To an Indian Methodist bishop who wanted to visit us because: “Here in India I am deeply concerned about reaching Hindus with the Christian gospel, in a way acceptable to them in the language and form they understand. After a lot of research and browsing I have found your way of understanding and presentation of the Christian faith may be the answer to lead the majority community in India and diaspora to the TRUTH.”
Please look more carefully at our website, especially the article and book: The Christ of India. There you will see that our sole purpose is to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth travelled to India and became an orthodox Sanatana Dharmi. Then after living half of his life in India he returned to Israel as a teacher of Dharma and after three years returned to India where he lived the rest of his life in the Himalayas as a master yogi.
Those who would truly follow Jesus have only one option: the adoption and following of Sanatana Dharma–not that which is today called Christianity, but is only Churchianity.
What is Sanatana Dharma?
Since the teachings of Jesus were pure Sanatana Dharma, they can be learned from the eleven principal Upanishads (Isha, Kena, Katha, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka, and Shvetashvatara), the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Darshan (Yoga Sutras) of Patanjali. Anything that contradicts or adds to them is contrary to Dharma, and therefore contradictory to the original teachings of Jesus.
Hindus do not need “the Christian gospel,” which is a corruption of Jesus’ teachings, but they need to become more deeply aware of and grounded in traditional, authentic Sanatana Dharma.
Conversion or re-establishment?
One of my friends in Delhi for some reason (perhaps from past life samskaras) became interested in converting to Christianity, so he went to consult with some Catholic priests. They asked him to first carefully study the scriptures of Sanatana Dharma and then decide what he felt was right to do. He did so, and did the right thing: he did not convert, but began following the Brahminical traditions of his ancestors. He kept a picture of Jesus in his puja room along with the pictures and images of the Hindu deities, understanding that Jesus was a worshipper of them as was he.
Original Christianity
We certainly do hope that our website and publications will help seekers in America to find the eternal truths revealed to the ancient rishis of India, and will confirm those of India in the faith and practice of their divine, ancestral heritage: Sanatana Dharma.
Satyam Eva Jayate: “Truth alone prevails, not falsehood. By truth the path is laid out, the Way of the Gods, on which the seers, whose every desire is satisfied, proceed to the Highest Abode of the True” (Mundaka Upanishad 3:1:6).
May you find that path.
A blogpost in reference to the previous question and answer (above).
Dear friends,
There are two reasons for this blogpost besides the fact that I received the letter from India quoted previously.
The first is the need to make clear to all visitors to our website and readers of my books that the purpose of the website and my writings is to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth travelled to India in his so-called “lost years” and was a convert to Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). He returned to Israel as a messenger of that Dharma and was persecuted and executed for teaching Dharma. He returned to India where he lived the remainder of his life in the Himalayas. Therefore those who feel a spiritual affinity for Jesus become his true disciples by following his example and adopting Sanatana Dharma.
The true religion of Jesus
A Saint Thomas Christian priest once told me: “You cannot understand the teachings of Jesus if you do not know the scriptures of India.” That is because Jesus taught those scriptures! What is today popularly considered Christianity (Churchianity) is an insult and defamation of both Jesus and his teachings. The purpose of our website is to help Christians of both East and West to find the true religion of Jesus: Sanatana Dharma, and follow it as he did. They will be Sanatana Dharmis who have devotion to Jesus, just as there are Sanatana Dharmis who have devotion to Rama, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Durga, Ganesha and the other forms of God. They will no longer be Churchians and need not even call themselves Christians.
Those who use Dharma as a ploy for conversion
The second is to explain that in India there are missionaries and their adherents that incorporate token elements of Hinduism into their churches in the hope that they will attract Indian converts. For example, they will read passages from the Upanishads or Gita and follow them with passages from the Bible to pretend that the Vedic rishis were seeking truth and that the Bible and Christianity are the fulfillment of that search.
He admits his guilt
When the writer of the letter I answered got my reply he wrote a long letter of semi-defense which was really an admission of such underhanded and brazen deceptions on his part. He even said that his desire was to help those that pray: Asato ma sad gamaya, Lead me from the unreal to the Real (which he rendered, Lead me from the untrue to the Truth) to “the Truth that is Jesus.”
And of course he expressed indignation at my reference to Brahmins–and therefore caste–in my answer to him. In other words, the man aspires to destroy dharma and usher people into profound ignorance and blasphemy.
These may be strong words, but one of my first Indian friends told me what he and his Hindu classmates endured day after day in a Christian school in Gujerat. Every day there was a session of sneering at them and Dharma. They were told they were stupid, fools and going to hell. Often pictures and images of the deities were brought in and mocked and disrespected. The teachers also read out passages from the scriptures and mocked them. (Now their successors read them in church, as I have mentioned.) As a result he detested Jesus personally.
That is the evil of the missionaries who came to “dark India” to bring the false “light” of lies. Of course their version of Jesus is detestable.
A real missionary of Truth
For thirty-two years Paramhansa Yogananda lived in the West and explained the real teachings of Jesus and Jesus himself as a yogi and disciple of the masters of India. All of his writings present the truth, especially The Second Coming of Christ. If you have not already done so, I hope that you will read The Christ of India and the other related articles on our website.
Yours in the Light of the Spirit, the Atma Jyoti,
Abbot George Burke
(Swami Nirmalananda Giri)