Swakilki was now at the Sumiyoshi Jinja. Even though she was Catholic, Shinto belief and rituals had remained with her and she desperately wanted comforting. She had just killed the only man whom she had ever come close to loving. She was now well and truly alone, except for the company of the divine Kami.
After electrocuting Takuya, she had spent the next six hours meticulously cleaning the apartment until she had removed all traces of herself. She had then packed all her belongings, loaded Takuya’s lifeless body into the trunk of her Toyota Sprinter and driven out of Tokyo along the Toumei Express Motorway to Nagoya. She had then transferred to the Meishin Express Motorway to Osaka. Soon she was driving towards Kansai International Airport. She stopped for a brief moment on the three-kilometre bridge connecting the mainland to the artificial island airport to throw the body into Osaka Bay. She had cringed while doing so. She longed to bring him back to life and hold him in her arms again. She checked into a room at Osaka’s Hyatt Regency Hotel where she placed a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door and slept for the next seven hours. It was when she woke up and saw the emptiness of her bed that she once again realised how much she missed him.
Swakilki now walked through the Torii, the double-columned gate of the Sumiyoshi Jinja, and crossed over the beautiful bright red staircase bridge within the complex. Swakilki stopped at the water fountain to wash her hands and mouth, a symbolic purification expected before entering a shrine. She needed to find Yoshihama Shiokawa.
Yoshihama was a Shinto priest who had become quite famous in the area. His claim to fame was his combination of Shinto principles with Reiki, the ancient Japanese art of spiritual healing—a formula that Swakilki desperately needed.
Reiki was an alternative therapy developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century by Mikao Usui in Japan. The word reiki was a combination of two Japanese words, rei, implying the cosmos, and ki, meaning energy. It was, therefore, the energy of the cosmos.
Practitioners such as Yoshihama Shiokawa believed that they could direct Reiki energy through their palms into specific parts of the patient’s body. More importantly, Yoshihama had combined Reiki with Shinto and Buddhist principles in order to handle mental healing along with physical healing. He believed that he could treat even deeply ingrained issues such as addiction, anxiety, and depressive tendencies by absorbing ‘visions’ of incidents in the present and past lives of his patients while he energised them.
Yoshihama urged Swakilki to lie down and relax. Once she was relaxed, he began to apply the healing energy of his hands to various areas of her body. Reiki energy would enter Swakilki through her seven chakras. Her body would absorb the required Reiki energy to heal itself while unwanted energy would be dissipated.79
Swakilki began to feel varying sensations: hot flushes, cold waves and pressure. The Reiki energy was flowing. Her energy deficiencies were being filled; her energy meridians were being repaired and opened; blocks of stale energy were being slowly melted away.
His hands stopped in the air over her pelvic region. He was certain. This girl had definitely faced sexual trauma in her life; probably child abuse, but he didn’t make any comment.
His palms were feeling warm—too much heat. An explosion? What sort of explosion? A gas leak? Why was he seeing a cardinal in scarlet robes?
Yoshihama gradually moved his palms over Swakilki’s head and continued moving them down towards her shoulders. He stopped at the base of her neck. ‘You have a severe energy blockage here,’ he said, as a vision flashed before him. In the vision he saw a young woman’s head being chopped off by a guillotine in eighteenth-century Paris. In his vision, Yoshihama did not see the faces of either the victim, Charlotte Lavoisier, or the executioner, Sanson. The original faces must have been different. What Yoshihama saw was Swakilki being executed at the guillotine by Professor Terry Acton. Swakilki had cut off Terry’s head in her present life because he had cut off her head in a previous avatar!
He moved his palms further down to her stomach. It was definitely tight and constricted. She had something to hide. Guilt? She had killed. Who? Another vision—an electric chair at Sing Sing prison in New York in 1890. The woman prisoner was killed by the flick of a switch that sent 2,450 volts of electricity through her. The switch was flicked by the state executioner whose face Yoshihama could not recognise. Actually, the face was that of Takuya, recently electrocuted by Swakilki. Tit for tat!
