Deepak Chopra recently made headlines with his claim in the Washington Post that “we need a new Jesus.” I didn’t say anything about that because what he had to say was tired and shallow in the late nineteenth century. But in his latest offering in the Post’s “On Faith” column is so cosmically bizarre that it deserves to get more notice than his drivel about Jesus. It’s his answer to the question, “E-mail: Blessing or Curse?” (On the question itself, I find myself in extraordinarily rare agreement with Susan Jacoby; you can find her response here.) Chopra wrote:
At the most mystical level, the Internet is God talking to himself through technology at the speed of light. Not every transmission is obviously divine, but it’s not content that I am referring to. It’s a process that involves bonding, free expression, and walls coming down. Spirituality may have a lot more to do with a cell phone photo taken on the spot of a tsunami or a terrorist attack than with homilies in church. That instantaneous transmission of another person’s plight generates equally instantaneous compassion. Whatever God may ultimately be, her attributes are knowable only through human consciousness, and any expansion of consciousness carries us a step (or maybe only a tenth of an inch) closer to the mystery.
Translation: I have no clue how to translate that. Not that it matters, because I don’t actually think he said anything.
Posted by David Fischler 
