Taking a step ever closer to messed up mystic Matthew Fox, here is retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong—a leading theologian in the Cult of Liberal Theology—praising Deepak Chopra on the back of Chopra’s latest book The Third Jesus—The Christ We Cannot Ignore:

In this book a man shaped by the religions of the East introduces the West to a Jesus we have either lost or have never known. That is itself a stunning concept, but Deepak Chopra is a stunning man. He explores what he calls the “Christ Consciousness,” which can be identified neither with the Jesus of history nor with the Jesus of the creeds, the doctrines and the dogmas of the ecclesiastical institution.

This “Third Jesus” can be seen only when we move into a new human awareness that will carry us beyond tribe, prejudice and even beyond our religious systems. As a Christian, I welcome his insights into my Jesus and his provocative call to me to enter the “Christ Consciousness” and thus to become more deeply and completely human.

Welcome deeper into the New Spirituality currently slithering into the evangelical community. In what Spong has just said we see a perfect example of 2 Timothy 4:3-4 — For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

And the above is all the more startling when you consider those words were written by a professing Christian who now shows us he is turning to an unbelieving New Age guru to supposedly teach him about Jesus and how to enter the “Christ Consciousness.”

This itself is more clear evidence of a neo-Gnosticism which years ago made a den for itself in the liberal “Christian tradition” where we are told that one can’t really know Jesus by reading the Scriptures; instead, we must now enter some alleged Christ Consciousness to acquire this secret knowledge obtained through meditation.

And what is this Christ Consciousness according to guru Chopra? What he’s talking about is known by different terms in different religions such as “transformation” or “enlightenment” and refers to the alleged ability all human beings have to reach the “higher awareness” that we are all god—all mankind is divine.

Below Chopra tells us the goal of this Christ Consciousness as he says:

there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

When we take Jesus literally, we are faced with the impossible. How can we truly “love thy neighbor as thyself”? But when we see the exhortations of Jesus as invitations to join him on a higher spiritual plane, his words suddenly make sense.

Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is—someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.
(Online source)

Practitioners of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism such as another liberal Episcopal priest Matthew Fox, whom I mentioned earlier, have been teaching essentially these same things for years concerning this so-called “Cosmic Christ.” And here is what Fox himself says in his praise within Chopra’s book:

What happens when an “outsider” looks at some of the deep teachings of Jesus? Different angles and perspectives are awakened and different questions are asked of the Christ tradition. In this way wisdom flows in two directions, East to West and West to East and we all wake up—which is, after all, the purpose of a man and life like Jesus.

This book helps to heal the divorce between East and West, underscoring that there is only one wisdom and that it demands much of all of us no matter what tradition we come from and especially at this perilous time in human and earth history when we are finally realizing we are all in this together and together we will perish or rise. (Praise section, ii)

Apprising Ministries leaves this for now with the following question: What is it going to take for evangelical leaders to finally wake up and notice that this very same neo-Gnostic language of classic mysticism is right now also coming from the lips of those within the Emergent Church?