The Lost Years of Jesus,according to Buddhist Scripture...

I'm sure the Orthodox Church thought they had that book buried a long time ago," Richard Bock told me as he handed over a copy of The Unknown Life of Christ. His interest in the lost years of Jesus began with this travel diary recorded in 1887 by Nicolas Notovitch, a Russian doctor who journeyed extensively throughout Afghanistan, India, and Tibet.
Nicolas Notovitch
Dick Bock took the same tour in 1975 and produced a documentary film on the lost years. It includes impressive testimony by John C. Trevor, director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project, and a nuclear physicist named Ralph Graeber. But the most convincing evidence comes from a little Buddhist monk who appears halfway through the film.
"Lord Jesus..." The old man shows one particularly shiny tooth as he speaks. His voice is high, like a tiny child.
I remember the impact of seeing a character like that on camera. I looked at his dark face, his saffron robe, and all those grimacing gods with too many heads and arms and legs. And I wondered how such a man could whisper with so much reverence the holy name of Jesus.
"... 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.
Sitting in the lotus posture. I pictured a country where over six hundred million people are still struggling to enter the twentieth century. (They ride painted elephants, don't they?) How can this strange little man possibly know whether Jesus Christ ever set foot in India?
"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.
But what
surprised me most was that this Buddhist acted like he knew Jesus. Not so much historically or theologically. But personally. To hear him speak of "Lord Jesus"-it felt just like Christmas when it suddenly seems appropriate to think of the Mighty God in an intimate and deeply loving sort of way.
I'll never forget Richard Bock's documentary starring the little Buddhist Christian. It changed my image of Jesus-and it began to change my image of myself.
That's what I told Mr. Bock when I went to him for research. He said that he had shared the same experience.
Isn't it true, we agreed, that our outer search for the lost years of Jesus is reflective of something going on within each one of us. When we look to find truth in ourselves, we are encouraged "by coincidence or fate or God," as Bock put it, to search for the truth of Jesus' life.
When I began to read Dick's dog-eared copy of The Unknown Life of Christ, I realized that Notovitch had followed nothing more than a childhood hunch that there was something "majestically colossal" about India. His book tells of the startling discovery of the Issa legend-very much by coincidence, no doubt by fate, and most certainly by the hand of God.
It's a great story. The aristocratic Dr. Notovitch and his coolies. "Sahib, take the gun!"
It reads like an old Geographic, rich in the delightful minutiae of bungalows and centipedes, tinned goods, portly lamas, silence and wonder.
Notovitch wandered through the picturesque passes of Bolan, over the Punjab, down into the arid rocks of Ladak, and, "as curiosity led me," beyond the celebrated Vale of Kashmir into that inviolable secrecy of the Himalayas. Land of the Eternal Snows.
During his investigation of this "marvelous country," Notovitch learned that there existed in the library at Lhasa ancient records of the life of Jesus Christ. In the course of a visit to the great convent Himis, he located a Tibetan translation of the legend and carefully noted in his carnet de voyage over two hundred verses from the curious document known as "The Life of St. Issa."
Leh, Ladak. Altitude 14,500 feet. The great convent Himis is situated in the environs of the town. There Nicolas Notovitch, Nicholas Roerich, and Swami Abhedananda viewed ancient manuscripts decumenting the life of Jesus in India and in Tibet.
The legend recorded by Dr. Notovitch appears to be a collection of eyewitness accounts, a book of tales told by indigenous merchants arriving from Palestine where they had happened to be on business during the controversial execution of a man known as the "king of the Jews." This type of word-of-mouth news service is still popular in the fantastic bazaars of Calcutta and Bombay.
