Babaji - Message from the Himalayas

3) THE AVATAR AS DIVINE INCARNATION

The phenomenon of avatars³ is fundamental to Hindu theology and plays a particularly important role when 'the end of the world' periodically recurs in the unfolding of the cycles.

Great avatars are extremely rare. They always appear during transition periods, during times of crisis in world history. Through decisive intervention they come to cure the body of the planet of a disease that threatens to disintegrate it. The advent of a redeemer in human form has often been compared to a swimmer who, to be able to rescue a drowning person, must plunge into the same sea.

The phenomenon of divinity descending from transcendence into manifestation is not a unique historical event; in fact, the recurring revelation of divine power is a central theme in the infinite drama of the evolutionary processes of the cosmos.

The appearance of an avatar has always given a profound impetus to world affairs and a new direction to the evolution of human consciousness. The teachings and significant events concerned with this personage have been recorded in the traditional scriptures, in the great epic poems, in the Puranas, Shastras and Upanishads and are often still alive, thousands of years later, in oral tradition.

Actually, the descent of divinities on earth is in a sense something quite ordinary and has been described in countless myths. The Bhagavad Gita gives perhaps the most succinct formulation of this phenomenon:

"Whenever spirituality decays and materialism is rampant, then, O Arjuna, I reincarnate Myself. To protect the virtuous, to destroy the evil-doers, and to establish righteousness, I am reborn from age to age."⁴

Ramakrishna, the great saint of the nineteenth century, compares avatars with waves in the infinite divine ocean:

"Like a sea without confines, an infinite power dwells within spirit and matter. For a particular task, this infinite power assumes, so to speak, a concrete form during a given historical period - this is what we commonly call a great man. He is, strictly speaking, a local manifestation of the all-pervading power; in other words, a divine incarnation. His greatness is nothing but a manifestation of divine energy ..... the sea of life emerges at one place and is called Krishna, dives under again and appears in another place as Christ."⁵

The coming of the avatar, the model of perfection in human form, the most exalted realization of divinity in human form, points the way in which human consciousness can evolve. For human beings, the presence of the avatar reveals the possibility of transcendence from terrestrial reality and moreover the possibility of establishing divine law, or that way of being, on earth.

The descent of God is thus closely linked with the rise of humanity. Hindu philosophy distinguishes these two aspects of divine birth:

"One is descent, the birth of the divine into human form or other form of nature - this is the eternal avatar: the other is ascent, the birth of a human into divinity - the human who rises up to the divine and becomes one with its consciousness, beyond the cycle of karmic rebirth."⁶

The difference between the god in human form and the potentially divine human being is that the avatar is fully conscious of his identity with brahman, divine power. The human being, although created of the same substance, is blinded to perception of truth by the distracting senses of the body-mind. Yet, because the same immanent divine power is present in the body, it is this that enables the human to behold and discern the significance of an avatar, since only like can recognize like.

Although the avatar manifests in response to a deep-seated longing in humans for liberation and the fulfilment of their innermost desires, the fact is, his true significance is comprehended by only a few. The life of Christ was an example of this: most of his contemporaries considered him to be merely the son of a carpenter from Nazareth and the orthodox Jewish clergy deemed him an undesirable element jeopardising their hierarchical positions and privileges of power. Krishna; as another example, was raised in a family of princes but his divine power was revealed only to a scant few of his contemporaries.

Adi Shankara⁷, perhaps the most outstanding teacher of Vedanta, has commented extensively on the phenomenon of the avatar:

"The ignorant think that I have just now come into manifestation, having been unmanifest hitherto, though I am the ever-luminous Lord, I am not manifest to all people, that is to say, I am manifest to only a few who are my devotees; for I am veiled by yoga-maya."⁸

Traditional religious scriptures everywhere emphasise that it is ignorance of the divinity dwelling within that keeps a human blind­folded.

