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The Christ of India: The Story of Original Christianity Paperback – 20 April 2018
by Abbot George Burke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri) (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 456
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Janine
4.0 out of 5 stars EnlighteningReviewed in Australia on 8 October 2020
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We are being shown more and more the ruthlessness of how Christianity was formed as a religion by the Romans.... This book illustrates how the whole basis of Christianity as we know it is formed on lies for the sake of power
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Joan Winter
5.0 out of 5 stars Lost years of Christ explainedReviewed in the United States on 14 February 2024
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thank you. this information was new and enlightening for me.
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roastfrog
5.0 out of 5 stars It's an important seed in our personal journeyReviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 September 2021
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A great book for providing missing information on Jesus' life, important foundational concepts of hinduism and an effective meditation approach, too. An approach that is going to get me going on daily meditation - where the rubber meets the road. I didn't know how much I needed this book. Well worth it. Going to get more by Abbot George Burke.
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Vernon Cook
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in Canada on 12 December 2017
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Great read
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CVN Sai Chand
5.0 out of 5 stars Great BookReviewed in India on 14 May 2017
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Truth about Life and Life changing experiences and gets to the truth of our nature away from the external materialistic world, everyone should read such books for knowing real truth
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Udana Power
5.0 out of 5 stars This changed my lifeReviewed in the United States on 23 November 2023
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I suddenly saw everything differently. Profound. Direct. Clear and literally life-changing for me. I am deeply grateful. Put the final pieces together.
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The Christ of India: The Story of Saint Thomas Christianity
George Burke
4.05
143 ratings17 reviews
The unique story of Jesus, Saint Thomas his Apostle, and how the Dharma of India became part of Saint Thomas Christianity
There is a strong connection between Jesus and India, both historically and philosophically. And his disciple, Saint Thomas, who was the apostle of India, built upon the foundation of that connection. The result is that unique form of Christianity known as Saint Thomas Christianity.
In The Christ of India, Abbot George Burke presents the growing evidence that Jesus spent much of his "Lost Years" in India and Tibet, and reveals the philosophical unity of Jesus' teachings with the Eternal Way of Truth known in India as Sanatana Dharma. The history of Saint Thomas Christianity from the times of Jesus and Saint Thomas to the present day is also outlined.
The Christ of India: The Story of Saint Thomas Christianity includes the following:
The Christ of India, about the Essene roots of Jesus and the early Christians; the spiritual training of Jesus; The "lost years" of Jesus, with much information never before gathered together in one place; Jesus' return to the West, and how his teachings were misunderstood; Jesus return to India after his resurrection; and much more.
The Apostle of India, about how Jesus' apostle Saint Thomas went to India, and how the Christianity which grew up in India had a totally unique character compared to elsewhere in the world; the history of Saint Thomas Christianity in India and the story of mission from the Church of India to America in the 1800's and what happened to it.
Basic Beliefs of Saint Thomas Christianity, and The Saint Thomas Christian View of Dharma You will learn about the Tibetan adn Indian manuscripts which proved Jesus lived in the "East" and the efforts to suppress the news of their discovery.
You will learn about the Indian Saint Thomas Christian bishop of the 18th century who taught karma and reincarnation, who later became a wonderworking saint revered by Christians, Hindus, and Muslims alike.
Those who find themselves attracted to both Jesus and the Dharma of India will find this book fascinating and illuminating.
Genres
Religion
Spirituality
History
Biography
100 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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Format
100 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 2016 by Createspace
ISBN
9781535100632 (ISBN10: 153510063X)
Language
English
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About the author
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George Burke
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Abbot George Burke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri) is the founder and director of the Light of the Spirit Monastery (Atma Jyoti Ashram) in Cedar Crest, New Mexico, USA, a Saint Thomas Christian monastic foundation.
In his many pilgrimages to India, he had the opportunity of meeting some of India’s greatest spiritual figures, including Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh and Anandamayi Ma. During his first trip to India he was made a monk of the ancient Swami Order. In the United States he also encountered various Christian saints, including Saint John Maximovich of San Francisco and Saint Philaret Voznesensky of New York. He was consecrated a bishop in 1975 in the St. Thomas Christian lineage.
For many years Abbot George has researched the identity of Jesus Christ and his teachings with India and Sanatana Dharma, including Yoga. It is his conclusion that Jesus lived in India for most of his life, and was a yogi and Sanatana Dharma missionary to the West. After his resurrection he returned to India and lived the rest of his life in the Himalayas.
He has written extensively on these and other topics, many of which are posted at OCOY.org. Of major significance are: The Christ of India, The Breath of Life: The Practice of Breath Meditation According to Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish and Christian Traditions, The Yoga of the Sacraments and his various commentaries on Indian texts including the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 17 reviews
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Kenny
524 reviews
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February 16, 2022
Soham … truth
christianity
hinduism
spiritual-growth
...more
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Craig Bergland
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January 3, 2018
First, this is not a scholarly treatise, and the author admits that his lack of footnotes (reasons are explained) may be problematic - and he is correct. I have no way of knowing how accurate his presentation of Thomas Christianity is because I lack the necessary background. That being said, the author is articulate, intelligent, and presents the material well. Some of the conclusions he attributes to Thomas Christianity are logically flawed, but that is likely true of any religious system. Overall, a very enjoyable, easy read.
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David
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February 17, 2019
A very interesting read of a particular ancient community’s interpretation of the teachings of Christ, and how it relates to their everyday faith. No doubt many of the historical events outlined in this book are completely unknown to most western Christians, and are part of a forgotten history of Christianity.
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Alexander Josiah Logan
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February 26, 2017
This book is awesome
It brings together many different teachings succinctly and in a well thought out process that makes it easy to read and understand for anyone interested in this topic
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Mitchell McGill
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November 24, 2022
A bold book that takes seriously the implications of some radical claims about the Historical Jesus. Abbot Burke is a Theosophist and priest of the Liberal Catholic Church who, after studying in India, came to promote a very particular theory of Christ. Basically there's two claims--
1. Christ spent his lost years in India; and
2. The ancient St. Thomas Christians were originally far more gnostic.
Burke went on to found a monastery in the American West where he teaches and practices his theory of 'St. Thomas Christianity'-- a blend of Theosophy, Christian Gnosticism, and Hinduism which he calls 'Sanatana Dharma' (Eternal Dharma).
Burke doesn't simply make claims, he lays out evidence which presents a somewhat plausible case for his theory. First he argues that Essene Jews were heavily influenced by Dharmic religion. Next he makes the claim that Jesus was first and foremost a Jewish Essene, and that he gathered his spiritual knowledge after travelling to India during his "lost" teenage years; which go notoriously unmentioned in the canonical New Testament. To support this 'lost years' claim Burke presents a series of evidence which he found on his studies. A lot of these are stories he was told while traveling and studying in India. They associate Jesus (Isha, as he's known in India) with Shaivite traditions (living in Benares, meditating with a Shiva Lingam in a Rishikesh Cave, etc.) and are primarily derived via visionary experiences/remote viewing of Indian saints (so go ahead and make of that what you will). The strongest case objectively speaking however is not from Hindu sources, but Buddhist. The story goes that there is a Tibetan monastery at Marbour (near Lhasa) known as the Himis Monastery, and that several travelers have been allowed to access a certain set of manuscripts which are kept there.
The claim starts with a Russian man named Notovitch, who claimed to make the first find. He claimed the monks there allowed him to copy the manuscripts, which he published in 1890. After this, two disciples of Sri Ramakrishna (an Indian-American yoga teacher) each made independent journeys to the monastery and claimed to have confirmed the existence of these manuscripts. Trigunatitananda claimed he was shown two paintings also kept at the monastery. Nicholas Roerich-- a Russian lawyer, archeologist, theosophist, and painter-- also claimed to validate the claim while traveling Asia, and published his findings in 1929 in his volume 'The Heart of Asia'. In 1921 a woman named Henreitta Merrick also claimed to have accessed the documents at the monastery in Himis. In 1939 Elizabeth Caspari claimed to have seem the same scrolls at the same monastery. An anthropologist named Ravicz claims to have encountered the same legend when travelling to Himis in 1975. Edward Noack and his wife claimed to have been told by a monk in the same monastery that the manuscripts still existed in the late 1970s. As well did Swami Abhedananda (founder of the New York Vedanta society) make the trip and claim to have confirmed the manuscripts.
Bruke counts 9 separate verifications by 10 individuals over the course of over 100 years and presents other relevant circumstantial evidence. The scholarly consensus is that the story is a hoax, with the primary complaint being that the manuscripts have not been made directly available to available to them, as they are kept by a rival epistemological institution. No detailed, scholarly analysis of all 10 claims have ever been done. They have been presumed fabricated as there are second-hand accounts claiming to have heard Notovich admit to fabricating them. There is no direct record of Notovich himself ever saying anything of the sort, while there is substantial evidence of his work being aggressively suppressed by multiple sources. At the end of the day this is a question of whose word to trust.
For my money, I always expect the academy to grant the least possible latitude to any sources of information that originate from a rival epistemological instruction, and to actively suppress any subsequent truth claims for purely socio-political reasons. With that being said, theosophists were not always the most realistic of all spiritual seekers. With that being said, the sheer number of direct claims is impressive. The diversity of those making them is even more so. The idea that a radical Jewish rabbi had training from faiths east of Jerusalem, and during the height of the silk road no less, is not surprising, and actually a quite plausible explanation as to what made him so unique. If one has overcome the tyranny of state-sponsored materialism enough to take the possibility of remote viewing seriously, and has a healthy respect for the capabilities of Indian yogis, then this evidence corroborates the Himis manuscript story quite well. Especially if one takes seriously the possibility of Jesus as a teacher of Christian Gnosticism (a faith with striking parallels to Hindu ideology), and subsequent church suppression. Notovich was under the distinct impression, after meeting with Roman Catholic officials in response to the publication of his book, that the Vatican was well aware of this historical fact, and had gone to great lengths to suppress information about it throughout the centuries.
The other claims of the text not as well-founded in my view. Reducing Jesus to a mere Essene minimizes the influence of Zealotry in his ministry. Similarly, reducing the Essenes to a fundamentally dharmic merely expresses through the clothes of Judaism doesn't fit the historical record of the Dead Sea Scrolls, nor their descriptions in Philo and Josephus. The Essenes very well might represent an early form of Judaism, a tantalizing possibility explored by scholars of Jewish mysticism, which Abbot unfortunately undermines with his "all roads lead back to India" ideology. Furthermore, he ignores the presence of lost-years similar claims from Egypt, England, and Japan, and makes no attempt to integrate them into his theory despite some similarly plausible evidence. Again, this is a failure of his bias towards Indian religion as humanity's primary faith.
The enigma of the original St. Thomas Christians of India, and the Thomasian traditions of early Gnosticism in general, is a deeply fascinating topic. Especially considering that Thomas' only mentions in the canonical gospels is as a thrice great fool in the Gospel of John; why should it be that the amount of literature either attributed to him or written directly about him is more prolific than all of the 12 except for John and Peter? Especially considering the fact that there is some oddly gnostic material in the text widespread among the St. Thomas Christians-- 'Acts of the Apostle Thomas'. But did they ever use the famous sayings Gospel of Thomas as Burke suggests they did? Was it simply that Catholic cultural suppression (beginning at the Synod of Diamper and continuing until today) was so successful that we simply have no record of the text ever being used? Could it be that some continue to use and read it in secret, as the keepers of the Nag Hammadi library seemed to have? It's a tantalizing prospect that very well might be true.
Overall the text is provocative and worth reading to anyone interested in the Lost Years of Jesus, St. Thomas Christians, or contemporary Gnosticism revivalism. Burke appears sincere in his faith, and lays out a fairly complete guide for how one may engage seriously with the implications of these very real possibilities.
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Patrick W.
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March 2, 2018
This book is a good introduction to Thomas Christianity, leaving a researcher hungry for more. While many of the names and concepts are unknown to a Westerner, even a first-time reader is able to grasp basic ideas shared between Christianity and the religions of India. And it was quite illuminating to learn of the differences between Thomas Christianity of India and the types of Christianity that developed in Europe.
For instance, much becomes apparent in a brief allusion to the Trinity: “God is said to be Sit-Chit-Ananda: Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss… When we think of God as outside all things, we say ‘Father,’ and when we think of God as within all things, we say ‘the Son.’ But it is the one and only God we are speaking of in this way.”
Most Western readers are unaware of the tradition that Thomas brought Christianity to India in 52 CE, 18 years before the first canonical gospel Mark was written after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Thomas actually knew and lived with Jesus. Paul, who during the 40s and 50s was planting churches in Asia Minor, did not know the man Jesus and famously made a point of refusing to take advice from those who did. So we in the West can probably learn a lot from Thomas Christianity, and this book is a good start.
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Kat Starwolf
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June 22, 2022
A Fount of Quite Pertinent Information!
While Abbot Burke is a contemporary contributor to the answers regarding Jesus in India, he is a wealth of information, not only about Jesus and his life in India, but about the connection between what Jesus taught (including what little made its way into the New Testament Gospels of the Christian Bible), as well as the breadth of Jesus’s knowledge regarding what he had learned while he was in India.
Needless to say, Abbot Burke’s contribution to the subject of whether Jesus actually went to and lived in India has been eye-opening. Burke provides numerous corroborations for Jesus’s sojourn in India, as well as a bit more than the Christian Bible has supplied regarding what Jesus likely truly believed – and was really trying to impart to us – much of which proves that Jesus’s teachings were based in Indian Yoga.
Burke also shows how Jesus meditated, utilizing a type of meditation called ‘Soham (SoHUM) Yoga,’ and further provides examples of how we can effectively meditate. Very easy process (and I’ve tried a few!).
Far more informative than other books on this subject (so far as I know). Highly recommended.
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Isabel Castro
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May 18, 2018
I found it a bit confusing because the author assumes that the reader already has some background knowledge and also doesn't give footnotes or information about the facts he is presenting, for me that was annoying. I like to read well-fundamented theories or facts presentation, and this was not the case.
Although all of the above, I found it interesting and gave me the will to search more about this time of Jesus's life.
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Sitsi
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July 27, 2022
Enlighten Yourself
Excellent information on Jesus and his lost years. I grew up Roman Catholic and went to catechism where I got into trouble for asking questions. This book helped answer some of the questions. learned a lot about things I knew nothing about. Read and decide for yourself.
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Jo
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July 30, 2017
A perfect explanation
I have searched for 50 years for a simple explanation of my belief. Having read and studied incessantly on subject matter pertaining to the life and teachings of Jesus in India, nothing has explained this Truth better for me.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 17 reviews
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