# Jesus in India - Complete Documentary - Edward T Martin ## Edward T. Martin **Movie:** 2008 - A Paul Davids Film - Yellow Hat Productions http://www.jesus-in-india-the-movie.com/html/edmartin.html **Book:** King of Travelers: Jesus' Lost Years in India - 2008-09-10 https://www.amazon.com/King-Travelers-Jesus-Years-India/dp/0981924433 --- Pagels: > It's certainly a possibility that the teachings of Jesus are closer or sound closer to what we think of as Indian teachings. One can't assume that the ancient world was a simple one. It was a very cosmopolitan one. There was a great deal of travel. > In 1945, an amazing discovery was made in Upper Egypt that's changed the way we understand the early Christian movement. A Bedouin farmer named Muhammad Ali discovered, when he was digging for fertilizer, a six-foot jar in which he found 13 bound books in tooled gazelle leather, and they turned out to be a collection of early Christian writings, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and over 50 other early writings attributed to Jesus and his disciples. > So it's an enormous find of early Christian writings, and it's shown us for the first time how remarkably diverse the early Christian movement actually was. We think that the gospels that were found were hidden there to protect them from the order of the Archbishop of Alexandria, who had sent out an order in the year 367 saying that the monks should destroy what he called secret illegitimate books. And these were sacred books that the Archbishop didn't like. He told them that they could keep the 27 books that he listed, and that is actually our first list of what we call the New Testament. Tambasco: > There's a significant group that think that there are some of those texts at Nag Hammadi that are actually written earlier than the gospels and would give us ability, at least, to try to get back closer to the Jesus of history. People center especially on a book called the Gospel of Thomas. Pagels: > It's certainly possible, as some people say that Jesus had traveled to India. I happen to think it's not very likely for a village rabbi. One can't rule it as a possibility, because we just don't know. Martin: Imagine you're a detective. An unusual case comes across your desk. It isn't exactly a case of a missing identity or a missing person. It's a missing background, some lost years, and the particulars are sparse. Date of birth unknown, exact year of birth also unknown, sometime between 8 and 4 BC. Place of birth disputed, thought to be Bethlehem. All human history divided by his birth, BC, AD. This is no small case, an investigation into the past of one of the most influential persons. in history. By this time you realize what you might be getting into, but it doesn't add up. Why a file on Jesus? You read on. Adventurous early life, fled with parents to Egypt after father had a dream, returned to Nazareth an unspecified number of years later, was baptized by a cousin, John, traveled extensively with a band of 12 disciples for about three years, preached, healed the sick, raised the dead, orthodox position, rose from the dead on the third day, taught disciples 40 days, then disappeared from their sight in a cloud, ascended into heaven, sat on the right hand of God. The file, it is full of unanswered questions. No record of his existence made during his life. If made, did not survive. Nothing he may have written survived either. No record of what he looked like, height, weight, color of hair or eyes. Few details about his childhood. Little information about his family and home life. No record of any kind about where he was or what he was doing from age 12 to 30, a period called the lost years of Jesus. And I would ask the Bible school teachers, well, what about the missing time in the life of Jesus from the age of 12 to the age of 30? What was he doing? Was he working with Joseph? Was he making tables and chairs? Why don't they tell us? I was a student at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech communications and a minor in secondary education. I got my teaching certification. Most of my adult life, I taught English as a second language, ESL, and I taught ESL in many different foreign countries, including in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan. This is the first newspaper article that I wrote about India. This was after my first trip to India, when I was in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan. Here's a paragraph in the article concerning Kashmir and a mention about Jesus in India. And the paragraph says, > Also while in Kashmir, I met a newspaper editor who had written a book, "Christ in Kashmir." From his researches, he believes that Jesus of Nazareth visited India in his youth. He cites numerous historical records dating back 2,000 years to prove his point. And just that short paragraph got me into a lot of trouble at that time. People in my hometown of Lampasas criticized me and just basically thought that it was stirring up trouble to even look at any evidence about Jesus in India. Though I was born here and raised here, I never have felt that I belonged here. My parents had a strong fundamentalist religious conviction. My mother tended to be more narrow and strict about her fundamentalist Christian viewpoints, and my dad was more tolerant and open-minded. And my dad basically said, Let's leave the judging up to God. My parents, my brother and I, we went to church every time the doors were open: Sunday morning for Bible school and worship service, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening. We were taught in the fundamentalist Christian church here that you either were going to obey God, or if you did not obey, you were going to be damned at the last judgment, condemned by God and damned, sent to hell to burn and suffer for all of eternity. Witcher: > Well, the New Testament and the Old Testament are both the inspired word of God, and yes, we believe that they are. Fisher: > Well, we're, I guess you'd say, fundamental as far as Scripture is concerned. We believe every word of it, yes. Storm: > It was understood we were not supposed to dance, we weren't supposed to drink. Gambling was a no-no. I've known Ed Martin for, I guess, 50 years, since he was a little boy, certainly. I'm not sure how old Ed is. but I've known him, I guess, all his life. Ed has always been out there on the edge. The difference between being a visionary and being crazy is a very small difference sometimes. None of us know. None of us know what that difference is. Ed scraps for reality and mine are not the same thing. Witcher: > He has always wandered around, and he enjoys traveling. He just never has settled down, and that's all right if that's what he wants to do. But that's not what the rest of us do, of course. That's different, is what I'm saying. (choir) Fisher: > "How sweet, how heavenly is the sight when those that love the Lord, and ease their air of heaven refine, his blood and flow with blood." Martin: I really enjoyed Bible studies, and I remember on Sunday mornings where we would come to the place in the life of Jesus, where Jesus was 12 years old. It was the Feast of the Passover, and Jesus had disappeared from his parents, and Mary and Joseph had gone looking for Jesus, and they found Jesus with the learned Jewish priests, the learned doctors of the law, and Jesus, as we know, was giving very scholarly, very spiritual, and profound answers to their most difficult questions. And after that, we have in the Gospel of Luke the one transitional verse, > that Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. And then Jesus was 30 years old. He was at the River Jordan, and he was being baptized by John the Baptist. I would ask my Sunday school teachers, well, what happened during that 18 years that was covered by just one verse? Where was Jesus from that time, the age of 12 years old to the age of 30? And the Bible school teachers would just basically say, well, God does not want us to know about that. Narrator (The Gospel of Luke - Ch.2 and 3): > And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age. Mitchell: > It's frequently referred to as the hidden years, and I think mainstream Christian churches have assumed that he was growing up in Palestine. He was being raised by his mother Mary and by Joseph. Fisher: > I would have to say that he was with Joseph and Mary, growing up as boys grow up, probably mischievous at times. I don't see him as being anything other than just an normal human being, because that's the form he took. Witcher: > Makes no difference where Jesus was. After his 12th birthday, till he went to the wedding feast and changed water into wine, what would it change? I can think of nothing. Martin: People have said, How could Jesus have traveled to India? What road, what route was available? And the answer is the most famous trade route in the world, the Silk Road. The Silk Road was an ancient caravan route between China and the Mediterranean. And the distance, approximately the distance, say from the port of Acre, ancient port of Acre on the coast of Israel, all the way across to, let's say, Srinagar in Kashmir. The ancient route could be covered in about one year, walking in about ten miles a day. You could cover a distance of around 4,000 miles from Israel to India in about one year. Krishnamurti made the quote that > whenever a human being sets out to find the real truth about something, he or she... must arm himself with great courage because he may not find what he wants to find. Fleishman: > When a person becomes possessed by the need to answer a single question, for example, the question of where Jesus was in those years where there's no description of him in the New Testament, the harnessing of basic human curiosity is involved. We are curious, and it's difficult for the outside observer to know whether a person is obsessed or inspired. > Socrates said, "I am commanded by my God to go around and ask my fellow Greeks difficult questions. Even if you will kill me for doing so, I will not stop asking difficult questions". Martin: I lost a number of friends through