Here is my take….. I think there is a fundamental problem (comedy in a way) with Deepak Chopra’s statement about Richard Dawkins during his Huffpost Live interview. Here is something that he said “I think Dawkins is a fundamentalist, just on the other side of the divide. His version of reality is what we call ‘empirical reality’ , if you can see it it’s real, if you can’t see it it’s not real. But we know you can’t see your thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, creativity, choice and they’re real. Your inner world is real.”

I am not interested in everything Deepak said…. it is between him and Dawkins.. What I am interested in is that one part of the statement where Chopra says that Dawkins’s reality is ‘Empirical Reality’……… “if you can see it it’s real, if you can’t see it it’s not real”

Fundamentally at the very basic level as human beings what we see is ‘real’ and what we cannot see is ‘not real’… if someone goes around teaching/preaching to people and persuading them to accept that things they do not see are also ‘real’ then two things are bound to happen.

1. People slowly stop understanding the things they see in the way it is, they pad and puff it with their ‘unseen real’ things and distort it
2. People depend on this ‘unseen real’ things to help them with altering, changing, stopping or bettering what they really see.

And both these are not good…… Many times even though the preacher cannot substantiate with evidence or show it work, they want you to believe in it….  Are they saying that the acceptance of the ‘reality’ of things we cannot see is a natural process of evolution…. ? … are they saying that to progress we need to accept things that we cannot see as ‘real’?

Now no one debates that emotions, desires, creativity all exist, that is not the point…. the point is who says what and why….

Who is Deepak Chopra?… he is one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in the holistic-health movement…. he is an author and highly successful in selling his books and public speaking engagements….

Who are the people who buy Deepak Chopra’s books?… people who have been made to believe that there is something unknown (real things that you cannot see) that can help them correct their known things (the real things that you can see)… that one thing is the unique selling point… any threat to the USP is a big big issue…..

Deepak Chopra has carved that niche between ‘mambo jambo’ and science….. he keeps his legs on both the science and spirituality boats to maintain a prominence in an industry which was once reserved for completely non scientific people…. and this is of great appeal to many educated folks who have taken to the romanticism of spirituality……. and people like Richard Dawkins are always a threat to the profitability of this very lucrative balancing act….  What Deepak said in the interview in my opinion is two birds in one shot, attack Dawkins (and others like him) and also use that mudslinging as a tactic to catch eyeball and eardrum attention for more business…. that makes it very indecent…..

Now some might argue that even people like Dawkins use theories and hypothesis that can only be mathematically or theoretically proved to further knowledge… that might be true but there is a very big difference in how people like Dawkins use it and how people like Chopra use it….

One will not tell you to understand what you can see on just theory and hypothesis….. the other will tell you there are things beyond what you or (even they) can see and is ‘real’ and you should trust on it….. don’t you think there is a small issue in it…. especially proving a point means more profits and more wealth….. Deepak Chopra is an intelligent business man and a good one at it, that is how we should see him….. not as people call him as a New Age Guru or spiritual leader

Deepak Chopra has a right to his opinion but I can’t stop laughing at the comedy he brings in

Categories: Articles, Articles & Opinions

Tags: Dawkins, Deepak Chopra, Deepak Chopra on Richard Dawkins, empirical reality, Richard Dawkins