopra deploys Vedanta—stripped of context—for Western audiences, using ancient Indian texts to sound “scientific” while sidestepping caste, gender, and power inequalities.
• History: Vedanta was reworked by 19th-century Indian reformers to counter colonial stereotypes but also provided a “spiritual alibi” for class and caste hierarchies.
• Critique: Neo-Vedanta offers the perfect philosophical cover for spiritual capitalism and “regulatory freedom”—justifying wealth and status as marks of consciousness while dismissing real suffering as “illusion.”
  • Quote:
    "You always have the choice, Julian, to be a worker or an owner. Let's put it that way." – Matthew Remski [59:22]

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• “[Oprah] sold a hundred thousand copies of his book...the day he was on.” – Derek Barris [04:20]
• “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” – Deepak Chopra (email to Epstein) [11:30]
• "I liked watching you zero in on your prey. Made me smile." – Redacted [13:41]
• “I not a predator, just a lover.” – Deepak Chopra [13:53]
• "Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity..." – Deepak Chopra (public statement) [16:55]
• “Intuition creates unbridled reality. The invisible is rooted in an abundance of reality. Perception gives rise to boundless possibilities.” – From the "Wisdom of Chopra" generator [28:31]
• "There is no external enemy... No one realized how smart the ego is because it created the devil so you would have someone to blame." – Deepak Chopra [29:01]
• “The play of these responses is a symptom of why the war between good and evil as a concept is at once never ending and futile.” – Deepak Chopra [30:26]
• “[Chopra’s] core message is that humans can transcend the material world through meditation, awareness and spiritual practice, which appears in part to be a role he was filling in Epstein's life.” – Derek Barris [08:45]
• "Mahesh really gave him an example of how to do that kind of smiling charlatan kind of doublespeak, probably." – Julian Walker [26:18]
• “Chopra has this kind of secret weapon, which is that he's able to, I would say strongly, but also vaguely appeal to this whole corpus of Indian philosophy we've touched on so far.” – Matthew Remski [50:35]
• "If you wanted to engineer the perfect ancient sounding philosophy for...the neoliberal age..., Neo Vedanta is really going to help you with that." – Matthew Remski [59:25]

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Focus | |---------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:18–06:12 | Chopra’s career arc; Oprah’s influence | | 08:45–17:17 | Diving into the Epstein files/emails and the nature of their rapport | | 19:39–27:26 | Chopra’s brand, pseudoscience, cultural whitening | | 29:29–32:11 | Spiritual bypass, minimization, and moral relativism | | 33:27–37:27 | Financial networking, complicity with celebrity abusers | | 41:41–50:00 | Chopra’s influence during COVID, alliance with Sadhguru, impact | | 50:35–59:25 | Roots and critique of Neo-Vedanta, spirituality as capitalist tool |

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Tone and Style

• Witty, irreverent, and rigorous—hosts blend sharp analysis with humor, often using sarcasm or literary allusion to drive points home.
• Frequent references to pop culture, politics, and historical context.
• Critical but at times empathetic toward those drawn in by the pseudo-spiritual industry.

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Conclusion

In this episode, the Conspirituality hosts lay bare Deepak Chopra’s complicity, hypocrisy, and willingness to cozy up to power—both spiritual and financial—at the expense of ethics, public health, and honest inquiry. They reveal how Chopra’s brand and teachings have been shaped by, and in turn help shape, the fusion of pseudoscience, Eastern mysticism, and capitalist self-actualization that define the current New Age landscape. The episode is a warning about the lure and damage of conspirituality, and a call for critical thinking, especially as more truth about wellness influencers and their enablers comes to light.

Transcript

[Julian Walker]

Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, Grandpa.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Wait, you did?

[Julian Walker]

Yep. On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You don't say.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Wow. Way to go. So, about that picture frame.

[Julian Walker]

Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Pickup fees may apply.

[Derek Barris]

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading

[Julian Walker]

random articles from across the web to

[Derek Barris]

bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.

[Matthew Rimsky]

I'm Matthew Rimsky.

[Julian Walker]

I'm Julian Walker.

[Derek Barris]

You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on [e-mail] conspirituality you can also grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Episode 296 the Chopra Files so Deepak Chopra is all over the Epstein Files. Are we surprised? No, but we are interested in the various layers of his entanglement and what this tells us about the ethics and politics at play in the shadow of big wellness.

[Derek Barris]

God is a construct. Cute girls are real. That's likely the most talked about moment from Deepak Chopra's many, many appearances in the Epstein Files. One of the most famous pop culture gurus of our time appears over 3200 times on the DOJ website, which sort of obliterates his non apology on Twitter on February 4, in which he claimed to have limited contact with Epstein.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Like, compared to what?

[Derek Barris]

I guess compared to Trump.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

Like Peter Atia, who we covered last week. Chopra could have easily Learned about Epstein's 2008 child prostitution charges, but apparently he never bothered to look into the quantum field at his close friend. The correspondences in the files track from July 2016 through April 2019, whereas Atiya said he Cut off communication. Once the infamous 2018 Miami Herald article on Epstein dropped, records show that Chopra stayed in touch.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah. And touch. In touch, I think, is a really good word because it's pretty touchy feely. It's intimate, it's cloying. He's pandering. Much more so than with Atiya. Like, Chopra was very, very interested in getting close to this convicted child sex abuser.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah. Chopra's. If you read it, he's definitely in that zone. Atiya does sometimes often maintain a professional distance. He does get chummy, but it's a. It's a whole other level with Chopra.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

And we're going to be looking at him pretty broadly today. But let's start with a bit of a bio and some of the more lurid exchanges. We've really only covered Chopra in passing over last six years, mostly because he's such a saturated figure in the wellness world. I know I basically gloss him over. I don't think I know anyone who even owns a Chopra book. He's just kind of there, and I'm always wondering, who does he actually influence? Yeah, I. I don't know. I've just never taken him that seriously. I mean, a little bit back in 2004, but besides that, I just. He just kind of lost it for me. But he's built one of the most lucrative spiritual brands in history over the last five decades. He's written or co authored 95 books. He's given thousands of talks. He runs a media empire that was built on Oprah's 1993 endorsements. And we really can't underestimate how important that appearance on her show was, because he sold a hundred thousand copies of his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, on the day he was on Oprah. By the end of that week, he had sold 400,000 copies of that book. So once again, we have Oprah making the career of a spiritual figure who turns out to be shady as hell.

[Matthew Rimsky]

It's so interesting what you say about, he's so big, he kind of fades into the background. I have that impression, too. It's almost like he's a national corporate brand that you just kind of like, well, McDonald's is there, and the Ford Motor Company is just a part of our landscape. He was kind of like that, but it didn't really feel like I knew anybody who had an individual sort of of, I don't know, consumer relationship with him.

[Julian Walker]

In preparing this episode, I kept thinking, he's one of those people who you just have to say his first name. And everyone knows who you mean, right? It's just Deepak, he's Bono, he's Sting, he's Gwyneth.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. You know, before you go on Derek, I just, we need to ping, you know, the Rings of Hell that Oprah's also responsible for. So, you know, at the upper layer, she had run of the mill new age spiritualists like Marianne Williamson, who made it big on her show. Eckhart Tolle Don, Mikhail Ruiz, all got huge boosts from their appearances. She was pivotal in boosting Rhonda Byrne and the Secret, let's not forget, major influence in the growth of the Tony Robbins empire. Multiple appearances that he had on her show. And you know, they probably cross marketed a bunch of workshops and stuff. Then she got snow jobbed by Lauren Stratford, also known as Laurel Rose Wilson, who was a big satanic panic influencer. And that's very topical these days, who, when she wasn't writing about suffering satanic ritual abuse, was posing as a hobbit Holocaust survivor. And then Stratford appeared alongside Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder and took their stories as given. And over time, Oprah pulled away from this red pilled satanic panic discourse, but eased into recovery or, sorry, recovered memory theory and the promotion of Bessel Van Der Kolk. But the hottest ring of hell is that, you know, she gave a real boost to the plastic shaman James Arthur Ray, who killed people in his fake sweat lodges. She also heavily promoted psychic surgeon John of God, the Frankenstein Epstein of the new age healing world. He's now in prison in Brazil, convicted of hundreds of sex crimes. And so that's how this is, this is the font from which Chopra springs.

[Derek Barris]

But at least she's apologized for all of them, right, Matthew?

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh, right, yeah. No, she's actually given all of the money away. She's, she's, she's set up, you know, funds for the victims of John of God. Yeah, it's been great. It's awesome.

[Derek Barris]

I, I know people have parasocial relationships with Oprah. I don't want to underplay her import in certain, you know, from being a woman brought broadcaster at the time and actually elevating some other good voices. But I just remember reading an article in which she has a room in her mansion that is covered floor to ceiling with mirrors. And she said one of her favorite things to do is lie in the bed in that room and just stare at herself from every angle.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh, wow.

[Derek Barris]

And it was upon reading that I was like, I can't believe, like anyone takes this woman seriously on that on that level or understands what she's really

[Matthew Rimsky]

about or why she, why she would admit that to somebody. That seems like a very private activity to me.

[Julian Walker]

Right, yeah. And it's. It's kind of something from a Victorian short story.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Deepak Chopra markets himself as a guide to higher consciousness, inner peace, and ironically, given today's episode, moral clarity. His core message is that humans can transcend the material world through meditation, awareness and spiritual practice, which appears in part to be a role he was filling in Epstein's life. Epstein's calendar showed roughly a dozen in person meetings with Chopra at locations including Epstein's New York townhouse, his Palm beach residence, Paris, the Chopra center in Carlsbad, California, and various events and conferences.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, so he describes limited contact, but a lot of it's happening after 2008. But the other piece of background from Chopra's own side that we have to make sure is in here is that, you know, before we go into his Epstein communications is that there was a sexual harassment suit against him, Chopra, in the late 1990s. And then in 2021, there's an anonymous account from a woman who said that he used his guru status at his Ayurveda center to pose as kind of like a therapist wizard. And she says that that encouraged her to disclose childhood trauma to him, including sexual abuse. And then she alleges that he pressured her into a sexual relationship. And so it's not like he even has the, oh, I'm totally innocent of the world kind of, I don't know, Persona that he can wear into an investigation of this relationship.

[Derek Barris]

Well, we're going to do much more analysis of Chopra. Let's speed run through some of the email exchanges for context, though. So here's Chopra in February 2017.

[Julian Walker]

Come to Israel with us. Relax and have fun with interesting people.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh, boy.

[Julian Walker]

If you want, use a fake name. Bring your girls. It will be fun to have you love.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, so. So as with everything with Epstein, your girls is the proper focus here. But I want to point out that Chopra has enough of a following in Israel to have a Deepak in Israel Facebook page that links to, like, group zoom calls right up to December of this past year. Plus, public talks and listeners should also know or remember that yoga in Israel plays a huge role in regulating cognitive dissonance en masse. It's standard practice for IDF veterans to take a yoga vacation in India after discharge in order to recover and maybe purify bad karma. So this whole sort of, you know, conjunction of, of yoga culture and you know, meetings with Epstein in, in, in in Israel carries a, carries a kind of. It carries a vibe to it.

[Derek Barris]

That is not the only instance in which Chopra uses this sort of language. He also invited Epstein to a workshop in Switzerland, telling him to come with your girls. Then there's this one from March 2017

[Matthew Rimsky]

where Chopra writes, cells are human thing. Universe is human construct. No such thing. Cute girls are aware when they make noise. God is a construct. Cute girls are real.

