ABSTRACT
In 1993 Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old by Deepak Chopra MD (1993) was at the top of the New York Times bestseller list week after week, even while Quantum Healing (1989), also by Chopra, was still in the top ten from two years earlier. The promise of both books was that illness and even the aging process can be banished by the power of the mind. If anyone should doubt it, Dr. Chopra explains that it is all firmly grounded in quantum theory. Commenting on the occasional spontaneous remission of cancer, for example, Chopra explains that “such patients apparently jump to a new level of consciousness that prohibits the existence of cancer…this is a quantum jump from one level of functioning to a higher level.” Lest you imagine that he was using “quantum” in some metaphorical sense, he informs the reader that “once known only to physicists, a quantum is the indivisible unit in which waves may be emitted or absorbed.”