On rare occasions, the avatar reveals himself as Ishwara, the Lord of Creation. In this form, he dissolves the limitations of the human condition and to the faithful he grants spiritual vision. When the Lord transfigures himself before the eyes of his disciple, this is tantamount to an enlightenment experience for that disciple, whose inner eye perceives the unlimited consciousness of the divine in its transcendent form:

"Six days later Jesus took Peter and James and John, the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain where they were alone, and in their presence he was transfigured, his face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light."⁹

"And when he was hung up upon the Cross on Friday, at the sixth hour of the day, darkness came upon all the earth. And my Lord standing in the midst of the cave and filling it with light said: 'John, unto the multitude below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds and given vinegar and gall to drink. But to you I am speaking, and listen to what I speak. I put into your mind to come up to this mountain, so that you may hear what a disciple should learn from his teacher and a man from God.'"

"And when he had said this he showed me a Cross of light firmly fixed, and around the cross a great crowd, which had no single form ..... And I saw the Lord himself above the Cross, having no shape but only a voice; yet not that voice which we knew, but one that was sweet and gentle and truly the voice of God ....."

"'The multitude around the Cross that is not of only one form is the inferior nature. And those whom you saw in the Cross, if they have not yet one form, it is because not every member of him who has come down has yet been gathered together. But when human nature becomes the upper nature and the race that draws near me obeys my voice, then he who now hears me shall be united with this race and shall no longer be what he is now, but shall be above them as I am also.'"

"For so long as you do not call yourself mine, I am not what I am ..... The first then that you must know is the Logos; then you shall know the Lord, and thirdly the man and what he has suffered."¹⁰

The devotee beholds a vision of something which appears to be 'totally other', but which is in fact closer to him than his own self; the consciousness which perceives merges into that which is perceived and the experience of essential unity with the origin of being is overwhelming.

"'Behold here today, O Arjuna, the whole universe of the moving and the non-moving, and whatever else you desire to see, all integral of My body.

Yet you cannot see Me with these eyes of yours; I give you divine sight; behold My divine power of Yoga .....'

There were countless eyes and mouths and mystic forms innumerable, with shining ornaments and flaming celestial weapons.

Could a thousand suns blaze forth together, it would be but a faint reflection of the radiance of the Lord-God.

In that vision Arjuna saw the universe with its manifold shapes, all embraced in One, its Supreme Lord."¹¹

The moment of change of consciousness - and this is corroborated by the experiences of Babaji's devotees¹² - is experienced as a moment of profound initiation and as an extraordinary act of grace.

4) THE AVATAR IN SHAIVISM¹³

In the drama of creation the jnanis, yogis and siddhas, that is to say, the sages, ascetics and the people endowed with supernatural powers, play an important role; but it is the avatar who gives the decisive impetus for the development of human consciousness.

Of all the avatars, most are mortal: like Krishna and Christ, they leave their bodies at the end of their mission on earth; very few, like the purnavatars, who incarnate as the divine in its full potential, are immortal. The scriptures say that they are not born, nor do they die a physical death but are omnipresent at all times. Apart from manifesting at particular times, they remain hidden from the world. All purnavatars are incarnations of Shiva, like Hanuman, Baba Goraknath and Babaji.

At each major transitional period in world history, the supreme office for the dissolution of manifested life is in the hands of the infinite Being himself. The purnavatar or mahavatar¹⁴ always appears when the extent of unlawfulness is beyond the integrating power of the avatar; the author of the drama of creation becomes himself an actor in his own play.

In the context of the sanatana dharma, this supreme power is referred to as 'Samba Sada Shiva' the eternal God Shiva who is one with his shakti, or creative power, Amba, the mother of the universe.

In a universe of perpetual motion and transformation, everything, without exception, from the most subtle to the most gross, is subject to a process of incessant flow, whereby eventually it is all reabsorbed back into its original source. Shiva, being the principle of transformation, is therefore the Lord of creation. He who ends is also he who begins. Thus he is more than just a functional element within a triad: as Shiva-Rudra, he is the destroyer; as Sadashiva, he is the eternal god; and as Maheshwara, he is the great deity of the beginning of creation, who controls the processes of dissolution, world maintenance and creation. Viewed in this way, there can be neither creation nor destruction but only an unending process of transformation.

