It’s fine. The production is nice and the selected passages are properly inspiring. Chopra is a fine reader and the Indian music is atmospheric. I don’t know much about Hinduism, but I presume this combines best passages out of the Bhagavad Gita and Rig Veda with a dash of explanatory text.
But I can’t shake the feeling that this is just a basic offering. Mix a few ingredients that feel truthy across all cultures, coat it with woo, and sell it to America.
I’d be more charitable if this three hour production was marketed as an introductory taste of Hinduism, but I was put off by its inflated self-importance. I don’t care for a program that dilutes spirituality and sells it as more than a mere starting point.
As a pan-theistic atheist who is skeptical of all forms of systematic formal religious structures, I am the prime target audience. Slap on an ancient spiritual sheen and I’m intrigued. But I also spent my teenage years as a Reformed Baptist steeped in the intellectual cathedral of Calvin. Don’t pretend you got more unless you’re bringing it.