The Unknown Years of Jesus' Life--Sojourn in India - Part 4

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The Unknown Years of Jesus' Life--Sojourn in India - Part 4

 

All chronicles of Jesus'

life colored by the cultural

perspective of their authors

 

(p.87) The major import of the chronicles discovered by Notovitch is that they

provide compelling evidence that the missing years of Jesus' life were spent in

India. But they bear also, as would be expected, the distinctive character of

their authors. (p.88) The original documents purportedly were written in Pali

script just a few years after the death of Jesus. This was the language of the

Buddhists of that day. When reports reached India through traders from Jerusalem

of the ignominious death of Isa, the holy one who had been held in such

reverential regard by their community during his time among them, they set about

to record his history as a part of their sacred annals. The Buddhistic

perspective is quite naturally evident in their accounts.

 

If Jesus himself had written his life history and the substance of his

teachings, they would have been expressed significantly differently than what

has come down to this present day. With all the best efforts of those who

related and recorded the events of Jesus' life, the view of each narrator was

bound to have been somewhat influenced by his own background, be it of a Jewish,

Gnostic, Greek, Roman, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, or any other religious persuasion

or cultural bias--not to mention the additional assault of translation from one

language to another, sometimes passing through many transitions.

 

The manuscripts published by Notovitch, for example, were written originally in

Pali, having been gathered from eyewitnesses or hearsay-tellings of persons from

various linguistic and regional backgrounds and then translated into Pali. The

manuscripts then made their way from India to Nepal and thence to Lhasa in Tibet

where they were translated into Tibetan and eventually copied for various major

monasteries. Notovitch, a Russian, copied the Tibetan pages with the assistance

of a translator, eventually published them in French, and that edition was

subsequently translated and published in English.

 

Nevertheless, the overall value of these records is inestimable in a search for

the historical Jesus. There are two ways to know an avatar. First, to glimpse

his essence that shines through a melange of fact, legend, innocent or

purposeful distortion; and by discriminatively sifting the significant from the

unimportant, just as a person is recognized for himself apart from the

accoutrements he wears. And second, to have direct knowledge of a great one

through intuitive divine communion with that soul--as many through the centuries

have known Jesus Christ, such as Saint Francis of Assisi to whom Jesus appeared

nightly in flesh and blood, Saint Teresa of Avila, and many others of the

Christian faith; and such as Sri Ramakrishna, of the Hindu faith, and I also who

have been many times in the manifested presence of Jesus. Never would I have

undertaken this book except with the assurance of personal knowledge of that

Christ.

 

(p.89) The documents discovered by Notovitch lend historical support to my

long-held assertion, gleaned from my earliest years in India, that Jesus was

linked with the 'rishis' of India through the Wise Men who journeyed to his

cradle, and for whom he went to India to receive their blessings and to confer

concerning his world mission. That his teaching, born internally from his

God-realization and nurtured externally by his studies with the masters,

expresses the universality of Christ Consciousness that knows no boundary of

race or creed, is what I shall endeavor to make evident throughout the pages of

this book.

 

Teachings of the Oriental Jesus

have been too much Westernized

 

Like the sun, which rises in the East and travels to the West spreading its

rays, so Christ rose in the East and came to the West, there to be enshrined in

a vast Christendom whose adherents look to him as their guru and savior. It is

no happenstance that Jesus chose to be born an Oriental Christ in Palestine.

This locale was the hub linking the East with Europe. He traveled to India to

honor his ties with her 'rishis', preached his message throughout that area, and

then went back to spread his teachings in Palestine, which he saw in his great

wisdom as the doorway through which his spirit and words would find their way to

Europe and the rest of the world. This great Christ, radiating the spiritual

strength and power of the Orient to the West, is a divine liaison to unite

God-loving peoples of East and West.

 

Truth is not the monopoly of the Orient or the Occident. The pure silver-gold

rays of sunlight appear to be red or blue when observed through red or blue

glass. So, also, truth only appears to be different when colored by an Oriental

or Occidental civilization. In looking at the simple essence of truth expressed

by the great ones of various times and climes, one finds very little difference

in their messages. What I received from my Guru and the venerated masters of

India I find the same as that which I have received from the teachings of Jesus

the Christ.

 

It amuses me when my Western brothers ask: " Do you believe in Christ? " I always

say: " Jesus the Christ " --Jesus the divine son of man in whom was manifested the

Christ Consciousness, the Son of God. Much more than merely believing in him is

to 'know' him.

 

Christ has been much misinterpreted by the world. Even the most elementary

principles of his teachings have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths have

been forgotten. (p.90) They have been crucified at the hands of dogma,

prejudice, and cramped understanding. Genocidal wars have been fought, people

have been burned as witches and heretics, on the presumed authority of man-made

doctrines of Christianity. How to salvage the immortal teachings from the hands

of ignorance? We must know Jesus as an Oriental Christ, a supreme yogi who

manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union, and thus could

speak and act as a savior with the voice and authority of God. He has been

Westernized too much. [1]

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 5, pg. 87-90

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] Through the remarkable discovery of early Christian gnostic texts at Nag

Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, one may glimpse something of what was lost to

conventional Christianity during this process of " Westernization " . Elaine

Pagels, Ph.D., writes in 'The Gnostic Gospels' (New York: Vintage Books, 1981):

" The Nag Hammadi texts, and others like them, which circulated at the beginning

of the Christian era, were denounced as heresy by orthodox Christians in the

middle of the second century....But those who wrote and circulated these texts

did not regard 'themselves' as 'heretics'. Most of the writings use Christian

terminology, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer

traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from 'the many' who constitute

what, in the second century, came to be called the 'catholic church'. These

Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word 'gnosis', usually

translated as 'knowledge'. For as those who claim to know nothing about ultimate

reality are called agnostic (literally, 'not-knowing'), the person who does

claim to know such things is called gnostic ('knowing'). But 'gnosis' is not

primarily rational knowledge....As the gnostics use the term, we could translate

it as 'insight', for 'gnosis' involves an intuitive process of knowing

oneself....[According to gnostic teachers], to know oneself, at the deepest

level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of 'gnosis'....

 

" The " living Jesus' of these texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of

sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament. Instead of coming to

save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual

understanding....

 

" Orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and Son of God in a unique way:

he remains forever distinct from the rest of humanity whom he came to save. Yet

the gnostic 'Gospel of Thomas' relates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him,

Jesus says to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same

source: 'I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk

from the bubbling stream which I have measured out....He who will drink from my

mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are

hidden will be revealed to him.'

 

" Does not such teaching--the identity of the divine and human, the concern with

illusion and enlightenment, the founder who is presented not as Lord, but as

spiritual guide--sound more Eastern than Western?....Could Hindu or Buddhist

Tradition have influenced gnosticism?....Ideas that we associate with Eastern

religions emerged in the first century through the gnostic movement in the West,

but they were suppressed and condemned by polemicists like Irenaeus. "

('Publisher's Note')