My name is Avind. I was once known as Swami Aravindananda. For 33 years, I lived as a Hindu monk in the ashrams and caves of northern India. Today, I follow Jesus Christ. And I want to tell you how that happened.

I’m sharing this story not to hurt anyone or to disrespect the faith I once held. I’m sharing it because what happened to me was real. It changed everything and I believe that if God revealed himself to me, he can reveal himself to anyone who truly seeks him. This is my testimony.

I was born in Haridwar, a holy city on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. My parents named me Arvind Kumar. We were Brahmins, which means we belong to the priestly class. My father worked as a temple priest and my mother was deeply religious. Our home smelled constantly of incense and sandalwood.

Every morning before dawn, I would wake to the sound of my mother’s prayers and the ringing of the brass bell at our family altar. My childhood was filled with rituals. I learned Sanskrit prayers before I learned my multiplication tables. I went to the temple more often than I went to the playground.

My grandmother who lived with us would tell me stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Her wrinkled hands moving expressively as she spoke of gods and demons, duty and devotion. I was a sensitive child. While other boys played cricket in the streets, I sat by the window watching the pilgrims walk past our house toward the ghats. I wondered about them. Where were they coming from? What were they seeking? Did they find what they were looking for when they bathed in the Ganga?

Even as a young boy, I had questions that troubled me. When I saw beggars at the temple gates, I asked my father why God allowed suffering. He explained karma to me, how we are paying for sins from past lives. But something in my heart was not satisfied with that answer. When I saw sick people, dying people, people crying in pain, I wondered what terrible things they must have done in previous lives to deserve such punishment.

Then when I was 11 years old, my younger sister Meera became ill. She was only seven. A bright little girl who loved to sing devotional songs. She had a fever that wouldn’t break. My parents took her to doctors, but the medicines didn’t work. They took her to priests who performed elaborate pujas and yajnas. They prayed to every deity they knew. They fasted. They made vows. They donated money to temples. I remember watching my mother weep before the statue of goddess Durga, begging for my sister’s life. I remember my father’s face growing hollow with worry and helplessness. And I remember lying awake at night, praying to every god I had been taught about, promising that I would be good, that I would study hard, that I would serve them faithfully, if only they would heal my sister.

Meera died on a Tuesday morning just as the temple bells were ringing for the morning aarti. I was sitting beside her holding her small hand. She opened her eyes, looked at me, tried to smile and then she was gone. Just like that, the light went out of her eyes and she was no longer there.

The house filled with mourning. Relatives came, rituals were performed. My sister’s little body was wrapped in white cloth and taken away. The priest said her soul had moved on to its next birth, that this was her karma, that we should not grieve because death is just an illusion, that the soul is eternal.

But I grieved. I grieved deeply. And in my grief, a question formed in my heart that would haunt me for decades. If the gods are real and if they are good, why didn’t they answer our prayers? What kind of god allows a 7-year-old girl to die while her mother begs at his feet?

I didn’t speak these questions aloud. In our culture, such doubts were seen as signs of weak faith. So, I buried them deep inside and tried to be a good Hindu boy. But the questions remained, growing slowly like seeds in dark soil.

I continued my studies. I performed well in school. My father wanted me to become a priest like him or perhaps a teacher. My mother wanted me to marry and give her grandchildren. But as I grew older, the emptiness inside me grew as well. I felt like I was living on the surface of life, going through motions that everyone said were important but feeling no real peace or purpose.

When I was 19, I accompanied my family to Rishikesh for a Kumbh Mela, the great gathering that happens every 12 years. Millions of pilgrims come to bathe in the holy river believing that on certain auspicious days the water can wash away sins and grant liberation. The city was overflowing with people. There were tents everywhere, loudspeakers blaring mantras and bhajans, the smell of cooking fires and marigold flowers. And everywhere you looked, holy men in saffron robes.

One evening I walked away from my family and found myself at the ghat during sunset. The Ganga aarti was about to begin. Priests stood on the steps holding enormous brass lamps with multiple wicks, flames dancing in the evening breeze. As they began to swing the lamps in synchronized patterns, singing ancient hymns to Mother Ganga, something inside me broke open. I began to weep. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps it was the beauty of the ritual. Or perhaps it was the sudden overwhelming feeling of how small I was, how lost I felt, how desperately I wanted to find something real in all of this. I looked at the river, dark and swift and eternal. And I thought about all the millions of people who had come to these waters seeking purification, seeking liberation, seeking God. And I wondered if any of them had truly found what they were seeking.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my mat in our tent, listening to my father snore and my mother breathe. And I knew that my life was about to change. I knew I couldn’t go back to the ordinary life that was planned for me. I had to seek. I had to find answers. I had to know if God was real, if liberation was possible, if there was any meaning to all of this suffering and searching.

The next morning, I saw a group of wandering monks walking past our tent. They were young men, my age or a little older, with shaved heads and simple robes, carrying nothing but a water pot and a staff. Their faces had a quality I had never seen before, something peaceful and detached, as if they had left the whole world behind and found something better. I followed them at a distance, watching where they went.

They walked to a small ashram on the outskirts of Rishikesh, a simple compound with a few buildings and a garden. Above the gate was a sign that I can still see clearly in my mind. It said, “Seek the self, know the truth, be free.” Those words entered my heart like an arrow. Seek the self. Know the truth. Be free. This was what I wanted. This was what I needed. Not marriage, not a job, not money or status or family approval. I needed to seek the self. I needed to know the truth. I needed to be free.

I stood outside that gate for a long time. I knew that if I walked through it, everything would change. My family would be devastated. My father would feel I was rejecting everything he had taught me. My mother would weep and beg me to reconsider. Everyone would say I was throwing away my future. But the pain of not seeking was greater than the fear of seeking. So I walked through that gate.

I met the head of the ashram, Guru Shivanand. He was an elderly man with a long white beard and eyes that seemed to look right through you into your soul. I prostrated before him as tradition required and when I looked up, he was smiling gently. I told him I wanted to renounce the world and seek liberation. He asked me why. I told him about my sister, about the emptiness I felt, about the questions that haunted me. He listened without interrupting, nodding occasionally. When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment. Then he told me to go home and think carefully. He said the spiritual path was not an escape from life, but a journey toward truth. And that journey was harder than anything I could imagine. He said if I truly wanted to become a monk, I should return in 1 month and he would accept me as his disciple.

That was the longest month of my life. I returned to Haridwar with my family. I tried to act normal but my mind was far away. Finally, I sat down with my parents and told them what I wanted to do. My mother cried as I knew she would. She held my hands and begged me not to go. She said I was her only son now after Meera’s death and she couldn’t bear to lose me, too. My father was angry at first. He said I was being selfish, running away from responsibility, breaking my duty to the family. But after his anger cooled, he became quiet and sad.

