Chapter 1

The Evidence of Levi Dowling, Nicolai Notovitch and Holger Kersten

The Brahmanic Masters wondered at the clear conception of the child, and often were amazed when he explained to them the meaning of the laws.

The Aquarian Gospel, chapter 22 verse 20

We now enjoy living in the roseate dawn of the Age of Aquarius, the Water Bearer, the Truth Bearer. According to the astrological naming of time periods, which change about every 2,000 years, we have left the Piscean Age when the original gospels of Jesus Christ’s great mission on Earth were first given, and we have now entered a new era, when a new gospel has been revealed, appropriate to our Aquarian Age.

The Piscean Age is identical with the first Christian Revelation. Pisces means fish. This is a water sign, water symbolizing truth. In the early days of the Christian era, the fish was an emblem of the faith, which appeared inscribed on the catacombs of the persecuted Christians, hiding from Roman wrath under the insane Emperor Nero, who made the allegation that they had tried to burn down the capital. But, the Aquarian Age is pre-eminently a spiritual age, strongly reacting against contemporary materialism. The deeper, more esoteric teachings of Jesus are more suitable to the modern world, and according to their believers are given through the revelation of this new Aquarian Gospel.

The Gospel contains 22 sections, divided into separate chapters, on Jesus’ life and works, and covers over 260 pages. There have been 53 reprints of the book since it first appeared in 1908, and it continues to be reissued. In this book we shall necessarily concentrate on the chapters actually referring to Jesus’ time in India and Tibet, during his ‘missing years’, although the text covers his journey through ancient Greece, Persia and other regions on his route. However, India and Tibet are the dedicated subjects of our quest for investigating the truth of the Aquarian Gospel, and our wish to discover whether or not Jesus ever really visited these far-off lands. The relevant information is contained in chapters V, VI, VII, and XXI of the Gospel.

In the 20th and 21st centuries of the new Aquarian Age, many dramatic changes have already become apparent. Alternative medicine, astrology, vegetarianism, ecology, electronic communications and the literature of Western and Eastern mysticism are all gaining in popularity with millions, both in the East and West, in a way that is unprecedented in previous times. It can indeed be called a New Age. The Aquarian Gospel, necessarily suited to this radically different, historical period, was revealed to the highly gifted spiritual and psychic medium, the Reverend Dr Levi H Dowling (1844–1911). Born into a devoutly religious family, his father was a minister of the respected North-Western, American Christian Denomination, the Disciples of Christ. Following in his father’s footsteps, Levi was a prodigious child preacher, and began to enthuse large congregations from the early age of 16. As a young man he served in the United States Army as a chaplain, during the American Civil War. He attended the North-Western Christian University at Indianapolis, and graduated from two medical colleges before practising medicine until retirement, when he also began his serious literary work.

According to his biographer (and second wife), Dr Eva S Dowling, ‘after forty years of profound study and silent meditation, he entered deeply into the study of ethereal or heavenly vibrations. He found himself miraculously placed into that higher state of spiritual consciousness which allowed him to enter the world of those superfine ethers called the “Akashic”.’ The ‘Akashic’ may be defined simply as the Kingdom of Supreme Intelligence, or Universal Mind. Akasha is Sanskrit for sky, space or ether, and these records denote a vast collection of encoded knowledge, stored in a non-physical plane of existence. They record every event in the history of the cosmos, impressed on the somniferous ether or Akasha. It was from this realm that Dowling became ‘The Chosen Channel’, and received his New Gospel of Christ Jesus for the Aquarian Age. This revelation has influenced many Christian sects allied to the extensive Disciples of Christ movement in America, such as the Aquarian Christine Church Universal, the Saint Germain Foundation and the Church Universal Triumphant. The book has also enjoyed a much wider readership, East and West, among those interested in refined spiritual literature, and the many growing adherents of the New Age movement.

Levi Dowling was born in 1844 and was regarded at the time as an extraordinary child prodigy, commencing his pastoral ministry at the age of 16. He also successfully practised medicine in Ohio until his death in 1911. No exact date is given for the completion of his Aquarian Gospel, but in her introduction to his book, Dr Eva Dowling gives us Levi’s own account of how he received the Aquarian Gospel. I have extracted the important verses appertaining to our quest, that Dowling wrote in his own introductory poem entitled ‘The Cusp of the Ages’.

In Spirit I was caught away into the realms of Akasha;

I stood alone within the circle of the Sun.

And there I found the secret spring that opens up the

door to Wisdom and an understanding heart.

I entered in and then I knew …

And then I stood upon the cusp where Ages meet.

The Piscean Age had passed; the Aquarian Age

had just begun.

