Give PEACE^® a Chance

ThedayI’mscheduledto interview Deepak Chopra, I awake with a sore throat and soaring fever. I immediately call Chopra’s assistant to tell her I’m coming down with something. No matter, she assures me. “Deepak is the healthiest person in the world. He hardly even sleeps! He just meditates. So as long as you feel up to it, we welcome you in whatever shape you’re in.” So I go, spreading germs to the valet, the doorman and hotel guests on the tiny elevator up to Chopra’s room at the Mondrian. Everyone, including Chopra’s lithe and cheery blond assistant, Erika DeSimone, keeps a sensible distance. But Chopra, dressed in black but for his multicolored reading glasses, immediately extends his hand. I warn him that I’m contagious. He doesn’t relent. “The most sterilized countries in the world have the highest cancer rates,” he says. “We live in a Disneyworld environment; we’re not challenged every day by the normal so-called bacteria and viruses that inhabit the ecosystem. I believe every exposure is an opportunity for the immune system to learn.” I shrug. “So I guess you think I’m supposed to be happy that I even havea cold.” Chopra, the man who has successfully shrink-wrapped Eastern philosophy for a generation of audiobook-seekers on their morning commutes, looks out the window at the gorgeous sprawl of West Hollywood and smiles. “You should be intensely grateful,” he says. Chopra’s handshake is reassuringly decisive, and at 58, he looks just as described: fantastically healthy and fit. His body is compact and taut, like a lifelong tennis player’s. His tea-colored skin shimmers. He does not retreat from eye contact but neither does he force it on you; he has an air of comfortable wealth and Bill Clinton–style charisma. As he starts to talk, I suddenly feel much less sick. Chopra, in town to headline a Renewal Weekend, tells me how his new book, PeaceIstheWay:BringingWarandViolencetoanEnd,is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s expression, “There is no path to peace; peace is the way.” The book departs from the self-help spirituality with which he has become, for better or worse, associated: In other words, it has nothing to do with getting rich or avoiding aging. It concerns the “tangled hierarchies” between world leaders and terrorists and Westerners’ attitudes toward killing and what he calls “acceptable slaughter.” “We say, ‘Oh my God! How uncivilized — they behead!’ But how about the fact that we press a button from 25,000 feet above sea level, killing women and children? Whose slaughter is more civilized?” Earlier, when I had been on the verge of describing Chopra as speaking out against war, his assistant had sweetly pre-empted my gaffe. “For peace,” she said before I finished my sentence. “He’s speaking out forpeace,” because one of Chopra’s takeaway messages this time around is that the fight only fuels the conflict. “Explicit enemies,” he says in carefully measured tones, “become implicit allies. For example, just for a second think, where would George Bush be today without Osama bin Laden? Nowhere. He should be down on his bended knee and say, ‘Thank you, Osama bin Laden!’ He should have a portrait of Osama bin Laden in his office and say to it each day, ‘You made my career!’ ” Chopra went on to tell me about how he got Larry King to question his sexism: “ ‘Larry,’ I said to him. ‘How come God has been hijacked by men? This is one of the reasons we have war, because God is a Dead White Male.’ ” Chopra lectured me on how the emerging democracy in the Middle East will turn against America, and how poverty creates terrorists. Chopra insists that as each of us goes through a “personal transformation,” world conditions will change. “The book,” he says, “is about youbecoming an agent for peace through your internal transformation.” Perhaps my Claritin-Sudafed cocktail has worn off, but at this point, I start to think: I know all this. The conversation has turned in the direction of so many New Age seminars in which the lecturer serves up time-tested ideals as revelations. The only thing radical about Chopra’s anti-war message (it is, after all, just that) is that it comes from a man who got Bill O’Reilly to confess his love for Gandhi. I, however, have had enough of personal transformation. “I’ve changed and I’ve changed and I’ve changed,” I tell him. I’m shouting. “I’m a vegetarian. I meditate. I volunteer for stuff. I teach yoga . . .” “But there are not enough of you.” “So what am I supposed to do to create more?” “You don’t. You don’t, you don’t.” His voice softens. He comes down off the podium. “You hang out with people like yourself and increase that critical mass through media, through information technologies, through education, through music, through movies . . .” His voice rises again. “You marketpeace,”he says, “theway these guys have marketed guns and marketed Marlboro cigarettes and Coca-Cola.” “Yes,” I blurt. “Look,” he continues. “I can go to any part of South Africa and I can buy Marlboro cigarettes. I can go to the remotest part of India where I can’t get water but I can get Coca-Cola. We have to market peace and sell it with the same commercial zeal and enthusiasm — and the technology and the resources — that these guys have used to market guns. We’ve got to brand peace as an idea and sell it better than Calvin Klein can sell his underwear.” “There’s our story!” DeSimone blurts out, as if she hasn’t heard it before. “People have criticized me for the last 25 years,” Chopra goes on. “They’ve said, ‘You’re selling spirituality.’ And I say ‘Thank GODI am!’ First of all, in America I’m not going to apologize for being successful. I’m not selling pornography. I’m not selling cancer-producing substances. I’m selling something that’s useful to people, and I’m going to outsell the other guys. I’ve made that my mission. Unless we can market peace as an attractive, sexy idea that can permeate our collective consciousness, we’re never going to have peace.” “Right on,” I say. Confident that I’ve been converted, DeSimone interjects. “I know you want to meditate before your lecture tonight,” she says to her boss protectively. “Yes, I have to go,” says Chopra. “Thanks for your time,” I say. “And I hope you don’t get my cold — I mean, I hope you already have the antibodies to fight it.” —Judith Lewis