The canonical gospels give few details about the childhood years of Jesus Christ. They describe in more detail the amazing story of his birth and then give a couple of stories about Jesus Christ’s adolescence, after which there is a void in the narrative. What did Jesus Christ do between the ages of 15 and 30? There is no information about this in the canonical Gospel texts.
Perhaps Jesus Christ did not consider it necessary to talk in detail about exactly where he lived and studied for many years. Perhaps for the early Christians this was not essential information, and perhaps those who wrote the Gospel texts quite consciously hid this information.
For modern people, learning as much as possible about the life of Jesus Christ is very important because the more we know about his life, the more we can understand his spiritual message. Most likely, Jesus Christ told his closest disciples exactly what he did and where he lived in the period of those unrecorded years.
Perhaps the priceless information about his life in India was not included in the canonical Gospels because this information was not very clear to some of his students and followers. The first generation of Christians came from a Jewish background, and subsequent generations of Christians consisted primarily of Greeks and Syrians.
The information that Jesus Christ studied in distant India would hardly please and be understood by the early Christians. Perhaps the evangelists considered it more correct to remain silent about these mysterious years in the life of their teacher.
At the end of the 19th century, a Russian of Jewish origin, Nikolai Notovich (1858-1916) became one of the first to openly speak about the life of Jesus Christ in India. Notovich was born into a Jewish family, but later decided to convert to Orthodox Christianity. At the end of the 19th century, Notovitch went to India in order to try to discover the mystery of Jesus Christ. He visited distant monasteries, temples, and ashrams. He managed to visit different parts of the Himalayas, including Kashmir.
Why did Notovitch go to India in search of information about Jesus Christ? Did he have preliminary information that Jesus Christ lived and studied in India prior to his trip? There are suggestions that such knowledge could exist in the Theosophical Society founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as well as in some esoteric societies of Western Europe.
It is quite possible that Notovitch did not just go on this expedition but was sent by "someone" to search for important information about the mysterious years of the life of Jesus Christ in India. He confidently headed for India, as if he already knew what to look for and where to find it.
During his expedition to northern India, Notovitch interacted with Hindu and Buddhist teachers. His goal was to find evidence of Jesus Christ in India.
As a result of his research, Nikolai Notovitch was able to find written evidence that Jesus Christ had studied in the Vedic and Buddhist ashrams of Kashmir. Notovitch was shown the original of an ancient text that described the life of Jesus Christ in India. The researcher could not remove the original document from the Himalayan monastery; nevertheless, he was shown the text and was allowed to make copies of some chapters.
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.