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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, America saw its young people taking the road to the East. After having seen its older sons and daughters go off to make war, it saw its younger sons and daughters go off to make peace. The smell of napalm and the deafening noise of cannons faded into the smell of incense and the quivering sounds of sitars. The road to India, formerly travelled by spice traders, was now tramped by young people ready to sell their souls to anyone who could save them from their tasteless existence.
It was 1973. We were young Quebecois, aged 23 and 21. We set out on this journey (not knowing at the time that it would last 200 days), packs on our backs, $2000 in our pockets and our hearts overflowing with innocence and naiveté. In those days, borders were as wide open as the doors of a house after a cold winter.
The first stop in our pilgrimage, Paris, conquered our hearts, but as beautiful as the "City of Lights" can be in November, we sought a light that we knew was somewhere else. The American Express office served as a gathering place for young travellers seeking inexpensive transportation to Europe, Africa or the East. We went there hoping to find a bus or a van departing for India. There were several vehicle owners with placards indicating their destinations, but no one was going to India. The high cost of staying in Paris pushed us to depart as soon as possible, regardless of where we went.
Ferdinand and Yvonne were Swiss adventurers who, having navigated the seas around Indonesia in their sailboat, dreamed of buying a small farm in the Spanish Pyrenees with money earned from transporting travellers in their two Volkswagen vans. Paris to Barcelona was their regular route. On the way to Barcelona, we became friends with them, and they invited us to spend a few days with them in the mountains. They talked straightforwardly about God, but they talked as prospectors who sift the gravel in a stream searching for gold. They were looking for God; they had not found Him.
Roman Catholic by birth, we no longer practised the religion of our parents. We deserted Mother Church at a time when she was trying to make herself attractive again. The Sunday mass was no longer in Latin but in French; the priest now turned to face the congregation; and the songs were sung with a modern beat. But, for young people satiated with psychedelic music and distrustful of institutions, these reforms were not enough to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. As children, we had acquired the habit of never going to bed without first reciting a prayer of repentance in order to avoid dying in a state of mortal sin and suffering eternal damnation. By 1973, we no longer prayed, and we suppressed our fear of death. We were without God, and we were advancing into life without understanding the longings of our soul. We were seeking God without knowing it.
After a short trip to Morocco, we hitchhiked back to Madrid. Reading The Life of the Masters excited both of us and gave us much to discuss along the way. This book, bought in an esoteric bookstore, described the life of wise men and women dedicated to good, possessing supernatural powers and hoping to live hundreds of years. The prospect of meeting these men and women cloistered in the mountains of India gave us the energy to go forward.
The city of Madrid, which had recently rolled out the red carpet for American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had scarcely recovered from the anxiety caused by the explosion of a bomb planted by political activists. We were more concerned with finding a vehicle departing for India. Finally a young American woman took pity on us and sold us her Volkswagen van at a discount. India, so far away on our roadmap, suddenly appeared reachable. Perhaps there we would meet a wise man able to guide us into the road leading to life.
We parked our van on the French Riviera with the idea of reviving our finances before departing for India. Our van, which cost $150, proved to be a good investment, since it had a mattress and a kitchenette; nevertheless, our meagre savings were diminishing even though we were eating frugally. The strong sea breeze and the intoxication of our adventure were like a dessert eaten with obvious pleasure day after day. The weeks of February slipped away in making 30 papier mâché masks in the shape of the moon, to be sold on the Avenue of the English at the carnival in Nice. Fortune did not smile on us, but there, nestled next to the sea in our small van, for the first time we told each other solemnly that we believed in the existence of God.
The mistral wind whispered across the Mediterranean Sea, and spring had scattered blossoms on the mimosa shrubs. It was time to make our journey toward God. Becoming friends with some French young people who hoped to go to India one day, we sold them our van for $100 in order to avoid hassles at the borders, which we now saw as a series of hurdles to jump over. On the Orient Express train, on buses with goats and chickens and by hitchhiking, we passed through Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan before finally crossing the Indian border on foot. From Paris to New Delhi, by way of Madrid, Istanbul, Tehran and Kabul, we had crossed paths with atheist anthropologists, an astounding English Hare Krishna, "Jesus freaks" smoking hashish, Moonies ready to marry us, and the Children of God (the promiscuous followers of David Berg). We were thirsting for truth, but we desired to quench our thirst only with the mysterious waters of the Indian wise men.