[Derek Barris]

Epstein follows that up with Chopra when

[Matthew Rimsky]

he writes, did you find me a cute Israeli? I wonder if he's even with the bad grammar in Universe's human construct. If he's like echoing Maharishi or something like that. It's very odd. But all of these emails are like, filled with terrible grammar line breaks. A lot of them are hard to read. And you know, Julian, you're going to get to how his content fits the story here, but I want to mention that, you know, as I said on ig, this is a joke with a seriously twisted faith claim at the center of it. Like he's using a parody of non dualism in, you know, that he uses in all of his work, where you deconstruct God as a concept outside of yourself so that you can know yourself as being one with the divine, tasting the endless pleasures of the world, or totally illegal perversions like he's. He's using. He's definitely using a cover here as well as it being a joke.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, we're going to get into the Chopra generator in segment two, but it seems like Chopra does it to himself. Maybe he was behind it in the first place. In another exchange, Epstein asked Chopra to find him a cute Israeli blonde, which the guru with moral clarity said he would, warning, they are very. They are militant, aggressive, and V sexy. He always uses V for very. Then there's this horrific text exchange in October 2016 which begins with Chopra thanking this person for a very lovely experience. So it's. It's not. It's a redacted person, just to be clear. So we can't be entirely sure who he's talking to. Then that redacted person discusses a woman Chopra had met with Chopra replying that he felt connected to her at the level of awareness.

[Julian Walker]

This person replies, I liked watching you zero in on your prey. Made me smile.

[Derek Barris]

Five minutes later, Chopra writes, I'm not

[Julian Walker]

a predator, just a lover.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Actually, it's. I not a predator. Sorry.

[Julian Walker]

That's okay, because my face has frozen. I was distracted and I'm not sure that you were Hearing me, I'll do it again.

[Derek Barris]

During this exchange, Chopra also asks the redacted name how he picked up a woman he met on the street two weeks ago.

[Julian Walker]

Redacted, replied, listen, my son, and the wisdom of sages will reflect your reality. To which Chopra said, aha, I have much to learn.

[Derek Barris]

It's quite something reading these, quote, high school locker room talk. I put that in quotes myself because, you know, they're very Trumpian, these exchanges with someone who positions himself as a spiritual leader. Not surprising, per se, but seeing it in front of your eyes like this just hits different. Now, one last one, as this matters in terms of Chopra's knowledge of Epstein's activities. In November 2016, Epstein emailed Chopra a Daily Mail article about a woman who had claimed to be assaulted by both Epstein and Donald Trump when she was 13 and who had dropped her civil case.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Chopra responded, did she also drop civil case against you?

[Derek Barris]

Epstein replied, yep.

[Julian Walker]

Chopra wrote back, good.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, okay. We have to talk about what this case is. This is the Katie Johnson case in which she accused Epstein and Trump of raping her in 1994. It was well reported on at the time. You can read the horrible filing today. Still, Johnson's first filing in California was thrown out on a technicality. Then she refiled in New York State, but then withdrew the suit before a scheduled press conference with her lawyer, saying that threats against her had pressured her to drop it. Then she disappeared. The filing was discharged in November of 2016, four days before Trump's first election. So who knows what Chopra knew about the details of the case, but his instinct here is to cheer on a guy who has somehow managed to gag an accuser. And in the email chain, Epstein sends a link to one of the worst Daily Mail UK hack jobs I've ever seen.

[Derek Barris]

That says. That says a lot.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Well, listen to this exclusive in all caps. Troubled woman with a history of drug use who claimed that she was assaulted by Donald Trump at Jeffrey Epstein's sex party at age 13. Capital letters made it all up. So what's there? Evidence that Johnson made it all up? The fact that at 13, she didn't initially know who Trump was when he raped her. Allegedly. But found out later by watching the Apprentice. That's what they rolled with. She must have made it up because she didn't know at 13 who Donald Trump was until seeing him on TV. TV later.

[Derek Barris]

All right, well, let's close this segment with Chopra's only public correspondence on this matter in full. He was approached by someone on video at lax. That's its own story. But this is Chopra coming out to say, you know, his, his non apology, as I call it. So here it is.

[Julian Walker]

I'm deeply saddened by the suffering of the victims in this case and I unequivocally condemn abuse and exploitation in all forms. And I want to be clear. I was never involved in, nor did I participate in any criminal or exploitative conduct. Any contact I had was limited and unrelated to abusive activity. Some past email exchanges have surfaced that reflect poor judgment in tone. I regret that and understand how they read today given what was publicly known at the time.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Well, you know, there are going to be very few consequences in all of this and that's going to drive everybody insane. But so far we can report as we end the segment that Chopra has been dropped by the Heart Mind Institute, which organizes conferences and things like that. There might be some other cancellations, you know, coming up in the future. He'll be fine though.

[Derek Barris]

He'll be fine. You know, I saw someone post on threads that there are more people who suffered consequences from saying anything about Charlie Kirk's murder than there have been about the Epstein files in America, at least because other countries are taking this much more seriously than anyone in the American political landscape. I spent yesterday, last night looking and trying to find anything besides Heart Mind that had dropped Chopra. And as it so happened, his 2026 schedule is heavily focused on his latest book and online courses and people who signed up for a year long course with him. I'd be interested in who's going to keep going with that but that's obviously private knowled I wouldn't be able to to mine that. But besides that, there doesn't seem to be any, any repercussions to report yet. But we'll stay on it.

[Matthew Rimsky]

So is this like a big ticket online year long course that he's charging $1,000 for and he's not going to refund people?

[Derek Barris]

Probably, probably. But interestingly it appears that he shut off all comments to his social media channels in December. Oh yeah, before when Trump announced that the Epstein files were coming out.

[Julian Walker]

Wow.

[Derek Barris]

So he, he's been prepping for it. So it's not exactly surprising that he would, he would not have a lot on a schedule right now.