One of the narratives tells of an Israelite by the name of Issa, "blessed by God and the best of all," who was put to death by Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. Another detailed account traces the lineage of Issa and closely parallels Matthew's scrupulous chapter-one genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Notovitch never doubted the authenticity of these chronicles, diligently recorded in the Pali tongue by the Brahmanic and Buddhistic historians of India and Nepal. He determined to publish a translation of the Issa legend in at least one of the European languages and addressed himself enthusiastically to a number of respected ecclesiastics, "begging them to revise my notes" and give him an honest opinion.
Cardinal Rotelli opposed the publication of the legend for the ostensible reason that it would be premature. Meeting in Paris, Rotelli told Notovitch that "the Church suffers already too much from the new wave of atheistical thought." In Rome, Notovitch showed the Himis manuscript to a cardinal who was au mieux with the pope. "What would be the good of publishing this?" said the prelate. "You will make yourself a crowd of enemies. If it be a question of money which interests you..."
The cardinal did not succeed in bribing Dr. Notovitch. But to this day nobody has ever heard of St. Issa. I wondered why. (I would have loved to color Jesus riding a painted elephant.)
There was, as Notovitch put it, a "picturesque situation" at the Himis gonpa the day his caravan arrived. "The doors of the convent opened wide, giving access to some twenty persons disguised as animals, birds, devils, and monsters of every kind." It was a religious mystery play. Culture shock for a Russian orthodox.
"My head was in a whirl," Notovitch confessed. "Young men, dressed as warriors, came out from the temple. They wore monstrous green masks. Making an infernal din with their tambourines and bells, they gyrated round the gods seated on the ground…." The prolonged spectacle was rewarded by an invitation from the chief lama for a drink of "tchang" in honor of the festival.
Notovitch seated himself on a bench opposite the venerable lama. "What signification have all these masks, costumes, bells, and dances-?" he asked diplomatically.
The lama outlined for Notovitch a short history of Tibetan Buddhism, ending with a keen indictment of the priest class, so-called Brahmans, who had made the holy doctrine a matter of commerce. "Our first holy prophets, to whom we give the title of Buddhas, established themselves of old in various countries of the globe," he said. "Their preachings aimed before all at the tyranny of the Brahmans..." Here Notovitch seized an opportunity to broach the subject so near at heart.
The Lost Years of Jesuspart II
During a recent visit that I made to a gonpa," he began, "one of the lamas told me about a certain prophet, or, as you would say, a Buddha of the name of Issa. Can you tell me anything relative to his existence?"
"The name of Issa is held in great respect by the Buddhists," replied the lama. "But little is known about him save by the chief lamas who have read the scrolls relative to his life.
"The documents concerning his existence-brought from India to Nepal and from Nepal to Thibet--are written in the Pali language and are now in Lassa. But a copy in our language-that is, the Thibetan--exists in this convent."
"Would you be committing a sin to recite these copies to a stranger?" Notovitch ventured.
"That which belongs to God belongs also to man," said the lama. "I am doubtful where the papers are to be found. But if ever you visit our gonpa again, I shall be pleased to show them to you."
Dr. Notovitch was doubtful when he would consider returning to the wilderness of Hindustan. He remembered the "carnivorous inhabitants" of Kangra. And Zodgi-La, where his caravan tiptoed across projectures in the rock no more than a meter wide. "My heart stood still more than once during my perilous journey."
But, as fortune would have it, a violent fall from his horse furnished Notovitch with an unexpected excuse for an immediate return to the monastery. His fractured leg was bound in an extemporized splint -"one coolie supporting my leg while another led my horse by the bridle."
The caravan arrived back at Himis that evening.
"Hearing of my accident, everyone came out to meet me," Notovitch recalled. "I was carried with great care to the best of their chambers under the immediate surveillance of the superior, who affectionately pressed the hand which I offered him in gratitude." ( Photo-Durango, Colorado)
The affable lama kept Notovitch entertained throughout the following day with endless stories. At last, "acceding to my earnest entreaties," he brought out two large yellowed volumes and read to him the biography of St. Issa. Notovitch enlisted a member of his party to translate the Tibetan while he carefully noted each verse in the back pages of his journal.