Every 13 years, at the source of the Ganges River, there was a religious festival at Richikesh, where thousands and thousands of pilgrims gathered to celebrate the Indian divinities and to see and hear the spiritual masters. We were there, and we hoped with all our hearts to meet one of these wise men. Without hesitation, we plunged into the unknown. We knocked on the door of an ashram (a Hindu hermitage), asking to be enrolled as disciples and to learn transcendental meditation. Our reception was cold and distant. The man who opened the door passed his hands over our bodies as if to determine what energy could be emanating from them, then, without saying a word, pointed to the exit door. The invisible hand of the one true God (who says, "Whoever comes to Me, I will never drive away") was with us and kept us from entering that house.
The hot wind dried the clothes that we washed in the swift, warm water of the Ganges. The scenery resembled the descriptions contained in the pages of The Lives of the Masters, but no master or wise man appeared on the horizon--except for a holy man in search of followers who offered to lead Jean-Victor to a mountain after being initiated and getting to know "Baba" in a cave beside the Ganges. This little man, as eager for truth as Jean-Victor, seemed to us a consolation prize sent by destiny. Jean-Victor politely declined his offer, without fearing for a moment that he would lose his soul. It was Annie he was afraid of losing that day. Hand in hand, we went to complete our stay in India at Manali at the foot of the Himalayas.
We rented from a family of farmers their home made of pine beams and a shingled roof. This house, situated on the slope of a mountain, faced the "mountains of eternal snow". Without a word being spoken, we felt our hearts blessed by these men and these circumstances, which opened our eyes to the life of these simple farmers. Our eyes delighted in the sight of the old man with a white beard whose sheep followed him step by step to nestle against him at naptime under a cherry tree. We delighted also to see a young shepherd, flute at his lips, leading his little flock into green pastures along a path bordered by sparse pinewood. Through these pastoral scenes, the Spirit of God softened our hearts, which had been closed to the nearness of His presence. We hoped to find God, but we still ignored the road leading to life. In an attempt to save our souls, we now began to meditate.
Our return to Canada was hastened by a nightmare in which Jean-Victor heard the unceasing cry of a person in anguish in the face of death. Weakened by dysentery, we decided to return home. We had hoped for a glorious return from India, but our hearts were still empty, even though we had not spared any effort to fill them with silence for a God who remained unknown. A new sadness awaited us at the airport. Jean-Victor's father was in intensive care in hospital following a heart attack. To this day, Jean-Victor wonders if it was his father he heard crying in his nightmare. The evening we arrived home, we prayed to the God of the universe to save his life.
Life returned to normal. Annie worked as a substitute teacher, and Jean-Victor found a job as a caretaker at a college. We meditated continually, but we also prayed to God. A new book was circulating in our circle of friends, La Cosmogony d'Urantia, which was bought at a great price by a musician friend on a tour in France. This work, in three volumes, reinterpreted the Bible in a futuristic manner. We believed we had found a guide capable of showing us the road to life. We read with an insatiable curiosity the volume on the life of Jesus. Above all, two great ideas brought us much joy: that Satan was chained in prison incapable of action, and that there was a planet where we could continue our growth toward knowledge after our life on earth was over. We meditated and prayed more than ever, but we did not have peace in our hearts. We were anxious, and the thought of death terrified us.
A young man in town who had been converted to a belief in the God of the Bible four years previously, suggested he come to our house and compare what the Bible said with what La Cosmogony d'Urantia said. We accepted his proposal but could not understand his reluctance to admit that we were children of God just as he was. We regretted that he was not more open to receive the new ideas we had found written in La Cosmogony.
In the end, the only idea that we compared concerned Satan. After reading what was written about Satan in La Cosmogony, our friend asked us to read from the Bible a section of Paul's Letter to the Corinthians, where it says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. The falseness of La Cosmogony crumbled away to dust when faced with the authority of truth. We experienced that night, in a small room on Saint Joseph Street in Sainte Thérèse, Que., the power of God's Holy Spirit, who convinced us of our error and blindness. Trembling, we admitted to our friend that we had been wrong.
Several days later, we accepted the invitation of a preacher named Fernand Saint-Louis to go forward to the front of an auditorium and receive Jesus Christ into our hearts as our personal Saviour. The road to life that we had sought so long was offered to us, and we accepted it in front of a gathering of believers in Jesus Christ. God enlightened our minds to see Jesus as a living person ready to come into our hearts. The next morning, we awoke with an indescribable joy because of the forgiveness Jesus had given us. We knew for sure that we had been saved, because the Word of God, the Bible, had promised it. We had travelled the road to God, and we now knew the way.
Jean-Victor and Annie Brosseau live in Deux-Montagnes, Que., where Jean-Victor works for Mennonite Central Committee, a Christian relief and development agency, and Annie is editor of Le Lien, a Christian magazine.
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