HEMIS MANUSCRIPTS
The Hemis Manuscripts are said to be a set of ancient documents hidden away in a remote monastery high in the mountains along the Tibet India border. The documents say Jesus of Nazareth visited India between the ages 12 to 30, his so called missing years of the Bible. Some people support the theory, others dispute not only the content and thesis, but that such documents actually exist. However, fact or fiction, real or non-existent, and, although not one word or mention of the documents show up within the context of the book, the Hemis Manuscripts played a major role in the outcome of the real life character found in one of the Bestselling Novels of the 20th Century, The Razor's Edge.
The Razor's Edge, by British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham, was published in 1944. The story chronicles an actual real life person who eventually found spiritual Awakening under the grace and light of a venerated holy man high in the mountains of India.
Maugham's main character, the man who eventually found Enlightenment in India, was a young American pilot flying for the British after having joined through Canada during World War One. Two years into the war he was shaken to his spine with remorse when his best friend, who taught him everything he knew about flying and how to survive, died in front of his eyes after saving his life during a raging dogfight out over the western front. At the end of the war, driven by an unquenchable thirst to find the accountability of life and not knowing what to look for or where to go, he embarked on a ten year journey that took him through Europe, China, Burma, and India in search of an answer.
The man, given the name Larry Darrell in the book, and who had gone back to America seemingly lost and numb from the war, returned to Europe in search of the answers that continued to gnaw at him. Seeped in a classical western mind-set he was at first, convinced he could find the answers he was seeking through books. Taking a series of manual labor jobs across Europe to contrast his constant reading led him to a back-breaking job at a coal mine in Lens, France. There he befriended a former Polish army officer and mystic named Kosti who encouraged him to look toward things spiritual for his answers rather than in books. Thinking Kosti was right Darrell leaves the mines and in the process of continuing his quest meets a Benedictine monk who invites him to stay and study at his monastery. The monk, called Father Ensheim by Maugham, observing the depth of his angst and the seriousness of his quest began thinking Darrell might just find the answers he was looking for IF he was only put into the right environment. He needed a bridge to allow him to cross the gap between the religious aspects he was studying and that of the potentially deeper spiritual aspects he was seeking.
The Father had heard that sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s a man from the west had ended up in the monastery of Hemis high in the mountains of India recuperating from some sort of injury. While at the monastery he was shown an ancient manuscript that indicated Jesus of Nazareth had been in India during the so-called missing years of his life.(see) Being a fully entrenched member of the Catholic clergy he thought the prospect of Jesus being in India heretical, but found the idea intriguing nonetheless. Thinking that such a scenario, Jesus being in India, would be a perfect starting place or bridge for a western mind to open up to eastern religious thought, the good Father suggested Darrell go to India.
It is my belief that the man Maugham calls Darrell, following Father Ensheim's advice, went in search of the same manuscripts seeking the truth. If he ever saw the manuscripts or if the manuscripts ever existed is not known. However, it seems to me he had a massive change regarding his approach to things spiritual and religious after going to Hemis, especially so how he viewed things in a western sense. Between the time he got off the boat in Bombay and the time he arrived at the temple in Madura some two to three years later --- enough of a change occurred that when he went to study under the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, he was Awakened to the Absolute --- that is Enlightened in the same manner as the ancient classical masters.
Which brings us to the Hemis manuscripts.
The existence of the manuscripts has always been very controversial. In that I had a personal interest in whether the manuscripts existed or not because I knew and studied under the real life person Maugham used as a role model for the Larry Darrell character and who went to Hemis because of them, I wanted to know. My Uncle had introduced me to a man that had been to Hemis in 1975 and had garnered firsthand knowledge regarding the manuscripts. Our initial introduction was some years before his visit, so at the time there was no mention of Hemis or the manuscripts. However, in the early 1990s, well after his visit to Hemis, I found myself in a position to re-introduce myself and discuss the manuscripts with him.
My Uncle was a highly elusive medicinal plant and hallucinogenic mushroom hunter from the Santa Fe, Taos, New Mexico area. Albeit known on sight by many and semi-notorious because as a rather successful bio-searcher who had several plant species named after him, he was nearly as mysterious as he was unapproachable.
After my mother died and my family disintegrated I ended up spending many of my early formative years under the auspices of my uncle, oft times traveling with him deep into remote areas of the desert southwest in the pursuit of various bio-searching or archaeological/anthropological activities. Other times found me hanging around with him while he participated in library research or visited universities and professors. It was during one of those researches or visits, and I surely do not remember or recall any of the specifics, that my uncle, with me in tow, met with a man he knew by the name of of Robert S. Ravicz who had some rather extensive credentials and knowledge in the area of hallucinogenic mushrooms, their use, rituals, and after effects that my uncle wanted to compare notes with.(see)
Some years after that meeting, in 1963, Ravicz, who held degrees from both the University of Texas and Harvard, moved into a faculty position at California State University, Northridge, eventually becoming a professor emeritus of anthropology. He died in July, 1993. My uncle died in June, 1989. Between the time of my uncle's death and Ravicz's I was doing a little research myself.
