Responses to BA Goswami 4

[Guest guest]

Hello Bhakti Ananda Goswami,

I'd like to comment on the Notovitch section of your lengthy post.

<

Notovitch Was A Notorious Liar And Spy Who Sometimes Wrote And Even Forged

Documents For A Living.  He Was Involved In All Kinds Of Political

Intrigues And Was Exposed, In His Own Time, As A Liar Concerning His

Claimed Trip Of

Discovery In Tibet.

http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Tibet/tibet.html >>

As you say, one of Müller's claims was that he had heard that some

missionaries in Tibet had alleged that no one by the name of Notovitch had

ever visited the monastery. The evidence Mueller presented on this

consisted of a letter from an English traveler through Leh expressing this

belief while at the same time severely denouncing the lamas. However,

another critic that you mentioned, Professor J. Archibald Douglas, had to

acknowledge evidence that Notovitch had indeed been to Leh at least (the

dentist in Leh had once treated him), and in responding to Müller,

Notovitch mentioned names of two others who could attest to his having

traveled there (one was the governor of Ladakh). The critics never followed

up on these names, or if they did, never published it. Also, Notovitch's

description of both the exterior and interior of the Himis monastery, like

those of his travel experiences themselves, are sufficiently detailed

without appearing in any way contrived as to dispel doubts that he had been

to the monastery. Thus, Müller's claim here, along with his others, seems

to have been irrelevant.

However, from Abhedananda's confirmation of the Lost Years verses, we know

that Notovitch's find had indeed been genuine. Notovitch may have been no

saint, but the genuineness of his finding has been confirmed. You have now

placed yourself in the position where you have to claim that Abhedananda

was a collossal liar. And others, too, who visited Hemis monastery still

later and spoke with certain monks who mentioned the Lost Years verses. And

also the author and discoverer of the Talmud of Jmmanuel. And the report of

another whom you would have to denigrate, is as follows:

There is a report that records exist in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives

confirming that Issa had spent some time in India. This comes from Sri Daya

Mata of the Self-Realization Fellowship, when in 1959 she interviewed Sri

Bharati Krishna Tirtha in India; he was the Shankaracharya of Puri. In the

article she says, "In 1959 I discussed this [Jesus being in India during the

'unknown years'] with one of India's great spiritual leaders, His Holiness

Sri Bharati Krishna Tirtha, the Shankaracharya of Puri. I told him that

Guruji had often said to us that Christ spent some of his life in India, in

association with her illumined sages. His Holiness replied, 'That is true.

I have studied ancient records in the Puri Jagannath Temple archives

confirming these facts. He was known as "Isha," and during part of his time

in India he stayed in the Jagannath Temple. When he returned to his part of

the world, he expounded the teachings that are known today as

Christianity.'" In the above, "Guruji" refers to the yogi Paramahansa

Yogananda, and Puri is a coastal city in southeast India, where the

Jagannath Temple is located. The Lost Years verses mention that Issa had

spent time at this location.

It just isn't at all scholarly to assume that everyone who has researched

and disclosed the reality of the "Jesus in India" evidence, including the

Ahmadiyyas and Ahmad, is to be automatically disqualified.

<

Russian here. No one has been taken into the Seminary for the past fifty

years with a broken leg! There is no life of Christ there at all!"

[Goodspeed, p. 11]. >>

There's no reason to believe that this English woman would have known

anything about what went on within the monastery. If you continue on with

her letter, which you didn't, it read:

"It is dawning on me that people who in England profess to have been living

in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet and to have learnt there the mysteries of

_Esoteric Buddhism_ are frauds. The monasteries one and all are the most

filthy places. The Lamas are the dirtiest of a very dirty race. They are

fearfully ignorant and idolaters _pur et simple; no -- neither pure nor

simple." This was in Mueller's Oct. 1894 article in _Nineteenth Century_

journal.

