We Made Deepak Chopra Rich. Then He Befriended a Predator.

What the Epstein Files Reveal About American Spirituality

Several folks DM’d me when Deepak Chopra showed up in the Epstein files. They knew I’d have thoughts.

They were right.

Last week, the House Oversight Committee released over 20,000 pages from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Wellness guru Deepak Chopra’s name appeared throughout. Not just mentioned. Embedded. The emails reveal a years-long relationship 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.

The Receipts

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.”

November 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.

This was 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 told CBS News that “Jeffrey Epstein was introduced to me by Barnaby Marsh, former CEO of the Templeton Foundation, as someone who could potentially fund research on the brain and consciousness.” Chopra said their meetings were about treating Epstein’s struggles with sleep through meditation, and that “our meetings, focused solely on practicing meditation, lasted about 30 minutes each.”

“Last night was a blast. Ended 1 AM” doesn’t sound like a 30-minute meditation session to me.

This Is About Us, Not Him

Most commentary on Chopra stops here. Outrage at his association with Epstein, calls for accountability, no surprise that a “spiritual leader” is exposed as morally corrupt.

But that misses the deeper question: Why are we drawn to figures like Chopra in the first place?

Chopra’s Epstein problem is actually our problem. We created him. We gave him power. We made him rich. And until we understand why, we’ll just create the next version of him.

As a scholar of religious ethics, I’m less interested in whether Deepak Chopra is a “good person” or a “bad person” than in what his success reveals about American religious culture. What does his popularity tell us about ourselves?

The Wise Asian Sage: A Story We Keep Telling Ourselves

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 succeed by translating “the ‘wisdom’ from the East into the ‘language of the West’ without the bothersome trappings of their particular cultural contexts.” They 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 fits this pattern perfectly. Though he was educated as a physician in Western medicine, his authority comes from his Indian heritage and his claims to have accessed ancient Eastern wisdom. He ditched the orange 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.”

The genius of figures like Chopra is that they claim to have distilled the “true essence” of Eastern religions. As Persaud writes: “No need to label anything or separate it as ‘Hinduism,’ ‘Buddhism,’ ‘Jainism,’ etc. because they’ve extracted the ‘Truth,’ which gets lost in all the messy cultural stuff, disguising the insights and benefits, the core. And access to the core is exactly what we desire.”

“No need to label anything or separate it as ‘Hinduism,’ ‘Buddhism,’ ‘Jainism,’ etc. because they’ve extracted the ‘Truth,’ which gets lost in all the messy cultural stuff, disguising the insights and benefits, the core. And access to the core is exactly what we desire.”

—Prea Persaud

The vagueness is the point. Chopra presents his spirituality in intentionally hazy terms. That’s what his followers want and require. Words like “Vedic” and “Ayurvedic” and “consciousness” get deployed not for precision but for atmosphere. They’re foreign enough to sound ancient and authentic, vague enough that you can project whatever meaning you want onto them.

This vagueness serves a crucial function. It gives us permission to access spirituality without needing to change anything about our lives. You can embrace Chopra’s teachings 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.

And wait, there is more. Chopra’s Western western medical credentials make his quantum mysticism more credible, not less. He’s a licensed physician, board-certified, with appointments at prestigious institutions. He has the scientific authority of the West combined with the spiritual authenticity of the East. He’s the perfect hybrid.

He makes claims like “consciousness may exist in photons” and “the moon exists in consciousness, no consciousness, no moon” that scientists dismiss as nonsense. Richard Dawkins calls his work “quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus” and biologist Jerry Coyne calls him a pseudoscientist “showing all the characteristics of that genre, including the use of meaningless jargon that sounds profound, a refusal to discuss serious criticism of his views, and a deep sense of persecution by ‘the establishment.’” But none of this matters. His followers aren’t looking for scientific rigor. 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.

The scientific-sounding language makes followers feel like they’re accessing cutting-edge knowledge. The Indian heritage makes it feel ancient and authentic. The vagueness means you can interpret it however you want.

And this approach sells. Chopra’s empire is worth an estimated $150-200 million. He’s published over 90 books that have sold more than 25 million copies. His business grosses over $20 million annually. He charges $25,000-$30,000 per speaking engagement. He has celebrity endorsements from Oprah, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.

