Two weeks ago, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 pages from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Wellness guru Deepak Chopra’s name wasn’t just mentioned. It was embedded. The emails revealed a years-long association between a convicted sex offender and one of the world’s most prominent spiritual teachers, a man whose empire is built on promises of healing, consciousness, and transcendence.
Here’s some of what we know:
March 6, 2017: Chopra emails Epstein: “Lat night was a blast. Ended 1 AM.”
Epstein replies: “I’m glad.”
Nov 2016: When a woman drops her lawsuit alleging that Epstein sexually abused her when she was 13 years old, Epstein sends Chopra a news article about it. Chopra asks: “Did she also drop the civil case against you?”
“YuP,” Epstein replies.
Chopra responds: “Good.”
This wasn’t a one-time contact. CBS News reports that Chopra appears in Epstein’s appointment calendars “at least a dozen times in 2016, 2017 and 2019.” They met one-on-one. They had dinners with Woody Allen and his wife. Their last documented meeting was in April 2019, just three months before Epstein’s arrest on federal sex trafficking charges and nine years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Everyone knew who Jeffrey Epstein was. Chopra kept showing up. When pressed, Chopra said their meetings were about treating Epstein’s struggles with sleep, and that “our meetings, focused solely on practicing meditation, lasted about 30 minutes each.”
“Lat night was a blast. Ended 1 AM” doesn’t sound like a 30-minute meditation session to me.
The Wise Asian Sage Story
Most commentary stops at outrage at his association with Epstein, calls for accountability, and the predictable disappointment that another ‘spiritual leader’ has been exposed. But that misses the deeper question: Why are we drawn to figures like Chopra in the first place?
Scholar Prea Persaud wrote a brilliant analysis of Jay Shetty (another ‘monk’ turned wellness entrepreneur whose story has been questioned). She argues that figures like Shetty and Chopra are “only successful because [they are] giving us exactly what we want in the exact form we want it.” Drawing on Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, Persaud argues that the construction of “the East” always reflects western anxiety and desires. Sometimes, the East gets dismissed as barbaric and superstitious in contrast to a rational, scientific West. Other times (like now) the West gets seen as too materialistic and individualistic, lacking the spiritual depth found in the East.
This isn’t new. From the Transcendentalists (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau) to Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, Americans have repeatedly turned to Asian and South Asian spiritual figures to provide what we assume is missing in western life. Persaud notes that these figures become what she calls “oriental monks” who “have traditionally accentuated their foreignness through their physical appearance (orange robes, Eastern clothing, long beards, etc.) as well as an aura of peacefulness.”
Chopra is the perfect hybrid. His western medical credentials — he’s a licensed physician with appointments at prestigious institutions — give him the scientific authority of the West combined with the spiritual authenticity of the East. He has ditched the robes for stylish clothing and a clean-shaven face, but he kept what Persaud calls “the soft voice and the aura of the calm oriental monk.” He presents his spirituality in intentionally hazy terms. Words like “Vedic” and “Ayurvedic” and “consciousness” are foreign enough to sound ancient and authentic, vague enough that you can project whatever meaning you want onto them. This vagueness gives us permission to access spirituality while remaining fully embedded in capitalist consumer culture. You can be ‘spiritual’ without the demanding ethical commitments of actual religious practice. You can buy his $350 meditation glasses and $10,000-a-year ‘anti-aging’ packages and call it enlightenment.
Though scientists dismiss his claims like “consciousness may exist in photons” and “the moon exists in consciousness, no consciousness, no moon” and Richard Dawkins calls his work “quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus”, none of this matters. His followers aren’t looking for scientific rigour. They’re looking for the feeling of profundity that comes from someone who seems to bridge science and spirituality, West and East, material and transcendent.
And this approach sells. Chopra’s empire is worth an estimated $150-200m. His books have sold more than 25m copies. He charges $25,000-$30,000 per speaking engagement, and has endorsements from celebs like Oprah and Madonna.
What This Reveals About Us
The structural problem goes beyond one guru. While we correctly critique religious institutions when they enable abuse, demand accountability from churches, mosques, synagogues and hold clergy to ethical standards, what accountability structure exists for Deepak Chopra? None. No ethics board. No denominational oversight. No governing body to whom complaints can be filed. No transparency requirements. Just the guru, their followers, and the market. And the market rewards charisma, not ethics.
So, what do we do?
First, we stop assuming that spiritual equals safe, or that rejecting institutional religion makes someone immune to corruption and abuse of power. Second, we believe survivors when they tell us about abuse in spiritual contexts, just as we’re (slowly) learning to believe survivors in religious contexts.
Third, we get honest about our own complicity. What were we hoping to gain from teachers like Chopra? What shortcuts were we hoping to take? What responsibilities were we hoping to avoid? Fourth, we build better structures. If religious institutions have failed us, the answer isn’t no structure. It’s better structure. We need accountability frameworks for spiritual teachers. Ethics standards. Transparency requirements. Ways for communities to address harm.
Finally, we do the actual work. Real spiritual transformation requires ethical commitment, community accountability, and the willingness to be changed in uncomfortable ways. It can’t be purchased. It can’t be ‘optimised’.
Chopra’s empire will survive this revelation. His followers will find ways to rationalise his behaviour or simply ignore it. The question is whether we’ll learn anything. Whether we’ll do the actual work of building spiritual lives that don’t require guru worship and unaccountable charismatic authority. Whether we’ll stop outsourcing our ethics to individuals who promise us easy answers. Until then, we’ll just keep creating the next version of him.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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