This auspicious event did not happen to him alone;
it was a fortunate moment for all the human race,
many of whom were later privileged to receive the
soul-awakening gift of Kriya. The lost,
or long-vanished, highest art of yoga was again being
brought to light. Many spiritually thirsty men
and women eventually found their way to the cool waters
of Kriya yoga. Just as in the Hindu
legend, where Mother Ganges offers her divine draught
to the parched devotee Bhagirath, so the celestial
flood of Kriya rolled from the secret fastnesses
of the Himalayas into the dusty haunts of men.
{FN32-1} John 11:1-4.
{FN32-2} A cholera victim is often rational and fully
conscious right up to the moment of death.
{FN32-3} The god of death.
{FN32-4} Literally, “Supreme soul.”
{FN32-5} Genesis 18:23-32.
{FN32-6} Sri, a prefix meaning “holy,”
is attached (generally twice or thrice) to names of
great Indian teachers.
{FN32-7} One of the trinity of Godhead-Brahma, Vishnu,
Shiva-whose universal work is, respectively, that
of creation, preservation, and dissolution-restoration.
Shiva (sometimes spelled Siva), represented in mythology
as the Lord of Renunciates, appears in visions to
His devotees under various aspects, such as Mahadeva,
the matted-haired Ascetic, and Nataraja, the Cosmic
Dancer.
BABAJI, THE YOGI-CHRIST OF MODERN INDIA
The northern Himalayan crags near Badrinarayan are
still blessed by the living presence of Babaji, guru
of Lahiri Mahasaya. The secluded master has retained
his physical form for centuries, perhaps for millenniums.
The deathless Babaji is an AVATARA. This Sanskrit
word means “descent”; its roots are Ava,
“down,” and Tri, “to pass.”
In the Hindu scriptures, AVATARA signifies the descent
of Divinity into flesh.
“Babaji’s spiritual state is beyond human
comprehension,” Sri Yukteswar explained to me.
“The dwarfed vision of men cannot pierce to
his transcendental star. One attempts in vain
even to picture the avatar’s attainment.
It is inconceivable.”
The UPANISHADS have minutely classified every stage
of spiritual advancement. A SIDDHA ("perfected
being”) has progressed from the state of a JIVANMUKTA
("freed while living”) to that of a PARAMUKTA
("supremely free"-full power over death); the latter
has completely escaped from the mayic thralldom and
its reincarnational round. The PARAMUKTA therefore
seldom returns to a physical body; if he does, he
is an avatar, a divinely appointed medium of supernal
blessings on the world.
An avatar is unsubject to the universal economy; his
pure body, visible as a light image, is free from
any debt to nature. The casual gaze may see nothing
extraordinary in an avatar’s form but it casts
no shadow nor makes any footprint on the ground.
These are outward symbolic proofs of an inward lack
of darkness and material bondage. Such a God-man
alone knows the Truth behind the relativities of life
and death. Omar Khayyam, so grossly misunderstood,
sang of this liberated man in his immortal scripture,
the Rubaiyat:
