1. Flight-or-fight response.
2. Reactive response.
3. Restful awareness response.
4. Intuitive response.
5. Creative response.
6. Visionary response.
7. Sacred response.

Spiritual transformation is readily procured. Deepak Chopra is the "regular guy" who asks why, if you can wiggle your toes, you can't stop aging, earn buckets of money, achieve bliss. At a moment when consumer choice equals democratic participation in many people's minds, Chopra's organization has innumerable products to sell you, from OptiWoman herbs sold under the Ageless Body, Timeless Mind logo, to seminars on "Time-based awareness, versus timeless awareness -- the path to immortality." You may purchase exactly what Chopra sells to Demi Moore. The secret to his acceptability on "Larry King Live," on "Oprah," on U.S. public television pledge nights, is that he presents himself not as exotic but as accessible, clean shaven in suit and tie. My mother-in-law finds him "charming."

Some academics like to describe and analyze public life as a matter of "competing discourses." They mean that behind the specifics of what anybody is talking about, whether it be sex, free trade or finding God, are the embedded assumptions, fears and desires that shape the lines of argument.

As discourses go, Deepak Chopra has either shrewdly crafted or innocently arrived at a real winner. His "It's all good" discourse steamrolls over the assumption behind competitors like, say, traditional Christianity that preaches modesty and acceptance of this difficult world in order to inherit the next. Or social justice advocates, who want us to see that wealth is distributed unfairly through wile and the brute power of institutions. Or Roszak's "secular humanist" rationalists, who would have our fates be accidents of evolution.

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The tough sell for these discourses, unlike Chopra's, is that they want us to bow to limits, accept uncertainty, give up individual power and control, to imagine that any real spiritual progress must come through hard choices, hard work. Even then, you will never achieve absolute perfection, or absolute protection.

"'Amazing' teen killed in Whistler crash." Plain mean. That's how you look if you laugh at Chopra's ideas, or any belief system that allows people to feel safe within, yet capable of transcending, this world, this life, this vinyl and Formica refuge from the rain.

Then again, the more earnestly you contest the message of Deepak Chopra, the more you invite a patronizing smile from his believers. You have not made the leap yet, you have not opened yourself.

Even among the unconverted, you will likely encounter that admirable spirit of tolerance essential to making a pluralistic society go. "Who knows?" you will hear. "He may be right."

It's all good now, or it might be, at least. Which means that to grouse about the guru is to be out of step with the times. This is the era of the libertarian shrug, as well as the therapeutic reluctance to give offense. So perfectly does the current mood accommodate and reward the ambition of Deepak Chopra, you have to wonder. Maybe we all are but a perfect figment of the guy's imagination.

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