The Pattern: “Spiritual But Not Religious” Isn’t the Solution We Think It Is

Here’s the structural problem that goes far beyond Chopra himself.

We correctly critique religious institutions when they enable abuse. We demand accountability from churches, mosques, synagogues. We hold clergy to ethical standards. We expect transparency, oversight, and consequences when people in power exploit the vulnerable.

But when it comes to spiritual gurus? We seem to assume they’re “outside” those oppressive institutional systems, even though there’s plenty of evidence that spiritual teachers can abuse power just as readily as religious clergy.

The power dynamics are even similar. Charismatic authority, vulnerable seekers, promised transcendence, specialized knowledge that creates an asymmetric relationship.

One critical difference? Spiritual gurus have zero institutional accountability within the wellness industry.

When clergy abuse their power, we can point to institutional failures. The hierarchy that protected predators, the denominational structures that prioritized reputation over victims, the theological frameworks that demanded unquestioning obedience. But institutions (for all their profound failures) at least have structures for accountability. Denominations can defrock clergy. Ethics boards can investigate complaints. Congregations can organize for reform. Victims can appeal to higher authorities.

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. No institutional checks on individual charisma.

Just the guru, their followers, and the market. And the market rewards charisma, not ethics.

The “spiritual but not religious” move promises liberation from oppressive religious structures. But what it often delivers is individualized spiritual consumption with even less accountability than institutional religion offered. You get all the asymmetric power dynamics of the guru-disciple relationship with none of the institutional structures that might constrain abuse.

This doesn’t mean institutional religion is good. Religious institutions have enabled horrific abuse, and their accountability structures often fail catastrophically. But it does mean that the solution to bad institutions isn’t necessary no institutions. It might be better institutions. Or at minimum, some form of collective accountability beyond individual consumer choice.

What This Reveals About Us

So what are we actually hungry for when we turn to figures like Chopra?

We want spiritual depth without material sacrifice. We want ancient wisdom without cultural context. We want transformation without discomfort. We want to feel enlightened without actually changing our lives.

Chopra gives us exactly that. He tells us consciousness can cure cancer. That quantum physics proves we create our own reality. That ancient Vedic wisdom (unspecified) holds the secrets to health, wealth, and happiness. That we can “optimize” ourselves into enlightenment.

He never asks us to give anything up. To join a community with obligations. To submit to ethical frameworks that might constrain our choices. To grapple with theological questions that don’t have easy answers.

He just asks us to buy things. Books. Courses. Retreats. Supplements. Apps. Meditation glasses.

What Now?

Chopra’s relationship with Epstein reveals the moral bankruptcy at the heart of his project. You don’t maintain a years-long friendship with a convicted sex offender, express relief when his accusers drop their cases, and tell him your time together was “a blast” if you’re genuinely committed to healing and consciousness.

But this goes beyond one guru’s moral failures.

In 1996, a former employee filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Chopra, alleging he made “numerous unwelcome sexual overtures” and that she had to answer calls from women with whom Chopra was having affairs. Chopra denied the allegations and countersued for blackmail. A jury rejected the employee’s lawsuit in 2000 after deliberating for only ten minutes. A jury also rejected Chopra’s blackmail claim.

In 2021, an anonymous woman published a detailed account describing how Chopra sexually exploited her when she was a patient at the Chopra Center seeking treatment for addiction. She writes that he initiated a sexual relationship with her while she was vulnerable, in his care, and had disclosed childhood sexual abuse to him in therapy sessions. Chopra denies these allegations.

I’m not a lawyer or investigator. I don’t know what happened in these cases. But I do know that patterns matter. And I know that when we give individuals this much power, this much wealth, this much uncritical devotion (with no accountability structures whatsoever), we create conditions where abuse becomes not just possible but likely.

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 optimized. It can’t be achieved by buying the right products or following the right guru.

Chopra will be fine. His empire will survive this revelation. His followers will find ways to rationalize his behavior or simply ignore it. As of this publication, Chopra hasn’t addressed his Epstein connections. Yesterday’s Substack post from him? “Why Creating Reality Is Personal: Reconciling Quantum Physics and Vedanta.” Business as usual.

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.

The Epstein files revealed a lot about Deepak Chopra.

But what they reveal about us (about what we want, what we’re willing to ignore, what we’re afraid to face) is the real story.

And until we’re willing to look at that story honestly, we’ll just keep creating the next version of him.

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