And then I heard the Aquarian Cherubim and

Seraphim proclaim the Gospel of the coming Age,

the age of Wisdom, of the Son of Man.

This Gospel I will tell, and I will sing this song in every

land, to all the people, tribes and tongues of earth.

Consequentially, the Aquarian Gospel presented a new and completely radical vision of the mission and teachings of Jesus Christ, which its many adherents consider to be more relevant and applicable to our troubled times than the synoptic gospels. As this fascinating tale develops we shall follow all the supporting evidence for Dowling’s assertion that Jesus visited India in the ‘missing years’. It is an exciting series of events, with all the twists, and turns of a mystery story. This is our quest for the Aquarian Gospel which we will examine in more detail in our next chapter.

The legend that Jesus of Nazareth spent his ‘missing years’ in India first surfaced in the West at the end of the 19th century with a sensational bestseller written by the remarkable Russian scholar, soldier, explorer, journalist, author and historian, Nicolai Notovitch. He published his book in Paris, which became widely read in the 1890s, entitled La Vie Inconnue de Jesus Christ. This was first translated into English by Violet Crispe in 1895, and published in London. There were several other editions translated into all the major European languages. I found this rare book, in a slightly battered condition, in the archives of the British Library and studied it extensively, along with all the other significant literature that I could find. Notovitch’s book caused a great sensation at the time, because in his exploratory travels in India and Tibet, he was convinced that he had discovered certain documentary evidence that proved, beyond any doubt, that Jesus Christ definitely lived in India and visited Tibet during his so-called ‘missing years’.

There has been endless speculation about these missing, hidden, secret or lost years, as they are variously called. The New Testament is inexplicably silent about how and where Jesus lived in the time from when he discoursed with the elders in the Temple, at the age of 12, until he reappeared in Jerusalem to commence his great, historic mission at the age of 30. The main references are in Luke’s gospel, chapter 2, from verse 42 onwards. ‘When he was 12 years old, they [the holy family], went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast … as they returned the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem and Joseph and his mother knew not of it … After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions … And he went down with them [the Holy Family] and came to Nazareth … And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.’ He then only reappears to be baptized by John the Baptist in Luke, chapter 3 verse 23: ‘And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age …’He commences his ministry in chapter 4 when he sojourns in the wilderness and is tempted by the Devil. Then the gospel story continues until the Resurrection. The other gospels are also inexplicably silent, so we are left with a great mystery, about which there has been endless speculation.

One theory is that he spent his time in Jerusalem, simply working in his father’s carpentry workshop. More plausibly there is a suggestion that he disappeared into either an Essene or Theraputae community, for further spiritual preparation, before he was ready to embark on his great mission. Then there is the other theory that he travelled to distant lands. It is this supposition that prompted the author and explorer Nicolai Notovitch to commence his search in Asia and the Far East for evidence. He was convinced he had solved the great riddle, and his book The Unknown Life of Jesus stunned his contemporaries, with the startling revelation that Jesus had actually journeyed to India and Tibet during those mysterious missing 19 years.

The Koran has many verses concerning Jesus, and Islamic scholars, principally Dr Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahman of Qadian, Abdul Aziz Kashmiri, and the Sufi Professor Dr Fida Hassnain all believe, based on Koranic verses, that Jesus escaped the crucifixion, then travelled to Kashmir where he lived and died. I shall review this strongly held Islamic point of view in chapter 9.

This discovery by Notovitch was compounded by the astonishing revelation of ‘The Aquarian Gospel’, which I discussed in the Introduction, and would seem to confirm the discoveries which the explorer Notovitch believed to be true, although the narrative and details do not exactly correspond. Whether Levi Dowling ever read Nicolai Notovitch’s book, or whether Nicolai Notovitch ever read the Aquarian Gospel, we shall never know.

Nicolai Alexandrovitch Notovitch, born in 1858, was a prolific Russian author and historian. In 1887 he made a journey to India as the Far Eastern correspondent of the quality Russian Journal Novaya Vremiya, with the express purpose of sending articles of interest found on his travels in Asia. He travelled as far as Kashmir, then on to the hidden city of Ladakh, in Tibet. There in Ladakh, he chanced to visit a Buddhist monastery, where in conversation with the head lama, he was informed of their belief that the spirit of Buddhist teachings was actually enshrined in the teachings of Christianity, through the visit of the prophet Issa to Tibet approximately 2,000 years ago. Astonishingly, the lama’s description of Issa seemed, to Notovitch, to conform with the personage of Jesus Christ, and he determined then and there fully to investigate the truth of this legend. The lama directed him to the monastery of Hemis, near Leh, in Ladakh, where he would find the documentary evidence. There, following enquiries with the abbot of Hemis, he requested to see any manuscripts relating to the prophet Issa’s visit to Tibet. The abbot kindly obliged, by reading certain single verses, with the aid of a translator, from an ancient manuscript. This narrative Notovitch recorded and summarized. I will relate this gospel from his rendition, in chapter 3.

