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From: Deepak Chopra Ine Sent: 6/6/2018 11:32:09 AM To: Jeff Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com] Subject: Lunch with Deepak I: LSD, Quantum Healing, and Plato | Psychology Today Importance: — High FYI https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psyched/201806/lunch-deepak-i-lsd-quantum-healing-and- latoPamp& ___twitter_impression=true Lunch with Deepak I: LSD, Quantum Healing, and Plato A skeptic and a mystic seek common ground. Part one of four. Matthew Hutson Posted Jun 04, 2018 In March, I attended a debate on the proposition “The more we evolve, the less we need God,” With Michael Shermer and Heather Berlin for the motion and Deepak Chopra and Anoop Kumar against the motion. The next day I published an account titled “Do Not Debate Deepak Chopra” (subtitle: “He’s not even wrong.”). Soon after, Chopra reached out to me and invited me to lunch. In April I met him in his office at Deepak Homebase in Manhattan, we had lunch downstairs at ABC Kitchen, and returned to his office. This is a nearly full transcript of our two-hour conversation. This is part 1 of 4. Here are parts 2, 3, and 4. Matt: So, I’m curious why you invited me, what you wanted to talk about. Deepak: | read your article, "Not Even Wrong." [Laughter.] That’s been my label for a long time from a lot of people, so I thought I’d give you my perspective on what I think reality is and see if we can expand the conversation. Matt: So the debate, it seemed like it was ships crossing in the night. The two sides were talking about different things and so I think it was clear to—or everyone else had one conception about what the debate was going to be about: the usefulness of the idea of God as conceived in monotheistic religions. Whereas the two of you were—it seemed like you were avoiding that debate and talking about something else. Deepak: So let me give you a little background to that. The first time we were invited to the debate by the organizers—I didn’t know who they were—the topic was, "As we evolve do we need religion?" So I called the organizers and I said, "Let me rephrase that if you don’t mind. Can we say, 'As we evolve do we need religious experience?" So they said "We don’t HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029509