I tried to explain to them that this wasn’t rejection. I told them I honored everything they had taught me, but I had to find my own way to God. I had to know for myself if liberation was possible. I promised I would never forget them, that I would always be their son, even if I wore the robes of a renunciant. In the end, they gave me their blessing, though it was given through tears. My father performed a small ceremony for me, offering prayers for my spiritual journey. My mother packed a bag with a few clothes and made me promise to visit when I could.

I left on a cool morning in November. I touched my parents’ feet one last time and then I walked out of our house toward the bus station. I didn’t look back because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to leave.

When I arrived back at the ashram in Rishikesh, Guru Shivanand was waiting. He asked me one final time if I was certain. I said yes. He accepted me as his disciple and gave me the name Aravindananda which means bliss of the lotus. The lotus, he explained, grows in muddy water but rises above it to bloom in purity. That, he said, was to be my path: to rise above the mud of worldly attachment and bloom in spiritual realization.

My new life began immediately. I woke every morning at 4:00 when the bell rang through the ashram. In the darkness, I would walk down to the Ganga with the other monks to bathe in the freezing water. That cold water was like a slap that woke not just the body but the soul. In winter, ice formed along the edges of the river. And stepping into that water required every ounce of willpower I had. But it was believed that this discipline purified the mind and strengthened the spirit.

After bathing, we would sit for pranayama, breathing exercises that were supposed to control the life force within us. Then came meditation. Sitting cross-legged on thin mats, spine straight, eyes closed, trying to still the endless chatter of the mind. In those early days, meditation was torture. My legs would cramp, my back would ache, and my mind would wander everywhere: thinking about my family, about the breakfast I was smelling from the ashram kitchen, about whether I had made the right decision. But Guru Shivanand taught us that this was normal. The mind, he said, is like a wild monkey jumping from branch to branch. Our job was to train it slowly and patiently until it could sit still and focus on the eternal.

After morning meditation came the study of scriptures. We read the Upanishads, ancient texts that speak of the nature of reality and the self. We studied the Bhagavad Gita where Lord Krishna teaches about duty, devotion and the path to God. We memorized verses in Sanskrit, chanting them until they became part of our breath.

Then we worked. Everyone in the ashram had duties. Some worked in the kitchen preparing simple vegetarian meals. Some tended the garden where we grew vegetables and flowers for temple offerings. Some cleaned the meditation hall and guest rooms. I was assigned to help maintain the small library and to assist in teaching basic yoga to visitors who came seeking peace.

Our meals were simple. Rice, dal, vegetables, chapati, no meat, no eggs, no garlic or onions which were believed to agitate the mind. We ate in silence, focusing on each bite, treating the meal as a form of meditation. Food was seen as fuel for spiritual practice, nothing more.

Afternoons were for more study or personal practice. I would often walk into the nearby hills and find a quiet spot under a tree to meditate. Sometimes I would read. Sometimes I would just sit and watch the birds or listen to the wind in the leaves, trying to sense God in everything around me.

Evenings brought more prayers and rituals. We would gather in the meditation hall for Aarti, singing devotional songs and waving lamps before images of various deities: Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Hanuman. The music would fill the hall and sometimes I would feel something lifting in my chest, a momentary sense of transcendence as if I was touching something beyond myself. After Aarti came evening meditation, then a light meal, then silence. We were expected to be asleep by 9:00 and speaking was discouraged after the evening prayers. The ashram was a place of quiet, of turning inward, of seeking the eternal in the midst of the temporary.

Years passed this way. One year became two, then five, then 10. I became known as a serious practitioner. I could sit in meditation for hours without moving. I memorized vast portions of scripture. I learned to control my breathing so precisely that I could slow my heartbeat and enter deep states of concentration. I began to have experiences in meditation: visions of light, sensations of my consciousness expanding beyond my body, moments of profound peace where all thoughts ceased and there was only awareness, pure and empty.

People started coming to me for guidance. At first, it was just fellow monks asking questions about meditation techniques. Then visitors to the ashram began requesting private audiences. They would tell me their problems: marriage troubles, sickness, financial worries, spiritual confusion and I would offer them counsel based on what I had learned from the scriptures and from my own practice.

My reputation grew. People started calling me Swami Ji, a title of respect. By the time I was in my mid-30s, I was giving regular discourses on the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. Groups would come from Delhi and other cities to attend my lectures. I spoke about the nature of the self, about how the soul is eternal and unchanging, about how suffering comes from attachment and ignorance, about how liberation comes through knowledge and meditation.

Eventually, a wealthy devotee donated land and money for me to establish my own ashram. It was a small property near Rishikesh with a simple meditation hall, a few rooms for resident monks and a garden. We called it Ananda Niketan, an abode of bliss. I was now not just a monk but a teacher, a guru to others who came seeking the path to liberation.

From the outside, my life looked like a success. I had done what I set out to do. I had renounced the world, disciplined my body and mind, gained knowledge of the scriptures, and helped others on their spiritual journey. People looked at me with reverence. They touched my feet. They sought my blessings. They believed I was close to enlightenment, perhaps even already enlightened.

But inside, there was something I told no one. Inside there was still a restlessness, a hunger that all my years of meditation had not satisfied, a question that all my study had not answered. I had moments of peace. Yes, I had experiences of stillness and light. But these always faded. After every high came an ordinary moment where I was just Aravind again, just a man in robes trying to convince himself that he was progressing towards some ultimate goal that he had never actually reached.

I would sit in my room at night after everyone else had gone to sleep and I would be honest with myself in a way I couldn’t be with anyone else. I would admit that I didn’t truly know if moksha was real. I would admit that despite all my mantras and meditations, I still felt fear. Fear of death, fear of failure, fear that all of this was meaningless. I would admit that I still got angry sometimes, still felt pride when praised, still felt hurt when criticized. I would admit that I had not truly conquered my ego. I had only learned to hide it better.

And the question that had haunted me since my sister’s death remained unanswered. If God is real and if God is good, why is there so much suffering? Why do innocent people die? Why do prayers go unanswered? Why, after all these years of seeking, did I still not have real peace? Not just moments of peace, but a peace that stayed. A peace that nothing could shake.

I never spoke these doubts aloud. How could I? I was Swami Aravindananda. People depended on me for guidance. If I confessed my uncertainty, what would happen to their faith? So I kept teaching, kept meditating, kept performing rituals and kept searching.

By the time I turned 52, I had been a monk for over three decades. And I was tired. Tired of searching, tired of striving, tired of trying to achieve liberation through my own efforts. Something inside me was crying out, though I didn’t have words for what it was crying for.