In mythology Shiva is often portrayed as the destroyer, the only remaining witness who has transcended the period of cosmic night wherein he has sacrificed the universe, containing all its worlds, into the consuming fire of his own Light.

"When there is neither darkness nor night nor day, neither being nor non-being, Shiva alone is."¹⁵

In iconography Shiva is also depicted as the solitary cosmic dancer whose movements and gestures contain all beings and all worlds Out of the interminable flow of his divine energy comes an outpouring of rhythmic dance patterns, endlessly repeated. Long after the moon has vanished into the waters, the mountains disintegrated, the sunlight extinguished, humankind perished, the stars plummeted and the earth slipped under the waves of a gigantic ocean - Shiva alone remains, dancing the pralaya tandava¹⁶, the dance of the dissolution of all worlds.

Shiva, the brahman of the Vedanta, is the divine origin into which even the gods, as aspects of his creative force, are reabsorbed and from which they emerge again. The gods are also the rulers of a person's inner life.

To illustrate the diversity which occurs when the divine manifests itself into matter, the sacred scriptures use 1008 names as symbols for all the aspects of Shiva that are contained in the unity of his Being¹⁷. These partial manifestations in turn express their potential in the five-fold process of revelation: creation, maintenance, dissolution, veiling and grace.

Alienation - movement away from the source of Being and reabsorption - movement back into that source, is an endlessly recurring cosmic cycle and it embraces so-called evil as an essential part of the duality principle. Worship of the terrible as the other side of the gracious, benign god, is an integral part of the Hindu way of contemplating the divine. Shiva, destroyer of worldly illusion, demands experience of the divine in its most horrific form; demands the ability to face the truth as it is, unveiled, without becoming overwhelmed by it and without losing one's mental equilibrium. This is why Ramakrishna used to tell his disciples:

"Worship the terrible! Throw yourselves into death, not into life!"

To realize that demon and god are one is an initiation of the highest order; such an insight imparts the certainty that nothing can befall one that was not intended from the beginning of time.

As the highest Being in creation, Shiva can undergo change without, however, his unlimited potential diminishing as a consequence. Although he may assume different forms in manifested reality, his essential Being remains unchanged.

As the original yogi, Shiva is portrayed in iconography as sitting on the snowy peaks of Mount Kailash in perfect meditation, in solitary tranquillity, beyond time and immersed in the fathomless crystal-clear depths of his own infinite Being.

There exists an artistic representation of Babaji as Swayambhu, the divine self-created Being, in the pose of a yogi meditating on Kailash, symbolic of the centre of the world and point of transition into the realm of divine transcendence. Around him are three concentric circles representing the three gunas: rajas, tamas and sattva, the basic constituents of every form in existence. Babaji as the centre of these rings is the Lord of the gunas. He is also shown as the Lord of the five elements: ether, air, fire, water and earth.

Within Babaji's heart chakra¹⁸, Shiva and Shakti are shown as a unity from whom the brightest light is radiating forth, illuminating the whole universe. At the sound of OM, the primeval sound that gave birth to creation, Shiva and shakti begin to separate.

So it can be seen how Shiva unites in himself on the one hand the point of absolute stillness and on the other hand the mighty, endless flow of dynamic energy that generates the infinite diversity of life. As cosmic Being: "his forehead is fire, the sun and moon his eyes, the four directions of space his ears, the Vedas his voice, the wind blowing through the world his breath, the earth his feet. He is the inner self of all things."¹⁹

Depending on how spiritually evolved a person is, Shiva may reveal himself as 'Thou', and the abundance of myths handed down in the epic poems of the Mahabharata and Ramayana bears witness to this form as do also the experiences, visions and dreams of his devotees²⁰. In another way Shiva may reveal himself as knowledge born in the innermost depths of a human being and here the divine is experienced as the 'I am' in a process of becoming. Shiva may also be encountered in a personal relationship as master or guru.

