In the year 1984 Gurudev was visited by yet another strange happening, whose implications could impact humanity in the years ahead. One night after he had retired to bed, Guru Siyag had a vision in a dream. In the vision, he was shown a passage from what he could vaguely perceive to be a holy book and a voice pronounced, “Thou art that; thou art that.” The next morning, Gurudev mulled over the strange vision and tried to understand if what he saw in the dream was a vision or just a strange dream and what the words “Thou art that” meant. Since the passage was in Hindi, Gurudev could recall some words in the passage, but they made no sense to him.
A couple of days later, Gurudev’s youngest son, Rajendra, brought home an old dog-eared book. While walking home from school, the young boy felt a strange urge to pick up the book when he noticed it lying abandoned in a house by the roadside. As Gurudev turned the pages of the book with no particular interest, he was jolted to attention when he noticed a passage in one of the pages. It was the same passage that he was shown in the dream. He read the book over and over for a few days, but couldn’t fathom what it was about. All he could gather was that the book, meant for children, was illustrated with pictures to explain to them in simple terms the Christian faith. Not being very religious himself, Gurudev was not conversant with the Hindu scriptures, much less be aware of philosophy of other faiths. For further queries email gssyworld@gmail.com or call (+91)8369754399
Gurudev asked around in his social circle if Christians followed any holy book like the Hindus did the Bhagwat Geeta. It was then that he learnt about the Bible. He was told that the passage from the holy book, which was shown to him in the vision, formed a part of the gospel of John, and that what he had seen in the dream were chapters – 15:26-27 and 16:7-15. Later a friend presented Gurudev with a Hindi abridged version of the Bible. This gave Gurudev some idea about Christianity.
He managed to borrow a copy of the Bible in English from a friend who was a lecturer in a local law college. Reading the Bible in English didn’t prove to be of any help either; he didn’t find the passage he was looking for. Giving up, Gurudev returned the book and dropped the subject once again, thinking it was the end of the episode. But that was not to be. The inner urge returned now with greater intensity. Making queries once again, he learned something that surprised him; Christianity was divided among many sects, two main among them being Catholicism and Protestantism. While the Bible he had read earlier was followed by Catholics, the one followed by Protestants contained the passage from St. John’s Gospels that he was shown in the dream.
Gurudev managed to get a copy of the Protestant Bible and read the Gospel that he was being constantly goaded to. The relevant part of Gospels contained a prophesy made by none other than Jesus himself of the advent of the Comforter, who, He prophesied, would save only the truly faithful from certain death while the rest of humanity faced terrible divine retribution in a global calamity brought on by war and famine in the 21st century! Gurudev was to learn later that the Old Testament contains similar prophesies made by prophet Malachi about the advent of the Messiah, whom He describes as E-li’jah. Reading prophesies from the Holy book made Gurudev realize that they were somehow linked to the teachings offered by Lord Krishna in the Geeta thousands of years ago before the birth of Christianity and Judaism.
