Svyatoslav Dubyanskiy
Sathya Sai Baba. Supernatural Experiences and Divine Transformation. Book Three
14. Sathya Sai Baba on the Life of Jesus Christ in India
Sathya Sai Baba spoke quite a lot about the life and spiritual path of Jesus Christ. He delivered numerous lectures about Jesus Christ that were completely unusual and unique, and they often shared information that cannot be gleaned from the canonical Gospel texts.
If you perceive Sathya Sai Baba as an ordinary person, then the question arises: how can he know all the secret details of the life of Jesus Christ and the features of his spiritual path? However, if you realize that Sathya Sai Baba is a divine incarnation, then his stories about the inner spiritual quest of Jesus Christ and his life path become precious.
The sayings of Sathya Sai Baba about the life, teachings and spiritual path of Jesus Christ are an invaluable treasure. In fact, this is the most reliable source of information about the most hidden details of the inner world of Jesus.
Throughout his life, Sathya Sai Baba gave public lectures and communicated with individuals. His books contain his lectures given to university students and devotees from around the world. The philosophical heritage of Sathya Sai Baba includes dozens of volumes. In his lectures, he covered a variety of topics; in particular, he spoke often about life and the philosophical heritage of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ preached the unity of all mankind – love for one's neighbor, direct communication between man and God, and the original unity of the soul with God. Jesus Christ taught his disciples that true worship of God takes place in the depths of the spiritual heart.
Every year in the ashram on December 25th, Christmas was celebrated in Western style. In Greek Orthodox Christianity, Christmas is celebrated on January 7th. Since Christians from Europe and America began to arrive much earlier than the Greeks and Russians, the tradition of celebrating Christmas in the Western style was established in the ashram.
During the celebration of Christmas, Sathya Sai Baba delivered the most interesting lectures, which were dedicated to Jesus Christ. During his long life, he left a vast amount of invaluable information on this topic.
Sathya Sai Baba said that in the Tibetan manuscripts, which are kept in the monasteries of the Himalayas, there is information that Jesus Christ spent several years in the northern Himalayas in Kashmir. In those days, Jesus was called Issa, which means the Lord of all living beings.
The fact that Sathya Sai Baba confirmed the version that Jesus Christ lived and studied in the Himalayas is extremely important for a deeper understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ and his world divine mission. These facts lead us to the realization that Christianity has not only Biblical roots, but to a great extent came out of Vedic philosophy and Buddhist moral principles.
Where did Sathya Sai Baba get his information about Jesus Christ from? Sometimes he spoke in detail about Jesus, as if he himself had witnessed all the events of the distant past. Sathya Sai Baba is an Avatar, and therefore all, even the most hidden events of the past, present, and future are open to his all-pervading consciousness.
Over the years, during the Christmas lectures, Sathya Sai Baba told several stories about how, after the death of his earthly father, Joseph, the teenage Jesus worked for some time as a carpenter. Sathya Sai Baba said that Joseph died when Jesus was a teenager. At an early age, Jesus worked as a carpenter in and around Nazareth. Because of his spiritual quest he made his journey to India.
Sathya Sai Baba repeatedly mentioned the high spiritual level of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Several times, Sathya Sai Baba touchingly shared about Mary’s dedication to the spiritual education of her son, and that as young man, when Jesus decided to leave home and go to India for spiritual education, he received the blessing of his mother.
Nowadays, quite a few spiritual seekers mistakenly believe that family responsibilities are an illusion thinking instead that it is possible to engage in the practice of yoga and meditation, but at the same time neglect their family duties.
Sathya Sai Baba spoke about the fallacy of such a point of view and cited, as an example, the relationship of Jesus Christ with his mother. Mary showed deep concern for the spiritual development of her son and was active in encouraging it.
15. From an early age, Jesus walked the spiritual path
Sathya Sai Baba, with the help of his clairvoyance, could look into the details of the life of any person and learn about every event in history, even if it happened a long time ago. Clairvoyance can be demonstrated by saints and healers; however, it must be understood that their capabilities are limited, but this did not apply to the capabilities of the Avatar.
Sathya Sai Baba's stories about the life of Jesus Christ are amazing with their incredible details. He told stories about Jesus’ life as a teenager. One such story was set in Nazareth when Jesus lived with his mother, brothers and sisters. By this time, his earthly father, Joseph, had already died.
According to the story of Sathya Sai Baba, the teenage Jesus took himself away to a nearby hill. His mother, Mary, soon became worried about the long absence of her son and began to look for him. Eventually, she found him at the top of the hill, sitting on the ground, in a state of deep meditation. He practiced solitary meditation while on the hill for 12 days.
