Jesus lived the life of a fully realised Being in life and in death — hated by the authority figures of his time, he was mocked, tortured and put to death. At any stage of that unfolding process, the man Jesus could have walked away but he chose not to. Later, three days after dying on the cross, quietly, he did something extraordinary…

“Whenever virtue declines and vice predominates, I incarnate as an Avatar. In visible form I appear from age to age to protect the virtuous and to destroy evildoing in order to reestablish righteousness.” ~ Bhagavad Gita

Today, for anyone who wants to understand and embody Christ’s teachings, it is important to understand that the man Jesus was a realised yogi in the highest sense of the word.

Do the words ‘yogi’ and ‘Christ’ seem unpalatable to you? They are one and the same thing.

Jesus was born in Palestine as a Jew but he was much more eastern in his orientation and teaching style than western, so it is ironic that many Churches, and their leaders, have today condemned yoga as the “work of the devil” and denied yoga’s true purpose of God realisation.

The rejection of the path of yoga by the Church shows very clearly the collective, negative ego embedded in its own structures, which feels threatened by anything that would give people a sense of peace and oneness, and direct contact with the God self within.

The Three Wise Men of the East

Most of us know the story of the three ‘wise men’ who visited Jesus the infant, but who were they really?  This information is often omitted in stories about the birth of Jesus.

These wise men, however, were none other than the great rishis of India, who already knew by meditation of the coming of the Great One. Not only did they come to Jesus but he reciprocated their visit by communing with them directly at the Soul level.

These sages lived continuously in the highest spiritual consciousness and through Divine intuition alone foresaw the coming of the Avatar Jesus.  We are told in the bible that they followed ‘the star’… but nothing else is said about it.  However, for those who know the inner science of yoga, and of Christianity, it is clear they were following the spiritual light of the third eye (‘ajna’), not a star in the night sky!

Later, Jesus speaks of this, saying, “The light of the body comes from the (spiritual) eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”

Jesus’ unaccounted-for years = Hidden records found in Tibet

In the New Testament. we find that the curtain of silence coming down on Jesus’ life after his twelfth year and does not rise again until eighteen years later. at which time he receives baptism from John and begins preaching to the multitude. We are only told one sentence about all of these missing years of his life, seventeen in total: “And Jesus increased in stature, and in favour with God and man.” (Luke 2:52). For the contemporaries of such an extraordinary figure to find nothing noteworthy to record from his teens to his thirties is in and of itself extraordinary.

Remarkable accounts do exist, however, not in the land of Jesus’ birth, but further east in India and Tibet where he spent most of his unaccounted-for years.

Hidden away in a Tibetan monastery priceless records speak of a Saint Issa of Israel, “in whom was manifest the soul of the universe”; who from age fourteen to twenty eight was in India and regions of the Himalayas amongst the saints, monks and pundits. Except as chronicled in these ancient manuscripts, no other history of the unknown years of Jesus’ life has ever been published.

Providentially, these ancient records were discovered and copied in the Himis Monastery in Tibet by a Russian traveler by the name of Nicholas Notovitch, who later published hint notes himself in 1894 under the title ‘The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ.‘

He was a Russian doctor who journeyed extensively throughout Afghanistan, India, and Tibet. Notovitch journeyed through the lovely passes of Bolan, over the Punjab, down into the arid rocky land of Ladak, and into the majestic Vale of Kashmir of the Himalayas. During one of his jouneys he was visiting Leh, the capital of Ladak, near where the buddhist convent Himis is. He had an accident that resulted in his leg being broken. This gave him the unscheduled opportunity to stay awhile at the Himis convent.

Notovitch learned, while he was there, that there existed ancient records of the life of Jesus Christ. In the course of his visit at the great convent, 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.”

He was shown two large yellowed volumes containing the biography of St. Issa.

Notovitch enlisted a member of his party to translate the Tibetan volumes while he carefully noted each verse in the back pages of his journal.

Notovich’s manuscript tells us: ‘Issa secretly absented himself from his father’s house; left Jerusalem, and, in a train of merchants, journeyed toward the South, with the object of perfecting himself in the knowledge of the Word of God and the study of the laws of the great Buddhas.’

When he returned to the western world there was much controversy as to the authenticity of the document. He was quickly accused of creating a hoax and was ridiculed as an imposter. In his defense he encouraged a scientific expedition to prove the original tibetan documents existed.

One of his skeptics was Swami Abhedananda, a direct disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahansa.

In 1922, Abhedananda journeyed into the arctic region of the Himalayas, determined to either find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose the fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir O 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, was a 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. Speaking of Issa, Roerich quotes legends which have the estimated antiquity of many, many centuries.

During the unaccounted years of Jesus’ life, we can safely say then that Jesus journeyed to India where his own God realisation, reawakened and reinforced in the company of the masters and the spiritual environs of India, provided a background of universality of truth from which he could preach his message of Universal Truth – a message that would be comprehensible to the masses of his native land, yet with underlying meanings that would be appreciated for countless generations to come as the infancy of man’s mind would mature in understanding and be able to receive the deep wisdom imparted in them.

How to understand Jesus the Christ

The deeper meaning of Jesus’s (hidden) teachings are inextricably linked to the inner science of yoga – one of the world’s oldest and most systematic ‘religious’ paths achieving self-realisation.  Jesus did not care for external structures, churches and temples and so forth, he was only concerned with the Temple of Mankind, where the living Christ dwells.

