Returning to Russia, Nikolai Notovitch wrote a famous book called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. It was impossible to publish the book in Russia, so he published it in France.
Returning to Russia, Nikolai Notovitch was immediately arrested. Two years later, he was released from prison. In Russia, he was banned from publishing books, after which Notovitch left the Russian Empire and moved to Europe.
In Europe, Nikolai Notovitch met with several hierarchs of the Catholic Church, in particular with Cardinal Rotelli. Representatives of the Catholic Church also asked Notovitch never to publish materials about the life of Jesus Christ in India.
Interestingly, the representatives of the Catholic Church were not surprised by the very facts presented in Notovitch's book. The subject of their concern was only the disclosure of secrets. It is a known fact that the Catholic Church offered a large sum of money to Nikolai Notovitch so that he would refrain from further publication. It is difficult to say whether Notovitch agreed to accept the money, but subsequently he refrained from active public activity.
One of the remarkable Indian spiritual teachers of the early twentieth century, Swami Abhedananda (1866 – 1939), having read the materials of Nikolai Notovitch, was shocked by the information about the life of Jesus Christ in the Himalayas, and he decided to personally verify the authenticity of this amazing information.
Swami Abhedananda was a Hindu expert in the philosophy of Vedanta. He had no personal interest in confirming or refuting this version. All he wanted was to know what the truth was.
In the early 1920s, Swami Abhedananda organized an expedition to northern India to Kashmir. He confirmed he was able to personally see an ancient text describing the life of Jesus Christ in India. It was the same text that Nikolai Notovitch had held in his hands thirty years before.
In the late 1920s, Swami Abhedananda published his materials under the title Journey to Kashmir and Tibet. Swami Abhedananda was also unable to obtain the original text – all he testified was that he held the ancient manuscript in his hands.
17. Spiritual Masters about the life of Jesus Christ in India
Nicholas Roerich (1874 – 1947), the greatest Russian mystic, artist, philosopher, and explorer of the East, referring to materials he received from a variety of sources, said that Jesus Christ underwent spiritual training in the ashrams of India.