As divine guru, Shiva incarnated as Babaji [Revered Father] and has been known as 'Baba Haidakhan' since the beginning of the nineteenth century when he appeared in the foothills of the Himalayas near a tiny village of the same name. Babaji became more widely known as 'Mahavatar Babaji' to the people of the western world in the middle of this century through the publication of Paramahansa Yogananda's book, Autobiography of a Yogi.

5) HAIDAKHAN VISHWAMAHADHAM²¹
RESIDENCE OF BABAJI AS SHIVA AVATAR

Haidakhan is a little hamlet in the Kumaon region of the foothills of the Himalayas, twenty-six kilometres east of the market town of Haldwani in the district of Nainital, part of the Indian province of Uttar Pradesh²².

According to legend, the Kumaon region is an ancient territory. It has featured in many tales including the second incarnation of Vishnu as Kurma, the tortoise, which occurred at the beginning of the satya yuga, or age of truth, and the first time sector of our present aeon.

In a dialogue between Shiva and his son Karttikeya²³ which is set down in the Uttar Manas Skanda Puranas²⁴, this area is mentioned as being a sacred site even as far back as the ice age, when the Indian subcontinent was covered in glaciers right down to the Vindhachal region, now in the present state of Rajasthan.

Shiva commissioned Virabhadra²⁵, a fiery emanation born out of his mouth "terrifying to behold and of untold power", to establish a centre in what was then a gigantic landmass, surrounded on all sides by ocean - this was a time before it had broken up into five continents. When the division finally happened, it was so violent that it virtually amounted to a new creation of the world. It is remembered as a time when "the mountains crashed asunder, the earth shook, the winds raged and even as far as the very depths of the ocean the turbulence was full and furious".

When it was all over, ice and glaciers could be seen only on the highest elevations of what today are known as the Himalayas. Shiva and the pantheon of gods, whose former abode was on the Kumaon Kailash - the one identical with the legendary Mount Meru, world axis of the planet - retreated to a mountain in Tibet, north of Lake Mansarovar, also called Mount Kailash. As for the ancient sacred centre, little by little people began to move in and settle there.

This sacred centre of the world (the macrocosm) has a corresponding site in the human body (the microcosm), namely the meru danda of the spinal column wherein are connected the chakras, centres of consciousness or sites of manifestation of the gods.

When Shiva wedded Sati he brought her to the Kumaon Kailash, where in ancient times there used to be a lake at the base of the mountain. Sati delighted in bathing there and to this day the spot is called 'Sati Kunda'.

On the day of her arrival the goddess planted a sapling on this site and today it still stands as the one and only tree rising majestically out of the river Gautama Ganga. This river was formerly underground and it was Shiva who brought it to the surface at a later stage to emerge approximately two and half kilometres north of this site. This was an act of grace by Shiva for the rishi, Gautama, who was one of seven rishis²⁶ practising yoga and meditation in this area.

The Gautama River flows underground from Lake Mansarovar for many kilometres beneath the Himalayan Range and surfaces not far from the little village of Haidakhan. It continues its flow through the Sati Kunda, curiously without ever flooding the sacred tree, not even during the annual monsoon when torrential rains turn the river into a watermass of relentless, surging turbulence. Furthermore, as with Ganga water, the water taken from the area near the tree can be kept for years without contamination setting in.

At the foot of Mount Kailash, about level with the Gautama River, is a cave which, like the mountain, dates back to the time of creation. There are several subterranean passages leading from the cave towards Haridwar, Benares and Lake Mansarovar. Described in the Shiva Puranas²⁷ as a dwelling place of the gods, this cave is worshipped as a site where Shiva periodically retreats for deep meditation and tapasya [ascetic practices].