the years concerning this material. I gave up my house, sold my house to have my book published. I told some of my relatives, and they just kind of scoffed at the concept and did not want to hear any more about it. And of course, if we're going to talk about rejection, how many people rejected Jesus when Jesus was living? How many people listened to his message and his, Oh, what a troublemaker. Oh, that Jesus, troublemaker. Like that. So, what's wrong with being rejected? I mean, sure. I think the rejection does not deal so much with the individual being rejected, but it deals more with the rejector. --- Chidananda: > I'm Brother Chidananda. I'm a monk of Self-Realization Fellowship and disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. I've been a monk in SRF for about 26 years, and for many of those years, most of those years, my service in Self-Realization Fellowship has been with our publications area, assisting with the editing and publication of the books by Paramahansa Yogananda. > Here is this individual who is the focal point of Western history, and yet a huge block of time in the life of this individual, there's absolute silence in the Gospels about that. We have the beautiful story of his birth and the visit of the three wise men, and then a little account of him with his parents visiting the temple in Jerusalem. Takes him up to about the time when he was 12, 13, just a young man. And then there's a curtain of silence that just comes down, boom, and nothing. Nothing for 18 years. > We have the story in the Gospel shortly after the birth of Jesus where the Gospel describes the visit of the wise men of the East, who came to honor the birth of the Christ, the birth of Jesus, with gold and frankincense and myrrh. And again, the Gospel is very sketchy about who these individuals were and where they came from. > You know, traditionally now we call them the three kings, you know, We Three Kings of Orient Are. Well, there's no mention in the Bible of them being kings. There's no mention of where they came from. There's just this word, magi, meaning wise men from the East. > Now, Paramahansa Yogananda said that actually those three wise men were great sages, great rishis who had traveled from India. > From the very beginning of Jesus's birth, we have this very significant connection with the spiritual traditions of India. Again, the spiritual homeland, the spiritual lighthouse of humanity of ancient times. Mitchell: > From the word itself, Magus, they were some kind of astrologers from the East. The fact that they were fascinated by a star in the story, it seems to be the way Matthew wants to portray them, that they are astrologers. Exactly where they come from, he does not tell us, and I don't think we can know that. Chidananda: > Paramahansa Yogananda said that Jesus himself, when he got to be about 12 or 13 years old, joined up with one of the common trade caravans that were constantly going back and forth from Palestine and traveled to India, where he spent many years both in India and also in Nepal and Tibet, responding, you might say, to that connection that was established between him and these great sages of India at the time of his birth. Hesemann: > There have been a lot of speculations where they come from. The name Magi and the original depictions of them in the art of the catacombs from the third century depict them as Persian. prophet of the sixth century B.C., predicted the coming of the Messiah, and they expected him. --- Martin: I was not at first trying to step on any toes or find any hot potatoes. I was not trying to find anything controversial. I just wanted to answer the question in my own mind: where was Jesus during the missing years? What was he doing? I just wanted to know. Hesemann: > Of course, as a historian, you want to know what happened, but we have no reason to believe that he really was in India. Most probably he lived in Nazareth and learned carpentry, and at the same time prepared through prayer, through meditation, through contemplation, through what we call the Nazarate. > The Nazarate was a complete dedication of your life to God. And in included, but you were not allowed to touch your beard or your hair with a scissor, and you lived as a celibate. That's why Jesus, even when he started preaching around thirty, was not married. He did not have to go to India to learn this, but he could learn it among his fellow Jews. Adlerstein: > Jesus was born to a Jewish family. His teachers were Jewish. His practice was Jewish. His home was far more reliably kosher than that of 98 percent of American Jews today. Everything else about the story, Judaism really does not have an opinion. > The Jews were expecting in the time of Jesus, a Messiah, not necessarily a prophet. The Messiah was one who was going to, as I said, lead the battles, bring the oppression to an end, return Jews from exile, reestablish Jewish monarchy, and then gradually bring the world around, not to a Jewish message, but to a monotheistic message of ushering in an era of peace. --- Martin: I was on two quests, really. The first was a personal one, the quest to find out what I believed about my faith and why. The second one was maybe like some of those Texas tales of the search for missing gold or the search for the Holy Grail. I was serving in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, and after work one day I went over to the American Embassy annex, where they had a small bar for Americans and other foreigners. The bartender at the American Embassy annex was a Pakistani Christian, and Pakistani Christians are required to take Christian names, So the bartender, his name was Mr. Wilson. I asked Mr. Wilson about a beer that I saw behind the bar that day, and the name on the beer was Murrree, and so I said to him, That beer over there, Murrree beer. And he said, Yes, it's a Pakistani beer. And I said, I guess it's named after an Englishman named Murray. He said, No, sahib, it is named after Mary. I said, Oh, I see. Well, Mary was an English woman. And he said, No, sahib, Mary is Mother of Jesus. And I said, Pakistan is mostly a Muslim country. Why would a Muslim country name a beer after the Mother of Jesus? He said, Because of her tomb, her grave. She is buried in that place. And I said— Mary, the mother of Jesus, is buried in northern Pakistan. He said, Most assuredly, sir, that is exactly correct. Mother Mary of Jesus is buried at Murree in northern Pakistan. And I had to think about that a while, and I had another beer. Mr. Wilson also told me that some people in his part of the world do not believe that Jesus actually died on the cross. They think he survived the crucifixion, which could be one possible explanation for the post-crucifixion sightings of him by the disciples. They think he then went back to India, taking his mother Mary with him, and she died along the way, thus explaining why there is a tomb for Mary in Pakistan. Olsson: > She died on the old Silk Road before they made it to the final leg of the journey in Kashmir, and that's according to the legends on the old Silk Road. It was the British who first knocked it down to build a fort, because it did have such incredible views. They wanted this land to build this fort, and they didn't believe, like all Christians, they didn't believe this could possibly be Mother Mary's grave, so they tore it down. > The local residents were very frightened of the desecration, and they would sneak down in the mountain and pick up the rocks and bring them back up there and lay them very close to where her grave used to be. Martin: The more I asked questions about my faith, the more interested I became in other so-called lost writings related to Christianity. Everyone now seems to know something about the Dead Sea Scrolls, which tell of a teacher of righteousness who may or may not be Jesus, who was a member of the Essene community in Israel. I also learned about the many ancient Christian writings discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1948, which contained entire gospels dating back perhaps almost to the time of Jesus. But of all the mysterious writings, for me the most exciting was the document now shrouded in many legends, a document supposedly hidden away at the Himmis Buddhist monastery in the Himalayan mountains, which may fill in the details of the missing years of Jesus. For me, the hope of someday finding that document was like a personal search for the Holy Grail. The idea of finding it consumed me and became one of the main motivations of my quest. Nicholas Notovitch's book is called "The Unknown Life of Jesus the Christ", and that book tells the story of how he was thrown from his horse in 1887 and his leg was broken, and he was recuperating for a number of weeks at the Himmis Gompa Monastery. He became friends with the monks there, and they volunteered to show him the document, the life of Saint Issa, the best of the sons of men. Isa is the name that is used by the people of India and also by many Muslim people. They refer to Jesus as Isa. Narrator - Excerpts from an ancient text Notovitch claimed to see at Hemis - Notovitch: > The earth has trembled and the heavens have wept because of the great crime just committed in the land of Israel. For they have put to torture and executed the great just Isa, in whom dwelt the spirit of the world. > When Isa had attained the age of thirteen, when an Israelite should take a wife, the house in which his parents dwelt and earned their livelihood in modest labor became a meeting place for the rich and noble, who desired to gain for a son-in-law the young Isa, already celebrated for his edifying discourses in the name of the Almighty. > It was then that Isa clandestinely left his father's house, went out of Jerusalem, and in company with some merchants traveled towards Sind, that he might perfect himself in the divine word and study the laws of the great Buddhas. > In the course of his fourteenth year, young Isa, blessed by God, journeyed beyond the Sind and settled among the Aryas in the beloved country of God. The fame of his name spread along the northern Sind. > When he