Real Life Experience with Babaji

Here is an interesting site I saw in the net about personal experience of people who have met the great Babaji ...Please read this one !

Source : http://www.babaji.net/community-stories.htm

In 1989 I spent eight months in India. Most of the time with Sai Baba and at Ramana Ashram in Southern India. One day Sai Baba glanced at me and after I recovered from the shaktipa I got the message, "Go to the mountains, the Himalayas." The next day I left my wife and five year old son with Baba and took a bus and plane to Delhi, and another day's bus ride to Rishikesh.

I was just getting over dysentery and stayed there for about two weeks to build my strength. I and a new friend then took a bus to the village of Kedranath, at 6000 feet, with the intention of going to the high temple of Kedra when the path opened in a few days. It was the spring opening.

On that day we, along with dozens of other Shiva devotees, trekked the 5000 feet,13 km to the temple. By the time I reached the last mile I was exhausted. When the temple appeared over the horizon I received a bolt of energy and almost sprinted the last half mile.

We entered the small stone temple. Inside was a large monolithic rock, a Shiva lingum about 10 feet high and 5 feet across. It was worn and black with the oil from centuries of devotees hands. As I placed my hands on the lingum a column of white light came down through my crown into the Earth and I heard the words, "Your enlightenment is assured."

I knew its source. By the time we returned to our rooms that night I was sick again, but decided to move on anyway. India appears to be the place where one surrenders the body and then realizes that perfect health is less important than enlightenment.

On our way to Badrinath, another high temple, my friend and I spent the night at Tungnath. It's a small way-stop open only for a few weeks in the spring and again after the monsoons. There were only about half a dozen people at Tungnath, sellers of fruit and soft drinks to travelers. We decided to spend the night. There were no "real" lodgings and it was suggested that we could stay in a small stone hut with no doors or windows, and straw on the ground. This was great.

The next morning we were eating some of the staples from our backpacks when a young man walked out of the woods. He was about 20, in ragged clothing and no shoes. He went over to the locals and just stood in front of them saying nothing but not begging. They shooed him away and he come over to us and did the same. My first thought was to offer him money and I presented a few rupees. He motioned with his hand that he did not want them. We then realized that he was retarded, or at least suffering from some severe mental disability. We were stuck as to why he was there. He then made some motion, I don't remember exactly what, which indicated that he wanted clothing. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a spare pair of pants and a rather used shirt and handed them to him. He nodded, turned and walked back into the woods.

I had been fascinated by Babaji the Immortal from the "Autobiography" for years. In fact it was in my mind when I left Sai Baba that I would look for him, but the Shiva temple seemed to be the priority. I felt at the time that it may have been that Babaji. In the ensuing years my suspicions have grown stronger, along with my intuition and now I truly believe that it was him. I still ponder over the meaning of our meeting.

We never got to Badranath and later that day climbed another 1000 feet to the Tungnath Temple where we spent a week in similar lodgings, doing yoga in an open field of flowers surrounded at times by hummingbirds the size of bumble bees. This place is far enough North that the temple looks like a blending of India and Tibet. The mountains there are riddled with foot thick veins of quartz crystal and there is an ancient 15 foot wide stone road which apparently connects all of the four Indian high temples and spans over a hundred miles of the Himalayas. We climbed another several hundred feet and stood on a knoll covered with stacks of rocks honoring Shiva which had been left by previous pilgrims. From that place there is a 180 degree panorama of the Himalayas of India and into Tibet.

Returning to Delhi, and eventually to Sai Baba, was returning from a place that really defies complete description.

Robin Irelan

Know the Truth Through Meditation - Shiva Bala Yogi’s story

The great yogi who called himself simply “Swamiji” was named Sathyaraju by his parents. He was born on January 24th, 1935, into a family of weavers in Adivarapupeta, a small village in South India on the East Coast, near the mouth of the Godavari River. Poverty forced him to drop out of grade school to work at the family hand loom and at various odd jobs.

On August 7, 1949, when he was fourteen years old, Sathyaraju had a spiritual experience in which God in the form of Shiva suddenly appeared in the form of a handsome ascetic with long matted hair. Shiva touched Sathyaraju on the forehead and the boy immediately passed into deep samadhi (enlightenment).

In this way did the balayogi (boy yogi) begin twelve years of tapas, a spiritual austerity and purification to attain Self realization. He meditated in samadhi for twenty-three hours every day for eight years, returning to ordinary consciousness at midnight long enough to wash himself and perhaps drink a cup of milk. In those eight years he mastered meditation in all four cardinal directions: East, North, West and South. Then he meditated twelve hours every day for another four years. There were times when he remained in continuous samadhi for months.

Upon attaining Self realization (or God realization; Swamiji regarded them to be the same), his Divine Guru gave him the name Shiva Bala Yogishwara, meaning Lord of Yogis devoted to Shiva and Bala (the male and female aspects of God the Holy Spirit). Swamiji shortened the name to Shivabalayogi to avoid any suggestion that he equated himself with Ishwara, a name of God. He was instructed to use the powers he attained through tapas (tapas shakti) to comfort the grieving, heal the sick and bring enlightenment to those who seek God.

Shivabalayogi often told devotees that he had successfully performed tapas in many previous lifetimes. He had no personal need to do tapas again, but he incarnated and completed an unusually severe tapas at the instructions of the Divine Guru.

hivabalayogi is regarded as one of India’s greatest spiritual souls. His tapas was difficult because it was done for the sake of others. If we do ten percent of the work, he would often say, he will do the remaining ninety percent.

Shivabalayogi emerged from twelve years of tapas on August 7, 1961, before a crowd estimated by the press at several hundred thousand. They saw a body weak and scarred from twelve years of unusually intense meditation and extreme physical hardship. But witnesses described how he shone with a divine luster and his face glowed with the peace and divine grace inherent in his complete Self realization. His mere presence calmed the pushing and jostling multitude. Four decades later he continues to bring peace to those who come into his presence (darshan).

Shivabalayogi dropped his physical body on March 28, 1994 and it was interred in the Samadhi at Adivarapupeta on April 2, 1994. Since then, he continues to give darshan and blessings in the same ways he had over the three previous decades: through meditation, vibhuti, visions, dreams, and bhava samadhi.

Kindly visit www.shiva.org for more info