That’s when I decided to undertake a 40-day fast in a mountain cave near Badrinath. Badrinath is one of the holiest sites in the Himalayas, a temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The mountains there are ancient and powerful and many monks go there for intense spiritual retreats. I told my disciples I was going into deep sadhana, spiritual practice. They were concerned because a 40-day water fast is dangerous, especially for a man my age. But I was determined. I felt that if I pushed myself to the absolute limit, if I emptied myself completely, perhaps I would finally break through to whatever lay on the other side of all this seeking.

I found a small cave about 2 hours walk from the nearest village. It was cold even in summer and the wind would howl through the rocks at night. I set up a simple space with a mat and a blanket. I brought only water, a few prayer books and a photograph of my guru.

The first week was difficult but manageable. My body began to adjust to the lack of food. I spent my days in meditation and prayer. I chanted mantras until my voice grew hoarse. I watched the sun rise and set over the snow-covered peaks and I felt close to something, though I didn’t know what.

By the second week, I was weaker. Standing up made me dizzy. My thoughts became strange and fragmented. I began to see things. Visions of gods and goddesses. Memories from my childhood. Faces of people I had known. I wasn’t sure what was real and what was illusion.

The third week brought a kind of clarity. The hunger pangs stopped. My body felt light, almost weightless. I felt I was on the verge of something significant. I could sense it like you can sense a storm before it arrives.

By the end of the fifth week, I was barely able to move. I had lost track of time. Day and night blurred together. I would drift in and out of sleep. Or perhaps it wasn’t sleep, but some other state of consciousness. I saw light, brilliant and pure, filling the cave. I heard sounds that seemed to come from far away. Or perhaps from inside my own mind.

On what I later learned was the 40th day, I woke at dawn. Or perhaps I didn’t wake. Perhaps I had never really been asleep. The sun was just beginning to light the sky. I felt strangely peaceful, as if everything had led to this moment. I sat up with difficulty and looked out at the mountains, at the vast expanse of stone and sky, and I felt very small and very ready. I closed my eyes to meditate one last time. I began to chant the Gayatri mantra, the most sacred prayer I knew, asking for light and wisdom.

But somewhere in the middle of the chant, my voice stopped. My breath stopped, and then everything stopped. I felt a coldness spreading through my body, starting from my feet and moving upward. I tried to take a breath, but my lungs wouldn’t respond. I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t obey. A great heaviness came over me and I realized with a strange calmness that I was dying.

This is it, I thought. This is Mahasamadhi. This is the final liberation. My soul is leaving my body. I am going to merge with Brahman, the absolute, and all my seeking will finally end. I surrendered to it. I let go, and then there was nothing but darkness and silence, and I knew no more.

But that was not the end. That was only the beginning of what I need to tell you. Because what happened next changed everything I thought I knew about God, about truth, about reality itself. What happened next is why I’m telling you this story.

The first thing I need you to understand is that what happened was more real than anything I had experienced in my entire life. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a hallucination caused by fasting. It wasn’t my imagination or wishful thinking. It was more vivid, more solid, more true than the physical world I had lived in for 52 years.

When people have near-death experiences, they often struggle to find words to describe what they saw. Now, I understand why. Human language wasn’t designed to capture what lies beyond death. But I will try my best to tell you what I experienced because you need to know.

After the darkness and the coldness, after my breath stopped and my heart stopped, there was a moment of nothing. Not the nothing of sleep or unconsciousness, but an aware nothing, if that makes sense. I was still there, still conscious. But there was no sight, no sound, no sensation, just awareness floating in a vast emptiness.

Then I realized I could still think. I could still be. But I had no body. This shocked me. Even though I had spent decades teaching that the soul is separate from the body. Knowing something intellectually and experiencing it are completely different things. I was me, Avind, Aravindananda, but I had no flesh, no bones, no weight, no form.

And then I could see again, but not with eyes. I was looking down at something below me. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. It was a cave. It was my cave. And there, lying on a mat against the stone wall, was a body. A thin body in orange robes. The body wasn’t moving. The face was pale and still, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. It was my body. I was looking at my own corpse.

I felt no fear in that moment. Instead, I felt a kind of curiosity. So, this is death, I thought. This is what it means to leave the body. I wondered how long it would take for someone to find my body. I wondered if my disciples would perform the proper funeral rites. I wondered if they would grieve or if they would celebrate my achieving samadhi.

Then I felt a pull, not a physical pull, but something drawing me away from the cave, away from that empty shell I had lived in for five decades. It was gentle but irresistible, like being carried by a current in a river. I didn’t resist. Where else was there to go? What else was there to do?

I began to move through darkness. Or perhaps I was still and the darkness was moving past me. I couldn’t tell. There was no sense of direction, no up or down, no near or far. But I was going somewhere. I could sense it. I was being pulled towards something, though I didn’t know what.

In the darkness, I began to hear sounds, distant at first, then clearer. Bells, temple bells, like the ones I had heard every morning of my childhood. Chanting, mantras being recited, my mother’s voice singing a bhajan, my sister’s laugh, my guru’s gentle instructions during meditation, all the sounds of my life echoing in the void.

Then I saw light ahead. Not the harsh light of the sun or the flickering light of a lamp, but a different kind of light. Soft and warm and pure. It grew brighter as I moved toward it, or as it moved toward me. The darkness began to fade and I emerged into… I don’t know what to call it. A place that wasn’t a place, a realm, a dimension, something beyond the physical world, but more real than the physical world.

The light was everywhere, but it didn’t hurt to look at. It came from no single source. It simply was. And in that light, I could see colors I had never seen before. Colors that don’t exist in the earthly spectrum. I could hear music, but it wasn’t coming from instruments. It was the sound of existence itself, a harmony that made every song I had ever heard seem like noise in comparison.

I looked around and I saw that I had form again. Not my old body, but something like it. I looked down and saw hands, arms, legs, but they were made of light or something like light. I was solid, but translucent. I was myself, but also more than myself.

The landscape around me, if it could be called a landscape, was beautiful beyond description. There were what looked like hills or mountains, but they weren’t made of rock. They seemed to be made of crystallized light. There were rivers, but they flowed with something purer than water. There were trees, but their leaves seemed to sing. Everything was alive in a way that nothing on earth is alive. Everything was conscious. Everything was connected.

I saw others in the distance, figures of light like me, but I couldn’t approach them. Something was keeping me separate, keeping me in this particular space. They seemed to be in groups and they seemed joyful, but they were far away, as if they existed on another level of this realm that I couldn’t yet reach.

I felt no fear, but I felt awe. I felt small. I felt like I had stepped into a reality that my mind couldn’t fully comprehend, like an ant trying to understand a palace. And I felt a question forming in my consciousness. What is this place? Is this Brahman? Is this moksha? Have I achieved liberation?

Then I sensed a presence approaching me. I turned and what I saw made every thought stop. There was a figure walking toward me, not floating, but walking with footsteps that made no sound, but somehow echoed through everything. The figure was a man dressed in pure white. And the white wasn’t just a color. It was purity itself, holiness itself. The light seemed to come from him. Or perhaps he was the light. I couldn’t tell where the light ended and he began.