passed through the country of the five rivers and the Rajputan, the worshippers of the god Jain begged him to remain in their midst. But he left the admirers of Jain and visited Jagannath in the province of Orissa, where the remains of Vyasa Krishna rest, and where he received a joyous welcome from the white priests of Brahma. --- Martin: And that document gives specific details about young Jesus in India, for example, the Jagannath Temple at Puri, and that young Jesus was a student there. Chidananda: > And of course there was a great effort to essentially debunk it and to say that he had fabricated it, that he had made it all up, and there was no possible way that these manuscripts could exist. It was a forgery. Narrator - Notovitch: > They have thrown everything they can think of at me to try to invalidate the authenticity of my documents. But the main attack is against my honor as a writer. Martin: One of the main attackers of Notovitch's book was Dr. Max Müller of Oxford University in England, a noted Orientalist and a professor of modern languages. Narrator - Notovitch: > Mr. Max Müller is a skeptic who attempted to demolish me. Martin: He claimed that Notovitch had never gone to Hemis Monastery and that Notovitch had never examined such an ancient document. And Notovitch turned up the heat by telling how that he had talked privately with a cardinal, and that the cardinal had told him that the Vatican has numerous documents about Jesus in India, and the Vatican knows all about Jesus in India. The debunkers pressed Notovitch, What is the name of the cardinal? Notovitch would not reveal that source because he had promised the anonymity of that cardinal. And so the debunkers attacked him even more, and they said that was further proof that the whole thing was a lie. Narrator - Notovitch: > He further criticized me because I refused to name the cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who spoke to me in confidence about this matter. But I state here and now that I have learned from that cardinal the secret life of Jesus Christ is no novelty to the Catholic Church, that the Vatican Library possesses 63 documents in various Oriental languages referring to this matter, which have been brought to Rome by missionaries from India, China, and Arabia. Martin: I think the debunkers were feeling that, because Notovitch was a Russian-born Jew who had converted to Christianity, that Notovitch may have concocted the story for his own means. They may have believed that Notovitch was trying to exonerate the Jews from guilt and put the blame on the Romans, specifically Pontius Pilate and also the Roman soldiers who carried out the crucifixion. Narrator - Notovitch: > To return to my book, I maintain it undeniably establishes an agreement between the Gospels and the sacred books of India and Tibet. Martin: To claim that the documents never existed. To me, it was ridiculous to make that claim because there were so many other witnesses in later years who also saw the same document, the Life of Saint Issa, the best of the sons of men. The evidence that I found is that Jesus studied with both Buddhists and also with Hindus in India, and that Jesus respected the teachings of both Buddhists and Hindus. So I think there's a significant lesson there about tolerance for all of us, that I think as we find out the truth about the life of Jesus and his studies in India, I think that we find that Jesus found value and wisdom in other religions, and I think that we as Christians should not condemn other religions, and I think that people of every religion should be tolerant of other religions and live in harmony with them. Adlerstein: > Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, wrote this very thesis that there is no greater problem facing 21st century man than finding a way for major religious groups to value, not just respect or tolerate, but to value the humanity of those outside their groups. Entin: > The goal is to unite all religions. The ultimate goal: unite all peoples, unite all nations, unite all religions. Total unity of humanity. You can only do that by transcending the differences. So if Jesus went to India, that would have been a major contribution to that goal. Tambasco: > My sense is that this is an enormous item in India. These traditions and legends have not permeated Western culture at all. I'm not familiar with them. Nobody talks about them in theological circles. All of what we would talk about, especially in terms of travel, would be pure speculation based purely on legend. And the reason why Gospels don't tell us about the hidden years of Jesus is because they did not consider the particular activities of those years as significant. Hesemann: > As a Roman Catholic, from a theological point of view and a point of view of my faith, I have no problem with our Lord going anywhere between 12 and 27, because why shouldn't he? We know about the Gospels are not complete biographies, and even Saint John pointed out that by many things he did not tell them, but all books in the world would not be enough to put in everything which happened during the lifetime of our Lord on earth. > So, theologically, no problem. It could be true. It doesn't change my faith. It would turn out to be true. But to believe anything as a part of history, I have to see and I have to investigate the evidence. --- Martin: As editor of the Tomb of Jesus website, Arif Khan has made it a personal mission to coordinate, on the World Wide Web, all the prominent research and scholarly efforts related to questions about Jesus in India. Although Arif Khan is a young man who lacks university or madrasa academic training in religion, nevertheless, almost all of the latest research about Jesus in India is brought to his attention first, and he is keenly aware of all the arguments and evidence that would place Jesus in India. Khan: > Belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, it's almost an article of faith, the Jesus in India story. So for me, living in a Western world brought up with ideas of Jesus that you see around you, very much Christian ideas, from a very early age I had to, you know, I had to reconcile, well, you know, is this true? What is my belief founded upon? Traditions of Jesus traveling to the East and having a presence in other faiths would drastically, I think, change the way Christianity is viewed. > If this idea was embraced by all the faiths, it would mean that Jesus could definitely, instead of being a dividing figure, could be a central point for them all to come together. --- Martin: I was incredibly lucky because I was allowed to enter the Minakshi Temple at Madurai, which is normally only for Hindus, and I was also allowed to film there. And it turned out that I was granted an interview with the head priest. I had to wait about four hours and wait through three weddings, but it all turned out. Meenakshi Priest: > See, the gap between the 10 to 32 years of Jesus Christ supposed to have traveled to India, especially northern Himalayas, where saintly persons of Hinduism, people have been living for centuries of centuries. So there he imbibed all these qualities of these saintlyhood people and taken this message of Hindu culture. > And he taken one part of Hindu culture, namely patience, love, affection, because Hindu culture is something very big, very broad. But he has taken that message to Western culture and preached over there. People didn't like it. They actually crucified him. Later point, the people realized what they've done, it is a sin. Martin: The head priest was excited to talk about Jesus in India, and while I was there, someone gave me a tip about a bishop of the Catholic Church in northern India, in the Himalayan foothills, at a place called Bareilly. Someone had once heard Father Baptiste talk about the possibility that Jesus was in Kashmir. So my next stop was by overnight train to Bareilly to see Father Baptiste at his Catholic church. --- Baptiste: > Jesus didn't start a religion. Jesus started a way of life that is away from the way of life of Pharisees and scribes. Matthew 5:20. Unless your religiosity is deeper than the religiosity of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter. And what Jesus wanted, that everyone to enter the kingdom of heaven experience God as the Father. > I believe, I take it that Jesus was there in the family. It is quite possible Saint Joseph, being an elderly man, must have died, and responsibility of Jesus to take care of Mary and maybe other children, and being eldest, it was his responsibility. Martin: Father, part of my research about the missing time in the life of Jesus is concerning a Russian explorer named Nicholas Notovitch. And in 1887, he was in Ladakh near Hemis Gompa Monastery, and during that time he became friends with the Buddhist lamas. And after some time they trusted him, and they told him that they had a 2,000-year-old document, a Tibetan document, which tells about Jesus in India, about the missing time in the life of Jesus. And that document is called The Life of Saint Issa, the Best of the Sons of Men, and it has a lot of details. And I'm wondering, have you ever met anyone here in India who has ever talked about that document or that information? Baptiste: > I have heard that Jesus was in Kashmir. That talk was there, and that was long back, even as a student in the seminary I have heard that Jesus was in Kashmir. Jesus came to Kashmir. That is, and I still believe it to be just a rumor without any historicity or any proof on it. Martin: We have a saying in English: Where there's smoke, there's fire. And we don't know, but where there's a rumor, sometimes there's at least a little bit of truth. It can be frustrating to try to track down a document as elusive as the life of Saint Issa. And we know that a string of researchers through the years, going back to 1887, back to Nicholas Notovitch, the Russian explorer, we know that he saw it in 1887. We know that in 1922, Swami Abhedananda, Calcutta, went to see the document at Hemis Gompa, and he was quickly shown the document. He was able to read the document and translate it and hold it in his own hands. I wanted to go to Calcutta to visit the ashram of Swami Abhedananda, which is called Ramakrishna Vedanta Math. I wanted to find any devotees who could verify that in 1922, Abhedananda had examined the document, the life of Saint Issa, the Best of the Sons of Men. And also I wanted to investigate the story that Nicholas Notovitch had given an ancient drawing of Jesus to Abhedananda, a very ancient drawing of Jesus which he had probably gotten at the Hemis Gompa monastery. We're talking about Jesus in India. Abhedananda devotee: > It's all there in Abhedananda's book Martin: But are there people living here now who knew Swami Abhedananda when he was young, when Swami Abhedananda was living, and they could tell us something? Abhedananda devotee: > They have all gone. Martin: So this is where Swami Abhedananda lived. Swami Abhedananda lived for about 20 years in America, and during that time—25 years, 25 years in America—and then Swami Abhedananda made a journey to Himis Gompa Monastery and found all the documents proving that Jesus came here. Abhedananda devotee: > He always used to say that all tigers are rolling in the same manner, so all the religion top men are saying the same thing. You are taking it in another manner, he is taking in another manner, he is taking it in another manner. All the gurus are same. Universality of religion. > Thomas Edison gave this to Swami Abhedananda after a discussion on Vedanta, for nearly 2 to 3 hours. And he is so inspired, he gave handed over his gramophone to Swami Abhedananda. A picture of Jesus. Yes. Martin: And how was it brought here by Nicholas Notovitch, did you say? Abhedananda devotee: > Yeah, yeah. Martin: Is it your understanding that this is a very old picture? Abhedananda devotee: > One of the oldest! --- Chidananda: > There was another piece in the puzzle, another piece, the next part of the story about this evidence of Jesus being in India, and that came from, interestingly, from another Russian traveler, another Russian explorer, Nicholas Roerich. Entin: > The Roerichs had a lot of influence in that people paid attention to what they said and did. In 1926, they were trumpeting the discovery of this document. Nicholas Roerich had an extremely productive career. He didn't leave Russia until his mid-forties, so he was already middle-aged and had produced a large body of work, and he was head of the largest art school in Russia. > From India, they went into Kashmir, then to Khotan, and then up through western China. When they began their expedition, certainly one of their scheduled stops would have been at the Hemis Monastery to try to verify what was in that book. They would certainly have been aware of it because it caused a sensation. The entire story of the famous manuscript at Hemis Monastery. > In 1926, they sent reports back to their group in New York, and from that were published at least a dozen newspaper articles about these manuscripts, that Jesus went to India to study Eastern teachings, and maybe Buddhist teachings mainly, which were already a few hundred years old, maybe 500 years old, and absorbed a lot of Buddhist thinking into his own thinking, which resulted ultimately in Christianity in a different form. Martin crew: They didn't call him Jesus, did they? They had another name for him? ISKCON Priest: > Isa. Isa. Martin crew: What does Isa mean? ISKCON Priest: > Ish. Ish in Sanskrit means Ishwara. It's a short form of Ishwara. Ishwara means the Almighty, the all-knowing, omnipresent God, and Masih means either a messenger or son. So he was called in India Isa Masih, or Son of God, messenger of God. > So Jesus Christ is one of the spiritual masters who is doing this very confidential service for the Lord by bringing so many souls closer to the Lord. So even when Jesus Christ was being crucified, he prayed to the Lord, "Please forgive them. Forgive all these people. They don't know what they are doing." > See, that is the quality of an acharya. Acharya or a spiritual master is very kind and merciful. Our spiritual master also says that for 12 years Jesus Christ, he was in Jagannath Puri. It's the temple of Krishna. Chidananda: > In the accounts that Notovitch found in the Tibetan monastery and translated, where it describes Jesus's travels and what he did while he was in India, there's one specific location that they talk about, and that is this ancient, ancient Hindu temple called Jagannath Temple. > The head of this Jagannath Temple traditionally is one of the four ecclesiastical heads of Orthodox Hinduism. Just as in the Catholic Church we have the Pope, in Hinduism, in the Hindu tradition, there are four spiritual heads that are called Shankaracharya. --- Martin: I felt incredibly fortunate to be allowed to have an interview with the Shankaracharya of Puri, one of the great leaders of Hinduism, and I was told beforehand that the Shankaracharya never grants interviews. But when we were able to convey our message to him that we wanted to interview him about Jesus in India, the door was opened. Shankaracharya: > I am the 145th Shankaracharya. Actually thistradition is 5,000 years old from the era of Sat Yuga. During the rapid spread of Buddhism, this tradition was suppressed. the first Shankaracharya was born in 506 BC. The Jagannath Temple was established as an education center in 483 BC. > In the Christian New Testament there is hardly any mention of Jesus's life from age 12 to 30. When Ed Martin asked about the missing years in his church he was silenced. > The truth was submerged to propogate lies. --- Martin: From about age 14, after he was with the rabbis in the temple in Jerusalem when he was a boy, until when he was 28, 30, when he was baptized by John the Baptist, we don't know where he was. Balducci: > Noi la sappiamo dai cosiddetti libri evangelici. Ma lui dice che giustamente c'è un periodo dai quattordici anni ai ventisette, non si sa bene che cosa abbia fatto Gesù. No, questo guardi, è la prima volta che io lo sento, pur avendo studiato assai bene la teologia. // We know this from the so-called Gospels. But he says that, quite rightly, there’s a period from age fourteen to twenty-seven when we don’t really know what Jesus did. No, look, this is the first time I’ve heard this, even though I’ve studied theology quite thoroughly. // Balducci Translator: > Basically, the answer to your question is that the Church itself too, they don't recognize this Indian period of Jesus. They say that it doesn't appear in any books. Not, in Old Testament, not in the New Testament. --- Shankaracharya: > Many important religious figures have come here to study. Jesus Christ also came here to study. So it is true He came here to study? Shankaracharya: > YES YES So Jesus Christ DID study here for a few years? Shankaracharya: > He studied the Achar Samhita - the Code of Conduct. He must have met the Shankaracharya of that time. Are there any ancient texts that have a record of this? Shankaracharya: > Our ancient records were buried someplace here to protect them from invaders. That is why they are hard to find today. And even though we know these things, the Christians are not willing to believe it. --- Balducci: > No, no, assolutamente. Tutto quello che noi sappiamo lo sappiamo dai quattro evangelisti: Matteo, Marco, Luca e Giovanni. Le cinque lettere di San Paolo e due lettere di San Pietro. Questo è tutto il Nuovo Testamento. E in nessuno dei libri delle lettere, quelli che ho detto adesso, c'è menzione, la minima menzione di questo. // No, no, absolutely not. Everything we know comes from the four Gospel writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the five letters of Saint Paul; and the two letters of Saint Peter. That is the entire New Testament. And in none of the epistles—the ones I just mentioned—is there any mention, not even the slightest mention, of this. // --- Chidananda: For hundreds of years, literally centuries, the rest of it was forgotten because they did such a good job of destroying and declaring heretical and actually burning or otherwise suppressing any other competing versions of what the teaching of Jesus and the life of Jesus was really signifying. Shankaracharya: > Jesus studied our teachings of Truthfulness, Mercy, Charity, Serving Others, Compassion and Ethics. The fact that Hindus made a contribution to Jesus's learning is not accepted by some people. It is a fact that our very ancient Hindu text, the Bhavishya Maha Purana has an account of King Shalivahana meeting Jesus in Kashmir, India > Yes, that is true, but the Christians will still not believe it. Balducci: > Sarebbe nei Vangeli, nelle lettere di San Paolo. // It would be in the Gospels, in the letters of St. Paul. Martin crew: Quindi allora tutti i documenti, diciamo così. // So, all the documents, let’s say. Balducci: > Ma i documenti perché? Possono essere anche di trentamila anni fa, i documenti. No, trentamila anni fa perché no? Sono più di quattromila anni fa. // But why the documents? The documents could even be from thirty thousand years ago. No, thirty thousand years ago—why not? It’s more than four thousand years ago. Martin crew: In pratica, allora questa documentazione, queste supposte prove sono tutte false. // Basically, then, this documentation—this so-called evidence—is all false. Balducci: > False! Sono invenzioni che poi si sono tramandate. // False—they’re fabrications that have been passed down over time. Martin crew: Ma invenzioni di chi? // But fabrications by whom? Balducci: > Ma del posto. // By the locals. Martin crew: E che motivo avrebbero avuto di inventarsi la vita di Gesù in India? // And what reason would they have had to invent the story of Jesus’s life in India? Balducci: > Ma mica le hanno fatte prima che sapessero di Gesù. // It’s not like they made them up before they knew about Jesus. Martin crew: Ah, lei dice dopo? // Ah, you mean afterward? Balducci: > Dopo. Ma dopo. // Afterward. But afterward. --- Arif Khan: > There's a Hindu work called the Bhavishya Purana, which talks about someone, a figure known as Isa Masih. Isa, which is how the Quran refers to Jesus, Isa Yusuf. These are all related words, and it exactly pinpoints Isa Masih as being around the time of 100 A.D., and it talks about a king meeting with Isa Masih. And it mentions it just in passing, that he met this figure, a saintly figure. And the figure said that he had been born of a virgin, that he had taught a religion of peace. He had been persecuted in his homeland to the point where he had to flee to the east. Shankaracharya: > Christians know Jesus was missing for many years. Where was He? Where was He living? Where was He travelling? He lived in Kashmir. Travelled all over India. The truth has been covered up. --- Martin crew: Diciamo, non esiste comunque una risposta certa e sicura del motivo per cui le scritture non parlano di quel periodo della vita di Gesù. Cioè non esiste una certezza. Cioè sappiamo che i libri non ne parlano perché... Cioè, sono ipotesi di fatto. // Is there a motive why the Holy Books don't tell about this period of His life? There is no certainty about this, is there? It all hypothesis? Balducci: > Sì, ma cosa è andato a fare a diciassette anni in India? Avrà detto qualche cosa di buono. E allora il Nuovo Testamento avrebbe detto: questo viaggio non è andato là come turista. // but why would He have gone at 17 to India? There would be sayings of Jesus from India, some good works! And then the New Testament would have discussed this voyage! He wouldn't have gone there like a TOURIST! // --- Martin: According to the Life of Saint Issa, Jesus criticized the caste system. He criticized the Brahmins for exalting themselves. And at one point, Jesus irritated the priestly caste so much that they hired an assassin to try to kill him. So it seems Jesus did step on some toes within the Hindu community 2,000 years ago. And Jesus fled and went northward up toward a place that is called Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, and then later went further north up into Tibet, into Lhasa. My source for this is Notovitch and his translation of the Life of Saint Issa document. The document may not really be 2,000 years old. We realize that it may be something more modern. We do not know right now about the facts of its true history, and that's something that we want to go and investigate firsthand. At the airport at Ladakh in northwestern India, it's high up in the Himalayas, the highest airport in the world. It's amazing that the monks there can live and function as high as the elevation is. I'm hoping that the monks will receive me kindly and graciously with the compassion for which Buddhist monks are known, and I'm hoping they will show me the document. Hemis Monastery Monk: > सत्य सामने आ पड़ते हैं क्योंकि काल को इनकी प्रेज़ेंस में या हम कमेटी की प्रेज़ेंस में, कमेटी है, सारे यहाँ बैठ के करेंगे तो पता चल जाएगा कि यहाँ है कि नहीं है। अब अकेला आदमी तो कुछ नहीं कर सकता है, क्योंकि इस तरह से भी बात उठ सकता है काल को कि है तो सही है, ठीक है, नहीं है तो कहीं गायब कर दिया हो। इस तरह की बातें इसमें हैं तो थोड़ा इसमें मुश्किल भी है, जो इसका इतिहास है, इस तरह का किताबों में... मैगज़ीनों में लिखा है, और इन जनश्रुति में भी है। दूसरी, हमारे यहाँ किताबें हैं, जो जितना भी किताबें हैं, उसका कैटलॉग अभी तक हुआ नहीं है। यहाँ ये नहीं कह सकता है कि यहाँ नहीं है, कि हमारे यहाँ दुर्बाग्यवश कहिए या जो भी कहिए, हमारा जो है यहाँ का हैड जो है लामा है, रिंपोछे जी है, वो बचपन से ही तिब्बत चला गए थे। तो उसके बाद वो लौटे नहीं, चालीस-पचास साल तक। तो जैसे कि तैसे जितना भी मैनुस्क्रिप्ट है, जितना भी लिपि है, लिपिबद्ध है, जितना भी यहाँ ग्रंथें हैं, वो ऐसे पड़े हुए हैं। // We have to be careful, because in the future, with our committee The truth would come to light if the matter were examined in the presence of a committee; if everyone sat together to verify it, we would know for certain whether it is here or not. A single individual cannot do this alone, as questions could later arise—claiming it was indeed here, or conversely, alleging that it had been made to disappear. Such concerns make the situation complex, especially given the history documented in books and magazines, as well as in oral traditions. Furthermore, we have a vast collection of books here, yet they have not been catalogued. One cannot definitively say whether a specific item is present or not; unfortunately—or however one chooses to view it—the head of our institution, the Rinpoche, left for Tibet in his childhood and did not return for forty or fifty years. Consequently, all the manuscripts, written records, and texts have simply remained here, unorganized and unattended. Truth comes to light because time, in their presence — or in the presence of the committee, which is us — if we all sit here and do it, we'll find out whether it's here or not. Now a lone person can't do anything, because that way the question can also arise for time that if it exists, then it's correct, Okay, if it's not here, maybe it's been made to disappear somewhere. There are these kinds of things in it, so it's a bit tricky—its history, the way it's presented in books… It's written in magazines, and it's also in these oral traditions. Secondly, we have books here, but all of them haven't been cataloged yet. I can't say for sure that they're not here, that fortunately or unfortunately, our head here, who is the Lama, Rinpoche, he went to Tibet as a child and didn't return for forty or fifty years. So all the manuscripts, all the scripts, all the books that are here are just lying around like that until he returns. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) // -- Martin: The lamas were not allowed to open the archives, which were just bound with strings, but the head lama had given the orders that they were sealed and should not be opened until he returned. So those beautiful Tibetan books were within reach but out of reach. It's kind of like on some mountain climbs that I've been on. Some mountain climbers have gotten within a hundred yards of the summit that they have been working for maybe for fourteen days or longer, and they're almost at the summit, and a storm is coming, and the guide makes the decision, we have to turn back, and maybe they never get to reach the summit. Hemis Monastery Monk: > कुछ इस तरह ऐसा होता है कि दलाई लामा जी से मिला है। दलाई लामा जी ने भी बोला है, कहीं की तिब्बत में भी, कहीं लाइब्रेरी में मैंने... इस विषय में इस सब्जेक्ट ने कुछ दिखा था बचपन में। इस तरह से, मतलब... लेकिन खुद दलाई लामा खुद नहीं कहते। हमें मालूम नहीं, मैं तो नहीं मिला। एक रिसर्चर था अमेरिका का, जो मूल भारतीय था, वो अमेरिका में रहते हैं, उसका मोहम्मद क्या था कुछ था, उसका मेरे पास सारी चीज़ डॉक्यूमेंट क्या है, है, ChatGPT है, वो कहते हैं कि वो धर्मशाला में दलाल लामा जी मिले थे। तो दलाल लामा जी भी ये स्टेटमेंट कहते हैं कि कभी बचपन में, मैंने भी ल्हासा में एक लाइब्रेरी है, ल्हासे जोलपार्क नाम का, वहाँ कहते हैं वहाँ हमने देखे थे। तब कभी हमें भी लगता है कि संभव भी हो सकते हैं। // When a researcher asked the Dalai Lama, he did say that he has seen something about this subject matter in a library in Tibet when he was a boy. So you see, there may be a possibility. But the Dalai Lama himself has not comment on this? I don't know, i never met him. It as a researcher from America who said this. We have that researcher's letters and documents. That researcher says he met the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. He claimed the Dalai Lama said he saw documents at the library of Lhasa Zorpa. So if this is true, then suddenly it makes us feel there's probably truth behind this! It's kind of like I met the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama himself also spoke—somewhere in Tibet, in a library I had… this subject had shown me something about it when I was a child. In that way, I mean… but the Dalai Lama himself doesn't say it. We don't know; I didn't meet him. There was an American researcher, an American Indian, who lives in the US — his name was something like Mohammed — I have all his documents, you know, the researcher says he met the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. So the Dalai Lama also says in this statement that when he was a child, he too had a library in Lhasa, called Lhasa Jolkpark, where they say we saw them. So sometimes we also think it could be possible. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) // --- Martin: I have great faith in divine order, which means that if you have spiritual faith and you're aiming in the right direction, you will get guidance for the best possible outcome eventually. And so I came here to Dharamsala, and I have the hopes of getting an appointment to interview His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Even though I'm someone he's never heard of, somebody from Texas, they tell me that he'll be back in a couple of days and it will be his 70th birthday, and I'm hoping the sun will shine on His Holiness and also on our research. His appointment book was pretty full, but what should I expect? If I dropped in at the Vatican and tried to see the Pope, his schedule would have probably been pretty full too. Finally I learned, in a communication from his office, that the Dalai Lama says he does not know of the existence of ancient Buddhist documents that tell of Jesus in India. That in fact, he first learned about these questions when he was asked the question by others. And so even he cannot confirm today that Nicholas Notovitch and the others really saw and translated those ancient Buddhist accounts of Saint Isa, or Jesus in India. And I have to reflect on all of these things more because I am not completely certain about all the answers. I want to find more evidence. I want to find more information, and I want to look outside the box and think outside the box. I heard that Professor **James Deardorff** was available for an interview, and I decided that I would go talk with him because he is one of the experts about the subject of post-crucifixion Jesus, the possibility that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion. --- ## Professor James Deardorff: Deardorff: > My second book goes into the stories of Jesus travels to India and back, especially after the crucifixion. It is pretty well known to anyone who studies the religions that Islam doesn't