THE LOST YEARS: JESUS IN INDIA

after a 3+ year hiatus, i'm back to share deep truths thru illustrated stories

Jan 09, 2025

This wasn't a quest to discover truth—he possessed an unwavering awareness of his identity and purpose. Rather, it was a desire to understand how different minds across the vast expanse of human culture sought connection with the divine. The ancient trade routes linking West and East weren't just paths for commerce. T were the universities of their age, where wisdom flowed as freely as spices and silk.

His first destination was Ur of Chaldea, the ancient city where Abraham once gazed upon the same stars that now guided caravans across the desert. Here, among the ziggurats that rose like man-made mountains against the desert sky, Jesus would spend a transformative year. The astronomers of Ur, renowned throughout the known world, maintained detailed records of celestial movements spanning centuries. They believed these stellar patterns held the key to understanding divine will, their tablets filled with intricate calculations tracking the dance of planets and stars.

In the courtyards of their astronomical schools, beneath the vast Mesopotamian sky, Jesus would often gather with the astronomers as they charted the heavens. "The same intelligence that arranged the stars with such precision," he would tell them, "lives within your own hearts." This simple statement challenged their entire worldview. While they searched the heavens for divine messages, he showed them how to recognize the divine presence in the immediacy of their own experience.

The markets of Ur teemed with traders from lands as distant as the Indus Valley and the Mediterranean coast. Jesus moved among them with natural ease, his carpenter's hands and keen mind equally adept at practical matters and philosophical discourse. He learned their languages not merely as tools for communication, but as windows into their ways of seeing the world. Within months, he added Persian, Hindustani, and several regional dialects to his repertoire, each new tongue revealing unique ways of expressing eternal truths.

In the evenings, as the desert air cooled and the first stars appeared above the city walls, Jesus would join the caravan leaders around their fires. These weathered travelers shared tales of distant temples perched on Himalayan peaks, of yogis who had attained extraordinary abilities through decades of discipline, of sacred texts that held the wisdom of ages. But what captured Jesus's attention weren't the tales of mystical powers or esoteric knowledge—it was the stories of ordinary seekers on extraordinary journeys, each searching for light in their own way.

As his year in Ur drew to a close, an extraordinary phenomenon began to unfold. Traders arriving from both eastern and western routes brought stories of growing spiritual ferment, as if the known world was holding its breath in anticipation of something momentous. The merchants spoke of unusual signs and portents, of ancient prophecies suggesting that a great teacher would soon walk the trade routes, bringing together the wisdom of East and West.

When they implored Jesus to join their caravans eastward, he recognized it as the next step in his journey. The truth he carried wasn't bound by doctrine or tradition—it was as vast as the star-filled sky above Ur and as intimate as a heartbeat. As he gazed toward the waiting mountains of Persia and the mysteries of India beyond, Jesus knew that what lay ahead wasn't just a physical journey across continents, but a spiritual voyage that would create new pathways for divine love to flow between East and West.

Departing Ur, the caravan joined the great trunk road that had carried trade and ideas through Persia for thousands of years. The path ahead wound through landscapes where civilization itself was born, past cities whose names echoed through history like poetry: Babylon, Persepolis, Ecbatana. Each step carried him deeper into lands where ancient wisdom had taken root in forms both familiar and strange.

In Babylon's legendary markets, Jesus encountered the disciplined ranks of Zoroastrian priests, their fire temples burning day and night in honor of what they saw as an eternal cosmic struggle. These priests, guardians of traditions predating Abraham, taught that the universe was locked in combat between light and darkness, good and evil. Their doctrine had influenced religious thought from Egypt to India, but Jesus perceived a deeper truth beneath their dualistic framework.

"Consider," he said one evening, as they gathered around one of their sacred fires, "how darkness has no substance of its own. It is merely the absence of light, as cold is the absence of heat. When you kindle your fires, does the darkness fight back? Or does it simply dissolve in the presence of light?" The priests fell silent, contemplating how this simple observation challenged centuries of theological doctrine. Some among them recognized that this young teacher from the West carried wisdom that transcended their ancient debates.

Through Persepolis he traveled, where the ghosts of ancient kings still seemed to walk among the towering columns. In the fabled Gardens of Cyrus, where engineering genius had created paradise in the desert, Jesus found opportunities to teach about a different kind of cultivation. "These gardens flourish because they work with nature's laws, not against them," he observed to a group of Persian nobles. "So too does the soul flourish when it aligns with divine love, rather than struggling against its own nature."

