{"id":438,"date":"2008-02-22T08:41:55","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T08:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/the-third-jesus.html"},"modified":"2008-02-22T08:41:55","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T08:41:55","slug":"the-third-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/the-third-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"The Third Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chopra’s book is currently #56 on Amazon. A couple of articles to put it in context, in Chopra’s own words:
\nFrom the Huffington Post, a report on an appearance in New York <\/a>at St. Mary the Virgin Church (very high church Episcopal, right off Times Square. I did a tragically never-aired DVC-related Dateline <\/em>interview there.)
\n<\/p>\n

“When Jesus said, ‘I’m the son of God,'” Chopra tells the audience, “His meaning wasn’t ‘I’m the son of the Boss,’ or I’m his son and you’re not.'” Instead, in Chopra’s view, that declaration invites us all to realize our own divinity. While Chopra honors what he calls the first two Jesus: Jesus, the real man, and the Jesus, “built up over thousands of years by theologians and …scholars,” Deepak focuses attention on the third Jesus, a model\/teacher of universal\/Christ consciousness.
\nChopra’s definition of consciousness reaches beyond the confines of biochemisty, which defines it as a brain secretion, to physic, in which consciousness is seen as a “field of uncertainty containing all potentialities that collapse via space-time events into consensual reality.”
\nsnip<\/em>
\nWithout a doubt, Chopra knows his bible, although he contends that the many contributors to the New Testament have sometimes confused Jesus’ core view. In particular, he takes issue with notions of sin and retribution, as well as with sexism, homophobia, and other forms of exclusion. “It’s not healthy to seek divinity while coming from a place of guilt and shame,” Chopra the doctor reminds us.
\nChopra recommends translates the teachings into self-inquiry, not condemnation of others. “Is my behavior consistent with my beliefs? What is the quality of my intention?” he offers as examples of his own process.
\nBelief is less important than experience and behavior, Chopra implies, since all too often “belief can be a cover up for insecurity. Once you actually experience the reality of Christ consciousness, you don’t have to profess belief in it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Reuters article:<\/a><\/p>\n

He said he began searching for the third Jesus as a child attending a Catholic Irish missionary school in India after being fascinated by what he described at the “most interesting, romantic, passionate, spiritual story of all time.”
\n“Yet I was struck by the fact that my friends, who were part of the Church, had been indoctrinated into a belief system where guilt was actually a virtue and I couldn’t quite come to terms with that,” Chopra told Reuters in an interview.
\n“I said to myself there must be a third Jesus, a state of consciousness that I can actually relate to, and I started to really study the New Testament and the Bible,” he said.
\nChopra paints this third Jesus as one of both Eastern and Western spirituality.
\n“Leave aside the differences in the language of it — they are all talking about the same thing,” he said. “So I hope in the very least it will contribute to some healing of the rift in our collective soul, which is the cause of all the wars and all the problems we’re having today.”
\nChopra said the Jesus created by the Catholic Church was confusing because although the religion had done a lot of good in the world, it had also taken part “in the Crusades, in witch hunts, in burning people on the stake, homophobia, depriving women of their rights, all kinds of things.”
\n“The present day crisis in Christianity is it’s bogged down in issues like — what would Jesus do? They make pronouncements on things like abortion, women’s rights, homophobia, stem cell research — nothing to do with Christ,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So yeah, I say, have Chopra on programs in Catholic media, sure. Just as long as the interviewer is ready and willing to say, many times,\u00a0“What in the world<\/em> are you\u00a0talking about?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chopra’s book is currently #56 on Amazon. A couple of articles to put it in context, in Chopra’s own words: From the Huffington Post, a report on an appearance in New York at St. Mary the Virgin Church (very high church Episcopal, right off Times Square. I did a tragically never-aired DVC-related Dateline interview there.)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Third Jesus - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/the-third-jesus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Third Jesus - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chopra’s book is currently #56 on Amazon. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}