This woman was apparently a very biased person who wouldn't have wished to

enter the monastery. She was likely associated with the Christian

missionary outpost in Leh, which Notovitch stayed away from. When he broke

his leg, he decided to take his chances with assistance from the monastery

rather than going to the mission for assistance (Read his book!). So in

all, I'd have to give zero credence to the claims of this woman, who seems

to have been quite a racist. Here there is very good reason why she should

be disqualified.

< ="scrolls.>>" ="" This="This" was="was" New="New" Testament="Testament"

scholar="scholar" Goodspeed's="Goodspeed's" claim,="claim," after="after"

Notovitch="Notovitch" had

responded to Mueller by writing, "They [the Isa verses] are to be found

scattered through more than one book without any title." From that,

Goodspeed and later others have claimed Notovitch back-pedaled or perhaps

reneged, since in his book he had mentioned them having come from two large

volumes. (See Prophet, p. 188.) But is it so difficult to imagine that most

of the Issa verses were located in one volume, from which Abhedananda was

later read to, and most of the rest located within a second volume? You can

see what has happened -- Christian scholars so badly wanted the whole thing

to be a hoax that they distorted the slightest seeming discrepancy, picking

on the difference between "two volumes" and "more than one book." Really!

And as I questioned before, would Notovitch have been able to keep track of

which of two volumes the lama read from on any given day?

<

monastery and interviewed the abbot, reading him Notovitch's Unknown

Life. The abbot was outraged at the hoax and asked why crimes like

Notovitch's fraud could not be punished! As abbot for the past fifteen

years, he knew no one had been given shelter with a broken leg, and as a

lama for

forty-two years he could attest there was no such document as Notovitch

claimed to have used [Goodspeed, p. 13]. Notovitch was exposed as a fraud

and that was the end of it for a while." >>

Here the critics have assumed, without cause, that a lama would certainly

not tell a lie to a potential trouble maker to get rid of him. Müller noted

that there indeed had been travelers to the East "to whom Brahmans or

Buddhists have supplied, for a consideration, the information and even the

manuscripts which they were in search of." He felt that Notovitch might

have been such a victim of a Buddhist monk who supplied him with an

invented story. However, it is more likely that Douglas instead was the

unknowing victim of a monk's discretion or subterfuge, as it would

obviously have been much simpler for the chief lama of Hemis to deny to

Douglas any knowledge of Notovitch's visit there, after having learned of

some potentially dangerous reactions that Notovitch's 1894 book could

cause, than it would have been for him to invent on the spot a collection

of 244 verses about Isa to read to Notovitch and his translator. And any

impartial reading of his book discloses no good

motivation why Notovitch, of Russian Orthodox belief, would have had to

invent the verses about Isa, though he was obviously excited at the

prospect of being the one to fill in this gap within the Gospels and bring

the information to the attention of the West.

In his response to Mueller, which he placed in his 1895 book, Notovitch

explained that the head lama may have replied negatively to Prof. Douglas

"because Orientals are in the habit of looking upon Europeans as robbers,

who introduce themselves in their midst to despoil them in the name of

civilization." This is backed up by the Tibetologists D.L. Snellgrove and

T. Skorupski who, in their 1977 book, reported that, "They [the monks at

Hemis monastery] seem convinced that all foreigners steal if they can.

There have in fact been quite serious losses of property in recent

years...". In the 1907 book by V. R. Gandhi, he wrote that, "Europeans have

not yet understood the reason why the monks and other custodians of the

sacred literature of the East have been unwilling to give full information

about manuscripts." He went on to explain that it was due to the Muslim

invaders of India once having destroyed thousands of the Indians' sacred

documents, and to early Christian missionaries having acquired and

belittled some of the documents.

This easily explains Prof. Douglas's findings, about whom we know nothing

except what he wrote in a letter to Mueller. In his letter, it shows

through that he was a Christian who was deeply offended by Notovitch's

findings.

  Jim Deardorff