This is a truly amazing story that describes the mysterious details of the inner world of Jesus Christ. We know, at the age of 30, Jesus Christ received an initiation baptism, from his cousin, John the Baptist. After this baptism, he retired to the desert for 40 days in order to practice meditation and prayer. According to information from Sathya Sai Baba, Jesus Christ began to practice solitary meditations and prayers as a teenager.
Sathya Sai Baba stressed that Jesus Christ came into this world with a special divine mission. He was a unique personality, however, Sathya Sai Baba said that Jesus Christ was not born perfect right away but went through the path of spiritual development before fully realizing his oneness with God.
Sathya Sai Baba said that Jesus Christ was Karana Janma, which in Sanskrit means, "born with a special divine mission." There are several excellent lectures by Sathya Sai Baba about this. He said that Jesus Christ, as a young man, practiced many days of meditation in a secluded area on the outskirts of Nazareth.
Sathya Sai Baba said that Jesus Christ went through several stages in his spiritual quest. From a very early age, he followed a spiritual path – the essence of which was the contemplation of the one divine consciousness and the search for God in the depths of his heart.
Nowadays, quite a few spiritual seekers naively assume there is no need to practice any yoga techniques and meditation. Many people mistakenly think that it is enough to attend a few lectures and learn the great teachings of Vedic philosophy, and then, in some incomprehensible way, instant enlightenment should occur.
Using the example of Jesus Christ, Sathya Sai Baba shows that even the greatest souls who came into this world with a special spiritual mission must go through very serious and intense spiritual practices in order to know the truth.
16. Jesus Christ in India – a history of enlightenment
The canonical gospels give few details about the childhood years of Jesus Christ. They describe in more detail the amazing story of his birth and then give a couple of stories about Jesus Christ’s adolescence, after which there is a void in the narrative. What did Jesus Christ do between the ages of 15 and 30? There is no information about this in the canonical Gospel texts.
Perhaps Jesus Christ did not consider it necessary to talk in detail about exactly where he lived and studied for many years. Perhaps for the early Christians this was not essential information, and perhaps those who wrote the Gospel texts quite consciously hid this information.
For modern people, learning as much as possible about the life of Jesus Christ is very important because the more we know about his life, the more we can understand his spiritual message. Most likely, Jesus Christ told his closest disciples exactly what he did and where he lived in the period of those unrecorded years.
Perhaps the priceless information about his life in India was not included in the canonical Gospels because this information was not very clear to some of his students and followers. The first generation of Christians came from a Jewish background, and subsequent generations of Christians consisted primarily of Greeks and Syrians.
The information that Jesus Christ studied in distant India would hardly please and be understood by the early Christians. Perhaps the evangelists considered it more correct to remain silent about these mysterious years in the life of their teacher.
At the end of the 19th century, a Russian of Jewish origin, Nikolai Notovich (1858-1916) became one of the first to openly speak about the life of Jesus Christ in India. Notovich was born into a Jewish family, but later decided to convert to Orthodox Christianity. At the end of the 19th century, Notovitch went to India in order to try to discover the mystery of Jesus Christ. He visited distant monasteries, temples, and ashrams. He managed to visit different parts of the Himalayas, including Kashmir.
Why did Notovitch go to India in search of information about Jesus Christ? Did he have preliminary information that Jesus Christ lived and studied in India prior to his trip? There are suggestions that such knowledge could exist in the Theosophical Society founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as well as in some esoteric societies of Western Europe.
It is quite possible that Notovitch did not just go on this expedition but was sent by "someone" to search for important information about the mysterious years of the life of Jesus Christ in India. He confidently headed for India, as if he already knew what to look for and where to find it.
During his expedition to northern India, Notovitch interacted with Hindu and Buddhist teachers. His goal was to find evidence of Jesus Christ in India.
As a result of his research, Nikolai Notovitch was able to find written evidence that Jesus Christ had studied in the Vedic and Buddhist ashrams of Kashmir. Notovitch was shown the original of an ancient text that described the life of Jesus Christ in India. The researcher could not remove the original document from the Himalayan monastery; nevertheless, he was shown the text and was allowed to make copies of some chapters.
Returning to Russia, Nikolai Notovitch wrote a famous book called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. It was impossible to publish the book in Russia, so he published it in France.
Returning to Russia, Nikolai Notovitch was immediately arrested. Two years later, he was released from prison. In Russia, he was banned from publishing books, after which Notovitch left the Russian Empire and moved to Europe.
