The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes

Harnessing Our Power to Change the World

By: Deepak Chopra MD

Narrated by: Ajay Mehta

Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Given the volatile state of the world, it is no coincidence that superheroes have captured our imagination like never before. Everywhere you look, superheroes have broken free from their comic book pages and become a dynamic aspect of the culture at large. Superheroes are imbued with magical powers that challenge the laws of space and time, offering us a vision of a world that can change. By exploring the boundaries of energy and awareness, allowing us to better understand ourselves and our potential, superheroes can help us save the planet in a very real way.

From Buddha's search for truth to Batman's struggle with his dark side, from Wolverine exposing his greatest fears to Hanuman's divine gifts of inspiration, New York Times best-selling author Deepak Chopra with his son Gotham, author and cofounder of Liquid Comics, decode the seven essential laws that govern the realm of superheroes both ancient and modern, cosmic and commercial, and explain their relevance, importance, and perhaps most critically, how to apply them to our daily lives. These seven new transformative laws will help us all uncover greater happiness, courage, balance, creativity, compassion, and purpose in our lives. Each law has the potential to awaken us to our own superpowers and together these laws offer the potential to change our lives and the world around us.

©2011 Chopra Media and Liquid Comics LLC (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers

Simply Super!

I love Deepak's work and this book with his son is no exception. Terrific listen, with tangible examples of exercises to practice. Really enjoyed how they used the whole idea of "superheroes" (stories and imagery) to help create deeper understanding and further connecting of dots around these universal laws.

Deeply disappointing, in content and performance

This may be of some interest to die-hard fans of Deepak Chopra. The ideas expressed herein are nothing new, but if you love his message and want to hear it in a different form, then you may enjoy this. If, however, you are a fan of comic books (or have even a passing knowledge of their content) then you will probably find this book frustrating and perhaps too annoying to finish.

Chopra clearly knows nothing about the subject of superheroes. He says as much and credits his son with informing him about comic books and the stories of the heroes. If he had used, say, the Internet to actually research these stories then this still may have worked. But he is constantly incorrect in his description of the heroes and their stories. At times he is slightly off in minor details and at times he is deeply wrong about the character and their history. But even this could be forgiven if he were truly using the idea of the superhero to illustrate his philosophy. Instead he seems to have disregarded the actual stories and created his own version of the ideal superhero which he credits with a deep understanding of the concepts he has put forth in his other books. This goes beyond error. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Chopra is merely using the currently popular idea of superheroes to sell more books. I hate to sound so cynical, but that is the only conclusion I can draw.

Chopra repeatedly says things like "superheroes understand the illusory nature of reality" or "the superhero does not seek acclaim" despite the fact that there are almost countless examples of heroes who completely contradict these statements (which are paraphrased, but fairly accurate representations of what is said in the book). Superheroes are a very large and diverse stable of characters, and it would be folly to try to describe all of them with any one simplistic description as Chopra does here repeatedly.

In short, there are some good messages here, but the constant frustration caused by the fallacious superhero veneer is keeping me from hearing or respecting them.

And the performance is not helping either. Ajay Mehta has a gorgeous speaking voice, but he is simply terrible as a narrator. His accent is not too thick, but at times it obscures words to the point that it becomes distracting. His pronunciation of "intuition" as "intoozhun" is a case in point.

But more important, he reads as if he has no idea of the meaning of the sentences he is reading. He consistently puts emphasis in the wrong place and pauses inappropriately, often obscuring or changing the intended meaning of what is written. All of this makes it very hard to follow the book or even maintain any interest. I would listen to this man give a speech any day, but I'll steer clear of his narrations in the future.

Is there a worse narrator on the planet?

First, he sounds like he's reading a script for the first time, so the cadence is wrong. Then he's obviously not a native speaker and his pronunciation is horrible.

As to the content, it's wrong in some places. As a comic reader for decades, I may be a bit jaded, but I expected some competence. He claims no superhero is motivated by guilt (*cough*Spider-Man) and all superheroes are emotionally balanced (Because Legion is sooo well balanced, and Iron Man is totally immune to addictive tendencies).

It's not all bad. When Chopra is playing in his accustomed sandbox, he's got his a game on. If you're into that, you might like it. Comic fans, don't bother.

False advertising

As others have said before the ideas in this book are interesting and might have been good in a book on their own. However the author tries to market the book for those intrigued by super heroes by drawing correlations between super heroes and the schools of thought he's pandering. The problem is the author knows nothing about the super heroes he tries to write about or their respective mythologies. So, he winds up alienating those hes trying to rope in. Some of the super hero traits he tries to correlate are a stretch for his ideas, others ard just plain wrong and i couldnt finish the book. Because the author destoys sny credibility he had midway through. If he's going to make up whatever he likes then how can I, as the reader, take any of his ideas seriously.