Deepak Chopra = The Pope !!!

Do I need to explain how or why? OK. I will.

DC is the latest beneficiary of the fascination that people in the West have with the mysterious East. The fact that he was able to persuade a few Hollywood celebrities has clearly helped his cause immensely as well.

He is a trained medical doctor and PhD too as he will readily inform you. The essence of his philosophy is intricate and intriguing. Well, that's really the secret to being a New Age guru. A SUCCESSFUL one, that is.

You take the latest from modern science ... medicine/physiology/genetics, nuclear physics/quantum physics and general relativity and whatever else you can put in the mix without appearing too wacko.

You correlate this 'latest' scientific stuff with some 'ancient' wisdom. And you say that all this was already known to the ancient wizards living and meditating in the jungles. And then you've to do a very effective presentation about the 'new' insights you've gained into these 'ancient' texts. Of course, you're allowed to speak on authority — your own. It would be very useful to throw in as many instances of anecdotal evidence as you can. For the tribe of New Age healers thrive entirely on the basis of the credulity of people — on purely unrepeatable anecdotal evidence. Which is, one might add, the exact opposite of what science is about.

Oh, do not forget to criticize 'science' for all the 'evil' it has spawned of course. That is quite essential. Oh, how our lives have become so complicated ! Blame computers, blame cell phones, blame emails, blame Twitter if you want to be really hip (and iPad too ...).

People just love it when someone has the chutzpah to simultaneously bask under the glory of science and then criticize it with equal gumption.

Let's picture it ... you could imagine ... Jack ... for example doing this seminar for example. He has got a nice PowerPoint presentation where he persuasively talks about the 'confluence' or 'convergence' he has discovered between modern science and ancient wisdom. Then, inside of five minutes, Jack should throw his laptop away from the lectern (Apple will be the sufferer most probably ... guys, you're the best after all) in a huff and say that technology is the root cause of all that ails human life today.

And then Jack makes a joke or two about how the laptop can be useful ... at t-i-m-e-s ... and retrieves the Apple and proceeds with his PowerPoint presentation.

He offers life improvement techniques of course — take aways ... life lessons learned ... why else would anyone pay the $100 tickets to attend this theater.

So, there you have it. One instance of how to be a New Age Guru.

Deepak of course has mastered all of the components of it. The Pope is similar to Deepak in certain ways. Neither of them bother to confine themselves to their specific areas of expertise. Deepak will blithely lecture about insights provided by quantum physics as if he's a professional physicist. Deepak will talk about the Planck time and he will lecture about the moments after the Big Bang when the laws of physics do not work.

The Pope will do the same things as well ... talking about contraceptives and the origins of the universe and evolution and perhaps psychology as well.