As he came closer, I could see his face. It was the most beautiful and terrible face I had ever seen. Beautiful because it was filled with such love, such compassion, such perfect kindness that I wanted to weep. Terrible because I felt that this face could see everything about me. Every thought I’d ever had, every deed I’d ever done, every secret I’d ever kept. Nothing could be hidden from those eyes.

He stopped a short distance from me and looked at me with an expression I can only describe as infinite tenderness, and then he spoke. He didn’t speak in Hindi or Sanskrit or English. He didn’t speak with sound at all, but I heard him, and I understood him, not with my ears but with my entire being. He said my name, my birth name, the name my parents gave me, the name I had abandoned when I became a monk. He said, “Arvind.”

The sound of my name in his voice broke something open inside me. I fell to my knees, or whatever passes for kneeling in that realm. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he was holy. I knew he was powerful. I knew he was good in a way that nothing and no one I had ever encountered was good.

I tried to speak but no words came. I wanted to ask who he was, where I was, what was happening. But I could only kneel there trembling in the presence of this overwhelming love. Then he spoke again and what he said changed my eternity.

He said, “I am Jesus. I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

I have to stop here and tell you what went through me when I heard that name. Jesus. I knew that name. Of course, I knew. He was the central figure of Christianity. I knew Christians believed he was God incarnate, that he had died and risen from the dead. But to me, he had always been a foreign god, a western god, someone who belonged to a different religion, a different culture, a different world. I had respected him as one might respect any great religious teacher. But I had never thought he had anything to do with me, with India, with Hinduism, with my search for moksha.

And now here he was, standing before me in the realm beyond death. Claiming to be the way, the truth, and the life. The very things I had been seeking my entire adult life.

Confusion flooded through me. This couldn’t be right. Where were the deities I had worshiped? Where was Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma? Where were the gods and goddesses I had offered prayers to for decades? Why was Jesus here? Why was he speaking to me?

I found my voice. Somehow I said, or thought, or communicated in whatever way beings communicate in that place. I said that I had worshiped other gods. I had meditated on the absolute. I had sought Brahman, the impersonal divine consciousness. I had tried to realize my unity with the eternal self.

Jesus looked at me with those eyes that held no judgment, only love. And he said something that I will never forget as long as I exist. He said, “You have sought me in many names, but I am the one you have been seeking. I am not foreign to you. I am not the enemy of your longing. I am the fulfillment of every prayer you have ever prayed.”

I didn’t understand. I told him respectfully, carefully, because even in my confusion, I could feel the holiness radiating from him. I told him that I had prayed to Hindu gods, that I had followed Hindu scriptures, that I had never called on his name.

He smiled then, and that smile was like the sun breaking through clouds. He said that every sincere prayer, every genuine seeking after truth, every honest cry for God was heard by him. He said that he was not just the God of Christians, but the God of all creation. He said that he loved India as much as any nation. That he loved Hindus as much as any people. That he had watched my whole life, every moment of seeking, every meditation, every tear, every question.

Then he began to show me things. I don’t know how to explain it except to say that my life appeared before me, but not like watching a film. I was seeing it from his perspective. I saw myself as a child praying at the temple, and I saw him there listening. I saw myself weeping over my sister’s body. And I saw him weeping with me. I saw myself taking vows as a monk. And I saw him honoring my sincerity even though I didn’t know his name. I saw every moment I had sat in meditation seeking truth. And I saw him drawing close to me, waiting for the day when I would recognize him.

But I also saw other things. I saw moments of pride when I had received praise. I saw moments of anger when I had been criticized. I saw moments when I had judged others for not being as spiritually advanced as I thought I was. I saw how I had used spirituality sometimes to feel superior, to gain respect, to build my own reputation. I saw the hardness in my heart toward people who had hurt me. I saw the unforgiveness I had held on to while teaching others about detachment.

I saw my heart, and my heart was not pure. Despite all my practices, despite all my disciplines, despite all my years of striving, my heart was still tainted with selfishness, pride, anger, and fear. I was ashamed. I had taught others that through self-effort and self-realization we could purify ourselves and achieve liberation. But now I saw clearly that I had not purified myself at all. I had only covered my impurities with spiritual practices, like putting clean clothes on an unwashed body.

I fell on my face before Jesus. I felt like I was dissolving in shame and sorrow. I had wasted my life. I had sought the wrong thing in the wrong way. I had taught others a path that didn’t work. I had been a blind guide leading other blind people.

But then I felt his hand on my head. It was the gentlest touch imaginable, full of comfort and strength. He lifted my face so that I had to look at him. And he said, “This is why I came.”

“No amount of meditation, no amount of fasting, no amount of rituals or disciplines can cleanse the human heart. Only my love can. Only my sacrifice.”

I asked him, “What sacrifice? What was he talking about?”

He held out his hands toward me and for the first time I saw clearly what I had not noticed before. There were scars on his hands, wounds. They looked old but somehow also fresh, as if they were constantly healing and constantly being renewed. He told me to look at his feet. There were scars there too. And when he turned slightly, I saw that there was a scar on his side as well.

He said these were the wounds from his crucifixion, from when he died on a cross 2,000 years ago. He said he had taken the sins of the entire world upon himself, including mine, so that anyone who believed in him could be forgiven, could be made clean, could be reconciled to God, not through their own efforts, but through his grace.

I struggled to understand this. It went against everything I had been taught. In Hinduism, you pay for your own karma. You work off your own sins through countless lifetimes. There is no one who can take your burden from you. You must achieve your own liberation through your own effort.

But Jesus was telling me something different. He was telling me that liberation, salvation, was a gift. He was telling me that God himself had come to earth as a man, had lived a perfect life, had died an undeserved death, and had risen from the dead, all so that imperfect people like me could be forgiven and brought into eternal life with God. It seemed too good to be true, too simple, too much like grace and not enough like justice.

But as I knelt there before him, looking at those scars on his hands, I understood something profound. This was justice and mercy meeting together. Justice because sin, all the selfishness and pride and hatred and violence in the world, had to be punished. Mercy because God took that punishment upon himself rather than leaving us to bear it.

I asked him why. Why would he do such a thing? Why would God suffer for us?

He said one word, “Love.”

And in that moment, I experienced love in a way I had never experienced it before. Not as an emotion or a feeling, but as a force, as a reality, as the very foundation of existence. I felt loved by this Jesus in a way that made every other love I had ever known seem like a pale shadow. I felt known completely and loved completely at the same time. I felt that even if I were the only person in the world, he would have done everything he did just for me.

I wept. I don’t know how long I wept. Time seemed to have no meaning in that place. I wept for all the years I had spent searching in the wrong direction. I wept for the pride that had kept me from seeing the truth. I wept for the relief of finally, finally finding what my soul had been crying out for all along. Not a philosophy, not a technique, not a state of consciousness, but a person. A God who was personal, who knew me, who loved me, who had pursued me even when I didn’t know his name.

When I could finally speak again, I had questions. So many questions. They poured out of me like water from a broken dam. I asked him about my people, about India, about Hinduism. I asked him if everything I had been taught was wrong. I asked him about the millions of Hindus who sincerely worship other gods. I asked him why, if he was the truth, he had allowed me to spend so many years following a different path.

He was patient with every question. He never seemed annoyed or rushed. He answered, not always with words, but sometimes with understanding that came directly into my mind. Knowledge that bypassed language altogether.

He told me that he had not come to destroy the sincere seeking in any religion, but to fulfill it. He said that when Hindus seek truth, peace, love and liberation, they are seeking him even if they don’t know his name. He said that the hunger for God that is in every human heart was placed there by him, and only he can satisfy it.

He told me that many of the things I had learned were not entirely wrong, but incomplete. The understanding that there is one ultimate reality behind all things? That was true. The recognition that this world is temporary and that there is an eternal realm? That was true. The knowledge that human beings are more than just physical bodies, that was true. But the idea that we could reach God through our own efforts, that we could cleanse ourselves through our own disciplines, that we could earn liberation through our own merit? That was false.

He said, “Salvation is not something we achieve, but something we receive. Not something we earn, but something we accept as a gift. And the only requirement is faith: trusting in him, believing that he is who he says he is, accepting what he has done on our behalf.”

I asked him about karma, about reincarnation, about all the doctrines I had taught for years. He showed me that karma, the law of sowing and reaping, was real, but it was not the final word. Yes, our actions have consequences. Yes, sin brings death. But his sacrifice interrupted the cycle of karma. His grace broke the chain of cause and effect. Through him, we don’t get what we deserve. We get what he deserves, which is eternal life in perfect relationship with God.

As for reincarnation, he showed me that this was not how things truly work. Human beings live once, die once, and then face judgment. But judgment is not about weighing good deeds against bad deeds and assigning you to a new birth. Judgment is about one question: What did you do with Jesus? Did you accept him or reject him? Did you believe or refuse to believe?

I asked him what happened to people who never heard his name, who never had a chance to believe in him. He told me that he was just and merciful and that he judges the heart. He said that anyone who truly seeks God with all their heart will find him, because he reveals himself to those who genuinely seek. But he also said that he is the only way to the Father, the only door to salvation, the only name under heaven by which people can be saved.

This was difficult for me. I thought about my parents, my guru, the millions of devout Hindus I had known. Were they all lost? Was their devotion worthless? Jesus seemed to sense my pain. He reminded me that he is the judge, not me. He said that I should trust his justice and his mercy. He said my job was not to condemn anyone, but to tell them what I had learned: that there is a God who loves them, who died for them, who wants relationship with them, and whose name is Jesus.

Then he asked me a question. He asked if I wanted to stay there with him, or if I wanted to go back.

I was confused. Go back where? To the cave? To my body? But I was dead. My heart had stopped. I had left that body behind.

He said that nothing was impossible for him. If I chose, he could send me back to my body. I would live again. But if I went back, it would be for a purpose: to tell others what I had seen, to share the truth I had discovered, to be his witness in India. Or I could stay there in that place of light and love and never return to the pain and struggle of earthly life.

I looked around at that beautiful realm. I felt the peace that filled every corner of it. I felt the joy radiating from those distant figures of light. I wanted to stay. Oh, how I wanted to stay. The thought of returning to my broken, weak, worn-out body, of returning to a world of suffering and death, of facing the rejection and persecution I knew would come if I told people about Jesus… it was almost unbearable.

But then I thought about my disciples. I thought about the seekers who came to my ashram looking for answers. I thought about my family. I thought about the millions of people in India who were searching for God just as I had searched, performing rituals and disciplines and prayers, hoping to find peace but never quite finding it. If I had found the answer, how could I keep it to myself? If I had met the truth, how could I not share it?

Yes, they might reject me. Yes, they might hate me. But what if even one person believed? What if even one person found Jesus because I told them my story?

I looked at Jesus, and I saw in his eyes that he already knew what I would choose. He wasn’t manipulating me or pressuring me. He was simply offering me a choice and waiting for my answer with perfect patience.

I told him, “Send me back. Let me go back and tell them. Let me be your witness.”

He smiled again. And this time, I saw something in that smile that I hadn’t noticed before. I saw his own scars, his own suffering, his own sacrifice, and I understood that if he was willing to die for the world, I could be willing to suffer for him.

He reached out and placed his hand on my chest, right over where my heart would be. His touch was warm and strong and full of power. He said, “Go and tell them what you have seen. Tell them that I love them. Tell them that I am not far from any of them, that I am waiting for them to seek me. Tell them that in me they will find the peace they have been searching for.”

Then he said one more thing. Something that I have held on to in every difficult moment since that day. He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.”

And then everything changed again.

The light began to fade. Or perhaps I was falling away from it. I felt myself being pulled back through the darkness, back through the void, back towards something solid and heavy and painful.

I felt my body again. And the feeling was shocking. After the weightlessness of the spiritual realm, my body felt like a prison, like a heavy coat made of lead. I felt cold stone beneath me. I felt pain in my joints, my muscles, my head. I felt hunger and thirst and weakness.

I tried to breathe, and at first nothing happened. My lungs wouldn’t work. Panic seized me. Was I trapped somehow between life and death? Then suddenly, like a door being thrown open, air rushed into my lungs. I gasped, and the gasp turned into a cough, and the cough shook my whole body.

My eyes opened and I saw the roof of the cave. Gray stone, dim light, the smell of dust, and my own unwashed body. I was back. I was alive.

But I was not the same person who had died in this cave.

I tried to sit up, but I was too weak. I lay there breathing heavily, feeling my heart beating in my chest. That heart that had stopped, that heart that Jesus had touched, that heart that was now pumping blood through my veins again.

I began to weep again. But these tears were different from any I had cried before. They were tears of gratitude, tears of joy, tears of overwhelming love. I had died and returned. I had seen the other side. I had met Jesus. And nothing would ever be the same.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Hours perhaps, or maybe just minutes. Time felt strange, as if I was still partly in that timeless place and partly back in the world of seconds and minutes.

Eventually, I gathered enough strength to sit up. I looked down at my hands. Turning them over, amazed that I had hands again, that I could move them. I crawled to the entrance of the cave and looked out at the mountains. The sun was setting, painting the snow-covered peaks in shades of orange and pink. It was beautiful, but it was nothing compared to what I had seen. This world, which I had once thought was the ultimate reality, now seemed like a shadow, a copy of something far more real.