[Julian Walker]

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[Julian Walker]

tread [e-mail] we've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode, the Jordan Harbinger Show, a podcast you should definitely check out since you're a fan of high quality, fascinating podcasts. Hosted by interesting people, the show covers such a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy hitting guests, and there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting. Since you're a fan of this show, I'd recommend our listeners check out his skeptical Sunday episode on hydrotherapy as well as Jordan's episode about Tarina Shaquille where he interviews an ISIS recruits journey and escape. There's an episode for everyone though, no matter what you're into. The show covers stories like how a professional art forger somehow made millions of dollars while being chased by the feds and the mafia. Jordan's also done an episode all about birth control and how it can alter the partners we pick, and how going on or off of the pill can change elements in our personalities. The podcast covers a lot, but one constant is his ability to pull useful pieces of advice from his guests. I promise you you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life, whether that's an actionable routine change that boosts your productivity, or just a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world. We really enjoy this show. We think you will as well. There's just so much there. Check out jordanharbinger.com start for some episode recommendations or search for the Jordan Harbinger show that that's H A R B as in boy I N as in Nancy G E R on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We've touched on Deepak's career arc a little bit so far, but there's a couple pieces about his bio that I want to tease out because I think they're relevant for today. So Chopra gets his start in a quite privileged life in New Delhi in 1946. His father was a cardiologist who, as it turned out, acted as a medical advisor to Lord Mountbatten, who was then the Viceroy of India under British occupation. Deepak was educated in India as a doctor and then became board certified in the US in 1973, where he then both taught at Harvard and other prestigious schools and had a private medical practice in Boston. Then comes the turn. So in 1981, on a visit back to New Delhi, Chopra begins looking into Ayurveda and Transcendental Meditation and as ways to overcome his heavy caffeine and cigarette habits. And this led him eventually to meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who asked him to start an Ayurvedic health center. And he did so in Lancaster, Massachusetts. And that drew in this elite clientele. And Chopra then becomes a prominent and lucrative spokesperson for the benefits of Transcendental Meditation.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know, like flying. Or if you gather enough people to meditate together all over the world, then war will stop. I just want to point out here that, like, if he's really introduced, maybe he has some prior knowledge of Ayurveda, just sort of like culturally or folk knowledge or something. But if he's really introduced to it and he's hooked in 1981 and he's immediately sort of sent out as a lieutenant to start an Ayurveda center. You know, people who really do Ayurveda in South India, it's something that they study for 10 years with recitation and all kinds of ritual stuff. Yeah, this.

[Julian Walker]

He's cut the line.

[Matthew Rimsky]

He completely cut the line. But then, you know, the other things I want to add is that, is that I've heard from a lot of Daisy commenters whenever I publish on this stuff that, like, first of all, making it as a doctor is just a common immigrant parents dream for a son, especially in the 1970s. And secondly, a lot of the kids. This is what I've heard from many sources who wound up in the Ayurveda colleges that started popping up as the BG gained strength and they started developing their own Maha movement were those who didn't have the grades for like real medical school. So just two things to keep in mind. But he did. I mean, he was a legit doctor. Sure. So he's such an interesting case.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. And I framed it as then comes the turn because it's actually the synthesis of these two things in the context of American consumer spirituality that's going to, you know, set him off down the track that he's.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Light him on fire.

[Julian Walker]

Right? Yeah, yeah. By the late 80s, Deepak had moved on from working for Mahesh to head up the Mind Body clinic in a $4,000 a day resort in California where Michael Jackson and his family were visitors. Jackson, with whom he would then have a 20 year friendship, introduced Deepak to Oprah Winfrey. And as you've mentioned, Derek, that appearance on that show sends his book sales and fame to the moon and provides many more business opportunities for him over the years while amassing a personal fortune of around $150 million. He's also been professionally associated with Elizabeth Taylor, Demi Moore and Madonna. So to me, Deepak is really like an archetype of the top of the food chain wellness expert. His background in medical science combined then with his Indian origin story, made his turn toward traditional Ayurveda. And then the special affinity he develops from misusing quantum physics as if it intersects with Indian mystic of that becomes extremely compelling. For example, he'll claim that via meditation, we can tap into the realm of infinite quantum possibilities to then heal our own diseases by going beyond the material limitations of the body as a construct.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know, in thinking about this arc from overworked, cigarette smoking, hard drinking doctor to wellness guru. You know, the. The notion of tapping into the infinite quantum realm is just a lot easier, isn't it? It's just a lot cleaner. Like, you don't have to do scrubs for that, right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You're not doing 18 hour shifts in emergency. Anyway, I think he took a good fork, and I think it's the perfect story of the Indian prodigal son lost to the excesses of Western culture and delusion and addiction before coming home to the motherland of original consciousness. I suppose Mahesh, if he was a different type of gu, might have helped steer him away from Epstein and really back into the quiet of his own atman. But it didn't work out that way.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. Instead, I think Mahesh really gave him an example of how to do that kind of smiling charlatan kind of doublespeak, probably.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah. And to go after big clients. Right. This is how you do it.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So Deepak made to order for Oprah's brand and audience, and then his influence becomes absolutely enormous. He gives outrageous, magical thinking, metaphorical whimsy about mind, body, relationships, and then discredited ancient models of diagnosis and prescription. He gives all of this the sheen of being cutting edge spiritualized science with which the west is supposedly only now catching up. And by the time we get into the 90s, that is a very popular message that all of us here were exposed to and probably cheering on. There's a generation of pseudoscience peddlers who have successfully followed his lead in one way or another.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know what? I just have to pause because you used the best word ever, which is whimsy. And it made me think of, like, whether or not Myst crooks on Instagram could do like a me not do this thing with, like, ayurvedic treatments. You know, like coffee enemies. Me not do this.

[Julian Walker]

What is going on here?

[Matthew Rimsky]

These.

[Julian Walker]

These white people are too rich, right? Deepak's many nonsensical statements about the spiritual nature of reality have drawn plenty of criticism. And it led we pinged this earlier to the 2010 online launch of the Wisdom of Chopra, which is a quote generator that humorously demonstrated that his act sentences were often indistinguishable from randomly combined sciency, metaphysical jargon. And for example, when talking about Hurricane Sandy, global warming and other natural disasters on his YouTube channel, Chopra said the following.