In Europe, Nikolai Notovitch met with several hierarchs of the Catholic Church, in particular with Cardinal Rotelli. Representatives of the Catholic Church also asked Notovitch never to publish materials about the life of Jesus Christ in India.
Interestingly, the representatives of the Catholic Church were not surprised by the very facts presented in Notovitch's book. The subject of their concern was only the disclosure of secrets. It is a known fact that the Catholic Church offered a large sum of money to Nikolai Notovitch so that he would refrain from further publication. It is difficult to say whether Notovitch agreed to accept the money, but subsequently he refrained from active public activity.
One of the remarkable Indian spiritual teachers of the early twentieth century, Swami Abhedananda (1866 – 1939), having read the materials of Nikolai Notovitch, was shocked by the information about the life of Jesus Christ in the Himalayas, and he decided to personally verify the authenticity of this amazing information.
Swami Abhedananda was a Hindu expert in the philosophy of Vedanta. He had no personal interest in confirming or refuting this version. All he wanted was to know what the truth was.
In the early 1920s, Swami Abhedananda organized an expedition to northern India to Kashmir. He confirmed he was able to personally see an ancient text describing the life of Jesus Christ in India. It was the same text that Nikolai Notovitch had held in his hands thirty years before.
In the late 1920s, Swami Abhedananda published his materials under the title Journey to Kashmir and Tibet. Swami Abhedananda was also unable to obtain the original text – all he testified was that he held the ancient manuscript in his hands.
17. Spiritual Masters about the life of Jesus Christ in India
Nicholas Roerich (1874 – 1947), the greatest Russian mystic, artist, philosopher, and explorer of the East, referring to materials he received from a variety of sources, said that Jesus Christ underwent spiritual training in the ashrams of India.
Nicholas Roerich was initiated into a number of Western and Eastern mystical orders. He was a close student of the Mahatmas, the high spiritual teachers of the Himalayas, and also studied with the Tibetan Lamas.
In the 1920s, Nicholas Roerich made several expeditions to India, Tibet, Mongolia, Central Asia, and Altai. For about thirty years he lived in the Himalayas, in a place called Kulu Manali. He published some materials about his eastern expeditions, in which he mentioned he came into contact with numerous testimonies that Jesus Christ traveled through India and the Himalayas, where at that time he was called Issa.
Nicholas Roerich did not hide the fact he received information about the life of Jesus Christ in India not only from the Himalayan teachers, but also from the secret esoteric societies of the West.
Traveling through the places of power of the East, Roerich came into contact with a large number of legends that Jesus Christ lived and studied in Kashmir. It is difficult to say, perhaps the teachers with whom Roerich met in the Himalayas provided him with the original manuscript. It is only known that Roerich preferred only to refer to the existence of information about the life of Jesus Christ in India, but never provided the general public with more accurate evidence.
Unique information about the life of Jesus Christ in India was also confirmed by Yogananda (1893 – 1952), the greatest teacher of Kriya Yoga. In his lectures and commentaries on the New Testament, Yogananda shared many details about the life of Jesus Christ in India.
According to Yogananda's information, Jesus Christ studied at several mountain ashrams in Kashmir and eastern India, in the holy city of Puri, where one of the most important temples of Krishna, called Jaganath, is located. At the time of Jesus Christ, Buddhism was actively developing in India and numerous ashrams of the Vedic tradition continued to exist in parallel.
Yogananda did not refer to the fact that he saw the ancient texts; rather, he based his understanding on his inner experience of clairvoyance, as well as on the information he received from high teachers from the Himalayas. Yogananda said that Jesus Christ studied the practices of Kriya Yoga in the Himalayas and was a member of the inner circle of disciples of the Himalayan Masters.
Of course, for some, Yogananda's clairvoyance may not be a convincing proof of the truth of the information, but for me it is quite a convincing reason to recognize this information as genuine.
18. Yogi Ramaiah about the life of Jesus Christ in India
The unique information about the life of Jesus Christ in India was also confirmed by my teacher of Kriya Yoga, Yogi Ramaiah (1923 – 2006), with whom I studied for many years. He was a direct student of Mahavatar Babaji, an immortal teacher from the Himalayas. I wrote in more detail about the life of Yogi Ramaiah in my books: Babaji – Eternal Consciousness in an Immortal Body and Babaji – the Mystery of Divine Potential.
Yogi Ramaiah spoke not only about the fact that Jesus Christ studied in India, but also revealed details about who exactly he studied with. Yogi Ramaiah said Jesus Christ was a close disciple of Mahavatar Babaji.
