by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(April 14, 2008) A new book by best-selling author Deepak Chopra says Jesus Christ was not the Savior of mankind, but an “enlightened teacher who intended to save the world by showing others the path to God consciousness.”
In his latest book, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, Deepak Chopra, an Indian physician turned New Age guru describes the three figures of Christ:
“First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, a priesthood, and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.”
Christian author and broadcaster Tom McMahon told OneNewsNow that Chopra’s version of Christ is so foreign to the Bible it’s upsetting.
“That’s the religion of the anti-Christ, whom the entire world will worship, according to Revelation 13,” he said. “You know, it just rejects Jesus saying ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.’ So this is just anti-Christ religion. It is prophetic; we’re seeing it happen. Jesus said in Matthew 24 that in the last days there would be religious deception, and this is what it’s all about.”
Chopra’s book not only creates a false Christ, it also invents a third coming which is supposedly needed because the Second Coming imposes too much of a delay on what should happen now.
“So now we have the undermining of the Word of God. And if people aren’t into the Word of God, they may buy some of this,” McMahon said. “ . . . He proposes a third coming – finding ‘God consciousness’ through your own efforts. I challenge anybody to find this in Scripture. It’s just not there.”
Unfortunately, Chopra’s ideas are getting plenty of air time on popular shows such as Oprah Winfrey and Larry King Live. He also distributes these ideas out of the Chopra Center for Well Being based in Carlsbad, California which attracts thousands of visitors and millions of dollars in business each year.
In addition to Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, Chopra’s list of friends includes actress Demi Moore and Tibet’s Dalai Lama. His more than 30 books have sold over 10 million copies in English alone and have been translated into more than 30 languages.
A 2002 article appearing in Time Magazine reports that Chopra’s son Gotham and daughter Mallika are following in his footsteps; Gotham with books and TV appearances and Mallika with a website on human potential.
Chopra was born in New Delhi in 1947 and had dreams of becoming a novelist but his father, a cardiologist, talked him into going to medical school. At the age of 21, Dr. Chopra came to the U.S. and served as an endocrinologist and chief of staff at Boston Regional Medical Center.
In 1985 he attended a lecture by Transcendental Meditation guru Marharishi Mahesh Yogi which turned Chopra’s interest to Ayurveda, an ancient Indian science based on an understanding that the physical body has its roots in the world of spirit. He plunged into the study of Ayurveda and other traditional healing modalities and began writing small books on the subject.
His big break came in 1993 when he published Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, a book in which Chopra combines philosophy, modern health research, biology and quantum science with the “ancient wisdom of the seers” to demonstrate that the effects of aging are largely preventable.
His work is just another manifestation of the human potential movement, which includes a long list of self-help and motivational training programs that promote a human-centered psychology based on the belief that a person is in complete control of their destiny. Other examples include L. Ron Hubbard’s The Power of Positive Thinking, Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth and Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret.
The authors of the Pontifical document, Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life, explicitly warn Christians against dabbling in the any form of the human potential movement, calling it “the clearest example of the conviction that humans are divine, or contain a divine spark within themselves.”
Humans are not God and they cannot save themselves, the document says. “For Christians, salvation depends on a participation in the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, and on a direct personal relationship with God rather than on any technique. The human situation, affected as it is by original sin and by personal sin, can only be rectified by God’s action: sin is an offense against God, and only God can reconcile us to Himself.”
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