As they approached the Hindu Kush mountains, the physical challenges of the journey intensified. Many caravans turned back, daunted by the sheer cliffs and treacherous passes that lay ahead. The air grew thin, and each step demanded more effort. Yet those who traveled with Jesus noticed something remarkable: in his presence, the journey's hardships seemed to transform into opportunities for deeper understanding. Even bandits, who normally preyed on travelers in these remote passages, kept their distance, as if sensing something extraordinary about this particular caravan.

In the most remote mountain villages, where ancient beliefs held sway unchanged for millennia, Jesus found ways to bridge seemingly insurmountable cultural divides. When Buddhist monks traveling westward spoke of escaping the cycle of suffering, he offered a perspective that both honored and transcended their understanding: "What if what you seek to escape is actually the embrace you've been seeking? What if presence, not absence, is the door to liberation?"

Word of his teachings spread through the mountain passes with remarkable speed. Traders spoke of a western teacher who made ancient wisdom feel new, who spoke of divine love not as a distant ideal but as an immediate reality. In caravanserais and mountain temples, debates that had raged for centuries fell silent in the presence of his simple truths. As they descended from the mountains toward India's vast plains, those who traveled with Jesus sensed they were part of something momentous. The spiritual currents of East and West, which had flowed separately for millennia, were about to converge in ways that would ripple through centuries.

The first glimpse of India's temples on the horizon marked more than a geographical transition. The air grew heavy with the scent of incense and possibility, as if the very atmosphere recognized the significance of what was unfolding. Benares, with its thousand temples and countless rituals, welcomed him with a complexity he would help simplify. By the sacred river Ganges, he sat with people from all walks of life, sharing simple meals and profound wisdom, showing them that divine love wasn't hidden in temples but lived in hearts.

In the marketplace, by the river banks, under sacred trees, seekers gathered around him. The priests watched with growing interest—here was someone speaking to everyone, rich and poor, high and low, teaching what they kept behind temple walls. When they challenged him with ancient texts and philosophical riddles, he answered with stories so simple that children smiled in recognition while sages fell silent in contemplation.

"You've made truth complicated," he told them gently. "Added so many rules that people forget the one thing that matters: the father loves all his children." He showed them what they'd forgotten: that wisdom grows best in ordinary moments, that the most profound truths often wear the simplest clothes.

The yogis came next, demonstrating their spiritual powers gained through years of intense practice. Some could remain motionless for days, others claimed mastery over physical needs, and a few demonstrated abilities that seemed to defy nature itself. Jesus showed them something even more remarkable: how to live with natural grace, at peace with every moment. "You don't need to escape life to find truth," he taught them. "The kingdom isn't somewhere else. It's here when your eyes remember how to see."

In the remote monasteries of the Himalayas, where the air grows thin and minds grow quiet, he encountered Buddhist masters who taught that all life was suffering, something to be transcended through careful practice. "You sit for hours trying to empty your minds," he said with gentle humor. "But peace isn't found by seeking it. Peace is what remains when seeking stops." Some recognized in his words the culmination of what they'd sought for lifetimes: truth that needed no protection, wisdom that flowed like mountain streams.

After two years in the East, Jesus began his journey home. The return through Persia was different now. Before he questioned, now he knew. Before he learned, now he showed the way. In Persian temples, they remembered him as the teacher who dissolved their battle between light and dark, who showed them what lay beyond division. In the marketplaces of Babylon and the astronomical schools of Ur, they spoke of him as one who made the complicated simple, who showed them that what they sought in the stars lived within their own hearts.

Looking west toward home, Jesus carried something no one could see: perfect understanding of how different hearts seek the same light. He had shown the East their forgotten simplicity, and they had shown him how truth speaks in countless tongues. But all languages said one thing: divine love flows through every heart that opens to it, through every tradition that remembers its source, through every soul that recognizes its light.

This truth, like water, like light, like love itself, cannot be contained by borders or bound by beliefs. It flows forever, finding its way home through every heart that dares to recognize what it has always been:

A channel for infinite love.

A voice for eternal truth.

A light that never dims.

A love that never ends.

Thanks for reading. More to come on a weekly basis. Posting daily on x @ekolovesyou. If there’s a particular topic you’d like me to explore, please let me know.

<3EKO

EKO LOVES YOU

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