Crono News article translated from Italian to English via Google Translate
Historical Fiction imbued with great mysticism
The Transmigrant by Kristi Saare Duarte is an alternative vision of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Inspired by both ancient scriptures and relatively new discoveries, such as Russian traveler Nicolas Notovitch's book "The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ," this book explores the life of Jesus in his years of study and meditation in India, which will allow him to become an effective and well-educated "preacher" on the many religious foundations of his time.
It is a book that the authors of Siddhartha (Herman Hesse), The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran) and The Last Temptation of Christ (Nikos Kazantzakis) would not have denied, because Duarte managed to create a convincing, truly human Yeshua.
The Transmigrant could be thought of as a travelogue and a story of self-awareness, self-discovery, and spiritual by someone whose deepest motivation was to be loved and to help others. The author has done extensive research in order to give her novel the necessary basis for its realism. He also showed great depth in his reflections.
It is an easy and enjoyable read that I recommend to anyone who loves intellectually and spiritually enriching books.
The Transmigrant: Pressed by his family and peers to obey his father and marry on the threshold of adolescence, Yeshua runs away with another novice, a monk, also a seeker of truth, and begins his journey. His travels take him to the borders of India, to the foothills of the Himalayas, through lands where he meets followers of Buddhism and Hinduism and begins to see that not everyone shares the same god, neither faith nor beliefs. He finds comfort in meeting ordinary people; workers, peasants, the poor, and begins to understand that his vocation in life is to bring God's message to all men, not just to the "chosen ones" or to those who are faithfully faithful to "their one true God ”. Over the years, he progressively internalizes great spiritual truths, finds love, loses love, but never stops teaching ordinary people, and word spreads of a different kind of teacher, one who professes that God loves everyone. equally, and in turn, that everyone should love and respect each other as equals. The obvious parallels are related to the early life of Jesus Christ and his subsequent return to the Holy Land, where he eventually faced his fate at the hands of Rome.
This is not a tragic tale, but a fascinating perspective on a man whose name has become synonymous with one of the greatest religious movements in the history of the Earth.
You see the journey from the eyes of a very young boy, a boy who challenges the status quo, and who, as he gets older, grows wiser and sees that the only true God can only be one who respects all men as equals.
There are many adventures, twists and turns, almost fatal episodes, not to mention the threads of spiritual insights that the author weaves into the plot.
It is not an evangelical presentation, far from it. It is, most likely, a lesser known perspective of the probable path of Jesus Christ. An invitation to the reader to embrace a different perspective than that presented by conventional biblical texts. A very useful and recommended read.
We conclude by quoting a truly touching passage from Kristi Saare Duarte's The Transmigrant, in which Yeshua stands in the sacred waters of the Ganges River in India:
He swam under and above the surface, stroke by stroke, until he was saturated with the river’s blessing. As if cast into another dimension, Yeshua sat on the bank and crossed his legs in lotus position. The world had shifted. The sounds around him were a hundred times sharper, the smells a thousand times stronger, and everything around him was enveloped in waves of energy. He wanted to stay right in that moment and never return. Nothing, absolutely nothing else mattered. The world was a perfect place, and the people around him were sublime. The white cows grinned at him with their big teeth. The cripples had come here to fulfill their purpose. A healthy body didn’t guarantee happiness any more than the lack of arms caused grief. Ultimate bliss resided in the soul, the atma. The atma was God. And everyone and everything was God.
Yeshua could have stayed in trance forever, but the aroma of fried pastries and milky chai teased him back. His fellow Brahmins had spread out an assortment of foods on the stairs and feasted on spicy vegetable samosas. But Yeshua was no longer hungry. His body was satiated with spirit, and his physical needs seemed arbitrary. Instead, he remembered his silent promise to the beggar. He selected a puffed pastry stuffed with lentils, picked up a mug of tea, and returned to feed the cripple.
The man seemed to have expected Yeshua’s return. How easy it was to communicate with a mute: Yeshua simply opened his heart and connected their atmas. The beggar had lived on this very spot for years. His life wasn’t bad. He was always hungry but never starving. Most pilgrims were generous, and barely a day passed without his receiving something to eat. But could Yeshua please bring him closer to the river for a blessing?
The man wheezed with delight when Yeshua carried him down the stairs and placed him waist-deep into the water. He held the cripple in his arms and helped him float in the sacred waves. Quietly, Yeshua chanted a healing mantra while the cripple absorbed the sacredness of Mother Ganges.
When Yeshua placed him back on the stairs above the river, the cripple gleamed, his face twisted in a smile. And when Yeshua left him there, he knew he had done enough. Kindness was free, and it was something he had in abundance.
Link to the original article in Crono News