Deepak Chopra's upcoming novel links Jesus to India

Deepak Chopra, spiritual leader and renowned author of several best selling books, takes a different take on Jesus once again in his upcoming novel, "Jesus: A Story of Englightment."

Remember Holger Kersten? The German author who earned fame with the release of his book "Jesus lived in India." Chopra follows similar lines of Kersten writing on a story of the Messiah-to-be during what might be called his early Wanderjahr.

In the book, Jesus consults with a guru on an icy mountain, and even gets caught up with armed Jewish zealots and eventually achieves the oneness with God.

During an interview with TIME magazine, Chopra said his book speaks on the life of Jesus between the age of 12 and 30, which has not been mentioned in the Bible.

When asked on his version of Jesus missing years, he said, "There's a lot of mythology, some of it involving the East. There was a German scholar who claimed in the 1940s that Jesus traveled the Silk Road, lived in India and may have visited a monastery in Lhasa where there were Buddhist texts."

"The church of St. Thomas in India's Kerala province is the only place where Christ is not pictured on a cross but in a meditative samadhi posture. I also researched that period in history for Jesus's religious context, political and cultural contexts, the Jewish sects at the time, the occupation by Rome. Then I went into incubation, meditation, and I allowed this story to unfold. It fits into the category of "religious fiction," he added.

Chopra's "The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore," which was published in March 2008, too had a very unique explanation on Jesus.

Chopra examines the teachings of Jesus not in the context of his historical existence as a rabbi, and not that he is the son of God, but as "a cosmic Christ" Jesus as a state of mind. The third perspective, which Chopra calls a "cosmic Christ," looks at Jesus as a spiritual guide whose teaching is not only for the Church but also for the entire human kind.