Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra's Opinions

Alternative Medicine Can poor eyesight be improved with eye exercises? Agree [One of the many eye exercises are taken from Dr. Chopra's audio tape set Magical Mind:] This exercise improves flexibility, pliability, and elasticity to the lens. Focusing - To change the focal length of the lens & improve the internal muscles of the eyeballs, look at an object up close and then at a distance. For example look at your hand 6 inches from your face and then look at an object on the horizon. Repeat this exercise for 15 times without straining. Edit Pitches 01 Jan 1993    Source Does homeopathy work? Agree [The homeopathy debate] represents the usual confusion. Adherents to alternative medicine clash with the establishment, both sides pointing to their own research, but both sides also having to admit that definitive results never seem to settle their disputes. I've come to feel that the argument will never be settled until we accept a fact of nature: everyone has a unique response to disease. No single treatment can be expected to cure or prevent illness with complete reliability... The Middle Ground Pitch   Edit Pitches 26 Nov 2007    Source God Do all religions ultimately express the same God? Agree If you're a fundamentalist, it doesn't matter what religion you are, Hindu or Buddhist or Christian or Muslim, you're tied to a literal interpretation of the scripture. ...[But if you look deeper]... Biblical literature contains the various stages of understanding God, as does Vedanta and every other religion. The fact is that Christ wasn't a Christian and Mohammed wasn't a Mohammedan; Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. These are dogmas and ideologies. The fight is about semantics. Edit Pitches 01 Mar 2001    Source Must God exist to explain how the universe began? Agree ...God is the field of consciousness that creates, governs, and controls the manifest world. This consciousness has an invisible aspect beyond space and time. We can posit that because there was no space or time before the Big Bang, yet there had to be something that allowed the universe and the laws of nature to coalesce with such amazing orderliness than with the slightest deviation, life could not have evolved. Edit Pitches 22 Mar 2010    Source Evolution Is the theory of evolution falsified by fossil evidence? Agree How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no "missing link" can fill. The most glaring is the leap by which inorganic molecules turned into DNA. ... If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations -- those that lead to new species -- and so few negative ones? ... How can whole systems appear all at once? The leap from reptile to bird is proven by the fossil record ... to our embarrassment.... The Incoherent Pitch   The Ignored Evidence Pitch   Edit Pitches 23 Aug 2005    Source Did complex life evolve through the process of natural selection? Disagree Darwin's theory of evolution is an enormous over-simplification. ...it's simple enough to teach to children between recess and lunch. But it fails to capture the driving force and what's really going on. It is time to step back and take a look at the big picture. ... The challenge, alas, is to peer not just behind our ancestral way of thinking, but to grasp the world in a way that is at the same time simpler and more demanding than what we are accustomed to. The Wake Up Pitch   Edit Pitches 05 Oct 2009    Source Science Is there life after death? Agree There are many [proofs]. One is near-death experience, and the second are the stories that are recounted by children who've experienced reincarnation... The third are the conscious death experiences of the bardo Tibetan rituals. And fourth is afterlife experiments where, through mediums, contact is made with a disembodied consciousness. ... Then there are the theoretical constructs that come to us from information theory... Being non local, [consciousness] cannot be created or destroyed. Edit Pitches 01 Nov 2006    Source Is rebirth/reincarnation plausible? Agree Children who remember their past lives have now been studied in detail at the Univ. of Virginia. In some of the most striking cases, the child was born with a birthmark that matched the way he had died in the previous life (for example, entry and exit wounds from a bullet). The number of cases is now over 2,500. Edit Pitches 10 Nov 2006    Source Are the core truths of science and religion complementary? Agree There is room for a new paradigm that preserves all the achievements of science ... while giving the universe meaning and significance. Dawkins shows no interest in uniting these two perspectives (he disdains the whole notion of a religious scientist), but many of is colleagues do. Edit Pitches 17 Nov 2006    Source