I knew I needed to leave the cave, to get back to civilization, to tell people what had happened. But I was so weak. I had been fasting for 40 days, and then I had died, and now I was alive again but barely. I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t support me. I fell back to my knees.

So I prayed. But I didn’t pray the prayers I had prayed for 30 years. I didn’t recite mantras or call on Hindu deities. I prayed to Jesus. I said his name. That name I had never spoken with faith before. That name that now meant everything to me.

I said, “Jesus, help me. Give me strength. I want to do what you sent me back to do. I want to tell them about you.”

And I felt it. Strength flowing into my limbs. Energy returning to my body. Not all at once, but gradually, like dawn slowly breaking. I was able to stand. I was able to walk. I gathered my few belongings: my water pot, my prayer shawl, my books, and I began the long walk down the mountain.

The path was treacherous in the fading light. I had to go slowly, carefully, stopping often to rest. My mind was racing the whole time. What would I say to people? How would I explain this? Who would believe me? Would they think I had gone mad from fasting? Would they think I had betrayed everything I had stood for?

But underneath all these questions was something solid and unshakable. I had met Jesus. I had seen him with my own eyes, spoken with him, been touched by him. This was not imagination or delusion. This was more real than anything else in my life. And whatever the cost, I had to tell the truth.

Night fell before I reached the village. I could see lights in the distance, small fires and lamps glowing in the darkness. I thought about how I had walked away from human society so many times, seeking isolation for meditation and prayer. But now I was walking toward people, carrying a message that they needed to hear.

When I finally reached the village, a shepherd saw me. His eyes went wide with shock. He started backing away from me, making signs to ward off evil spirits. I realized I must look like a ghost. A thin, ragged figure appearing out of the darkness from the direction of the mountain where everyone knew a monk had gone to fast. I tried to speak, to tell him I was alive, but my voice came out as a croak. I hadn’t spoken in weeks, and my throat was dry.

He turned and ran toward the village shouting for others. Within minutes, a group of men came with torches. Among them, I recognized one of my disciples, a young man named Prakash, who had been waiting in the village for news of me. When he saw me, he let out a cry and ran forward, dropping his torch. He fell at my feet, touching them, weeping. The other men surrounded us, staring at me with a mixture of fear and wonder. Prakash kept saying my name, “Swami Ji! Swami Ji!” over and over as if he couldn’t believe I was real.

They half-carried, half-supported me to a small guest house in the village. They laid me on a bed and brought water and food. I drank the water slowly, carefully. They wanted to give me solid food, but I told them I needed to break my fast gradually with something light. They brought warm milk and a little rice cooked very soft. As I ate, they watched me in silence. I could see the questions in their eyes.

Finally, Prakash spoke. He asked me what had happened. He said they had expected me to come down from the mountain after 40 days. But when I hadn’t appeared, they began to worry. He had been about to organize a search party the next morning.

I looked at him, at all of them, and I knew this was the moment. I had to begin telling the truth. I had to start bearing witness to what I had seen. I said, and my voice was stronger now, I said that I had died. I had stopped breathing in the cave. My heart had stopped. I had left my body.

They looked at each other, uncertain whether to believe me. Prakash asked if I meant that I had achieved Mahasamadhi, the final liberation. I shook my head. I said, “No, it wasn’t Mahasamadhi. It was death. Real death. But I have been sent back.”

They asked who sent me back. What power had returned me to life? And I said the name that I knew would change everything. I said, “Jesus. Jesus Christ sent me back.”

The silence that followed was thick and heavy. No one moved. No one spoke. They just stared at me as if I had spoken in a foreign language they didn’t understand. Then Prakash asked very quietly if I was saying I’d met the Christian God. If I was saying Jesus was real.

I looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes. Jesus is real. Jesus is not just a Christian God. He is the God. He is the one we have all been seeking. He is the truth we have all been searching for.”

And with those words, I began the most difficult journey of my life. The journey of telling the truth to people who didn’t want to hear it. Of losing everything I had built, of being rejected by those I loved, but also of finding a peace and joy that no amount of meditation had ever given me. The journey of following Jesus in a land where his name was not known, his love was not understood, and his truth was not accepted.

But I had met him. I had seen him. I had been touched by him. And nothing could make me deny what I knew to be true. Nothing.

The next few days in that village were some of the strangest of my life. My body was recovering, slowly, gaining strength, but my heart and mind were in turmoil. I was back in the physical world, but part of me was still in that realm of light, still hearing Jesus’ voice, still feeling his touch on my chest.

Prakash and a few other disciples stayed with me in the guest house. They were kind and attentive, bringing me food and making sure I rested. But I could see the concern in their eyes, the questions they were afraid to ask. They treated me with the same reverence they always had, but now there was something else too. Confusion, maybe even fear.

I spent those days praying and trying to understand what had happened to me. I would close my eyes and see Jesus’ face. I would remember his words, and I would feel this overwhelming love that I had never felt before, this certainty that I was known and loved completely. But I also felt lost. I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t know how to be a Hindu monk who had met Jesus. I didn’t know how to bridge these two worlds: the world I had lived in for 33 years and this new reality that had been revealed to me.

On the third day, I was strong enough to travel. Prakash arranged for a car to take us back to Rishikesh, to my ashram. The drive took several hours, winding down from the mountains into the valleys. I looked out the window at the landscape I had known for so long. The temples, the prayer flags, the sadhus walking along the roadside, the pilgrims heading to sacred sites. Everything looked the same, but I saw it all differently now. I thought about how many people were seeking God in these mountains and rivers and temples. How many prayers were being offered? How many rituals were being performed? How many sacrifices were being made? And I felt such a deep sadness because I knew, what I now knew, that all this seeking was pointing towards something, towards someone. But most people would never find him because they were looking in the wrong direction.

When we arrived at the ashram, my disciples were shocked to see me. They had heard I was alive, but seeing me in person was different. They gathered around the car, some crying, some touching my feet, some just staring in disbelief. I was taken to my room and told to rest. But word spread quickly through Rishikesh that Swami Aravindananda had returned from his mountain retreat, that something extraordinary had happened to him.

People began arriving at the ashram. Other monks, teachers, students, curious seekers. They all wanted to see me, to hear what had happened. I knew I couldn’t hide. I knew I had to tell them. But I was afraid. I had lived in this community for decades. These people were my spiritual family. The thought of how they would react when I told them the truth made my stomach tighten with anxiety.

On my first evening back, I gathered my closest disciples in the meditation hall. There were about 15 of them, men and women who had studied under me for years, who had left their families to follow the spiritual path, who looked at me as their guru. They sat before me on the floor, looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to share some profound teaching about my experience in the cave, some new insight into meditation or consciousness or the nature of reality.

