Deepak Chopra


Deepak Chopra (born 1947 in New Delhi, India) is a popular contemporary writer in the United States on spirituality, alternative medicine and Ayurveda. He claims as his main influence his native religion of Hinduism, specifically the teachings of Vedanta and the Bhagavad Gita.

Chopra is a trained physician and was board-certified in internal medicine and endocrinology. According to Stephen Barrett, an outspoken critic of Chopra, he graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1968, and after interning at a New Jersey hospital, trained for several more years at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts and at the University of Virginia Hospital. He later became chief of staff at New England Memorial Hospital. He subsequently became associated with the transcendental meditation movement, but later branched off on his own.

Chopra has both a community of supporters and numerous critics. Of particular concern to his critics are his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, which they consider part of a pattern of general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.