II

Before I go into what happened the rest of Friday evening, let me give you some background on how I first became familiar with the world's most famous guru. Around about 1995, my mom got interested in Deepak. I believe she had seen a PBS special in which he had been speaking and was so compelled by it that she bought his latest book which at that time, was The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Here are the "laws":

I once joked with her that when I graduated college, I would look for a job using the Law of Least Effort. She said I better not. The following year, Deepak released a new book called The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons in Creating the Life You Want. My mom purchased it for me for my birthday and I still have it to this day. As the years went by, Deepak released many more books, but none that I had to have. I saw him from time to time on Larry King Live and was always interested in what he had to say on such programs.

Thus it was that I was quite interested in seeing him speak for the first time. My wife and I took the elevator down to the first floor and headed to the ballroom where his talk was to take place. I found out later on that more than 1,000 people had signed up for the conference. We entered the ballroom at around 6:30. There were already a number of people there that had taken most of the best seats, but we did manage to find a couple in about the fifth row, though we were way off to the left, so didn't have a great view of Deepak, but still better than many who had to settle in the back. This one dude was playing guitar and singing inspirational songs while it got closer to magic time. He had a shaved head, was probably in his 30's, and had the last name of Goldstein.

At just after 7, the women who put on the conference welcomed us and then introduced Deepak Chopra. He came out to a standing ovation. He started out talking about how he first became a medical doctor, how he was originally from India, and then discussed cognitive behavioral therapy as well as the nature of consciousness. His talk was quite interesting. The most notable thing about his speech, however, were not the words he was speaking. It was the glasses he was wearing. They were red and anytime he started walking in the direction where we were seated, the top of his glasses sparkled red almost like brake lights. Many people were amused by this and commented on it afterward. The below pic shows him with said glasses. I wonder how much they cost him.

I hear the movie coming out later this month starring Michael Myers called "The Love Guru" is loosely based on him. It will interesting to compare the film to what I saw from Deepak this past weekend. I started to get fairly restless once it hit about 9:15 or so, but thankfully, he started to wrap it up at that point. After the speech, Deepak signed books for people. It was during this time that I took the below pic of him: