The Third Jesus
Adapted from “The Third Jesus,” by Deepak Chopra
The idea of the Second Coming has been especially destructive to Jesus’s intentions, because it postpones what needs to happen now. The Third Coming—finding God-consciousness through your own efforts—happens in the present. I’m using the term as a metaphor for a shift in consciousness that makes Jesus’s teachings totally real and vital.
When Jesus Comes Again
Imagine for a moment that you are at the top of the hill where Jesus is and he delivers a sermon, and you are deeply struck, to the heart, in fact. He promises that God loves you, a statement he makes directly, without asking you to follow the duties of your sect or to respect the ancient, complex laws of the prophets. Further, he says that God loves you best. In the world to come, you and your kind will get the richest rewards, everything you have been denied in this world.
As the son of Adam, your sins have brought you a wretched existence, full of misery and endless toil. But Jesus doesn’t mention sin. He expands God’s love to unbelievable lengths. Did you really hear him right?
You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before all men. He compares you to a city set upon a hill that can’t be hidden because its lights are so bright. You’ve never been told anything remotely like this or ever seen yourself this way.
Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will open.
Consider the lilies, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin, but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Consider the crows, for they neither sow nor reap, they have no storeroom or barn, and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds!
When he preached, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also” (Luke 6:29), Jesus wasn’t preaching masochism or martyrdom. He was speaking of a quality of consciousness that is known in Sanskrit as Ahimsa. The word is usually translated as “harmlessness” or “non-violence,” and in modern times it became the watchword of Gandhi’s movement of peaceful resistance. Gandhi himself was often seen as Christ-like, but Ahimsa has roots in India going back thousands of years.
In the Indian tradition several things are understood about non-violence, and all of them apply to Jesus’s version of turning the other cheek. First, the aim of non-violence is ultimately to bring peace to yourself, to quell your own violence; the enemy outside serves only to mirror the enemy within. Second, your ability to be non-violent depends on a shift in consciousness. Last, if you are successful in changing yourself, reality will mirror the change back to you.
Without these conditions, Ahimsa isn’t spiritual or even effective. If someone full of desire for retaliation turns the other cheek to someone equally enraged, the only thing that will occur is more violence. Playing the part of a saint won’t make a difference. But if a person in God-consciousness turns the other cheek, his enemy will be disarmed.
Ananda and John’s Comment:
Deepak Chopra has a way of taking highly complex subjects and synthesizing them down to their basic essence. This complex issue, that has occupied the central core of billions of people for 2,000 years, has been laid out in a fashion that allows everyone to experience a deeper, richer experience with Jesus…whether they are fundamentalists, rationalists, mystical, or skeptical Christians or even students of other religions.
Just reading that excerpt feels so empowering.Deepak Chopra is extremely talented and one of the best personal development gurus out there. His writing combines intelligence, spirituality and science in such a consistent way. Most spiritual writings often fail to make intelligent sense, however Deepak’s writings are intelligent as well as spiritually profound. He is what the modern world needs.