Part I: The man who took on religion
Part II: 'The Love Guru lampoons Hinduism'

Dr Deepak Chopra could easily be among the busiest people anywhere in the world. But when he decides to give an interview, he speaks unhurriedly. Yet, there is vigour and passion in everything he says. The spiritual guru spoke to Arthur Pais in his spartan office in New York recently.

He spoke about a number of things ranging from how he meditates on his own death, how Mike Myers, the hugely successful Hollywood comedian whose Austin Powers films have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, came to make a film 'inspired' by him. And how he ended up writing a fable called Why Is God Laughing? about a fictional character called Mickey Fellows, loosely based on Myers's crises and how he handles them through comedy.

We start the interview with The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, which questions the way the churches have deified Christ and made him God.

Buy: The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

Did you write this book to drive Christian missionaries out of business?

My intention in writing The Third Jesus was to see what was the best we can get out of the teachings of Jesus. It is more important to understand the mind of Christ and the concept of Christ because, if you do, you realise that (whoever he was) he was a very extraordinary spirit!

To me, the first Jesus is the historical Jesus -- a man who walked on this planet about 2,000 years ago; was written about in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; who was also written about by the Roman historian Flavius Josephus, a Jew who later became a Roman citizen because the Jews were being persecuted by the Romans. He mentioned Jesus.

Then, of course, there are the Gnostic gospels through the Gospel of Thomas. According to some legends, Thomas, one of the apostles, is Indian. If you look at some of the paintings of the Vatican, you will see he is dark-skinned. There are even some historical references that he could have been Jesus' teacher. The reason he is not so easily swayed is that he the doubting man, always.

But the fact is we do not know too much about the historical Jesus because of the 33 years he lived, 26 years are unaccounted for. Historically, we know less than 20 per cent of his life.

The second Jesus is the Jesus of theology. And the history of that is fascinating. In 313 AD, the Emperor of Rome, King Constantine, decided he was going to embrace Christianity. Until then, Roman emperors were persecuting Christians. There were two reasons for his conversion: One was that Christianity was becoming very popular and, despite persecution, it was spreading very fast. Second, his mother was a follower of Christianity. Constantine knew one of the ways to conquer your enemies is to embrace their faith. He also realized that if he did not embrace Christianity, it was going to threaten Rome.

You know, all the holy sites in Israel are the result of his mother going to Israel and identifying the places: Here was the crucifixion, here is Galilee, here is the wall, etc.

In 325 AD, the church leaders held the Council of Nicaea to control this religion. In 382 AD, they had the Synod of Rome and that's when they declared the official Canon, the whole Bible as pertinent to Christians -- the 27 books of the Bible, including the four gospels. They completely threw out the Gnostic gospels, which were then discovered in 1949.

I looked at all that literature and what happened then. From 382 AD until the year 1611, there were 20 revisions of the New Testament, depending on who was in charge in Rome. In 1611, King James authorised the official version in English. That had 54 people doing the translation - they were looking at Hebrew texts; they were looking at Latin texts; they were looking at Greek texts; they were also looking at English translations by a man called Tyndale (he was burned at the stake by Pope Clement VIII because he had translated the Bible into English).

So, you see, the theological Jesus did not come into existence until four centuries after the historical Jesus. And this theological Jesus has a very controversial history: (In the name of this Jesus) We have soothsayers, we have witch-hunts, we have burning at the stake, we have torture, we have (in modern times) the bombing of abortion clinics, we have an institution that hides paedophiles in its clergy while criticizing gays as sinners, not to forget what the White House is doing.

Image: Chopra arrives at the 2004 Cinema for Peace UNICEF charity gala in Berlin, Germany.
Photograph: Kurt Vinion/Getty Images

Also read: Hindu groups attack Mike Myers' new film

Next