Published by Kriya Yoga Publications — ISBN 978-1-895383-43-0
224 pages, bibliographical references. Order here.
With the discovery of many new source documents in the Sinai Desert and near the Dead Sea, and with the advent of modern methods of textual analysis by scholars who are independent of institutional bias, today most Biblical scholars will agree that the books of the Bible’s New Testament are written at several levels of authenticity:
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- What were likely the actual words of Jesus, quoted in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but recorded several decades afterward.
- What were likely interpolations – words attributed to Jesus by unknown sources.
- What was said about Jesus or about His teachings by others, for example, Paul in his “letters,” which make up most of the rest of the New Testament, and which served as the basis for early Church dogma.
Within Christianity and in the popular understanding of Jesus and his teaching, how much have these interpolations and early Church dogma distorted or obscured the actual words and teachings of Jesus? What do the actual words of Jesus say about who Jesus was and what His teachings were? What do the actual words of Jesus not say? Answers to these questions are a prerequisite to making comparisons between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the Gnostics and other mystics, such as those of the Yoga Siddhas.
Previous attempts by some may have been flawed as they seek to make comparisons with Christianity’s dogma reflected in the King James version of the Bible. They did not consider the work of biblical historians who have suggested numerous inaccuracies in this English version of the Bible, in comparison with the original Greek. They do not take into consideration the many findings that modern critical historical research has brought to light. This present work presents a comparison between the teachings of the Yoga Siddhas, with those of the teachings that are considered now to be the most authentic teachings of Jesus, based upon the results of modern, critical, historical research.
The research of the Yoga Siddha Research Centre in Chennai, India, has brought out a series of books providing, for the first time, translation and commentary of the Yoga Siddhas, or “perfected” Yogis of India, who were contemporaries of Jesus. Their teachings and miraculous powers were remarkably similar to those of Jesus.
In this work we will explore and compare these and other areas, which will shed great light on the questions “Who was Jesus?” And “How can I best understand his teachings?”
“An excellent overview of what are now considered reasonably established facts about Jesus and his teachings. Marshall Govindan’s clear exposition of the tangled web of New Testament scholarship in itself commends this book to a Christian or Christian-connected reader ship. But The Wisdom of Jesus and the Yoga Siddhas does more than rehearse the scholarly evidence. As the title suggests, it uniquely relates the teachings of Jesus to those of the Siddhas of South India. This may seem like a rather large intellectual leap, but Govindan has substantially succeeded in making this comparison work. His book is systematic and answers all the key questions one might have. Readers will not only acquire a much richer understanding of the figure of the God-man Jesus but will also gain a valuable glimpse into the extraordinary spiritual realizations and thoughts of the great Siddhas of Tamil Nadu.” — Dr. Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D, Yoga Research Institute, and author of more than 30 scholarly books on Yoga
”This work examines intriguing parallels between the putative teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (using the scholarship of the Jesus Seminar) and the Yoga Siddha tradition of South India. The author skillfully summarizes research by prominent scholars of Christian origins to paint a portrait of Jesus that confounds theological orthodoxy and argues for his status as a teacher of gnostic wisdom. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the transformational teachings of the Yoga Siddha tradition and this tradition’s echoes in the early Jesus Movement. This study forces us to reexamine the vexed question of Indian-Middle Eastern transcultural flows during the Inter-testamental period.” — Dr. Phillip Lucas, Professor of Religious Studies, Stetson University, Deland, Florida, USA
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Contact
Marshall Govindan
[email protected]
(450) 297-0258