It was inside this cave, in June 1970, that Babaji was 'discovered' by a local villager who had had a dream instructing him to go there²⁸.

Mount Kailash (approx 2600m) is described in local historical accounts as well as in mythology as the 'golden mountain' because the Meru Parvat is also called Hemadi which means golden mountain. It is known also by other names such as Ratnasanu - jewelled peak; Karnikachala - lotus mountain; and Devaparvata - mountain of the gods.

Today only some sporadic huts are to be found on the lower slopes; vegetation is scant near the peak; and there are no water springs at all. There is however a rare variety of the parijata tree growing all over the mountain. Only one among thousands of these is able to produce a seed. (In legend, it came into being when a milky potion bestowing immortality was beaten to a froth.) On the summit of Kailash is a Shiva sanctuary with a lingam, dhuni²⁹ and an altar of bells, the latter being offerings made by pilgrims.

Opposite Mount Kailash, on a hilltop across the river, is a temple constructed in the 1840's (oral tradition dates its completion in 1843)³⁰ by Babaji's own hands and with the help of some villagers. This Shiva temple has an octagonal form symbolising the ashthasiddhis³¹, the eight-fold aspect of Shiva's manifest power. Using only local stones and boulders, Babaji would trace out the required size of the building block with his staff and the excess rock would just fall away. Inside the temple itself is a three-faced lingam, believed to be alive with divine breath.

In recent years after Babaji's reappearance, the temple precinct has been greatly extended to become an ashram capable of housing many people.

To the human eye, the five-hundred-metre-wide riverbed is an endless mass of whitish-grey stones and boulders. Babaji has said that these are souls who have attained liberation, and that the day is no longer far away when so many people will flock to Haidakhan that their number will surpass even that of the stones in the riverbed.

Stone has traditionally been significant as an object of ritual worship and as a vital medium of divine revelation; it also features strongly in accounts of disciples' experiences in Babaji's ashram. For instance, down on the riverbed in line with the temple above, there is a lingam which marks 'the most sacred site on earth'; its meaning was revealed some years ago to a disciple in a vision:

"On the evening of 28 January 1976, a marriage ceremony was being performed by the riverside near the ashram. During the festivity, Babaji called me over and told me to go look for a little boy who was apparently missing.

"In the darkness I began to climb the many stairs to the ashram above, pausing several times to catch my breath and gaze upon the cheerful scene below. At this height the sounds of the brass band and the voices from the crowd became mingled into a great humming and droning. I leaned against the wall and surveyed all below me. Suddenly I could see the 'other Haidakhan' as it were, the hidden spiritual reality of a place that had otherwise become so familiar to me in the two months of my stay there.

"The words 'Haidakhan is the centre of the world' kept coming into my mind and then I had a vision. I saw a havan kund (sacrificial fire-pit) enclosed by a beautifully structured yet simple boundary and inside it was teeming with life. It was a picture of utter simplicity but I knew I was looking at the original and the last place to exist on earth....."

Mahendra Baba³² has spoken of the significance and spiritual beauty of this place in the ecstatically inspired poetry of his Haidakhandi Arati³³:

"Haidakhan is a place unique - pure, full of bliss, the ultimate goal,

Where gods and sages daily meet, where the Gautama Ganga flows.

Beholding Mount Kailash, I am drawn to it with all my being. At the foot of this mountain is a beautiful divine cave - within the Lord Himself resides.

There the animals of the forest move about without fear and enmity toward one another.

Since my Lord is dwelling there, even Nandana Van, Lord Krishna's abode, has lost its charm for me.

Glory be to this sacred place of Haidakhan, Lord

Shiva's home."

Of his vision of the future, Shiva tells his son, Karttikeya, that a time will come, when all the gods will return to the Kumaon Kailash; this will be also the time when Haidakhan will regain its original significance as the principal sanctuary of the world; a time which would mark a turning point in world history and the dawn of a new age.