Most of us are accustomed to looking outside of ourselves for fulfilment, where we believe that outer attainments can give us what we want — spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, who actually live Jesus’ teachings, point out that the human ego is rarely satisfied and always wants MORE.

We are caught up in doing rather than being, in action rather than awareness.

In the Bible, it says “be still, and know that I am God.”  

In these few words, lies the key to the science of yoga which offers a direct means of stilling the turbulence of arising thoughts and the restless of the mind-body that obscures our true identity – that which is beyond form.

Ordinarily our awareness and energies are directed outward, to the things of this world, which are transient in nature and can never give us lasting fulfilment because they are rooted in illusion, or maya.

Yoga, in its true form, reverses the ordinary flow of energy and consciousness so that the mind becomes a dynamic centre of direct perception, and the senses are refined upwards in consciousness.

Jesus learned the ancient science of yoga and the real teachings of Jesus embody them fully – so it is is vital to perceive them through intuitive perception, rather than the blind and deadened rational intellect that is divorced from true knowing.

The real message of Jesus

Jesus was preceded by Gautama Buddha, the ‘Enlightened One,’ whose incarnation reminded a forgetful generation of the Dharma Chakra, the ever-rotating wheel of karma – self-initiated action and its effects which make each person responsible for his present condition. The Buddha brought hear back into the arid theology and mechanical rituals into which the ancient Vedic religion of India had fallen after the passing of a higher age in which Lord Krishna, India’s most beloved of avatars, preached the way of divine love and God-realisaiton through the supreme spiritual science of yoga, union with ‘God’.

Jesus came to demonstrate the forgiveness and compassion of the Creator, whose love is a shelter from exacting law (karma).  In truth, the action of Grace is a higher law than the karmic action and reaction we see playing out daily in our lives.

The Good Shepherd of souls opened his arms to all, rejecting none. As the tiny babe in the manger at Bethlehem, and as the saviour who healed the sick and raised the dead, and applied the salve of love to the wounds of errors, the Christ in Jesus lived among humanity, and laid down a clear foundation and path, that we all might learn to live like gods. In the little human body called Jesus was born the vast Christ Consciousness, the omniscient Intelligent of God, or Spirit, onmipresent in every part and particle of creation.

It is no happenstance that Jesus chose to be born as an Eastern Christ in Palestine — he was oriental by birth and blood.  So to separate a teacher from the background of his nationality is to blur the understanding through which he is perceived. As a fully realised yogi, he manifested full mastery of the universal science of God-union and could thus speak and act as a saviour with the direct voice and authority of God.

Jesus, as the man, had to use the medium of Oriental civilisation, customs and mannerisms, language and parables in spreading his message of Oneness — and the Gospels can be rightly understood in light of the sacred teachings of India – not the caste-ridden, stone worshipping, distorted interpretations of Hinduism, bu the philosophical, soul-saving wisdom of her rishis; the kernal not the husk of the Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita.

Christ’s message, through Jesus the man, has been sorely interpreted by the world, by those who are not yet awake. Even the most elementary elementary principles of his teachings have been desecrated, and their esoteric depths forgotten.

We talk about Jesus’ literal crucifixion but what about the daily crucifixion of his teachings?

His teachings have been crucified at the hands of dogma, prejudice, and cramped understanding – all born of ego.  Genocidal wars have been fought, many innocent people (mainly women) have been burned as witches and heretics, on the presumed authority of the man-made doctrines of Christianity.

We must ask how we can salvage the immortal teachings from the hands of ignorance?

Jesus spoke of the Christ consciousness in man and woman when he proclaimed, “I and in the Father, and the Father in me.” (John 14:11).  Or as the Sufi mystic Rumi later put it, “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.”

Jesus spoke of ‘the Father’ as he was referring to the active principle of consciousness within and without.

To receive Christ is not accomplished by going to church, and by outer rituals that change nothing inwardly.  To truly know Christ means to close one’s eyes and go inwards.

Eckhart Tolle explains this in clear terms when he says that the Christ essence is within all of us – each man, woman and child – as unrealised potential.  The awakening Presence in you is the actualisation of the Christ energy.  You could call this Buddhic energy, and it would be the same.

Jesus Christ preached his Universal message throughout that area and then returned home to teach in his native land, where he was treated vilely, condemned and put to death because the collective ego was not ready to be challenged.  Yet, in surrendering to his own mortal death, Jesus cracked the ‘egg of perception’ for all time.

Now, buried under the dogma of Christianity’s narrow interpretation of his teachings, it is up to each Soul to awaken through direct contact with the Christ energy in meditation.  When enough Souls have heeded the clarion call, this will mark the second coming of the Lord.

Today’s world is in great upheaval, having lost touch with the deeper meaning of Christ love and brotherhood preached by Jesus — and all avatars before and after him.

To return to Christ’s message is the only sure panacea to prevent the world from tearing itself apart by unyielding differences.

The teachings of Jesus, when rightly followed, break down the ego shell – they do not strengthen a false sense of a separate self, the ‘little me’ that is disconnected from the whole.

If you wish to follow the teachings of Christ, ask yourself if your understandings — whether it is something you read or something you hear in church – increase your compassion for yourself and others, or if they alienate you from others.

We are all children of God, from our inception unto eternity.  Differences come from prejudices, and prejudice is a child of ignorance, born of the ego which has nothing to do with Christ.