This article was originally posted to Religion News Service by Liz Bucar.
(RNS) — Last month, more than 20,000 pages from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate were released by the House Oversight Committee. The name of Deepak Chopra, the wellness guru with multiple bestselling books, appeared repeatedly. Emails showed Chopra recalling an evening with Epstein as “a blast. Ended 1 AM.” Chopra later expresses relief when one of Epstein’s accusers dropped her lawsuit. Between 2016 and 2019, continuing well after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Chopra has at least a dozen documented meetings with him.
Last Friday (Nov. 28), Chopra launched something that says more about modern American spirituality than his Epstein connections: an AI companion to his entire body of work. Ninety-five books, thousands of videos, decades of talks have been fed into a proprietary model designed to answer your existential questions. For 50 cents per 30-minute session, or $10 a month, readers can now ask Digital Deepak about their purpose, their fears, their path forward.
Lisa Braun Dubbels runs a publicity firm in the spiritual wellness space, building infrastructure for spiritual teachers. She knows how these systems work from the inside. Last week she published an analysis of what Chopra actually built with this AI platform, and it’s definitely worth reading in full. Here’s her key insight: “For decades, wellness personalities have relied on models that require ongoing human presence,” mentioning speaking tours, retreats, teacher trainings, book contracts and one-on-one sessions.
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