A brief introduction describes the early history of the Israelites and the life of Moses. An account follows of how the Holy Spirit periodically assumes human form so He may demonstrate the Divine Wisdom for mankind in practice. One of these avatars or messengers of God was born in Judea and given the name of Issa, which is significantly close to Isa, the Muslim name for Jesus. Sometime around the age of 14 the youth arrived in the region of the Indus, in the company of merchants, following the ancient Silk Route, where he settled among the Aryans with the intention of furthering his self-perfection, and studying the revelations of the Hindu sages, in particular that of the Buddha, born over 500 years before Issa himself. The young Issa travelled in the Punjab, visited the Jains, and met the Brahmans of Jagannath, where he studied the Vedas. He eventually left India having displeased the Brahmans by his castigation of the caste system, which took away from the lower castes their fundamental human rights as children of God, their heavenly Father. Issa travels on to Nepal, where he studies the Buddhist Scriptures, before returning to his own people who were suffering severe affliction at the hands of Imperial Rome. There in Jerusalem he commences his great, historic mission on Earth, as the New Testament records. According to Notovitch all the passages which were translated to him were collections of ancient Tibetan writings, in the Pali language, and compiled around 200 years after the birth of Christ, and preserved in a monastery in Lhasa near the Potala Palace, home of the Dalai Llama.

On his return to Russia Notovitch succeeded in having his sensational manuscript published in Paris rather than Moscow, as the Russian authorities believed it to be subversive in its undermining of the doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church. It was therefore written in French and published with the title La Vie Inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English in 1895. The book caused a sensation both amongst the international public and the Christian authorities, and scholars and historians. Professor Dr Max Muller, the celebrated Oxford professor, and editor of the 50-volume Sacred Books of the East was a convinced Christian, and was said to be very unhappy with such a discovery. He sent a school teacher from the Government College in Agra, one Archibald Douglas, on to Tibet in order to verify Notovitch’s claims. Although Douglas never succeeded in examining the manuscripts he nevertheless partisanly denied their existence. However, 40 years before Notovitch’s visit to Hemis, according to the German academic and religious historian Dr Holger Kersten, author of the book Jesus in India, a lady by the name of Mrs Harvey, in a book entitled The Adventures of a Lady in Tartary, Thibet, China and Kashmir, published in 1853, describes the Tibetan manuscripts, which were later read to Notovitch. After Notovitch, Kaliprasad Chandra of the Oriental Seminary in Calcutta visited Tibet. He went to Hemis where the monks reported Notovitch’s report to be truthful, and he was shown the manuscripts. This account was published in his book Kashmir and Tibet. In 1925, the Russian archaeologist Nicholas Roerich, who spent most of his life in India, made reference in his writings to the Tibetan documents in Ladakh, whereby it was stated that ‘Jesus had returned from the Himalaya to Palestine at the age of twenty-nine’. In 1931 Lady Henrietta Merrick’s book In The World Attick allegedly contained the statement: ‘In Leh is the legend of Christ who is called “Issa” where the monastery at Hemis holds precious documents 1,500 years old which tell of the days that he passed in Leh, where he was joyously received and where he preached.’ In 1939 the Swiss nun, the Revd. Mother Elizabeth Caspari visited Hemis Monastery in the company of Mrs Clarence Gasque, the esteemed President of the World Association of Faith, when the librarian showed them the original ancient manuscripts that were read to Notovitch. Dr Holger Kersten, however, who also visited Tibet, found that the texts have since been moved to an unknown destination. We shall return with a full examination of Nicolai’s discoveries in our concluding chapter, but first we need to examine the writings of Dr Holger Kersten.