The 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, 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.
When Issa had attained the age of thirteen years, the epoch when an Israelite should take a wife,
The house where his parents earned their living by carrying on a modest trade began to be a place of meeting for rich and noble people, desirous of having for son-in-law the young Issa, already famous for his edifying discourses in the name of the Almighty.
Then it was that Issa left the parental house in secret, departed from Jerusalem, and with the merchants set out towards Sind,
With the object of perfecting himself in the Divine Word and of studying the laws of the great Buddhas.

The Lost Years of Jesuspart III
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.
Criticism of "The Life of St. Issa" recorded by Nicolas Notovitch began soon after its original publication.
A trenchant note from the author "To the Publishers" in the later English translation counters allegations that he never entered Tibet, "that I am an impostor," and that the Himis manuscript never existed at all.
Notovitch argues that the Vatican library contains sixty-three manuscripts in various Oriental languages which refer to the Issa legend-documents brought to Rome by Christian missionaries from India, China, Egypt, and Arabia. He even suggests that one of the missioners may have been the apostle Thomas-yes, "doubting Thomas," the empiricist.
That is possible. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Thomas evangelized India and the territory between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. The apocryphal Acts of Thomas describe him as a carpenter who preached the gospel and performed miracles. He could not have preached in his native Greek to men who spoke only Pali or Sanskrit. So it is possible, even probable that he wrote or edited the historical narratives we now know as "The Life of St. Issa."
Notovitch says that he believes in the authenticity of the Buddhist narrative "because I see nothing that can contradict or invalidate it from a historical or theological point of view."
"Before criticizing my' communication." He suggests, "any learned society can equip a scientific expedition having for its mission the investigation of these manuscripts on the spot."
In 1922, a punditic disciple of Ramakrishna named Swami Abhedananda took Notovitch up on his offer.
Swami Abhedananda
Abhedananda lived in North America for a quarter of a century, traveled extensively, and was acquainted with Thomas Edison, William James, and Dr. Max Muller. He was fascinated by Jesus and skeptical of Notovitch.
Abhedananda journeyed into the arctic region of the Himalayas, determined to find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose the fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir 0 Tibetti, tells of a visit to the Himis gonpa and includes a Bengali translation of two hundred twenty-four verses essentially the same as the Notovitch text. Abhedananda was thereby convinced of the authenticity of the Issa legend.
In 1925, another Russian named Nicholas Roerich arrived at Himis. Roerich, the towering artist, was also a profound philosopher and a distinguished scientist. He apparently saw the same documents as Notovitch and Abhedananda. And he recorded in his own travel diary the same legend of St. Issa.
Nicholas Roerich was a man of strong and definite personality. His writing is characteristically intimate and eloquent.
Speaking of Issa, Roerich quotes legends which have the estimated antiquity of many centuries.

... He passed his time in several ancient cities of India such as Benares. All loved him because Issa dwelt in peace with Vaishas and Shudras whom he instructed and helped. But the Brahmins and Kshatriyas told him that Brahma forbade those to approach who were created out of his womb and feet. The Vaishas were allowed to listen to the Vedas only on holidays and the Shudras were forbidden not only to be present at the reading of the Vedas, but could not even look at them. (portrait-Nicholas Roerich- above)

