Writings
Chopra has written more than 40 books. They range broadly across spiritual and health topics — his original interests — and now include bestsellers on aging, the "Seven spiritual laws of success," the existence of God, arguments for the afterlife and world peace. He has also written novels and edited collections of spiritual poetry from India and Persia.


Ideas on the current war with Iraq
In March 2003, shortly before the US-led Invasion of Iraq, Chopra, upon being asked for creative ideas, gave ten suggestions. These suggestions included that Iraq could be disarmed without force; that religious leaders meet in Baghdad; increasing UN forces by ten-fold; sponsoring 25,000 Iraq exchange students to the West; etc. He also suggested that a new Disney World theme park in the Middle East would help to reduce fear and anger in children and that residents of Iraq should be provided free access to CNN, MTV and Nickelodeon [2] to expose them to the rest of the world.


Principal themes
Many of Chopra's themes and beliefs are stated in his first book, "Creating Health" in 1986. He launched himself as a staunch advocate of the interconnection between mind and body, advocating meditation and self-awareness as primary factors in both illness and healing. He deepened these themes in "Quantum Healing" (1989), where he examined the mysterious phenomenon of spontaneous healing of cancer. Here he introduced quantum physics as a means of understanding the mind-body connection, arguing — as he would in many other books — that consciousness is the basic foundation of nature and the universe.

In "Perfect Health" (1991) Chopra authored the first widely read book on Ayurveda, the traditional system of Indian medicine. Besides outlining the Ayurvedic concept of body types (Prakriti), Chopra emphasizes that the roots of Indian healing lie in changing the holistic balance of mind and body.

Subsequent books have turned toward larger spiritual questions. In "How to Know God" (2000) and "The Book of Secrets" (2004) an argument is made for an all-pervasive intelligence that unites every living thing rather than the traditional Western concept of God as a person, "a venerable white male sitting on a throne in the sky." Chopra sees God as a projection of human awareness who becomes more expansive and universal as individual consciousness expands.

In his book "Life After Death: The Burden of Proof" (2006) he extends personal consciousness beyond the "artificial boundary that separates the living from the departed." Assessing the seven varieties of the afterlife espoused in world religions, Chopra offers the startling proposal that a person's awareness in the present shapes existence after death; that is, the afterlife is created uniquely for each of us by our present level of consciousness.

In 2005 Chopra became a staunch advocate for disarmament and international peace in "Peace Is the Way," where he argues that a "critical mass" of people who band together in their spiritual worldview can defeat the age-old "addiction to war" that continues to create mass suffering. In the same regard he became president of a broad-based organization, Alliance of a New Humanity, that seeks to form "peace cells" around the world and to foster such related goals as environmental healing and sustainable economies in developing nations.


 Intelligent design and religion
In August 2005, Chopra posted a series of articles on the blog The Huffington Post (to which he is a frequent contributor) in which he offers his solution to the creation-evolution controversy. In doing so he expressed support for Intelligent Design without the Bible or the politics of religion. According to Chopra, Nature displays intelligence.

In the article, Chopra states:

"To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn't make you a Christian fundamentalist. Einstein said as much, and a fascinating theory called the anthropic principle has been seriously considered by Stephen Hawking, among others."
"“It’s time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward.”
Chopra also offers a series of questions about evolution he believes cannot be answered by science alone (thereby requiring an "intelligent designer"). Science writer Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society and long-time critic of Chopra, posted a response.


 Criticism
Chopra has been both appreciated and criticized for his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, a connection that has drawn skepticism from some quarters because it can be considered as possibly contributing to the general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Biologist PZ Myers has also criticized these claims in depth.] In October 2006, Myers again fisked a blog post by Chopra  for displaying a lack of understanding of genetics.  Fellow science blogger Orac has criticized Chopra's views

In 1998, Chopra was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness."

In its May 22/29, 1991 issue, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by Sharma, Triguna and Chopra: Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Modern Insights Into Ancient Medicine. This article was represented as discussing the traditional healing system practiced in India known as Ayurveda. Upon investigation, JAMA editors discovered that the co-authors had financial interests in the complex web of interlocking organizations that promoted and marketed Maharishi Ayur-Veda products and services. In the August 14, 1991 edition of JAMA, the editors published a financial disclosure correction and followed up in October 2, 1991 with a six-page Medical News and Perspectives exposé. In response, two Transcendental Meditation groups and Chopra sued the author, Andrew Skolnick, JAMA's editor Dr. George Lundberg, and the AMA for $194 million in July 1992. The courts dismissed the suit without prejudice in March 1993, and no part of Skolnick's article was retracted. The series of events was later reviewed by Skolnick in the Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers.

Chopra has cast himself as a critic but not an enemy of conventional medicine. He teaches an annual update in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel hospital Harvard Med School and physicians' continuing education though his center has been certified by the AMA.