I sat on my usual seat at the front of the hall, looking at their faces. These were good people, sincere people. They loved God as much as I had loved God. They were seeking truth as hard as I had sought truth. And I was about to tell them something that would shatter their understanding of everything.

I began slowly. I told them about the 40-day fast, about the weakness and the visions, about the moment when I felt my body shutting down. I described the sensation of dying, of leaving my body, of floating above it and seeing myself lying still in the cave. They listened intently, nodding. This was familiar territory: out of body experiences, near-death states. Many yogis reported similar things.

But then I continued. I told them about the realm of light, about the presence I encountered there, about the figure in white who approached me. One of my disciples, an older man named Vishnu, smiled and said he knew I would have a divine vision. He asked which deity had appeared to me. Was it Lord Shiva? Lord Krishna perhaps?

I took a deep breath. This was the moment. I said, “No. It wasn’t Shiva. It wasn’t Krishna. It wasn’t any of the deities we have worshiped.”

The room became very quiet. They waited. I said the name, “Jesus.”

For several seconds, no one reacted. They just stared at me as if they hadn’t heard correctly, as if their ears were playing tricks on them. Then Vishnu laughed nervously. He said I must have been confused by the fasting, that my mind had created an image from something I had seen or read somewhere. He suggested we perform a cleansing ritual to clear any spiritual confusion.

But I shook my head. I told them I wasn’t confused. I told them this was more real than anything I had ever experienced. I told them Jesus had spoken to me, had revealed himself to me as the way, the truth, and [clears throat] the life.

The laughter died. Now there was only silence, heavy and uncomfortable. A young disciple named Meera, who had been with me for 5 years, spoke up. Her voice was shaking. She asked if I was saying that Jesus was superior to our gods. If I was saying that Hinduism was wrong.

I chose my words carefully. I said I wasn’t saying Hinduism was all wrong. I said there was truth in what we had learned about karma, about the impermanence of this world, about the hunger for something beyond the material. But I told them that Jesus had shown me that he was the fulfillment of that hunger. He was what we had been seeking all along.

Another disciple, a man named Rajesh, stood up abruptly. His face was red with anger. He said I had betrayed them. He said I had betrayed Sanatan Dharma, the eternal tradition. He said I had spent decades teaching them one path and now I was suddenly claiming a different path was true. How could they trust anything I had ever taught them?

I understood his anger. I felt the weight of his words. But I couldn’t deny what I had experienced. I told him I understood how he felt, that I would have reacted the same way if someone had told me this a month ago. But I had died. I had gone to the other side. I had met the living God, and that God’s name is Jesus.

Rajesh walked out of the hall. Two others followed him. Meera was crying now. She asked what she was supposed to do with all the years she had spent in meditation and prayer. Were they wasted? Was everything we believed a lie?

I moved down from my seat and sat on the floor with them. I reached out and took her hand. I told her those years weren’t wasted. The seeking was real. The hunger for God was real. But now I knew where that hunger led. It led to Jesus. And I was inviting her, inviting all of them, to seek him with me.

Some of them sat in stunned silence. Some of them wept. Some of them looked at me with something like pity, as if I had lost my mind. One by one, most of them stood and left the hall. Out of the 15 disciples who had gathered that evening, only three remained by the time I finished speaking.

That night, I lay in my room unable to sleep. I could hear voices outside, disciples and visitors discussing what I had said, debating whether I had achieved enlightenment or gone mad, wondering what would happen to the ashram now that their guru had apparently converted to Christianity.

I prayed to Jesus. I asked him if I had said the wrong thing, if I had explained it badly, if there was a better way to share what I had learned. But even as I prayed, I felt peace. I felt his presence with me. And I remembered his words that he would be with me always, even to the end of the age.

Over the next week, the situation grew worse. News of my experience spread throughout Rishikesh. Other Swamis and religious leaders began to visit the ashram, not to congratulate me on some spiritual breakthrough, but to confront me.

An elderly swami from a large ashram down the river came with several of his followers. He sat across from me in the meditation hall and asked me to explain myself. I told him my story again: the death, the encounter with Jesus, the message I had been given. He listened with a stern face. When I finished, he said that what I had experienced was Maya, illusion. He said the mind can create powerful visions, especially under extreme physical conditions like prolonged fasting. He said I had perhaps tapped into some collective unconscious image of Jesus from things I had seen or heard over the years, and my mind had created an elaborate vision around it.

I asked him how he explained the fact that I had died and come back to life. How he explained the physical evidence of my death: no breath, no heartbeat. And then my sudden return. He waved his hand dismissively. He said there were documented cases of yogis who could stop their heart and breath and then restart them. He said I had probably entered a very deep meditative state that mimicked death.

I told him respectfully that I knew the difference between a meditative state and death. I had been practicing meditation for 33 years. What happened to me in that cave was not meditation. It was death. And what happened after was not a vision. It was an encounter with the living God.

His face hardened. He said that by making these claims, by speaking the name of Jesus as if he were supreme over our gods, I was betraying my culture, my tradition, and my people. He said I was causing confusion and potentially leading others astray. He urged me to recant my story, to admit I had been mistaken, to return to proper Hindu teaching.

I told him I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen. I couldn’t unknow what I now knew.

He stood to leave. Before walking out, he said that he would be informing other religious leaders in the area about my apostasy. He said I should expect consequences. I watched him leave, and I felt a coldness settle over me that had nothing to do with the weather. I knew what consequences meant. I had seen how religious communities dealt with those they considered traitors to the faith.

Within days, articles began appearing in local newspapers. One headline read, “Respected Swami claims Jesus appeared to him: mental breakdown or publicity stunt?” Another said, “Hindu monk abandons faith after fasting; doctors say hallucinations common in extreme cases.”

People I had known for years stopped speaking to me. When I walked through Rishikesh, some would cross to the other side of the street to avoid me. Others would stare with open hostility. A few would spit on the ground as I passed, a sign of contempt.

The ashram began to empty. Disciples left one by one. Some came to say goodbye, tears in their eyes, saying they loved me but couldn’t follow me down this path. Others simply packed their belongings and disappeared without a word. The students who came for yoga classes stopped coming. The donations that had supported the ashram dried up.

I understood. I didn’t blame them. If someone had told me a year earlier that they had met Jesus and that he was the only way to God, I would have reacted the same way. I would have thought they were confused or brainwashed or mentally unstable. But understanding their reaction didn’t make it hurt less. These were people I had lived with, taught, prayed with, shared meals with. They were my spiritual family, and now they were gone.

The hardest visit came 2 weeks after my return. My mother arrived from Haridwar. Someone had written to her telling her what I was saying, warning her that her son had lost his mind or been corrupted by Christian missionaries. She came with my older brother Prakash, who I hadn’t seen in years. Prakash had done well for himself. He owned a successful textile business in Delhi, lived in a nice house, drove an expensive car. He had always been slightly embarrassed by having a monk for a brother, but at least a Hindu monk carried some social prestige. Now I could see in his face that I had become an embarrassment of a different kind.

