Christina Patterson: The real meaning of Easter: it's about me, me, me

State-school kids don't know that creme eggs have anything to do with a crucifixion

It has been a mixed week for Jesus. He's back in the news again, but less for his resurrection than the lack of it. The sudden boost to his celebrity status is, of course, due to his infinitely more successful protégé, Dan Brown and those messianic mentors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. It would be ridiculous to accuse Baigent of trying to cash in on a multi-million pound phenomenon, but he did just happen to have another book up his sleeve. The Jesus Papers, due out next month, aims to expose "the greatest cover-up in history". What, Baigent asks, if there was incontrovertible proof that Jesus survived? Who, he muses, could have helped hide him? Funnily enough, Baigent succeeds where all other historians have failed. He alone knows the truth about Jesus Christ. Just buy the book and you can, too.

Tony Blair also knows the truth about Jesus (a slightly different truth, admittedly), which is why he's so keen on faith-based schools. Generously, he has extended this favour to other faiths. So we're edging ever closer to that two-tier culture. On the one hand, the state-school kids, who don't have a clue that creme eggs have anything to do with a crucifixion. On the other hand, the crisply ironed Christians and mini-mullahs, reciting, in regimented rows, the truths about which species God created before supper on Saturday or the how-to-bag-that-virgin martyrdom manual.

(A friend of a friend of mine, an Arabic scholar, was working on a translation of some early texts of the Koran when she came to the bit about Paradise: the beautiful gardens, the vineyards and the 72 luscious, ripe, untouched, er, figs. She was so shocked that she stopped the project.)

Lacking any grasp of the basics of Christianity, the state-school kids won't understand a word of Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, or indeed most of the canon of Western literature. Never mind. They can do GCSEs in cold calling or plumbing. Anyway, Ruth (yes, the Ruth who's a member of Opus Dei) wants us all to be vocational now. The faith-based kids can look forward to a bright future on New Labour multi-faith think-tanks or (if they're not Jewish) fronting jamborees for Ken. When, that is, they're not burning down abortion clinics or blowing up the Tube.

It's a tiny bit depressing, so let's seek sanity and solace elsewhere. If you want moderation in matters religious, you go to the middle classes. You go, in fact, to Waterstone's. So what, in the week before Easter, was the most popular path to paradise? At number one, predictably enough, the book Dan Brown didn't plagiarise: Baigent and Lee's Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which uncovers the real truth about Jesus Christ, his marriage to Mary Magdalene and his taste in home furnishings. (Well, OK, I didn't finish it, but that Having-It-All-Chicklit thing is just so déjà vu.)

At number two, Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, an internationally bestselling step-by-step guide to "inner peace, increased joy and more harmonious relationships" - all of which can be achieved by leaving behind the "analytical moment", surrendering to "the present moment, where problems do not exist" and acknowledging that you are "already complete and perfect".

Phew! For a moment, I thought we were on the brink of global warming, mass terrorism and a big Berlusconi sulk, but for a mere £7.99 you can bypass these illusory irritants and grasp your inner guru. The Holy Grail is not in Paris, Scotland or B&Q, but in your tummy. (Or perhaps, Alien-like, your thorax, but never mind these niceties.)

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, at number four, agrees. For him, the divinity is a "next door kinda God" who also, confusingly, is to be found within. Walsch apparently wrote a letter to Him and was delighted to get a reply. God's message was surprisingly similar to Tolle's: that a new age of spiritual awakening is upon us, that now is the time to embrace the universal energy and that we can create an abundant future with the power of the human mind. But not the analytical bits, of course.

It is also remarkably similar to Deepak Chopra's, whose new book, another top 10 best-seller, offers further handy hints on the highway to heaven. In The Book of Secrets the multi-millionaire exclusively reveals that the pursuit of materialism is doomed because "the world is in you", "everything is pure essence" and your reality is something that you create. Thanks, Deepak, I think we've got the hang of it now. What matters is me, me, me. My energy, my vision, my reality.

It's a universal virus: the new nirvana in which solipsism masquerades as spirituality and where every freedom conceals the phantom of fundamentalism. It makes you long, in fact, for a bit of woolly, Anglican "love thy neighbour". These days, your neighbour's lucky to get a look-in.

c.patterson@independent.co.uk