believe that Jesus died at the cross. This is, of course, heresy to the Christians. But the idea that he could have survived the crucifixion, that's another viewpoint that has quite a lot of support. > Holger Kersten, in his book Jesus Lived in India, gives quite a lot of this evidence that Jesus had undergone the crucifixion, did survive, and traveled on east. And I've looked into this and find that quite a bit of this is credible. Khan: > The mainstream orthodox Muslim viewpoint is that it was not Jesus Christ placed upon the cross. But even in orthodox Muslim circles, that viewpoint has sort of varied wildly. There's a famous Muslim scholar called Ahmed Didat, who's written and given many lectures, and despite being very orthodox in his views, he was definitely of the opinion that Jesus actually survived the crucifixion. He was placed on the cross. He appeared to be dead, where in fact he was still alive. > So, but ultimately, whether you believe in a physical resurrection or if you believe in him fainting and surviving or reviving, you still end up at the end of the story with a live Jesus. --- Chidananda: > As the Gospel says, and Paramahansa Yogananda concurs with this, that then he spent a number of days talking and teaching his disciples further, at the end of which time he essentially dematerialized his body, which in the Christian tradition is described as the ascension into heaven. Khan: > The other view is that very much within the laws of nature, he was on the cross for a short period of time. He was taken down. He was treated with aloes and myrrh, which we know are very strong healing properties. And there's a suggestion that his body was tended to by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. > So the other viewpoint is that they were able to nurse him back and revive Jesus, essentially, and he was able to then recover in time and then continue his mission. --- Bajpai: > Regarding the medical aspect, yes, if you nail a person through the palms, through the legs. And raise him up. He not bleeding, but that bleeding may perhaps be so slow that his body systems may have a reactionary aspect where it can sustain him for life for hours together, and beyond six hours too, because the bleeding is that slow. > It's not a major vessel that we are knocking off. So this could be believable that he lived for that many hours thereafter, and when he was brought down, he was living. Khan: > When he does speak to his disciples, you hear of him meeting in secret, and this makes absolute sense if he was physically alive and if he had survived this crucifixion, because he would have still been a wanted man. Chidananda: > Did Jesus really die at the crucifixion, and was he bodily resurrected? In the last section, the last chapter of The Second Coming of Christ, Paramahansa Yogananda goes into this in great detail, and it was his perception, it was his assertion based on his own intuitive understanding of what Jesus had gone through. He said that absolutely he experienced physical death. It wasn't just going into a coma and that then they revived him and then he was able to then walk and talk and meet with his disciples later on. He said, no, he died. Khan: > When Jesus was asked to give a sign, he even said categorically that the one sign I will give you is the sign of Jonah. And he stated how Jonah spent three nights and three days in the belly of the whale, and he would spend a similar period in the belly of the earth. Now if we look at Jonah, Jonah went into the whale and came out of the whale very much alive. And so if Jesus is highlighting this, then it suggests that this is exactly the way he thought things would happen with him. Hesemann: > Jesus died with a long loud outcry. Which is an indication of a rupture of the heart Martin: If the crucified prisoner's legs are broken, it interferes with his breathing. He's not able to support his own weight, and death comes quickly. In the case of Jesus, we know from the Bible his legs were not broken. Science tells us that if the legs are not broken, the prisoner could survive for a day or more. Hesemann: > Another indication of the rupture of the heart is the separation of plasma, of liquid and blood after they pierced his side. So when this clear evidence of death was already there, they did not need to destroy the legs. --- Mitchell: > As I say, this question of whether or not Jesus could survive the crucifixion, I think really is a question about whether or not he was resurrected from the dead, and where there's doubt there, even as you see in the end of Matthew's Gospel, the question is raised by the evangelist precisely to refute it. The tomb was very well secured. No one could have stolen the body, and therefore there must have been a resurrection. Khan: > Whether there was a Roman guard out there is very sort of disputable and unlikely. Even if there was a stone in front of the tomb, they could still roll that away, and there would still be access to the tomb. We know that even the biblical accounts talks about Mary, Mary's appearing on the morning of the resurrection to try and anoint the body, or they are definitely going to visit the tomb, so there definitely was a means of access to that tomb. Martin: I heard that recently they discovered in Israel a tomb with a second entrance, a back tunnel entrance. Maybe there was more than one tomb like that. Khan: > If we were to able to pinpoint one point in religious history where Judaism, Islam, and Christianity diverged, that is the divergent point, because at the point Jesus dies on the cross for Jews, he's a failed Messiah. That's the end of the story. God would not allow his Messiah to die, so that's the end of it. > For the Christian point of view, the death and then the resurrection is essential to their faith as well. > Now, from the Muslim point of view, again there's variations, but they believe that Jesus was lifted to the heavens, again because they do not believe he could have died on the cross, because they do not believe that a prophet of God would be allowed to die in this way, because it would be a sign of him having failed in his mission. --- Chidananda: > After his resurrection, he was living in this highly spiritualized state, and in fact his body was materializing and dematerializing all the time during that point, and we have evidence of that in the stories where the disciples are there having a meal together in a room, and all of a sudden there's Jesus in the midst of them. He didn't come in the door. Deardorff: > Apparently even in the Gospel of Luke it mentions that he ate with the disciples afterwards. The resurrected body doesn't have to eat, presumably. He wouldn't have to walk before them on the road to get from Jerusalem to Galilee, as he was said to do. I mean, if he were resurrected, he could just pop in and out wherever he wanted, supposedly. Chidananda: > The gospel doesn't tell us how he got there, but clearly he just materialized in their presence. Or another one is they saw him just walking through a wall. Mitchell: > There's a lot of room for speculation because no one witnessed the resurrection. The resurrection technically, you know, isn't really something that can be investigated historically the way other things can be investigated historically. Martin: If Jesus survived the crucifixion, he would naturally want to escape the Roman Empire, and returning to India, where he had spent his youth, would be a wise choice. Khan: > There was a scattering of the Jews as far as Kashmir, India, Afghanistan, the whole of that area, to the point that out of the original twelve tribes of Israel, only two were to be found in Jerusalem. Adlerstein: > There were times in which elements of Judaism were brought to different parts of the world. I even go back to a verse in the Bible where, on the death of—close to the death of Abraham—the children that he fathered in late life, nobody knows the names of them, but they're right there in the Bible. > It says that he sent them eastward to the east. The phraseology is jarring, eastward to the east. Well, of course, if you're going to the east, you have to go eastward. So there are those who've argued that the east that's meant there is the real east, and that what Abraham was doing was putting a placeholder in the part of the world that would not discover monotheism as quickly as the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. Khan: > Now Jesus himself has said his mission is to gather the lost tribes of Israel. And this was always the mission of the Jewish Messiah, was to unite the tribes of Israel, bring them back. So it's his obligation to now go and preach to those brothers and sisters who are dispersed throughout the East. Martin: There are many correlations about the similarities between Hebrew people and the people of Kashmir. The linguistic similarities, which are very strong, types of foods, types of clothing, DNA. The kind of knife used by butchers. The shape of the end of the oars of the shikara boatman is a heart shape, the end of the paddle, which is the same as the ancient Hebrew oars. Entin: > I remember being quite surprised when someone I know was actually hired by the Indian government to do research to try to explain why there are so many Hebrew names in India. Martin: Therefore, the Messiah. Kashmir when he talked about the lost sheep of Israel, the lost tribes that he needed to minister to. Adlerstein: > The Messiah has an obligation to those people who are recognized as Jewish in his name. Pagels: > Thomas, according to tradition, went to India and brought the gospel there. Martin: So Saint Thomas, the Apostle Thomas, one of Jesus' chosen twelve apostles, was teaching, spreading Christianity here in India from 52 A.D. until his death in 72 A.D. So we're talking about 20 years, and Thomas was killed by a Hindu. He was speared in the back while he was praying. Continuously from the end of the first century until today, there are Christian communities. They call them the Thomas Christians, who date their church or their teaching back to Saint Thomas. Pagels: > The Gospel of Thomas suggests that the