Parapsychology Are psychic powers real? Agree Besides the various experiments in telepathy and 'remote viewing,' which are much more credible than skeptics will admit, there is a replicated study from the engineering department at Princeton in which ordinary people could will a computer to generate a certain pattern of numbers. They did this through thought alone, having no contact with the machine itself. Edit Pitches 10 Nov 2006    Source Cognition Can reductionist methods help explain consciousness? Disagree A materialist could conceivably analyze the brain functions of [a] Mozart down to the last synaptic firing, but that would tell us nothing about why music exists, why it is beautiful, where great symphonies come from, why inspiration uplifts the listener, or in fact any relevant thing about the meaning of music. The world ... has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals. Beauty and meaning can be known independent of a biochemical analysis. The Common Sense Pitch   Edit Pitches 15 Nov 2006    Source Do Gödellian arguments refute a computational model of the mind? Agree ...the brain being a physical organ cannot process real creativity as per Gödel's Theorem ... or even have free will. Edit Pitches 27 Mar 2010    Source Religion Is there a Law of Karma? Agree A very simple way to interpret karma is that it is conditioned response, the past influencing the circumstances of the present as well as our tendencies to act in conditioned patterns of behavior. We become bundles of conditioned reflexes constantly triggered by people and circumstances into predicted outcomes. Hence karma is considered to be a prison, a bondage. The goal of the spiritual journey is to escape the prison of karma and bring about the true response of our soul which is creativity. Edit Pitches 21 Feb 2009    Source Physics Is life a deterministic consequence of physical laws? Disagree ...the universe was until rather recently [thought to be] a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other, and obeying predetermined rules [of mysterious]... origin. The universe is presented as a watch that somehow wound itself and that, allowing for a degree of quantum randomness, will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But there are many problems with this paradigm - some obvious, others rarely mentioned but just as fundamental. ...the overarching problem involves life... The Growing Realization Pitch   The Ignored Evidence Pitch   Edit Pitches 05 Oct 2009    Source Is quantum mechanics needed to explain consciousness? Agree Today science tells us that the essential nature of reality is non-local correlation. Everything is connected to everything else. That there's hidden creativity. That there are quantum leaps of creativity. That there's something called the observer effect where intention orchestrates space time events which we then measure as ... motion and energy and matter and we can have a personal relationship with this intelligence because we have a consciousness that is part of the sea of consciousness. The Poetic Pitch   The Equivalence Pitch   Edit Pitches 23 Mar 2010    Source Health Can hallucinogens enrich one's life? Agree My first experience with spirituality was with LSD when I was 17. I can honestly say that it was my first excursion into other dimensions. ...[However] I would not recommend anyone in try a [psychedelic drug] on their own. If your really want to try it, go to South america, go to Peru, and look for a really authentic shaman who does these rituals. Edit Pitches 29 Oct 2009    Source Do antioxidant supplements have health benefits? Agree The Chopra Center for Wellbeing endorses Zrii as a high quality, reliable formulation of the rejuvenative fruit Amalaki (Emblica officinalis). ... Zrii is rich in antioxidants... Edit Pitches 10 Jun 2010    Source Philosophy Does everything happen for a reason? Agree ... Everything happens for a reason. ... Just as the material world is connected invisibly at the quantum level, the subtle world is connected by a field of consciousness. A prayer, a desire to be healed, a wish for peace, hope for reassurance about the dead -- each impulse enters the field of consciousness and is responded to, just as every material event enters the quantum field and is responded to, down to the least quark and photon. Edit Pitches 08 Jun 2010    Source

Comparisons with Other Experts and Influencers

The similarity between Deepak Chopra and each expert and influencer is calculated by looking at how the same questions were answered. These figures are used to calculate conforming, nonconforming, and projected opinions. The accuracy of the analysis depends on Deepak Chopra's coverage, which grows with the number of their opinions entered into TakeOnIt.

Conforming Opinions

Deepak Chopra's conforming opinions are opinions that align with the group of experts and influencers Deepak Chopra typically agrees with.

Projected Opinions

Deepak Chopra's projected opinions are opinions Deepak Chopra is expected to have if their opinions align with the experts and influencers that they typically agree with.