Another vision—an Inca palace in Machu Picchu. Mama Anawarkhi, the wife of the king Sapa Inca Pachacuti, is being strangled by her bodyguard. Yoshihama saw that the queen’s face was that of Swakilki, but the bodyguard’s face was not known to him. The face was that of Vincent Sinclair. Yoshihama moved his palms along her arms and onwards to her hands. The hands had evil energy flows. Murder? Was this a killer that he was healing? In his vision, Swakilki morphed into Empress Wu Zhao, the evil power on the Chinese throne, shattering the limbs of Vincent Sinclair in revenge for having killed Mama Anawarkhi.
Wu Zhao and Mama Anawarkhi were simply Swakilki in previous lives. She then morphed back into Swakilki as she killed again and again and again.
Chapter Thirteen
Medina, Saudi Arabia, A.D. 632
All the wives of Prophet Muhammad took care of him during his illness. Lady Ayesha was always by his side. She would only withdraw when his daughter, Lady Fatima, came to visit him. After a short illness, Prophet Muhammad died at around noon on Monday, 8 June, A.D. 632, in the city of Medina at the age of sixty-three. 80 The Qur’an had been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel over an extended period of time before his death. The Prophet, in turn, had dictated the revelations to his secretaries. One of the passages (4:155-159) that was among the several dictated by the Prophet was:
‘They said in boast, “We killed Jesus the son of Mary the Apostle of Allah.” But they killed him not nor crucified him. But so it was made to appear to them. And those who differ therein are full of doubt with no knowledge but only conjecture to follow. For sure they killed him not!’81 Could the Prophet possibly have heard of Irenaeus of Lyons?
Lyons, France, A.D. 185
The intriguing paragraph written by Irenaeus in Book II, Chapter 22, of his treatise, Against Heresies, reads as follows:
On completing His thirtieth year He suffered, being in fact still a young man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age . . . from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify.82
In this rather strange paragraph, Irenaeus was telling his readers that Jesus was very much alive and teaching at the age of fifty, even though he was no longer the youthful man that he had been at the time of his crucifixion at around the age of thirty. Was it possible that Irenaeus had read an Indian book of history called the Bhavishya Mahapurana that spoke of a meeting that had happened in A.D. 115?
North India, A.D. 115
The man sitting on the mountain had a peaceful and tranquil expression. Peace and love seemed to radiate from within him. King Shalivahana was enraptured by this man’s serenity.
Shalivahana was a brave and effective ruler. He had van-quished the attacking hordes of Chinese, Parthians, Scythians and Bactrians. One day, Shalivahana went into the Himalayas. There, in the Land of the Hun, the powerful king saw a man sitting on a mountain who seemed to promise auspiciousness. His skin was fair and he wore white garments. The king asked the holy man who he was. The other replied, ‘I am called a son of God, born of a virgin, minister of the non-believers, relentless in the search of truth.’
The king then asked him: ‘What is your religion?’ The holy man replied, ‘O great King, I come from a foreign country, where there is no longer truth and where evil knows no bounds. In the land of the non-believers, I appeared as the Messiah. O King, lend your ear to the religion that I brought unto the non-believers. Through justice, truth, meditation and unity of spirit, man will find his wa
y to Issa in the centre of light. God, as firm as the sun, will finally unite the spirit of all wandering beings in himself. Thus, O King, the blissful image of Issa, the giver of happiness, will remain forever in the heart; it is for this that I am called Issa-Masih.’83
The Hindus had eighteen historical books called the Puranas. The ninth book was the Bhavishya Mahapurana. Unlike the Gospels, which could not be accurately dated, the Bhavishya Mahapurana’s date of origin was clearly known. It was authored by the poet Sutta in the year A.D. 115. The historical passage on King Shalivahana and the holy man was from the Bhavishya Mahapurana. Could the Bhavishya Mahapurana have possibly influenced Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad?
Qadian, India, 1835
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born in the year 1835 in a small town called Qadian in India. He became famous in the Islamic world and before his death in 1908 he published a book titled Masih Hindustan Mein.84 He later went on to found the Ahmaddiya sect of Muslims. In his book he wrote:
Let it be noted that though Christians believe that Jesus, after his arrest through the betrayal by Judas Iscariot, and crucifixion, and resurrection, went to heaven, yet, from the Holy Bible, it appears that this belief of theirs is altogether wrong . . .
The truth rather is that as Jesus was a true prophet . . . he knew that God . . . would save him from an accursed death . . . he would not die on the cross, nor would he give up the ghost on the accursed wood; on the contrary, like the prophet Jonah, he would only pass through a state of swoon.
Jesus, coming out of the bowels of the earth, went to his tribes who lived in the eastern countries, Kashmir and Tibet, etc.—the ten tribes of the Israelites who, 721 years before Jesus, had been taken prisoner from Samaria by Shalmaneser, King of Assur, and had been taken away by him. Ultimately, these tribes came to India and settled in various parts of that country.
Jesus, at all events, must have made this journey; for the divine object underlying his advent was that he should meet the lost Jews who had settled in different parts of India; the reason being that these in fact were the lost sheep of Israel.
Of course, Hazrat Mirza had not heard of the Bnei Menashe, who would only come into prominence several years later.
Israel, 2005
The report filed at the BBC World News desk in early April was crisp and concise:
An Indian tribe called the Bnei Menashe have always claimed that they are one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Now, one of Israel’s chief rabbis has recognised this Indian tribe as the lost descendants of ancient Israelites.
Lalrin Sailo, convenor of the Singlung-Israel Association, an organisation representing the Jews of India, said: ‘We have always said we are descendants of Menashe (son of Joseph) so it is great to hear that our claims have been authenticated.’
According to the community, the Bnei Menashe are one of the lost ten tribes of Israel who were exiled when the Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century B.C. The community’s oral tradition is that the tribe travelled through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China and on to India.85
The report spoke about the journey made by the lost tribes of the eighth century B.C., but failed to mention the journey St Thomas had made to India in A.D. 52.
India, A.D. 52
Acta Thomae, or The Acts of Judas Thomas, was written in several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Latin, Armenian and Ethiopic. According to Acta Thomae, after the crucifixion, the apostles had met in order to allocate the various countries of the world among themselves. The Middle East and India had fallen into the lot picked by St Thomas.
The book went on to say that a merchant by the name of Habban arrived in Jerusalem searching for a carpenter needed by the Indian king Gondophares. Jesus apparently met Habban, introduced himself as Jesus the carpenter, and sold his ‘slave’, Thomas, to Habban for twenty pieces of silver.
Habban enquired of Thomas whether Jesus was truly his master. Thomas quite naturally answered, ‘Yes, he is my Lord.’ It was then that Habban told Thomas, ‘He has sold you to me.’
Jesus had taken the twenty pieces of silver from Habban and given them to Thomas, who then left on Habban’s boat. The sea route to India had taken them via the port of Sandruk Mahosa, and they eventually reached the kingdom of Gondophares in India.
Thomas then proceeded southwards to Kerala. In Kodun-gallur, several families of Kerala were converted by him to the Christian faith. After establishing several churches, Thomas moved on to the east coast of India. He was eventually martyred for proselytising near Mylapore.
The St Thomas Christians continued to flourish in Kerala after Thomas’s death. This position would remain unaltered till 1498.
Calicut, India, 1498
It was 20 May 1498. The fleet of three ships that had left Lisbon around a year earlier, the São Gabriel, the São Rafael, and the São Miguel, succeeded in going around the Cape of Good Hope and arrived in Calicut on the west coast of India.86
Vasco da Gama had arrived on Indian shores. Over the next 450 years, the Portuguese influence over their Indian colonies would be brutal, ruthless and extremely profitable.
The 170 expedition members had arrived in India assuming they would need to preach Christianity to the ‘faithless’ natives. They were shocked to see that there were already an estimated two million Christians spread across the land, and that they had 1,500 churches under the jurisdiction of a single Metropolitan of the East Syrian Church.87 St Thomas had done his job well.
