Deepak Chopra explores Jesus

If you think of Sept. 11 and "shock and awe" as faith-based initiatives, you may find a kindred spirit in Deepak Chopra. He's not as appalled by religion as Christopher Hitchens or others who have questioned the foundations of faith in the 21st century, but he sees the dangers.

"Mixing patriotism with religion has always been lethal yet all too common," writes Chopra in his new book, "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore" (Random House, $24), which he will discuss March 4 at Benaroya Hall.

"Jesus is a most unlikely figure to justify a war," he continues. Yet his name has been used to justify "destructive wars in the name of religious fantasies. ... Most troubling of all, his teachings have been hijacked by people who hate in the name of love."

Previously best-known as the author of "Quantum Healing," "Life After Death" and about 50 other books, Chopra sees discontent everywhere. He interviews a Christian journalist who feels that "being a Christian in America makes me queasy." He talks to a friend who says "I'm disgusted with fundamentalism, and yet disgusted with myself for having no belief anymore."

"I sense this alienation all the time, but much more in the last few years," said Chopra by phone from Atlanta. "Politically, Christianity is being used almost as a weapon. It's very strange. Where did Jesus talk about stem cells, or abortion or homosexuality? There's just too much hypocrisy."

Chopra points out that the word "war" does not appear in the four official gospels — although there is a troubling moment from Matthew's gospel, when Jesus claims "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

How does this match up with his later pronouncement that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword"? How can Jesus be both for violence and against it? Chopra answers with another question:

"If Jesus was humble, why did he claim to rule the earth beyond the power of any king? At the very least, the living Jesus was a man of baffling contradictions."

Could this be a case of scribes putting words in Jesus' mouth? Some scholars explain the apparent conflicts that way. Others, perhaps most famously Thomas Jefferson, create their own version of the gospels, separating the things that don't fit from the ones that seem genuine.

Jesus' sometimes mystifying parables and pronouncements led Chopra to propose that there are in fact three versions of Jesus, whom he describes as "perhaps the most significant person in Western history."

First is the historical Jesus, who was crucified 2,000 years ago. Second is a symbolic Jesus, partly created by theologians and church dogma over the centuries. Chopra is more intrigued by a third, mystical Jesus whose radical vision was weakened only a generation after his death.

In the book, Chopra frequently quotes from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic gospels rejected by the early church, to prove his point.

"Thomas is the most amazing gospel," said Chopra. "There's nothing there that should scare anyone. When he talks about the kingdom of heaven, it's clear he's talking about a shift in consciousness."

Chopra uses personal details sparingly, but one moment stands out as an example of how this third Jesus guides him. At a book signing, a woman demanded three hours of his time. When he told her that she would have to come back later, she became enraged, made a scene and called him a fraud. Later, he couldn't stop thinking about the incident.

"People mirror back to us the reality of who we are," he writes in the book. "I sat down and wrote out a list of things I'd noticed about this woman. What had I disliked about her? She was angry, demanding, confrontational, and selfish. Then I called my wife and asked her if I was like that. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. I was more than a little shaken."

A publicist traveling with Chopra gave him the silent treatment as well; he agreed with Chopra's wife that "I can be like that sometimes." He counts his "brutally honest" children as similar checks on his ego.

He decided to come to terms with the negative emotions that had been stirred up at the book signing. To Chopra, "this was a Jesus moment." It does no good to turn the other cheek and play the martyr, especially if one is still filled with a desire for revenge, "but if a person in God-consciousness turns the other cheek, his enemy will be disarmed."

Born in 1946 in New Delhi, Chopra saw first-hand the similarities between other religions and Christianity. He attended a Catholic school for 15 years, became familiar with Christmas and Christian prayer but went home to listen to India's ancient Vedic chants. He also attended Muslim feasts and holy observances.

"I was totally taken by the story of Jesus, though there were things that puzzled me," he said. "How did this institution almost make guilt a virtue? Only much later did I see the parallels between what Jesus was saying and the Enlightenment in the East."

The book is dedicated to "the Irish Christian Brothers who introduced me to Jesus when I was a little boy." To Chopra, "it is only provincialism that separates East and West."

Perhaps the key phrase in Chopra's book is "God-consciousness," an experience that he believes Jesus was trying to evoke through prayer, parable and what Chopra calls "teachings impossible to live by."

"It would startle millions of Christians to hear that this riddle exists," he writes, claiming that Jesus' "deeper mandate" goes beyond good deeds. To Chopra, the Golden Rule means that you treat an enemy as an equal, "which means in essence that you can have no enemies."

In the middle of the book, Chopra invites the reader to experience contemplation by going through a series of exercises, using quotes from the gospels, including a favorite from Thomas: "What you expect has already come, but you do not recognize it."

"The Christian seeker who wants to reach God is no different from the Buddhist," he claims. But he does concede that Jesus has the more powerful story: "What could be more dramatic than the Son of God being executed? Buddha mystified people, but he wasn't persecuted."

Chopra admires the way Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," made "an emotional connection to Jesus," and he's working on a new book, "The Missing Years of Jesus," that he hopes will also find a fresh way to demonstrate Jesus' impact.

"It's based on bits and pieces of folklore because about 82 percent of his life is missing," said Chopra, who takes inspiration from his trips to the Dead Sea and Jerusalem.

Around the time Jesus lived, he believes, human consciousness was experiencing a shift in perception.

"The Roman occupation was generating a lot of suffering and despair, the Jews had to flee, and this was the only way to get away from 'an eye for an eye.' " He claims a similar reformation is taking place now, within the church, and that it will triumph because it's based on Jesus' teachings.

"Did you know, Gandhi carried a copy of the Sermon on the Mount throughout his life, and he lived it to the letter? His Christ-consciousness was so powerful that he brought down the British Empire."

John Hartl is a frequent contributor to The Seattle Times: johnhartl@yahoo.com.