Lost years of Jesus (Book Review with excerpts)
Brahmanistic historians revealed the Ancient journey of Jesus from Jerusalem to Benares, here its community fondly called him St. Issa; their great Buddha. Archeological findings show that he left Jerusalem at age thirteen traveled to the Orient and came back to Jerusalem at the age of 29. An awesome revelation published in the early eighties; the research started about the Christ’s lost years in 1929 . The lost years of Jesus is also known to be a relevant part of discussion in The Gospel of Thomas (yes, doubting Thomas) I lifted excerpts from the book: Best of the Sons of Men Translation by Notovitch:
"... Lord Jesus was in India during what are known as the lost years of Jesus," he reports.
Lost years? I called to mind the mimeographed chronology of my Sunday-school coloring book and marginal notes in a New Testament college text. He's right, I thought. The Bible records Jesus age twelve in the temple. Then age thirty at the river Jordan. That leaves eighteen years unaccounted for.
But in India? It was hard to imagine my carpenter-of-Nazareth Jesus bathing in the Ganges, for instance. "Lhasa." The monk describes inhospitable territory that is traversed by a solitary road leading to a Tibetan monastery. Here, he says, there are records originally written in the Pali language-"ancient scrolls," he explains, curling his blunt fingers as if to open the rigid parchment before my eyes.
"Near Srinigar in the Happy Valley of Kashmir we find the legend of an extraordinary saint known to the Buddhists as St. Issa," says the monk. "Events in the life of Issa closely resemble that of Jesus Christ, revealing what are thought to be the lost years of our Lord. It was a surprise to me that Jesus could have spent half his life in the Orient. It was a surprise that I had never wondered where the Master was all that time. To me he was simply "about my Father's business," as Luke wrote.
legend begins with the crucifixion.
The earth has trembled and the heavens have wept because of a great crime which has been committed in the land of Israel.
For they have tortured and there put to death the great and just Issa, in whom dwelt the soul of the universe,
Which was incarnate in a simple mortal in order to do good to men and to exterminate their evil thoughts
And in order to bring back man degraded by his sins to a life of peace, love, and happiness and to recall to him the one and indivisible Creator, whose mercy is infinite and without bounds....
At this time came the moment when the all-merciful Judge elected to become incarnate in a human being.
And the Eternal Spirit, dwelling in a state of complete inaction and of supreme beatitude, awoke and detached itself for an indefinite period from the Eternal Being,
So as to show forth in the guise of humanity the means of self-identification with Divinity and of attaining to eternal felicity,
And to demonstrate by example how man may attain moral purity and, by separating his soul from its mortal coil, the degree of perfection necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is unchangeable and where happiness reigns eternal.
Soon after, a marvelous child was born in the land of Israel, God himself speaking by the mouth of this infant of the frailty of the body and the grandeur of the soul.
The parents of the newborn child were poor people, belonging by birth to a family of noted piety, who, forgetting their ancient grandeur on earth, praised the name of the Creator and thanked him for the ills with which he saw fit to prove them.
To reward them for not turning aside from the way of truth, It was a surprise to me that Jesus could have spent half his life in the Orient. It was a surprise that I had never wondered where the Master was all that time. To me he was simply "about my Father's business," as Luke wrote.
legend begins with the crucifixion.
The earth has trembled and the heavens have wept because of a great crime which has been committed in the land of Israel.
For they have tortured and there put to death the great and just Issa, in whom dwelt the soul of the universe,
Which was incarnate in a simple mortal in order to do good to men and to exterminate their evil thoughts
And in order to bring back man degraded by his sins to a life of peace, love, and happiness and to recall to him the one and indivisible Creator, whose mercy is infinite and without bounds....
At this time came the moment when the all-merciful Judge elected to become incarnate in a human being.
And the Eternal Spirit, dwelling in a state of complete inaction and of supreme beatitude, awoke and detached itself for an indefinite period from the Eternal Being,
So as to show forth in the guise of humanity the means of self-identification with Divinity and of attaining to eternal felicity,
And to demonstrate by example how man may attain moral purity and, by separating his soul from its mortal coil, the degree of perfection necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is unchangeable and where happiness reigns eternal.
Soon after, a marvelous child was born in the land of Israel, God himself speaking by the mouth of this infant of the frailty of the body and the grandeur of the soul.
The parents of the newborn child were poor people, belonging by birth to a family of noted piety, who, forgetting their ancient grandeur on earth, praised the name of the Creator and thanked him for the ills with which he saw fit to prove them.
To reward them for not turning aside from the way of God blessed the firstborn of this family. He chose him for his elect and sent him to help those who had fallen into evil and to cure those who suffered.
The divine child, to whom was given the name of Issa, began from his earliest years to speak of the one and indivisible God, exhorting the souls of those gone astray to repentance and the purification of the sins of which they were culpable.
People came from all parts to hear him, and they marveled at the discourses proceeding from his childish mouth. All the Israelites were of one accord in saying that the Eternal Spirit dwelt in this child. According to the legend, Issa left his father's house secretly at age thirteen. He joined a merchant caravan and arrived in India "this side of the Sind" sometime during his fourteenth year.
Young Issa, the Blessed One, traveled south to Gujarat, through the country of the five streams and Rajputana, then on to the holy cities of Jagannath and Benares where Brahman priests taught him Vedic scripture.
Issa continued north into the Himalayas and settled in the country of the Gautamides, followers of the Buddha Gautama, where for six years he applied himself to the study of the sacred sutras. He left India in his twenty-sixth year, traveling to Persepolis, to Athens, to Alexandria Issa was twenty-nine when he returned to Israel--and reentered the familiar gospel of St. Luke, chapter three. His baptism by John in the river Jordan.
The legend of St. Issa persists to this day among street people and scholars in holy cities and remote villages throughout India and Tibet. But few have ever seen the Himis manuscript. Perhaps no one ever will.
Chinese Communists invaded Tibet in 1947 and what remains of the Buddhist gonyas and their ancient archives is unknown. But even before the Communist occupation, the written "Life of St. Issa" seems to have disappeared.
Richard Bock describes a visit to a monastery in Calcutta where a man named Prajnananda testifies that he had heard from Abhedananda--"from his own lips"--that the manuscripts did exist at Himis in 1922. A few years later, however, those scrolls were no longer there.
"They have been removed," Prajnananda told Bock, "by whom we do not know."
"Dick," I said, "are they in the Vatican?"
"Notovitch thought so."
"Then why doesn't the Church..."
"You have to go back to the early days of Christianity," Bock interrupted. "They wanted a strong church. They thought they had to control the people. So they treated them like children who don't have the capacity to understand a deeper significance. They created a religion for 'commonplace minds', as Notovitch put it."
"Where is the Jesus they know in the East?" I asked. "Where is the striving, the sense of a personal Christhood, so to speak?"Where is the Jesus they know in the East?" I asked. "Where is the striving, the sense of a personal Christhood, so to speak?"
"Jesus lives in the hearts of the Hindus and the Buddhists," Bock said.
That's where Jesus really lives--in the hearts of us all.
In His name I demand to see those manuscripts. Whatever the Vatican thinks is too much for my mentality-let me decide. Let me know all there is to know. Don't let me lose faith because I've been spoon-fed a diluted doctrine that cannot satisfy the hunger of my soul to know that man, that Master Jesus-my Lord.
Bock, Janet. The Jesus Mystery. Los Angeles: Aura Books, 1980.
Roerich, Nicholas. Altai-Himalaya. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1929.
Roerich, Nicholas. Altai-Himalaya. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1929.
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