[Matthew Rimsky]

A lot of turbulence in human consciousness could be connected with turbulence in nature, which could be everything from shifting tectonic plates to shift in the gravitational forces and space time in the cosmos that causes a course correction. If you were a meteorite or a piece of rock that caused devastation on a planet, planet called Earth, what the hell? Can you imagine that guy making money with that? Can you? Like Jesus, we are surrounded, surrounded by fools making tons of money. Incredible.

[Derek Barris]

For comparison, I went to wisdom of chopra.com but it appears that the site was taken down. It appears it existed through at least 2023 according to their Twitter thread. But thankfully Reddit exists. So here are a few gems from the generator. Intuition creates unbridled reality. The invisible is rooted in an abundance of reality, and perception gives rise to boundless possibilities.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, Deep.

[Julian Walker]

No, that last one was a real one. I'm sure he actually said that. So perhaps unsurprisingly, Deepak has also therefore been a proponent of the related idea that your own thoughts manifest the reality you are experiencing. That blaming others is actually a kind of victim consciousness. He has said that there is no external enemy. That's a quote. And another one. No one realized how smart the ego is because it created the devil. So you would have someone to blame.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh boy.

[Julian Walker]

Instead of blaming yourself because you created it with your consciousness. Likewise, when it comes to money, wealth is a state of consciousness, he says, where you have access to abundance because you have access to the source of all experience, which we call pure awareness.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, and I call ghostwriters and a huge staff of people pumping out content on your behalf. Probably. Probably. Right, like wealth is a state of being able to employ a lot of people. Okay, so listeners may be shocked to learn that there is a long standing critique of this philosophy which is called Vedanta or Neo Vedanta. And it's on the Indian left because, you know, it's largely an upper caste philosophical innovation that's just very easy to deploy when you're hand waving away wealth inequalities. But I'll say more about that in segment three.

[Julian Walker]

So when it comes to notions of good and evil, which are particularly topical for today, here's a quote from a blog post by Deepak in March of 2024.

[Derek Barris]

You can tell that you don't have clarity by noticing your own reactions to horrific news stories about behavior that people would click quickly label as evil, such as child pornography, mass shootings, drug wars in the street, and violent domestic abuse. In most people, such news reports create a confused and inconsistent response that includes the desire for revenge, passive acceptance, resigned resignation, plea for justice, horror, guilt, and so on. The play of these responses is a symptom of why the war between good and evil as a concept is at once never ending and futile.

[Matthew Rimsky]

That is just so incredibly bad.

[Derek Barris]

Can I also say, as a writer, anytime someone writes and so on, or et cetera, I. I just. It infuriates me.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, they're supposed to leave that in the draft, right? Like T.K.

[Derek Barris]

t.K.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead of saying to the reader, you can fill in the rest yourself.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Right, Because I'm filling in a bunch of bullshit myself. Yeah. So, yeah. What an incredibly bad statement.

[Julian Walker]

All of these quotes that I've chosen here are typical forms of spiritual bypass, which sometimes overtly and sometimes implicitly conveys the message that wealthier people are more spiritually developed. Traumatized people have themselves to blame for holding onto the feeling of being victimized. And ultimately all moral judgments and the human reality in which they exist are merely a low vibr illusion. In addition to emails and texts with Chopra in the Epstein files, we find about 10 minutes of various video files that he has sent to Jeffrey, most of which are selfie sermons that reiterate this kind of self aggrandizing and enabling wisdom. So in one of those videos, he says this.

[Matthew Rimsky]

The biggest obstacle to knowing yourself is to confuse yourself with your name and your current experience of that which you call your body mind. So, and just for the readers, these are selfie sermons in the classic sense of like, he's privately talking into the camera to Jeffrey. Now, they might have been sent to other people as well, because do we ever hear him address him by name?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So when you look at the videos, you don't know for sure because he doesn't say Jeffrey, by the way.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Hey, Jeff.

[Julian Walker]

The biggest obstacle to knowing yourself. But some of them look like they're very candid and they were maybe made just for him. Some of them look like he's repurposing his content and it's something he's gonna to Facebook. But he's also sending the video file to Epstein. He's not sharing a link with him, so it's part of his workflow that, like, oh, I'll send this one to Jeffrey.

[Derek Barris]

He might appreciate it.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, like, I've got these people on Rolodex and Jeffrey's in there. And it's like, it's also a subtle hint that he might actually benefit from having multiple passports, isn't it? Because you don't want to confuse yourself with your name and your identity. Right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, I was going to say, like, I had minimal contact with him, but I did suggest he use a fake name when he come to Israel and

[Matthew Rimsky]

bring his guy girls. Right. God damn it.

[Julian Walker]

So when we look at these videos sandwiched in between clips like the one that you just quoted Matthew, is one in which Deepak is standing beside someone called Paul Tudor Jones at the New York Stock Exchange. And together they're announcing to the camera, to the phone camera, the launch of an ETF called Just 500, which is a socially responsible investment fund. And he really does seem to be pitching Epstein on potentially investing in this new fund, which I found consistent with one of the emails that I saw in the files where Chopra twice asks if it's okay to bring his son in law, who he mentions is a venture capitalist, to meet Epstein. He says, I think you might find him interesting. But then he added the parenthetical warning after he checked in to see if he could bring his son in law. Can't talk about girls.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know, one of the hardest things about encountering all of this, and I think we'll be talking about this for the next couple of years, is how easy it is to really lean into, oh, look at how many things are connected. And I don't know where this next detail goes, but here's a connection, and I'm not sure what it means, but Paul Tudor Jones is another big money, big yoga person. He funded his wife Sonia's project to open Ashtanga Yoga centers across the US Ashtanga Yoga founded by the sex predator Patabi Joyce. They also donated $12 million to the university of Virginia to establish a Contemplative Sciences center, which is the kind of, you know, alt health friendly think tank where folks like Chopra would be giving keynote speeches and stuff, right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, absolutely. So I think you're right, Matthew. The fact that these people are densely networked and there's a lot of overlap between their circles is worth noting and worth Mapping out. But I think it's also important not to, not to read too much in a conspiratorial sense into things we don't have sufficient evidence for. Right.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, yeah. And it's really hard. It's really hard not to, especially given the fact that nobody's doing anything with this institutionally. Right. It's like the public is just sort of traumatized and stuck with their own sort of incentive to investigate and to figure out what their reality actually is. And yeah, it's going to lead to a lot of chaos as well. Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

