Deepak's Instant Karma

Esther Konigsberg, M.D., 38, is one of the pilgrims who found her way to Chopra. In 1993, as a family practitioner with three kids, she borrowed her father's Jag and popped one of his cassettes into the dash: Tony Robbins, motivational guru, interviewing a well-spoken man named Deepak Chopra. ""When I heard Deepak speak,'' she says, ""I knew everything he said, but I could never put it into words. I knew it was true, both personally and professionally.'' Then she went to a conference based on the self-help series ""Chicken Soup for the Soul,'' where she decided she wanted to learn more about the guy on the tape. ""You go through life and everything's working,'' says Konigsberg, an observant Jew, who now teaches Chopra's ""Primordial Sound Meditation'' and weeklong ""Magic of Healing'' courses in addition to her part-time family practice. ""You have a great husband, great kids, great job. But life falls short of expectations.'' She was especially frustrated by how much she couldn't do for her patients. ""When I heard Deepak, I realized what was missing. My connection with myself was missing. I was too externally focused.''

For the generation raised by Dr. Spock, this message was candy. ""He set the stage,'' Chopra says of his La Jolla, Calif., neighbor, who has become a friend and supporter. ""He was already moving toward the paradigm: freedom, moving away from punitive authority.'' In a 1996 survey conducted by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 12 percent of the parents of children under the age of 18 said they had tried LSD. This crowd doesn't necessarily shake out to be Chopra's audience, but it does signal a generation with an interest in what might be called alternative states of awareness, and a shared folk literature brought back from the edge. The Beatles tried the drug and found their way to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (pre-Chopra); the rest of us consumed the trip as the White Album. The doctor himself tried LSD twice in the '60s, as a medical student in India, and experienced a ""refined state of consciousness,'' which he deems as valid as any other--consciousness is consciousness, it's only our ""superstition of materialism'' that convinces us otherwise. Was the drug easy to come by? He laughs. ""I got it from two exchange students from Harvard Medical School.''

To reach these seekers, Chopra takes a road well traveled. In the book ""Within the Context of No Context,'' George W.S. Trow describes a mid-1970s experience at Erhard Seminars Training, better known as est. Trow writes, ""People had, for ... years, brooked no authority whatsoever on any subject, and this man, Erhard, realized that the time had come to insert within the realm of total permission--because the point of Erhard Seminars Training was to open up even more options, even more freedom, even more everything--some little bit of discipline.''

Since est, liberal spiritual bubbles in America have worked this formula: a little bit of authority in a field of infinite license. Anything that limits personal freedom is darkness--except for these seven spiritual laws, these 10 celestine insights, this map of your erroneous zones. For people who rebelled against the inconveniencies of mainstream religions--thou shalt not--Chopra offers an appealingly well-padded path to nirvana. ""They say you have to give up everything to be spiritual,'' he says, ""get away from the world, all that junk. I satisfy a spiritual yearning without making [people] think they have to worry about God and punishment.''

What makes Deepak run? On a propeller flight to Montreal, he tilts his head back, slips into meditation and right to sleep, a trick he learned as a resident working marathon shifts in a Boston hospital. When he wakes, 15 minutes later, he's ready to talk. The world, he proposes, is in a period of transition, from the age of information to an age of awareness. He considers himself one of the transition team. ""In 10 years, I'll be sunk in oblivion, because I've already introduced that intention in my heart.'' This is, you might suggest, a fairly heady ambition. ""I would like to think of myself as discontented rather than ambitious,'' he says. ""Oscar Wilde once said, "Blinding ambition is the last refuge of a failure'.''

It is a distinct part of his charm, this dexterity with a literary pearl. But he has used this particular Wilde quip four times in a weekend--what's he getting at? He says he enjoys wealth but is not attached to it, and his habits aren't fussy: hazelnut coffee in a shopping mall, lunch at the Four Seasons hotel, it all seems one to him. ""People make a big deal about me wearing Donna Karan suits,'' he says. ""I only wear them because she sends them to me. I don't pay for them. And they're nice.'' Visitors to his La Jolla home, assessed last year at $2.25 million, describe the property as spectacular but the house as unassuming. ""Let me tell you something,'' he says one night, with unprompted defensiveness. ""If I was just in this for the money, I would stay home and write books. I make a lot of money writing books. But I like to be out among people. When they tell me they've gotten off drugs or that their cancer is in remission after they read my books, they're doing things that I couldn't do.''