A Critical Review of Deepak Chopra´s book: The Third Jesus

 

In my article, The Conspiracy of the Third Eye, I described the New Age attempts of reinventing Jesus Christ in the image of New Age. In his book: The Third Jesus - How to Find Truth and Love in Today´s World, Chopra is contributing to these attempts. His thesis is that there are three versions of Jesus: 1) the guy of flesh and blood whom we basically know nothing about. 2) The Jesus, which is the church´s interpretation. Chopra claims that this Jesus never has existed since it is a "dogmatic" distorted interpretation (Chopra is, like other New Agers, extremely anti-Christian) 3) Then there is the third Jesus, which is the true Jesus: meaning, the Jesus, Chopra wants us to believe in.  Chopra says that this Jesus not is a metaphor (interpretation).

I say, yes of course it is. It is a New Age interpretation, and as filled with dogmas as any other spiritual direction. Chopra claims Jesus was an enlightened master in style with other enlightened masters. In this he uses Eastern enlightenment concepts. But he is incapable of understanding that these also are cultural interpretations. He puts Jesus into an Eastern interpretation, which therefore is a misinterpretation. Generally speaking you can talk about three Eastern enlightenment concepts (there are many others): Nirvana, Samadhi, and Satori. The descriptions of these all sound different. There is, for example, a huge difference between Tibetan Buddhist complex descriptions of Nirvana, and Zen Buddhist simplistic descriptions. And Chopra has no understanding of that enlightenment concepts also exist in a Christian context: namely as Unia Mystica and Illumination. He doesn´t understand that these are fully integrated in Christian mysticism. On Athos, for example, there is a mysticism with a lineage directly back to the apostles, perhaps even to Virgin Mary. This is very likely the best interpretations of Jesus you can find. On Athos there has, as in Tibetan Buddhism, existed a line of enlightened masters since the time of the apostles (very likely following a line of earlier enlightened Greco-Roman philosophers).

Chopra has no understanding of the necessity of following your roots and spiritual lineages, and how mystics and saints have had visionary experiences of such lineages. This is also something which is happening in Eastern contexts. Chopra is fully convinced that he is above all interpretations and "dogmas", but supplies us with a deeply distorting image of Jesus based on New Age interpretations. 

Finally, Chopra confuses Eastern enlightenment with Western subjective idealism (immaterialism), and claims, utterly naively, that Jesus followed this metaphysical theory, because he lived in "a simple way" - see my free ebook: The Tragic New Age Confusion of Eastern Enlightenment and Western Subjective Idealism. "Immaterialism" and "simple Living" (non-materialistic living) haven´t anything to do with each other. That Chopra confuses these, might either expose his lack of philosophical training, or else it is just a rhetorical trick. By the way: people practising simple living are often living in close harmony with nature, and they would hardly subscribe to a metaphysical theory like immaterialism, which claims that nature doesn´t exist, and is a pure illusion.

It is also a weird experience hearing Deepak Chopra preaching simple living, when considering his own extreme materialistic lifestyle.

Listen to this quote from the critical thinker Robert Carroll:

Chopra spends much of his time writing and lecturing from his base in California. He charges $25,000 per lecture performance, where he spouts out a few platitudes and give spiritual advice while warning against the ill effects of materialism. His audiences are apparently not troubled by his living in a $2.5 million house in La Jolla, California, where he parks his green Jaguar, which he can easily afford since he has amassed millions of dollars from the sales of his books, tapes, herbs, appearances, etc. Chopra is much richer and certainly more famous than he ever was as an endocrinologist or as chief of staff at New England Memorial Hospital (read more).

Even if Chopra, in the best New Thought style, has written a book about that spirituality in reality is about getting rich; that is: attracting material stuff (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success) – then his self-contradictions and hypocrisy are just over the top. 

Related texts:

A Critique of Deepak Chopra (the above review is taken from the updates to this general critique of Chopra)

New Netflix Series Gaslights People Into Becoming Drug Users (with Deepak Chopra as a guide. Here Chopra again preaches immaterialism, postulating that reality is an illusion, even that reality doesn´t exist at all = metaphysical nihilism)

The Conspiracy of the Third Eye (article about how New Age is trying to reinvent Jesus Christ in the image of New Age – basically: about the coming of the anti-Christ).

The Tragic New Age Confusion of Eastern Enlightenment and Western Subjective Idealism (free Ebook. Deepak Chopra is trying to make us believe that Jesus supported an anti-realist philosophy called: Subjective Idealism (Chopra doesn´t mention this because he hasn´t got the philosophical training to know. Subjective idealism is the same as “Immaterialism”. Subjective idealism was coined by the 18^th-century writings of George Berkeley. In philosophy, Berkeley is generally not being taken seriously. But today, with the rise of New Age scientism, subjective idealism is being pulled up from the magic hat again, now forwarded as if it is revolutionary new “scientific” theory, and not as it is in reality: a spurious philosophy idea.