real world is the spiritual world, and that the world of spirit and awareness is the real world of divinity, and that the rest is, in a sense, less real, analogous with Hindu teaching. Fleishman: > In Hinduism, there is a frequently referred to concept, the concept of Maya, which would mean the world around us, the world of physics, the world of time, the world of planets, the world of rocks. That entire world that we think of as real in our waking daily life is, in fact, a transitory, ephemeral — Illusion. It's something here today, gone tomorrow. > Generally, in Hinduism and Buddhism, the goal is to transcend all physical manifestation, all chemical, physics, biology-based life, and to enter entirely non-material spiritual realms. Pagels: > This is also suggested in the Gospel of Luke, in Luke 17:20 and 21, which Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is among you, or within you.". It depends how you translate. And so this is an idea present, apparently, within the early Christian movement, but it becomes developed and it becomes dominant in the teaching of the Gospel of Thomas. Fleishman: > Both Hinduism and Buddhism, the major historical religions of India, emphasize that the search for the divine should turn within oneself, that each individual, in one way or another, carries with them all the laws of the universe. Chidananda: > Even the simple statement of Jesus, Behold, the kingdom of God is within you. This is pure yoga. When they asked him, Well, where is this kingdom going to come? Will it be a political or social, or will it be at this location or that location? And he immediately corrected them and said, No, the kingdom of God is within you. And that is what we experience in meditation. Pagels: > In the New Testament it says, If your eye be single, your whole eye is full of light. That's one version of the saying. In the Gospel of Thomas, it goes like this: Within a man of light there is light, and if it is not illuminated, he is in darkness. The idea is that there is light within, and one can find that light. Chidananda: > What is that single eye, if your eye be single? This is one of the very fundamental tenets or experiences of yoga, of India spirituality, and that's the third eye, the spiritual eye, the eye of intuition and divine perception, which is located here at the point between the eyebrows. And through meditation, one awakens or activates the spiritual perception of that single eye, of that spiritual eye, and perceives the nature of reality, the nature of creation as divine light, that all of the seemingly material, physical world is really vibratory light emerging out of the divine creative principle, and that that's what one perceives with that awakened eye, spiritual perception. Pagels: > You find in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, You are the light of the world. The Gospel of Thomas teaches that the Gospel of Jesus is not only that he is the light and manifests the light, as it said in the Gospel of John as well, but that you and I also come forth from the light and need to recognize our true identity. > According to the Gospels like Mark, the disciple is to look to the end of time for the coming of the kingdom of God as a sort of great event of the judgment day. The Gospel of Thomas suggests something very different. It says, Go back. How do you go back to the beginning? the Gospel of Thomas has a saying. Jesus says, Blessed is the one who comes into being before he came into being. And this is a puzzle, because how can you come into being before you come into being? Martin: If someone is profoundly and deeply interested in spirituality, and if spirituality is the most important thing in your life, then there is a kind of connection, a kind of kindred connection about India, that there are teachings, there is wisdom here in India that is not available anywhere else in its complexity and in its depth. Deardorff: > Legends have it that Jesus lived a long time in northern India, in Kashmir, and that he has a tomb there. This tomb still exists today, but is well guarded; no one can get in. Khan: > The inhabitant of that tomb is Yuz Asaf, is the name given to us. Some researchers have said that this name is a translation of Jesus the Gatherer, and they believe Asaf means gatherer, so Jesus the Gatherer. Others have said it means the leader of the healed. Olsson: > We say Jesus, but in India, in Pakistan, in Kashmir, and other parts of the world, he was always either called Isa or Yuz Asaf. And Yuz Asaf simply means son of Joseph. After having lived there and breathed it for so long, and absorbed it in every pore of my body for so long, and researched it and seen it from that side of the world for so long, I have no doubt. No doubt is in my heart that is Jesus in that tomb. Hesemann: > We know that Christ, even during his lifetime, sent hundreds of disciples all over the world to preach the gospel. And why should not one of them, by the name Joseph, which later became Joseph, have gone to Kashmir, teaching the gospel according to Christ, dying there, and that's it. It doesn't have to be the Lord himself. Olsson: > When I was exploring and researching the grave of Mother Mary, which is not that far from the grave of Jesus, we're only talking about a couple hundred miles, they opened all doors for me, and they were absolutely enthralled with the idea of someone finishing this research. They told me if I could find the remains, I could have her. They really didn't care. They said, just get her off of this mountain because this is a military target now. > But as I said, then the militancy happened, and 9/11 happened while I was there, and Daniel Pearl was killed not too far from me when I was there. The Bamiyan Buddha was destroyed. The Kabul Museum was destroyed. And obviously, an American, doing research there, from that point on, was not a good idea. Martin: It was ironic that this search for the truth about Jesus, a man of peace, was surrounded by the dangers of conflict, terrorism, and war. Somehow, we felt protected on our journey. Disasters seemed to follow us a day or two behind wherever we went, but the disasters never touched us. We would leave one locale, and then a monsoon flood would strike where we had been and wash out all the roads. There were times when trains were bombed, but the trains that we traveled on were untouched. And time and again, there were other incidents of terrorism that followed in our footsteps, but divine order saved us again and again. We postponed a trip we were planning to the birthplace of Lord Rama of the Hindu faith. Terrorists bombed the Hindu temple that we were going to visit, but we were safely in another place. If we come away from this no closer to having proof that Jesus really was in India, at least we have tried. There's a wonderful saying here in India: better to aim at a lion and miss than to aim at a jackal and kill it. And I think we're aiming at a lion. For safety reasons, the decision was made that Paul Davids and I would remain at the houseboat on Dal Lake where we were staying, and that Anil, one of our producers, and the rest of our Indian team would go over to the tomb of Yuz Asaf. And even they had problems about security. About every 100 feet, there would be an Indian soldier with an automatic rifle on duty. with the flak jacket and helmet. And those soldiers were guarding against any kind of terrorism, any kind of trouble that might take place, because there's a lot of hostility and tension. India security adviser: > Just getting to that particular place itself is very, very risky. And all the more due to the presence of a mosque nearby, which generally has seen many gun battles between the outlaws as well as the security forces. Martin: We were trying to keep it secret that there were any Americans anywhere around there, but the word spread fast. They seemed to think that we might want to buy a quality Kashmiri carpet. And then as our Indian team got closer to the tomb of Yuz Asaf, they found themselves in a heavily Muslim neighborhood, and it was a very tense kind of environment that they found themselves in. Olssen: > They opened that casket and they basically raided it, and a lot of the documents and scrolls and important things that were in there associated with this tomb have disappeared or are being held in private homes. > What they've done is rip out all of the wood carvings. They removed the sarcophagus that contained all the relics. They replaced it with four glass walls so that now it looks like a shopping mall, you know, and they put a flimsy... fake sarcophagus inside, they painted the whole thing green because that's the color of Islam, and they removed all traces of the blue. --- muslins: आपकी राय में ये कितनी पुरानी होगी? बहुत पुरानी है, ये कह नहीं सकते हैं। हाँ, हमारे पुराने बुजुर्गों ने कहा है कि समंदर के इस पार ऐसी ज़ियारत कहीं नहीं है। ये पैगंबर ज़ादा है। और मिस्र से आए हैं, यहाँ पर ये क्लाइमेट, ये मौसम, आब-ओ-हवा अच्छा होने की वजह से उन्होंने यहाँ इबादत की है। यहाँ के मुसलमानों का प्यार देखा है उन्होंने, तो उन्होंने भी इस प्यार के लिए इसको वापस जाने नहीं दिया। हाँ, इनका ये इंतिकाल भी यहीं पर हो गया है, ये यहीं पर दफन हो गए हैं। बस ये बात। // How old do you think this is? It's very old; you can't say for sure. Yes, our elders have said that there is no shrine like this on this side of the ocean. This is a descendant of the Prophet. And they came from Egypt; because of the good climate and weather here, they worshipped here. They saw the love of the local Muslims, so out of that love, they didn't let him go back. Yes, he passed away here as well and was buried here. That's all there is to it. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) // --- Martin: So when Muslims living near the tomb insist that this is a prophet from Egypt, that could still mean Jesus to them. Khan: > In fact, it corroborates the story rather than detracts from it. Martin: The tomb of Yuz Asaf is hundreds of years older than the beginning of Islam. In the Muslim tradition, an enclosure building is never built around a tomb. But this tomb of Yuz Asaf has an enclosure building around the sarcophagus, around the grave, and that is an ancient building. जैन के पुलिस. जैन के पुलिस. Nice meeting you, मेरा नाम अनिल है, आपसे मिलकर बहुत खुशी हुई। तो हम आपसे पूछना चाहते हैं कि ये जो मजार यहाँ कब्र बनी हुई है, ये किनकी है? ये मुसलमानों की है? इसके बारे में कहा जाता है कि ये ईसा मसीह की... ये गलत बात है। अच्छा। जैसे दिखा है किसी ने किताब में, ये हज़रत ईसा है। हज़रत ईसा नहीं है, और ये हज़रत यूज़ा है। // Zain Police. Zain Police. Nice meeting you, my name is Anil, it's a great pleasure to meet you. So we want to ask you: whose tomb is this mausoleum here? Is it a Muslim one? It's said that this is Jesus Christ's… that's wrong. Okay. Like it's shown in some book, this is Hazrat Isa. It's not Hazrat Isa; it's Hazrat Uza. // --- Khan: > The direction of the tomb is in the Jewish direction, east-west facing. Which suggests that the inhabitant of that tomb would be a follower of Moses of Israelite origin, because this was the direction that they buried their dead in. Adlerstein: > There clearly were groups that did believe in aligning graves in an east-west manner rather than a north-south. For many, many, many hundreds of years, Jews were looking along that east-west axis. It was that band of the earth's circumference that Jews occupied, rather than largely to the north or south. Martin: In the Valley of Kashmir, the Temple of Solomon contained an ancient stone inscription going back to 54 A.D. The inscription said that Yuz Asaf proclaimed his prophethood and that he was Yusu, prophet of the children of Israel. In modern times, the inscription was destroyed, but not before photographs were taken of it, and that should settle the question as to whether Yuz Asaf was from Israel or Egypt. Darian waqt — waqt means time in Persian — darian waqt, at this time, Yuz Asaf, the Jesus the Gatherer, dawaii pagambari mikunand, that he proclaimed his... other part, he was Yusu, prophet of children of Israel. Aishan Yusu, paihambari Bani Israel ast. Olssen: > When I was given permission to get the DNA, those men had access to the underground tomb. There's, under the main room is a cellar, and there's another tomb down there. So it's a big room. You can walk around. There's headroom. ... Martin crew: There is a man here named Aziz Kashmiri who wrote a book on this. Muslims around the tomb: वो सब झूठ है, वो सब झूठ है। उन्होंने आपकी क्या राय... क्यों ऐसी कहानी बनाई? पैसे कमाने के लिए, और क्या? // > It's all lies! it's all lies! Martin crew: What do you think of them… why did they make up such a story? > To make money, what else? // Olssen: > Someone in Kashmir told me, who had been down there many, many, many years before all this militancy, before the tomb was altered, and they said he isn't in the ground. Behind one of those stone walls is a ledge, and they put him on that ledge and sealed off, so there's a false wall, and he is behind that false wall. Muslim men around tomb: तौहीन हो रहा है ये, कि अगर कोई भी फिरका ये कहे कि हज़रत ईसा यहाँ पर है, ये मुसलमान के इस कुरान को तौहीन है। ये मुसलमान बर्दाश्त नहीं करेंगे। इसलिए गवर्नमेंट ने इसको... ये नहीं, वो क्या नाम है उसका... गवर्नमेंट ने ये मान लिया हमें कि इसको बंद कर दो, फिलहाल लॉक कर दो इसको। // It's an insult that if any sect says that Hazrat Isa is here, it's an insult to this Muslim's Quran. These Muslims will not tolerate it. That's why the government has… no, that's not it, what's it called… The government has told us to shut it down; for now, lock it up. // Olssen: > They had said at the time, We're only going to be removing rocks from where the feet are. So that you have access to the feet. We don't want to remove the whole wall. So they've seen it. They know there's a body there. Yes, DNA can be recovered. If there's bones, they can get the DNA. Martin crew: It doesn't matter how old the bones are? Olssen: > No, we have 4,000-year-old, 5,000-year-old Tocharian mummies that they're getting DNA from regularly. Muslim men around tomb: ये गवर्नमेंट के ही इजाज़त से एक लेडी आई थी यहाँ, वो यहाँ से सैंपल उठाना चाहती थी, डीएनए टेस्ट के लिए। हाँ, तो इसी लिए ये बंद कर दिया है यहाँ पर कि यहाँ पर ये मुसलमान लोग जो हैं, ये बर्दाश्त नहीं करेंगे इसका तौहीन। // It was a woman who came here with the government's permission; she wanted to collect samples here for a DNA test. Yes, that's why they shut it down here—because these Muslims won't tolerate its desecration. // -- Olssen: > I received all the approvals I needed, but at the last minute there was some militancy, and this was shortly after 9/11, and the project collapsed. Martin: One of the significant aspects of the tomb of Yuz Asaf, there is a carving of two stone feet. The stone feet have strange marks, as though at the time of the burial, the artist was trying to show that that individual had undergone a crucifixion, and to preserve that knowledge in stone. And of course the Muslim caretakers now keep it covered over with a cloth because they do not want attention to be drawn to that fact. It took me personally about 20 years before I could change my thinking and not be threatened by the possibility that Jesus may have lived through the crucifixion and recovered his health and lived a long life. But I do not think it is heresy asking the questions and seeing where the evidence leads. In my quest, I felt like David in the story of David and Goliath. Trying to conquer a giant, as many obstacles stood in my path. But the Goliath I faced is still there. He's the bureaucracy of organized religions. He is the entrenched belief systems which control people and keep them in spiritual darkness. He's the lack of inquisitiveness of members of my own fundamentalist upbringing. He's the tendency of people everywhere to stand so firmly behind what they have been taught that they will not think independently and ask hard questions. He is the refusal of so many people to question authority and search for answers, even when the evidence can be found. --- There's something that Yogananda said I was reading one time, if I remember correctly: Tato dharma, yato jaya, where there is dharma, where there is righteousness and something that's true, tato jaya, there is victory. Does that make sense? Truth is a powerful thing. Dalai Lama: > When we look human history, and even today, unfortunately, there are conflict. in the name of religion. So therefore, the religious harmony is very essential. In spite of different philosophies or different sort of history, all traditions carry same message, message of love, compassion, forgiveness, self-discipline, and contentment. > In the West, Judeo-Christian background country, a certain portion of human beings in these countries get immense benefit from Christianity or from Judaism. And Asia, like India, millions of Hindus get inspiration from Hinduism. And Thai or Burma, Sri Lanka, in this area, from Buddhism, like that. And Arab world, millions of people get inspiration from Muslim, because of Islamic. > What is the reason of these different philosophy? It is quite obvious. For different people with different mental disposition, we need different way to approach. So these different philosophies, as you come, all aiming to promote these values: love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, or self-discipline. > So there is common message, and all different philosophies more or less same aim, to help humanity, to promote human values. So therefore, there is basis work together and respect each other. And actually, we can, once we have closer relations, contact, we can learn each other. --- Martin: Poem from India named Kalidasa wrote a salutation to the dawn. It goes something like this: Look therefore to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence, the bliss of learning, the glory of action, the joy of knowledge. For yesterday is only a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a vision of happiness and every tomorrow a dream of hope. Look therefore to this day. END. --- ## Interview References Pagels: **Prof. Elaine Pagels** Princeton University, Dept. of Religion Tambasco: **Prof. Anthony Tambasco** Georgetown University, Dept. of Tehology Kashmiri: **Aziz Kashmiri** Newspaper Editor, Author of "Christ in Kashmir" Mitchell: **Prof. Alan Mitchell** Georgetown University, Dept. of Tehology, Former Jesuit Priest Fleishman: **Dr. Paul Fleishman, M.D.** Psychiatrist/Author Chidananda: **Brother Chidananda** Self-Realization Fellowship Monk Disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda Paramahansa Yogananda Indian Philosopher and Author Founder of Self-Realization Fellowship Hesemann: **Michael Hesemann** Historian/Author, Vatican Accredited Journalist (skeptic) Adlerstein: **Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein** Professor of Jewish Law, Loyola Law School Olsson: **Suzanne Olsson** Author "Jesus in Kashmir: The Lost Tomb" World Explorer, AKA "Indiana Sue" Entin: **Daniel Entin** Director, Nicholas Roerich Museum Khan: **Arif Khan** Editor of the "Tomb of Jesus" website, London, UK Meenakshi Priest: **Meenakshi Temple - Head Priest** Meenakshi Temple, India Baptiste: **Father Baptiste** Bareilly Catholic church, India ISKCON Priest: **ISKCON Priest** International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Bagalore, India **Shankaracharya** The head of this Jagannath Temple, Orthodox Hinduism Balducci: **Monsignor Corrado Balducci** Apostolic Nuncio of the Vatican Bajpai **Dr. Ramesh Bajpai** Surgeon ### Historical People Notovitch: **Nocholas Notovitch** Author - "The Unknown Life of Jesus the Christ" "The Life of Saint Issa, the Best of the Sons of Men" Saw the document in 1887 Russian Traveler Roerich: **Nicholas Roerich** Russian Traveler Abhedananda: **Swami Abhedananda** Ramakrishna Vedanta Societ, Calcutta (Abhedananda devotee) ### Family and Hometown Witcher: **Marie Witcher** Ed Martin's cousin. Storm: **Robbis Storm** Church of Christ Member, Lapasas, Texas Fisher: **Preacher Elvis Fisher** Church of Christ, Lapasas, Texas ## Places Meenakshi Temple, Madurai, India Bareilly, India Iskcon International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Bagalore, India Ladakh,northwestern India Rozabal Tomb (Roza Bal)