In India, Jesus Christ was called Issa. In some cases, this name is pronounced as Ishsha. This name comes from the Sanskrit word Ishvara, which means the supreme Lord.
Yogi Ramaiah received information about Jesus Christ and his spiritual practices in India from his great Teacher, Mahavatar Babaji. Once I tried to find out from Yogi Ramaiah if he had seen a mysterious manuscript with the story of the life of Jesus Christ in the Himalayas. In answer to my question, Yogi Ramaiah replied he had not seen this text and did not even try to look for it, because he heard all the information about the life and practices of Jesus Christ in India directly from the immortal Mahavatar Babaji.
Jesus Christ was trained by Mahavatar Babaji in the practices of Kriya Yoga. Returning to Palestine, he taught some of his students these great meditation practices. Various elements of Kriya Yoga were practiced in the early Christian communities by the Gnostics.
The worldview of Jesus Christ was strongly influenced by Vedic philosophy and the moral foundations of Buddhism. Of course, Jesus Christ was born in a Jewish environment and his preaching was subsequently based on Biblical terminology, but the essence of his teaching clearly points to the Vedic and Buddhist tradition.
The question may arise as to how in those ancient times could Jesus Christ get to distant India? In that distant era, not only numerous caravans with goods went along the Silk Road, but also manuscripts were transported. Philosophers and mystics traveled with the help of the well-functioning system of the Silk Road.
People living in different parts of the ancient world could exchange not only goods, but also knowledge. No one is surprised that at the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, three Magi with a retinue came from Persia in order to greet the divine child. Why do people doubt the possibility of Jesus Christ traveling to India?
The importance of the information that Jesus Christ studied in India lies in the fact that the main source of the teachings of Jesus Christ was precisely the Vedic tradition. This impressive discovery includes the realization that Christianity, first of all, has Vedic roots.
The materials presented in the previous chapters indicate that Sathya Sai Baba was far from being the first to proclaim the truth about the life of Jesus Christ in India. Sathya Sai Baba confirmed what was already known a hundred years before him and added numerous important details about the inner path and spiritual quest of Jesus Christ.
19. Spiritual Path of Jesus Christ
Sathya Sai Baba said that Jesus Christ went through the path of intensive meditation and contemplation practices before he gained perfect wisdom. As a result of the practice of meditation, Jesus Christ gradually drew closer to God. Finally, he was able to realize that he was the Son of God. After that, he continued to strive for the knowledge of God even more intensely and gained the highest experience of oneness with God.
In order to advance deeply in the process of knowledge of God, Jesus Christ went on a distant pilgrimage to the Himalayas. There he practiced meditation, constantly thinking about God.
Sathya Sai Baba said that Jesus Christ practiced in a remote part of the Himalayas for several years. During this period of his life, Jesus Christ practiced various spiritual techniques. Finally, he fully felt the presence of his Heavenly Father's divine love. Jesus Christ realized that God is the original nature of the soul. Then he was able to proclaim: "I and My Heavenly Father are One." This is how Sathya Sai Baba described the spiritual path of Jesus Christ.
In the information that Sathya Sai Baba reports, it is important to note several fundamental points. First of all, again and again, he confirms the fact that Jesus Christ spent almost half of his life in India, including the Himalayas.
From the story told by Sathya Sai Baba, we learn many astonishing details; in particular, that Jesus Christ practiced for five long years in seclusion in the Himalayas. Perhaps during this period, he was in some cave, or in one of the ashrams. Such solitary retreats are a traditional form of spiritual practice for Himalayan yogis. Practitioners of various traditions retire to small ashrams or caves in order to immerse themselves in contemplation and study sacred texts in depth.
Speaking about the spiritual path of Jesus Christ, Sathya Sai Baba reminds us that even the greatest souls must go through the path of spiritual practices before they can realize their inner divine potentials.
In one of his lectures, Sathya Sai Baba said that after gaining in the Himalayas the experience of oneness with God, Jesus Christ received the presence of the Holy Spirit. After that, he decided to return from India back to the west, to Palestine. All the years spent in India, Jesus Christ lived almost alone, communicating with a narrow circle of Teachers and Yogis. Finally, it was time for him to begin teaching disciples. Jesus Christ returned to Palestine to show his disciples and followers the way of salvation.
We know that Jesus Christ was taught by superior teachers. In his open lectures, Sathya Sai Baba never gave the exact names of those Gurus who taught Jesus Christ, and he has not yet revealed this secret.