The St Thomas Christians were considered high-caste members of society along Hindu caste lines. Their churches were modelled on the lines of Hindu temples. The East Syrian Church of the St Thomas Christians was Hindu in culture, Christian in religion and Syro-Oriental in worship.
This was not very palatable to the visitors from Portugal. Portugal was Roman Catholic and everything outside the Roman Catholic Church was considered heretic. In order to bring the Indian Christians under his control, Pope Paul IV would declare Goa an Archdiocese in 1557.
This was easier said than done. It was not possible to change hundreds of years of worship, culture, practices and customs that had evolved locally. A possible solution was to bring the Inquisition to India. The Goa Inquisition would be formally inaugurated in 1560, and by the time it would end around 1774, it would succeed in torturing and executing thousands.
The first inquisitors were Aleixo Dias Falcão and Francisco, who took the first formal action of banning Hindus from practising their religion. Any contravention was made punishable by death. In 1599, the Thomas Christians were forcibly converted by the inquisitors to Roman Catholicism. This also implied severe restrictions on their Syriac and Aramaic customs. Again, violations were punishable by death. Condemned Hindus were tortured and put to death.88
The Inquisition gained momentum and went on to ban Indian musical instruments, the dhoti—the Indian loincloth favoured by men—and the chewing of betel leaves, a traditional Indian habit. Hundreds of Hindu temples were either destroyed or forcibly converted into Christian churches. Thousands of Hindu texts were burned with a view to ensuring the supremacy of Roman Catholic texts.89
It was amidst this turmoil that Alphonso de Castro arrived in Goa in 1767, towards the end of the Inquisition.
Goa, India, 1767
Alphonso de Castro arrived in Goa ostensibly to give further impetus to the Inquisition, but he was a bad choice for the task. He was more of a scholar than a religious fanatic and was more likely to be found studying the Hindu foundations of Goa’s churches than burning heretics at the stake.
This obviously created a problem. The chief inquisitor wanted Castro to be sent back to Lisbon but this could not be done because of the excellent rapport that Castro’s father enjoyed with King Joseph I of Portugal.
The next best solution was to give him a project that would keep him busy and, more importantly, out of the way. He was asked to make an exhaustive list of ancient texts that had been found in the homes, temples, churches, mosques and syn
agogues of the Hindus, the Thomas Christians, the Muslims and the Sephardic Jews. Any text that did not suit the sensibilities of the Roman Catholic Church would eventually have to be destroyed.
It was while going through an old set of manuscripts discovered in the bowels of the Church of Bom Jesus that Castro found a document that would change his life forever.
The Church of Bom Jesus contained the tomb of the Spanish missionary St Francis Xavier, who had begun his mission in Goa in 1542. This, however, was not its principal claim to fame. History recorded that this church had been constructed in 1559. It had actually been in existence well before 1559. Not as a church, but as a mosque.90
Within one of the pillars that had been discarded in favour of non-Islamic stonework was a cavity. The cavity contained a bundle of documents that had been written in Urdu. These documents had been found by a Hindu worker, Lakshman Powale, at the site where the mosque was being torn down to make way for the church.
Unaware of the significance of the documents, Lakshman had carried them to his home in the city of Damao, where they had continued to lie unattended for many years. He passed the bundle down to his son, Ravindra Powale, who buried them under his house for fear of the Inquisition. When Ravindra died in 1702 at the ripe old age of eighty-four, his house was requisitioned by the Portuguese administration to facilitate the construction of quarters for visiting missionaries.
The houses in the area had been acquired in 1705 but cons-truction was stopped for lack of funds. Construction recommenced almost forty-three years later, in 1748. It was while the ground was being broken for a new foundation that the old bundle of papers was discovered. The bundle was immediately transferred to the archives of the Portuguese viceroy where it continued to stay until it was taken up for cataloguing by Alphonso de Castro nineteen years later.