I had met with a man who had been an eyewitness to a rather controversial event in World War II that I too, as a young boy, witnessed. The event so mentioned circulated around an incident that came to be known as the Battle of Los Angeles wherein a giant airborne object of an unknown nature overflew Los Angeles creating a major havoc throughout the city and causing the authorities to put into place an area wide blackout. Since I had seen the object as a young boy myself I sought out the man to hear what he had to say and then physically visited the areas he talked about.
According to how my eyewitness described the event, the giant object skirted the north side of the Santa Monica mountains toward the east along Ventura Boulevard only to turn south in a gap in the mountains about midway along the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley. After turning south the object crossed over Baldwin Hills and turned westward toward the ocean coming out over the aircraft plants near the El Segundo tank farm, then south along the coast. At 3:06 AM, for reasons unclear, at least four Santa Monica area anti-aircraft batteries turned inland and start firing out over the city and Baldwin Hills, and suddenly "the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano."
While I was following the route along Ventura Boulevard it put me only a few miles south of the Northridge campus. After visiting the campus in an offhand attempt to somehow locate Ravicz and claiming to be a longtime friend, I was able to finagle Ravicz's address and phone number from a former cohort. No longer a professor at Northridge, but a professor emeritus, he lived in Pacific Palisades, adjacent to the city of Santa Monica. Since Pacific Palisades was not far off from the route I was traveling, going to see Ravicz fit perfectly into my plans.
Why the imperative to meet Ravicz? Because, between the time I first met Ravicz with my uncle and the time I was trying to meet him now, I had learned of Father Ensheim's efforts in convincing my mentor go to Hemis. As well, somewhat later during those same intervening years it had come to my attention that Ravicz, the same man I had met through my uncle, had gone to Hemis also.
So what? Well, Ravicz visited Hemis in 1975 and, even though he had never heard of Jesus being in India prior to his arrival, while there, he was told by a longtime friend and eminent Ladakh regional physician that there were a number of ancient documents at the monastery which stated Jesus had been to Hemis. My interest in meeting Ravicz was to learn firsthand any knowledge he held regarding the Hemis manuscripts. Initally he was not able to recall me nor the incidents surrounding our first meeting, but he remembered my uncle well and expressed genuine dismay upon learning of his passing. He himself had only recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with a somewhat grim outlook, and, although he appeared weak and frail, his memory seemed strong surrounding the events of Hemis. At first he relayed to me basically what was already known about what he saw and knew. For example, that it was his experience that in order to gain access to any of the manuscripts or scrolls in question one would most likely have to invest a minimum of several months in gaining the confidence of the document overseers. So too, in that the manuscripts are said to be written in classical Tibetan, one would also have to have either a working knowledge of the language or a translator, which would most likely be required to be a cooperative monastery Lama willing to do so --- which could be questionable.
He seemed evasive in the early stages of our conversation, especially when I tried to pin him down on more specifics, responding to my queries now and again with no more than an undiscernible nod or grunt or something like, "You said it, not me." However, in the end, when it suddenly dawned on him I was a grown-up version of the young boy who ran around with an archaeologist's or prospector's pick all day reading comic books in the company of my uncle, he loosened up. Because of that loosening up, even though he continued to lean toward the crypic side, I have been able to extrapolate much more out of what he said generally than any specifics he was willing to reveal.
In all accounts attributed to Ravicz it is always reported he was told by a physician friend that there were ancient documents in the monastery of Hemis that alluded to Jesus being in India. In all those same Ravicz accounts the doctor friend was always an eminent, albeit unnamed, Ladakhi physician. Ladakh is a large regional geographic area while Hemis is a small speck located in that region. It does not necessarily follow that the eminent Ladakhi physician was specifically from Hemis, only from somewhere in the region. One or the other or both was never made clear. So too, some accounts relate that the Hemis manuscripts are scrolls, others that they are in a book-like format with pages. The specifics of either being the case was also not made clear.(see)
Ravicz was playing games with whoever he first imparted his information. When he said in so many words that to gain access to any of the manuscripts or scrolls in question one would most likely have to invest a minimum of several months in gaining the confidence of the document overseers, while most likely true, he was implying that such a requirement would thus then exclude him, so there would be no way he would have actually seen or have had any access to the manuscripts.
However, be as it may, Ravicz was not a total unknown quanity in and around the Ladakh region. Matter of fact he had long established the confidence of the people having traveled and lived for extended periods in monasteries and religious communities in the region. He had met with the Dali Lama on at least three occasions and was known for his interest and concern in how the people lived and practiced their lives. So said, Ravicz's ability to gain confidence was not something that needed to be established or proven because he already had it.
What does that mean? It means Ravicz did not need a doctor friend to tell him about the documents because it is quite possible he had access to them, if they existed, himself. However, having the right to do so and actually putting that right into motion is two different things. When I told Ravicz that a disciple of Swami Abhedananda, who proportedly saw the manuscripts in 1922, visited the monastery in the late 1970s, five years after he had, and was told they were no longer there, that they had been removed. Ravicz said, "Such was not the case in 1975."
When I asked him IF such documents did exist at the monastery and were in fact moved, where would such documents be moved to. His response, "Where all roads lead to."
If you haven't read the footnotes yet, please do so by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.
DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
THE RAZOR'S EDGE: TRUE OR FALSE?
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING