Review: Deepak Chopra in Dubai

I’ve always wanted to be a whale. Swimming through the oceans, eating krill, being a master of my world, hanging out with the other whales and trying desperately to avoid sharks. It would also be a world devoid of emotional pain — bonus. This includes being hurt by another creature, in an emotional way.

Crushing my mammalian fantasy on Tuesday night, Deepak Chopra, the renowned author and doctor, told his audience of around 2,000 people, that humans alone have a capacity to experience consciousness. That’s having an awareness that one exists, that others exist and that the world around us exists.

Chopra was in Dubai on Tuesday night at the Madinat Arena to share his experiences and attempted to instil in us a touch of wonder about our human nature and our situation.

He started by talking about how technology is changing the world — even his five-year-old grandson knows how to describe the universe because of an app on his smartphone. His meandering about how humans are evolving with this technology quickly turned scientific — a bit too scientific for some — as a few people began slipping out the doors as he spoke.

I’ve never been to a talk such as Chopra’s before and I didn’t really know what to expect, but I wondered why he wasn’t trying to draw us in. Maybe he’d done too many of these talks to muster the energy. He spoke a lot about energy, dark energy, dark matter, the energy all around and within us — but I really didn’t feel any being emitted from him.

I guess the millions of books he has sold across the world are more easily absorbed. The themes he covers are things to be discovered on a personal basis and in a person’s own time. So perhaps two-and-a-half hours of Chopra discussing these issues just wasn’t enough. Not that it should have been longer. But what he said could easily have fit into an hour at the most and would have made more of an impact. What ever happened to leaving them wanting more? It may have led to more book sales.

But we had a delightful meditation session at the end of the two hours — and I suspect everyone was ready for a rest after the two-hour brain drain. The entire session left me feeling empty. I didn’t learn anything new, I’ve been to one or two science lessons and I know I need to be nicer to my fellow human beings. Apparently it makes us all happier.

Money is better spent on being entertained by a good comedian, laughter being the best medicine and all that, which would definitely have made me happier. I wonder if whales have a sense of humour.

Were you at Chopra’s session in Dubai on Tuesday? Tell us what you thought of it @gulfnewstabloid