The way these files were dumped seems to me emblematic of both the cruelty and the incompetence of the current administration. Like, this is not. This is not a report that's well organized, that tells you the relative strength or weakness of certain chains of evidence and why they decided to pursue them or not. And really like, gives you a clear sense of how the procedure unfolded. It's just a big pile of millions and millions.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah. It's almost like the DOJ saying, well, you figure it out. We couldn't, you know.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

So during the same period, 2016 to 2019, there are emails showing that Chopra was invited to multiple dinners and attended at least one that we know of, which he said was a blast with Epstein, at which Woody Allen and Soon Yi were listed as guests. And I just found myself noticing the uncanny reality of Deepak Chopra being connected to three wealthy, high profile people, all who have very public allegations with varying degrees of evidence of pedophilia. So Michael Jackson, Woody Allen and Jeffrey Epstein. It's like that's not a deal breaker for him.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Now. It doesn't sound like you've heard the Michael Jackson redemption arc, however, though.

[Julian Walker]

Well, I've seen some of the more conspiratorial stuff on Instagram saying that he was actually rescuing the kids from Epstein and taking them to his Neverland Ranch. Or you're referring to something else.

[Matthew Rimsky]

No, that's it. And isn't that an appealing story that you can imagine so many people sort of running with and saying, oh, that rehabilitates this person for me in some way. It's really, really difficult. It's gonna be difficult for people to see their way through.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

So in terms of him being comfortable moving in those circles, it seems consistent to me with a enabling moral relativism, as we've already covered, expressed in this pseudo non dual public philosophy of having transcended futile concepts of good and evil. It also fits with the attitude of minimizing and even subtly blaming Victims or survivors as not taking full responsibility for their own lives, needlessly holding on to blame. He's got a popular quote where he says, in every moment, you have a choice to be a victim or a creator. Yeah, really, Deepak? In every moment?

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

There are many texts and email quotes which suggest that, like other men in the files, Deepak was willing and perhaps happy to be a participant in banter that objectified women and girls. And this seems characteristic of how Epstein created very quick intimacy and confidant style relationships, which with men included a lot of this risque boys club back and forth, forth. And the thing that stands out to me is none of these guys ever push back in the way that I wish we could normalize by teaching our boys to speak up, to reject, to challenge other boys and men when they make dehumanizing, misogynist, objectifying statements about girls and women. Rather than just letting it slide or playing along with Epstein, it comes across to me as a form of grooming. Like he's testing the waters with these guys to see how much he can let them into his truly monstrous secret world.

[Matthew Rimsky]

I agree with all of that. And I also want to add that usually challenges to guys like that require a certain social equality. Like, to do it, you want to have some reasonable chance at either shaming or exposing the misogynist for the loser that he's being. And now that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you don't have that chance. But I think anyone who called out Epstein would have been exposed to immediate shunning. There's this FBI tip that came in that wasn't followed up on that Rokana read out on the house floor where it described a young woman who. Or a girl who had talked about being assaulted by Epstein. And because it became knowledge that the chauffeur of the car found her with her head shot and like, who knows what would happen or what did happen to people who began to make noises about exposing this stuff. And I mean, if you gave him the oppression, you were onto him, and a threat like this, a real problem. But. And I'm not even thinking about Chopra here at all, but, but I'm pointing to, you know, the fact that the money and the power is just so pernicious and. And, you know, encompassing.

[Julian Walker]

Absolutely. I. I feel like any of those guys could have walked away at any point and just been like, that's gross. You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be. I'm going to accuse you of all your crimes, just like that's gross. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Well, that's what Lutnick said he did, right? He thought that was going to be Blossom Possible.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So some email threads like the ones in which Chopra asks Epstein to bring girls with him to events or where he cautions him not to talk about girls in front of his son in law. These are quite suggestive of Deepak and Jeffrey having some shared secrets in this regard. Anyway, yeah, how much Deepak knew whether or not he participated is still up for debate. But what I am confident saying to your point Matthew, is that his desire for proximity to power, wealth and circles of self aggrandizing narcissistic influence could well have made him at the very least turn a complicit blind eye. Which completely negates any claim he may have had to being a spiritual leader. Anyone should trust.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road. Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy, fast. Free shipping, free road hazard protection and convenient installation options. Go to tirerack.com to see Tire test results, tire ratings and consumer reviews and be sure to check out all the special offers. Tirerack.com the way Tire buying should be. Okay, so we've got some, some good background and some, some sort of philosophical background as well on the cliches and non sequiturs. Good job, Julian. I liked that one. You know, in every moment you have the choice to be a victim or a creator. Yeah, I think that's my favorite. I want to turn to Chopra's broader social and political role over time because I feel like he's almost like the final boss of toxic New age Orientalism. And I think it's worth working backwards from the first time that we reported on him 245 shows ago. This is back in May of 2021. Now, if you remember what was going on at that time, there would have been footage pouring through your feeds of open cremation grounds in New Delhi and other major Indian cities as Covid Delta variant surged into a mass casualty event. You might remember our coverage also about how public health officials under the BJP had begged the Modi government to postpone the Kumba Mela, which was scheduled for April 1st to 30th. This is the huge gathering of millions of devotees at the river junctions at Haridwar. But after Modi consulted his astrologers, he realized that the transits and Moon houses of that period would help purify the most karma. And so he decided he was going to leave the date on schedule. And that created a Covid super spreader event. And so in the months leading up to the event, event which attracted millions, the chief minister of Uttarakhand pleaded that the festival be limited or performed symbolically, maybe online in light of pandemic dangers. And the Hindu nationalists fired that guy and installed a flunky who declared that nobody will be stopped in the name of COVID 19 as we are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus. So yeah, there was a religious infection festival, infection rate of about 400,000 people. Modi's BJP cracked down on all news outlets and demands that Facebook and Twitter delete posts about oxygen shortages. They underestimated casualties. They didn't want anybody reporting on infrastructure collapse. And meanwhile, Ayush, which I think we have to start looking at as India's very own alt health government agency that sort of precedes Maha and inspires it. It just ran wild during COVID It recommended homeopathy, herbs, neti pots. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if RFK Jr was there at the time taking notes, learning how to gargle his own urine, you know, making fire offerings at the Ganges by lighting his own farts. But what does this all have to do with Chopra?

[Julian Walker]

Well, you see, listeners, Deepak Chopra actually was one of RFK junior's farts. But no, Matthew, I mean, everything you just said, you just gave a rundown of something. The scale, which is hard to comprehend. Right? We're talking about millions of people gathering for the biggest festival on the calendar. That happens once every how many years?

[Matthew Rimsky]

Well, there's a smaller version that may be every six years, and then I think the larger version is every 12. And it goes by sort of like precise, very esoteric astrological calculations. And because the astrologers had so much power over the scheduling of this particular thing. Yeah, Modi just wouldn't bend on it.

[Julian Walker]

And you're talking about an infection rate that's estimated at 400,000 people who got

[Matthew Rimsky]

Covid just from that, just from that gathering. And I also think it really shows the price that is paid when a, you know, a medical system, an alternative health medical system begins to take over a public health health crisis or begins to influence it in a really negative way when somebody like Chopra is able to sort of like play around with it in a consumer setting on the global stage and legitimize it as a kind of like Middle class product. Right. But when it comes down to it, people in India who need, you know, vaccines and oxygen and, and the things that you actually need to survive. Covid, Covid, they're being offered homeopathy, right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. And this is the place where, you know, you and I have a long standing back and forth on this topic. This is the place where I say, here's an excellent example you just gave of how certain kinds of metaphysical beliefs that don't line up with the reality of the world we live in, you know, the beliefs themselves end up leading to terrible consequences if they are prioritized above and beyond medical science, for example.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, yeah. And well, and I just add to that that there's a really good reason for the BJP and Modi to prioritize Ayurveda as part of like Hindutva philosophy and soft power. So how does this shake out with regard to Chopra? Why am I talking about all this? Because he comes into our archive because he's the kind of guy who in the midst of this Indian health catastrophe, links up with a guy named Jaggi Vasudev Sadhgur to do a video in which they are chuckling about how blown out of proportion Covid all is. Now, Vasudev is the white bearded globetrotting meditation guy who in the words of one Indian journalist is Hindutva nationalism's in house mystic and cultural icon and he has these anti Islamic stances and he makes pseudo scientific claims about food, water, memory, like structured water, the health benefits of mercury and ritual fire ashes. So these two guys are like peas in a pod. And you know, I got a lot of comments at the time as I was writing about this from Daisy, folks around the world who said they're both giving off these creepy authoritarian uncle energy.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, but Aubrey Marcus is a big fan so we gotta kind of balance that in.

[Matthew Rimsky]

He's a fan of Vasudev?

[Derek Barris]

Of Sadhguru.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Of Sadhguru.

[Julian Walker]

Oh yeah.

[Matthew Rimsky]

I didn't know that.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, he's had him on.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh, he's had him on. God damn it. How did those two guys even fit their heads into the same room? So we covered the video that they made. They, they did this like super smug chuckling back and forth about the plebs who think they have the flu or something. The video's now deleted. But they were sitting in their multimillion dollar homes in LA and Coimbatore and they were talking about how nobody would have noticed Covid in the past. Right?

[Julian Walker]

Well that's true back in the day

[Matthew Rimsky]

Back in the day, nobody who actually was in control of power and knowledge and the news was would have noticed millions of outcasts and lower caste people. Caste oppressed people dying of COVID No, nobody would have noticed. It's just a silly little cold or flu. But then Chopra drops in some alt health salvation truth bombs. He downplays the effectiveness of vaccines. And then Sadhguru downplays infection rates. He says that poor people in the villages, the common folk, they're actually less vulnerable to disease because of their natural and simple lifestyles.

[Derek Barris]

You know, mat just sometimes I wish you'd pay more attention to our Instagram feed because I did post the Influencer recently who said that Pfizer has been hiding COVID vaccine data for 60 years now.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Oh, wow. Right. So this is how Chopra enters the pandemic chat for us. He's like playing Vedic Liberace to Sadhguru's passive aggressive Santa Claus. There was a danger during this video of these two guys out Veda ing each other, but they kept the Om Shanti flowing because Deepak is a guy who seems more interested in being around other bigwigs than anything else. But in this collaboration, what was clear is just how important it is that Chopra is able to mobilize and default to this affect of the Indian sage dressed up for Hollywood glamour. And while he's doing this, he obviously doesn't care about the medical profession and the culture that actually gave him his position.

[Julian Walker]