Dr Holger Kersten is a respected academic author and scholar, specializing in religious history. He studied theology and pedagogy at the University of Freiberg, and has travelled extensively in the Middle East and India. He is the author of the much discussed, best-selling Jesus Lived in India. This book has since been translated into 15 different languages, and has gained worldwide attention. It is still in print by Penguin Books. Kersten visited India in 1979, and in Dharamsala he requested a letter of introduction from the Tibetan authorities to the abbot of the Hemis monastery in order to inspect the manuscripts about which Nicolai Notovitch had written. Kersten received the necessary document, and eventually arrived at Hemis. While waiting for his audience he learned that the former abbot of Hemis had been reported missing since the invasion of Tibet by Chinese Communist troops. The Chinese Government had prohibited all correspondence with him, and the last anyone had heard of the Hemis high lama was that he was held as a prisoner in a labour camp. After 15 years, he was assumed to have died and a successor was found. When Kersten was summoned for his audience with the new high lama, he was accompanied by an interpreter. He showed the abbot his letter of introduction and told him how very important these texts would be for the whole of Christendom. The venerable abbot informed him that the scriptures in question had already been searched for, but nothing could now be found. He left feeling very disappointed, but later managed to discover that an old diary dating from the 19th century was located in the Moravian Church Mission in Leh, in which the missionary and Tibetan scholar Dr Karl Marx (not to be confused with the author of Das Kapital) had mentioned Notovitch’s stay at the Hemis monastery. He visited the Moravian Mission but Father Razu, the director, could not show him the precious diary because it had mysteriously disappeared three years earlier. The friendly priest had no explanation for the book’s disappearance but recalled that a certain Professor, Dr Fida Hassnain from Srinigar had taken photographs of the relevant pages, and had supplied the German Stern magazine with the report, and a photograph was published in 1973.

Thus Dr Kersten was satisfied that Notovitch had actually visited the monastery as he claimed. He then went to Kashmir and visited the venerable and distinguished Islamic, Sufi scholar Professor Fida Hassnain at the University of Kashmir. He agreed to inform Kersten all about his research into this question. But Kersten found that in his opinion, his evidence was mainly by implication, association and apparent connections, rather than based on solid scientific facts. Kersten determined that the professor’s research had to be placed on a firm scientific footing. This resulted in Kersten’s own book Jesus Lived in India. He felt certain that a story so highly respected by revered Tibetans, and maintained for over 2,000 years, must have some foundation in folk memory, although difficult to prove. Folk memory and legend invariably free us from the difficult weight of impossible scientific exactitude. Nevertheless these legends strongly resonate with those who hear of them, as somewhere the likelihood of their truth seems to lie in humanity’s archetypal, collective memory.

Kersten knew that Issa was somewhat similar to the name commonly used for Jesus in Kashmir, Yuz Azaf; and most likely to Isa, as used in Islam. Isa or Issa derives from the Syriac Yeshu, which comes from Jesus’ name in Aramaic, Yeshua or Joshua, the son of Joseph. Jesus is the Greek form, and Christos means Saviour. Jesus in India, by the Islamic scholar Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, born in 1835, strongly supports the theory that Issa, known in Tibet and Kashmir, was in fact Jesus of Nazareth. I shall refer to this scholarly and respected book wherever appropriate in chapter 7 on the Islamic point of view. In Islam, Jesus is thought of as the last great prophet before Muhammad. Ahmad states that the Koran confirms the truth that Jesus was saved from a death that would have been unworthy of him, then travelled with merchants to India and stayed in Kashmir until his death, where he was buried in a tomb which still exists. I shall quote the relevant verses from the Koran in chapter 7. This led Kersten to follow further trails fully outlined in his book. One was to point out the many similarities in Christ’s preaching with the Buddha’s teaching, particularly in the Beatitudes. He also followed up the legend in Kashmir that Issa was buried there, having escaped the crucifixion. He visited the tomb, which I shall also discuss in chapter 7. Kersten also discovered that amongst the ancient sacred Hindu texts, the Puranas, there existed the Bhavishyat Maha Purana and the Natha Namavali Sutra, written between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD and containing significant supplements that describe how Jesus came to India. I shall transcribe these verses in chapter 6.

Kersten maintains that there is further evidence for the presence of Jesus in Kashmir which is much more solid than mere oral and even the Puranic tradition. There is a tomb of the prophet Yuz Asaf (Kashmiri term for Jesus) located in Srinigar. Above the entrance to the burial chamber is carved an inscription which declares that Yuz Asaf entered Kashmir many centuries ago. This would tally with the Koran, whereby Jesus escaped death from the crucifixion. The tomb points to his actual death, much later, in Kashmir. Kersten also refers to other references in Hindu texts to Jesus having visited Kashmir. Dr Kersten’s research is long, scholarly and exhaustive. It is necessary to study his book for his entire thesis, of which this is a brief summary. ‘The Aquarian Gospel’ revealed by Dr Levi H Dowling is quite adamant that Jesus visited India and Tibet. Dr Dowling devotes three chapters to his stay in India and Tibet which I shall fully render in chapter 2. In the final chapter, I shall discuss Notovitch, Kersten and Dowling’s claims, as well as the several contrary opinions, so that the reader may form his or her own judgement on their veracity.