Deepak Chopra Traces Jesus' Untold Story

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," November 10, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: The brand-new novel, "Jesus: a Story of Enlightenment," imagines the lost years of Christ himself. Now, author Deepak Chopra traces Jesus's path from rebellious teenager to rebellious leader and tells the story of how the spiritual Christ emerged.

And joining us now for his first cable interview, New York Times best-selling author, founder of the Chopra Institute, Deepak Chopra.

You said a funny joke. I said, "It's Chopra, right?"

And you said, yes, it would be...

DEEPAK CHOPRA, AUTHOR, "JESUS": I said if Oprah married me she would be Oprah Chopra.

• Video: Watch Sean and Alan's interview with Deepak Chopra

HANNITY: Have you used that joke before? I like it. That's very good.

CHOPRA: Sure.

HANNITY: Now, Alan is going to talk to you about the book...

CHOPRA: Sure.

HANNITY: ... which by the way, and Alan is a big fan of yours. And we're glad to have you on the program. You and I were talking in the green room.

CHOPRA: Right.

HANNITY: You want 100 million people...

CHOPRA: Yes.

HANNITY: ... to take a pledge. Tell everybody what that pledge is.

CHOPRA: The pledge is the — a pledge of nonviolence. A pledge for making the choice for peace in every moment with your staff, with your friends, with your family and ultimately with the world.

And I believe that if 100 million people became embodiments of peace, the world would transform, because consciousness is a collective phenomenon. And what we see as good and evil is the balance between forces.

HANNITY: So if I punch — if I punch you, you're going to turn the other cheek?

CHOPRA: Twenty years ago I would have knocked you back.

HANNITY: That's a good answer. But now you would...

CHOPRA: But now I would create an environment where you wouldn't feel like punching me.

HANNITY: All right. What if somebody...

CHOPRA: You didn't hear me. I said I would create an environment where...

HANNITY: Where I wouldn't want to punch you.

CHOPRA: You know, and I wouldn't — salvation peace consciousness (ph). Then people around me cease to feel hostility.

HANNITY: So you just have this aura that you can prevent people. So a burglar comes in your house, you know, stoned out of his mind on crack cocaine and he wants to rape your daughter and your wife and steal everything you have, your aura is going to stop him?

CHOPRA: I'll tell you, 20 years ago, a burglar came into my house. He had a baseball bat. And I screamed so loudly that the bat fell from him. I picked it up and I knocked him on the head. He was unconscious. The police came. He was wanted for murder.

HANNITY: Right.

CHOPRA: About six months ago I was in Nashville. And the same thing happened, but it wasn't my house. I stepped into an alley, and four kids surrounded me with a gun.

HANNITY: Right.

CHOPRA: And I talked them out of it.

HANNITY: Well, look, I don't doubt that that can happen. But I believe, and I wrote a whole book about it, that there's evil. And, for example, Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. He wants to wipe Israel off the map. I think it is rather naive...

CHOPRA: Not so much evil as he's probably psychotic.

HANNITY: Psychotic, evil. You know...

CHOPRA: Psychotic people need to be treated.

HANNITY: I think there's evil. But you don't deny there's evil in the world?

CHOPRA: I think evil is our collective shadow. Each one of us has a tendency for the diabolical. If I put you in inhumane conditions, if you're not educated, if you're extremely poor, if you're humiliated, then as a child if you suffer abuse, then you will manifest even when you grow up.

HANNITY: My only point, though, is I think there are certain circumstances where you've got to defeat evil. You've got to confront it.

CHOPRA: I look at, say, cancer as an evil phenomenon.

HANNITY: Right.

CHOPRA: And if somebody has cancer, I cut it out.

HANNITY: No, no. I'm talking about spiritual evil.

(CROSSTALK)

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: This goes...

CHOPRA: And then I try understand what was the context? What's the conditions in which it arose? And if I don't do that, I'll continue to fight darkness with darkness. And you can't do that. You have to switch on the light, as Jesus did.

COLMES: Actually, that...

HANNITY: You're a very nice man.

COLMES: One of the things you talk about in the book, Deepak, which is — you talk about the Jesus you talk about, which we're going to get to in a moment. You say resist not evil is one of the things that Jesus teaches.

CHOPRA: Well, read the Sermon on the Mount. OK? And if you take it literally, which Gandhi did, by the way. Gandhi used to read the Sermon on the Mount and practice it. He brought down the British Empire, 200 years of colonialism, where they said the sun never set without firing a single bullet.

COLMES: Well, you talk about the things — and you talk about this in your previous book, "The Third Jesus." The things that Jesus talked about sound simple, but they're so difficult to do: love thy neighbor as thyself.

CHOPRA: Yes. You have to understand the mind, the consciousness from where he came. You know, in "The Gospel of John," Jesus says, "I and God are one." And the crowd picks up stones. They want to kill him. He says, "Many good works have I shown you. For which of these do stone you me?"

And they say, "We don't stone you for good works that you do. We stone you for blasphemy, because you, being a man, call yourself a god."

And then he explains that, you know, the state of consciousness that he is in is possible for anyone and everyone.

COLMES: And you talk about Christ's consciousness here. And you talk about some of the big controversies concerning Jesus. For example, was Jesus static? Was he born divine or was he born like us and evolved through a transformation?

CHOPRA: I think everyone has a spark of divinity inside them. After all, we were created in the image of God, as it said.

HANNITY: Even Alan?

CHOPRA: Even you.

If you pay attention to that, we can let it unfold.

COLMES: You see, he makes me want to be violent but nevertheless, I'm taking a page from you.

CHOPRA: No, no, no, no.

HANNITY: I'm the one that, you know, was — believes in defending oneself. Not him.

CHOPRA: When you're totally defenseless, there's nothing to attack.

HANNITY: That sounds great in theory, but the reality is if someone is raping your wife and daughter, you're going to use violence.

CHOPRA: You react at that time but then try and...

HANNITY: You hit them with the bat?

CHOPRA: Yes. I was...

HANNITY: You would?

CHOPRA: I'd try something else before.

HANNITY: What would you try?

CHOPRA: I wouldn't put myself in that situation.

COLMES: But what you're saying — we only have a second left here. But is what you're saying here, getting beneath that, is that you create a situation where those circumstances don't occur to you?

CHOPRA: The world is a projection of our collective consciousness. If our collective consciousness reaches that place of peace, harmony, laughter and love, it will be a different world.

COLMES: And idea is to achieve Christ consciousness?

CHOPRA: Absolutely Christ said, "I'm in this world and not of it." And we all have that capacity.

HANNITY: Can I ask you a question? Those glasses, that's like from the Elton John collection?

CHOPRA: I wasn't getting enough attention.

HANNITY: No, no, no. I mean, he used to wear the crazy glasses on stage.

CHOPRA: Actually, yes, but I think Liberace had better taste.

HANNITY: Right, OK.

COLMES: Deepak, thank you very much. Thanks for being on the program.

HANNITY: All right. Thanks for being with us.

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