For any listeners who are not familiar with Sadhguru, Matthew, we should just note, and you've referenced it a little bit, but he's always in full costume, right? He's got the turban, the prodigious white beard, the flowing deep colored robes, the dhoti draped over his shoulder. Straight from central casting for like the timeless Indian guru. Right.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Or a Disney cartoon, to be honest. Right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, he'd fit right in. And then there's Deepak in his tailored but like updated Nehru jacket and oversized jewel encrusted glasses. So there's just all of this role playing and performance going on.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Right. The diamonds on me. See the diamonds on you? Yeah. So more than anybody else we've really studied, Chopra has this kind of secret weapon, which is that he's able to, I would say strongly, but also vaguely appeal to this whole corpus of Indian philosophy we've touched on so far. And he uses that to back him up. And when I say the whole corpus, that's literal, because what he reps for is something called Vedanta So if you've heard Chopra say things like Julian listed, like, everything is consciousness, or you are the essence of reality, or the world is an illusion, these are bits and pieces of something called Vedanta, which translates to final or ultimate knowledge. And it implies that it completes the ancient oral scriptures called the Vedas. Now, the root texts of Vedanta are from up to 800 years before Christ. These would be the Upanishads, which are these gorgeous dialogue poems between father and sons, fathers and sons, about where the self is, like, how to find it, how to abide in ultimate meaning and peace. Usually it feels features the son asking, you know, where is the self, Father? Where can I find it? And the dad will say, you know, it's like ghee that already exists in fresh milk. The self exists in all of your experience. So you have to recognize that what you're seeking is in everything that you feel and are. And these metaphors are then elaborated on through the centuries, especially in a growing medieval scholastic tradition. It becomes very ornate now at the end of the 19th century. However, this poetry and theory is kind of spotlighted and selected out by the Yoga renaissance that is being run by Indian intellectuals like Vivekananda and, you know, the guys in the Divine Life Society who were responding to racist Christian missionaries and orientalist, you know, academics in Europe who smeared Hinduism as irrational or socially regressive. They really wanted to reject the reduction of cow caste and curry. So for these reformers, Neo Vedanta, as it came, came to be called because it was a sort of a reconstruction of this older literature was perfect for showcasing a rationalism and modernity in Indian thought. There was no focus on deities, no superstitions or rituals, no chanting. And it sounded compatible with science because it talked about consciousness. But most importantly, it left class hierarchies not only unstudied and untouched, but also glossed over or forgiven. So whether you were Brahman or you were caste oppressed, you are the same infinite consciousness, consciousness dancing around in Maya or illusion.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, it's so interesting and layered, right, Matthew? Because a lot of what you're describing is like the deeply problematic racist critique of the British Empire against Indian culture. But then there's also the reality that traditional Hinduism used notions of karma and dharma to justify the apartheid of the caste system and limiting restrictions on women. And it actually was socially regressive. And then it's interesting too, because it feels like there's been this back and forth between the more rationalist, sophisticated branches of Indian philosophy and more traditional Religious practices going back to the 5th and 8th centuries with Advaita, Vedanta and Buddhism, who were already, you know, trying to set aside superstition and myth and ritual and saying, hey, you know, engage in a. In. In a deeper sort of spiritual inquiry as an almost intellectual practice.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, so those strains are all there now when they get plucked out and sort of reconstructed for modern use. I think what happens with Neo Vedanta is similar culturally to what happens in Germany with the innovation of the Volk at the same time. Right. Because it contributes to a kind of an image of eternally homogenous Indian identity. So German thinkers deployed Volk specifically to paper over classical conflicts with the image of eternal and beneficent Germanness. So in India, educated Brahmins deploy Neo Vedanta to promote a vision of Hinduism as a universalist and rationalist science. I mean, in reality, Indian religions are an unruly carnival of incredibly diverse orientations and practices, often with major contradictions between them and conflicts. This is a huge continent where every village had its own people deity. And the nationalists at the time needed something like Christianity to help promote ideological and religious cohesion and shed the shadow of, like, unscientific animism.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

And in another way, it's almost like organized religion is a way of unifying huge groups of people into seeing political power and nationalist identity as divinely ordained.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, exactly. Now, because, you know, this is what happens whenever viewpoint comes to the fore culturally. There is a response to it, to this usage of Neo Vedanta, and it comes very strongly from leftist thought in India. So there's people like Ambedkar, who was the Dalit Buddhist leader of the 1950s, who repudiated the repressive function of Neo Vedanta. He said it would universalize metaphysics while ignoring caste oppression, that it kind of functioned as a spiritual alibi for inequality, equality, you know, because everything is all one, you know, all peoples are one, you know, in the same way that New Age spirituality does that. And then Marxist critics in India, you know, say that this emphasizes liberation from the illusion of suffering. Right. Because that's what we need, liberation from the illusion of suffering. Not the fact that there is suffering, not the fact that people suffer. So Chopra, as you've pinged, Julian, likely first really plunged into Neo Vedanta in a structured way during a conversion experience with Maharishi. And I think it gave him permission, along with many other gurus in this generation, to build a brand in direct opposition to science and public health. And I think an essential book here for listeners is Mirananda's Prophets Facing Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, in which. This is a book from the late 1990s, I think, in which the Indian historian of science argues that guys like Chopra benefit from Western postmodern critiques of science, which unintentionally bolstered Hindu nationalism by legitimizing things like Vedic science. So basically attacks on enlightenment rationality in the global north enable Hindu supremacists to portray mythic traditions as scientific truths. And it's really ironic because the promoters of Yo Vedanta did it in part to project rationalism. Now many people find dignity and peace in the poetry of Vedanta. Like I do. I do still. Like, I will pick up the Upanishads probably once a year and I'll read through them and I feel like, like, where, where does this come from? Like, this is just.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible. It's incredible and it's singular. Right. There's, there's something so specific about it that just, Just beautiful.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, there's nothing like it. And I think that, you know, I think there are problems with what I'm about to say with like a gendered perspective of who's included and excluded from philosophical conversations. But there is something about the fact that the Upanishad is like a parent to child, a father to son conversation. It makes these very, very beautiful and, I don't know, like luminous bits of poetry. Familial. Right. Like people are sitting with each other and I don't know, it's really hard to. It's really hard to, you know, not. I just. I just feel a certain thing whenever I come across that. And so I'm. I don't want to throw that all away or denigrate that or anything like that. I'm really talking about the weaponization, the utilization of certain types of ideas. Because if you wanted to engineer the perfect ancient sounding philosophy for, you know, the neoliberal age of deregulation, regulatory freedom and expanding markets and believing that you always have a choice to be a victim or what, a hero. Is that what the dichotomy is? Creator. Oh, creator. Right. You always have the choice, Julian, to be a worker or an owner. Let's put it that way.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, Just manifest it.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Right, let's manifest it also. If you wanted a mindset that gave you this sense that you were floating so serenely above all the illusory destruction of the world and class struggle like Neo Vedanta is really going to help you with that, and I think it's perfect for a charlatan like Chopra who holds people beneath him in contempt. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.