Q: I feel so betrayed. I have followed Deepak Chopra for years, and learning that he had a deep connection to the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is devastating. How can we be protected from spiritual charlatans?

RABBI RAMI: Every organization is made up of people, and people are prone to deceiving and being deceived. No church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or spiritual community can protect you from spiritual and religious charlatans, con artists, and opportunists. You must learn to protect yourself by being clear about your answer to five questions: 1) What is spirituality? 2) What constitutes an authentic spiritual practice? 3) How can I judge a practice’s effectiveness? 4) What is the role of a spiritual teacher? and 5) What is the place of money in a spiritual setting? Here is my take on each:

1. Spirituality is the realization that every being is a manifestation of the nondual Absolute Being called by many names—God, YHVH, Allah, Brahman, Tao, Mother, and so on.
2. A spiritual practice—meditation, chanting, affirmations, prayer, walking, gardening, or any other—is authentic if it leads to this realization.
3. You know a practice is effective if it enhances your ability to engage with other beings justly and with compassion.
4. The role of a teacher is to instruct you in an authentic practice without making you dependent on or open to exploitation by the teacher.
5. To borrow from the ancient rabbis: “Do not make a spade of the Torah” (Pirke Avot 4:5). In other words, don’t use spiritual knowledge as a tool for personal gain. While it is fair to compensate teachers for their time and expertise, teaching spirituality is not a career, and authentic teachers step aside once the practice is sufficiently mastered.

The quest for God and the pursuit of wealth are often linked in the minds of clergy, gurus, and their followers. This is especially true in the United States, where spirituality and religion are big business and spiritual teachers and New Age influencers can earn millions of dollars, inviting charlatans whose psychopathy and narcissism masquerade as charisma and sainthood to prey on spiritual seekers. To protect yourself, remember that practice matters, not the teacher, and that once the realization of the Absolute is attained, even practice is unnecessary. As Van Morrison, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, sang: “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.”

Q: My teacher insists that all teaching is propaganda and that I must overcome all teachings to become my true self and achieve unity with God. She offers various seminars to help me and others achieve this. Is she right?

RR: Let’s assume she is. This would mean her teaching, too, is propaganda that must be overcome. Now that we can ignore your teacher, let’s look at the idea of becoming your true self and achieving unity with God. You cannot become or achieve either because you already are both. Striving to be what you already are is exhausting and doomed from the start. So don’t start. Rather than striving to become your true self, ask who is aware of your false self. The answer is your true self. Then ask who is aware of this true self. The answer is an even truer self. Keep asking, and you will realize that all of this—the false self and the true self—is simply the play of the Only Self: God. Knowing this, you can observe any teaching while remaining free from all of them. No seminars required. &