Jesus and Enlightenment
I summarized this article because Deepak has a rich background in ancient eastern religions and shares his views on how this might relate to Jesus. Millions of Americans have bought and read his books. I offer no opinion on this article. -editor. You can visit his website at: http://www.chopra.com/
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008
Deepak Chopra on Jesus
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and…Deepak?
Chopra’s book, Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment, speculates a story of the Messiah-to-be during what might be called his early Wanderjahr. We meet Jesus consulting with a guru on an icy mountaintop in what seems like Tibet . Chopra spoke with TIME about his novel.
Your Jesus story is tremendous fun to read, but where is it in the Bible?
I also researched that period in history for Jesus’s religious context, political and cultural contexts, the Jewish sects at the time, the occupation by Rome . One day I was reading the Gospel of John 10: 30, where Jesus says, “I and God are one.” I interpreted this as “those who have knowledge of God are God.” In Eastern philosophical systems there’s an established idea of a path through personal consciousness to a collective conscience to a universal conscience, which people call the divine. I concluded that Jesus must have experienced this consciousness, and that he must have followed a path. Fundamentalist Christians always quote Jesus in the Gospel of John saying “I am the way. In your book there is a crucifixion, but only reported secondhand by Jesus as something like a dream.
Every spiritual tradition has this idea of death and resurrection. What would Jesus say?
Jesus would say, Recognize the difference between wealth and money. The rest is one big casino, making money off money or losing money off money.
For entire article click on:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1858571,00.html