They sat with me in my small room. My mother’s hair had gone completely white since I’d last seen her. Her face was lined with worry and grief. She looked at me with such pain in her eyes that I wanted to take back everything I’d said, to tell her it was all a mistake, just to see her smile again. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t lie to make things easier.

She asked me to explain what had happened. So I told her. I told her everything: the death, the crossing, the light, the encounter with Jesus, the return. I told her that Jesus had revealed himself to me as the God I had been seeking all my life.

When I finished, she was weeping quietly. My brother looked angry and uncomfortable. He spoke first. He said I was destroying our family’s honor. He said people in Haridwar were talking about us, that our name was being dragged through the mud. He said our mother’s friends were avoiding her because her son had become what they were calling a Christian convert. He said I needed to stop this nonsense immediately, recant my claims, and return to being a proper Hindu monk.

I looked at him and said I couldn’t do that. I said I understood this was difficult for the family, but I had to speak the truth.

He stood up, his face red with fury. He said I was selfish. He said I had always been selfish: running away to become a monk, leaving our parents to manage alone, and now this: converting to a foreign religion and bringing shame on everyone. My mother put her hand on his arm, asking him to be calm.

Then she turned to me. She asked me the simplest and most devastating question. “Are you happy, Arvind?”

I looked at my mother. This woman who had carried me, raised me, wept when I left to become a monk, and wept again when I returned changed. And I told her the truth. I said, “Ma, I am at peace. For the first time in my entire life, I am truly at peace. I tried to find peace through meditation, through rituals, through all the practices of our tradition, but I never found lasting peace. Now I have it, because I have found Jesus.”

She looked at me for a long moment, searching my face. Then she said something that broke my heart and gave me hope at the same time. She said, “I don’t understand what has happened to you, Beta. I don’t understand this Jesus or why you believe in him, but I can see something in your eyes that I never saw before. You look like you’re finally free.”

My brother made a sound of disgust and walked out of the room. My mother stayed a little longer. She didn’t say she believed me. She didn’t say she agreed with my choice. But before she left, she hugged me, something she hadn’t done since I was a child. And she whispered that she would pray for me.

After they left, I sat alone in my room as the sun set over the Ganga. The ashram that had once been filled with activity was now mostly empty. Only two disciples remained: young men who had been with me for less than a year and who seemed genuinely curious about what I had experienced. I felt the weight of loneliness pressing down on me. I had lost my community, my reputation, my life’s work. I had lost the respect of my peers and the approval of my family. I was a man without a home, without a place, without a clear path forward.

And in that moment of darkness, doubt crept in. Had I made a terrible mistake? Was I really supposed to give up everything? Maybe the other swamis were right. Maybe it had been a hallucination. Maybe I could quietly stop talking about Jesus and try to rebuild my life as a Hindu monk.

But even as these thoughts came, I knew they were lies. I knew what I had seen. I knew who I had met. I knew the peace I had found was real. And I knew that no amount of suffering in this world could compare to the joy of knowing Jesus.

I prayed, not the formal prayers I had prayed for decades, but simple, honest words. I said, “Jesus, I’m afraid. I’m alone. Everyone has left me. Please help me. Please show me what to do next. Please don’t let me walk this path by myself.”

And then, as I sat there in the darkness, I heard a knock at the door.

I opened it to find a woman standing there. She was middle-aged, dressed simply, with kind eyes. She introduced herself as Mrs. Sharma from a village about an hour away. She said she had heard about my testimony and she had something to tell me. She said she was a Christian. She said there were other Christians in Rishikesh, not many, but a few families who met together to worship Jesus. She said they had been praying for me, and they wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.

I felt tears spring into my eyes. I invited her in, and we sat and talked for over an hour. She told me about a church, about how they met in a simple house every Sunday, about how they too faced opposition from the Hindu majority, about how they had to be careful but remained faithful. Before she left, she gave me a small piece of paper with an address written on it. She said if I wanted to meet other followers of Jesus, I should come to that address on Sunday morning.

After she left, I held that piece of paper in my hands and wept. Not tears of sadness this time, but tears of relief and gratitude. Jesus had heard my prayer. He had sent someone to remind me that I wasn’t alone.

The next morning, I woke early as I had always done. But instead of my usual prayers and rituals, I read from a small Bible that Mrs. Sharma had left with me. It was in Hindi. And as I read the words of Jesus in the Gospels, I felt like I was hearing his voice again. The same voice that had spoken to me in that realm of light.

I spent my days quietly now. I helped maintain the ashram grounds, though it was mostly empty. I prayed. I read the Bible. And I waited to see what Jesus would do next.

Some people still came to see me. Not disciples anymore, but curious seekers who had heard my story and wanted to know more. I told them truthfully what had happened to me. Some believed, most didn’t. But I planted seeds, and I trusted that Jesus would make them grow in his own time.

Then came the night that changed everything again. It was about 3 weeks after my return. I was sleeping when I heard sounds outside my room. Voices, footsteps, something heavy being dragged. I got up and opened my door. The courtyard of the ashram was dark except for the moonlight, but I could see shadows moving. Before I could call out, I heard the sound of breaking glass. Someone had thrown something through the window of the meditation hall.

I ran outside and saw several figures running away. When I reached the meditation hall and lit a lamp, I saw the destruction. Someone had vandalized the space. Sacred images had been thrown down and broken. Books had been torn and scattered. And on the wall, written in red paint, were the words: “Betrayer of Dharma, leave or face consequences.”

I stood there looking at the destruction, and I felt not anger but sadness. These people thought they were defending their faith. They thought I was the enemy. They didn’t understand that I wasn’t attacking Hinduism. I was trying to show them the fulfillment of what Hinduism had been pointing toward all along.

I cleaned up what I could that night. In the morning, I reported the vandalism to the local police, but they were not interested. One officer told me bluntly that if I stopped causing trouble by talking about Christianity, these problems would stop.

I knew then that I couldn’t stay at the ashram any longer. It wasn’t safe, and my presence was causing ongoing conflict in the community. So I made the difficult decision to leave.

I took very few possessions. Some clothes, my Bible, my old copy of the Bhagavad Gita that I had studied for years, and a photograph of my parents. Everything else I left behind. I walked through Rishikesh with my small bag, heading toward the address Mrs. Sharma had given me. I thought about how many times I had walked these streets in my saffron robes, receiving respectful greetings and blessings from passers-by. Now I walked in simple clothes, unnoticed or avoided.

The journey of Arvind, now Avind, continues, but his testimony concludes with the truth he found. He is no longer Swami Aravindananda, but a follower of Jesus Christ, sharing the love and grace that transformed him from the inside out