Issa said that man had filled the temples with his abominations. In order to pay homage to metals and stones, man sacrificed his fellows in whom dwells a spark of the Supreme Spirit. Man demeans those who labor by the sweat of their brows, in order to gain the good will of the sluggard who sits at the lavishly set board. But they who deprive their brothers of the common blessing shall be themselves stripped of it.
Vaishas and Shudras were struck with astonishment and asked what they could perform. Issa bade them "Worship not the idols. Do not consider yourself first. Do not humiliate your neighbor. Help the poor. Sustain the feeble. Do evil to no one. Do not covet that which you do not possess and which is possessed by others."
Many, learning of such words, decided to kill Issa. But Issa, forewarned, departed from this place by night.
Afterward, Issa went into Nepal and into the Himalayan mountains ....
"Well, perform for us a miracle," demanded the servitors of the Temple. Then Issa replied to them: "Miracles made their appearance from the very day when the world was created. He who cannot behold them is deprived of the greatest gift of life. But woe to you, enemies of men, woe unto you, if you await that He should attest his power by miracle."
Issa taught that men should not strive to behold the Eternal Spirit with one's own eyes but to feel it with the heart, and to become a pure and worthy soul....
"Not only shall you not make human offerings, but you must not slaughter animals, because all is given for the use of man. Do not steal the goods of others, because that would be usurpation from your near one. Do not cheat, that you may in turn not be cheated ....
"Beware, ye, who divert men from the true path and who fill the people with superstitions and prejudices, who blind the vision of the seeing ones, and who preach subservience to material things. "...
Then Pilate, ruler of Jerusalem, gave orders to lay hands upon the preacher Issa and to deliver him to the judges, without however, arousing the displeasure of the people.
But Issa taught: "Do not seek straight paths in darkness, possessed by fear. But gather force and support each other. He who supports his neighbor strengthens himself
"I tried to revive the laws of Moses in the hearts of the people. And I say unto you that you do not understand their true meaning because they do not teach revenge but forgiveness. But the meaning of these laws is distorted."
Then the ruler sent to Issa his disguised servants that they should watch his actions and report to him about his words to the people.
"Thou just man, "said the disguised servant of the ruler of Jerusalem approaching Issa, "Teach us, should we fulfill the will of Caesar or await the approaching deliverance?"
But Issa, recognizing the disguised servants, said, "I did not foretell unto you that you would be delivered from Caesar; but I said that the soul which was immersed in sin would be delivered from sin."
At this time, an old woman approached the crowd, but was pushed back. Then Issa said, "Reverence Woman, mother of the universe,' in her lies the truth of creation. She is the foundation of all that is good and beautiful. She is the source of life and death. Upon her depends the existence of man, because she is the sustenance of his labors. She gives birth to you in travail, she watches over your growth. Bless her. Honor her. Defend her. Love your wives and honor them, because tomorrow they shall be mothers, and later-progenitors of a whole race. Their love ennobles man, soothes the embittered heart and tames the beast. Wife and mother-they are the adornments of the universe."
"As light divides itself from darkness, so does woman possess the gift to divide in man good intent from the thought of evil. Your best thoughts must belong to woman. Gather from them your moral strength, which you must possess to sustain your near ones. Do not humiliate her, for therein you will humiliate yourselves. And all which you will do to mother, to wife, to widow or to another woman in sorrow-that shall you also do for the Spirit."
So taught Issa; but the ruler Pilate ordered one of his servants to make accusation against him.
Said Issa: "Not far hence is the time when by the Highest Will the people will become purified and united into one family."
And then turning to the ruler, he said, "Why demean thy dignity and teach thy subordinates to live in deceit when even without this thou couldst also have had the means of accusing an innocent one?"
From another version of the legend, Roerich quotes fragments of thought and evidence of the miraculous.
Near Lhasa was a temple of teaching with a wealth of manuscripts. Jesus was to acquaint himself with them. Meng-ste, a great sage of all the East, was in this temple.
Finally Jesus reached a mountain pass and in the chief city of Ladak, Leh, he was joyously accepted by monks and people of the lower class .... And Jesus taught in the monasteries and in the bazaars (the market places); wherever the simple people gathered--there he taught.
Not far from this place lived a woman whose son had died and she brought him to Jesus. And in the presence of a multitude, Jesus laid his hand on the child, and the child rose healed. And many brought their children and Jesus laid his hands upon them, healing them.
Among the Ladakis, Jesus passed many days, teaching them. And they loved him and when the time of his departure came they sorrowed as children.
Nicholas Roerich's Central Asiatic Expedition lasted four and a half years. In that time he traveled from Sikkim through the Punjab and into Kashmir, Ladak, Karakorum, Khotan, and Irtysh, then over the Altai Mountains and through the Oyrot region into Mongolia, Central Gobi, Kansu, and Tibet. "We learned how widespread are the legends about Issa," he writes. "The sermons related in them, of unity, of the significance of woman and all the indications about Buddhism, are so remarkably timely for us."
Although Roerich was familiar with "The Life of St. Issa" recorded by Nicolas Notovitch thirty-five years before, "the local people know nothing of any published book," he says. Yet "they know the legend and with deep reverence they speak of Issa....
"It is significant to hear a local inhabitant, a Hindu, relate how Issa preached beside a small pool near the bazaar under a great tree, which now no longer exists. In such purely physical indications you may see how seriously this subject is regarded."
I agree with a sensitive Hindu who told Nicholas Roerich that "it is difficult to understand why the wandering of Issa by caravan path into India and into the region now occupied by Tibet should be so vehemently denied."
What's wrong with my children knowing that Jesus went to school, too? What's wrong with explaining to me that my Exemplar pursued a tough inner discipline? That he studied the Upanishads, perhaps even Plato and Pythagoras. He was born without purse or pedigree. He worked hard within the free enterprise of individual integrity.

Jesus Christ earned his grace and truth in the sense that he, like all of us, had to choose to externalize the Within so that the son of man might be the transparency for the Son of God. More than ever before I now know that because he lived I can overcome.
I know him in his holy innocent, bright and obedient boyhood. I know him in his strong, searching youth engaged in the Quest-finding and becoming the Teacher and the teaching as a young adult. I know him in the one fully Self-realized as the Word incarnate, the Healer, the Fiery Baptizer and the One Sent to sacrifice for the many.
Because in all of these Jesus is my example, I, too, will freely work the works of Him that sent me.

The Lost Years of Jesuspart IV
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?"
"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.