God was seen in a flash and all problems were solved.
Shivapuri Baba (Sri Govindananda Bharati)
1826 - 1963 (137 years)
Shivapuri Baba aka Swami Govindanath Bharati was born, with a smile on his face, in a rich Brahmin household in the Indian state of Kerala in 1826. At a tender age of 18, he decided to abandon the world and seek for absolute truth.
His grandfather, Achyutam, was a famous astrologer, and along with the other signs of his birth, he announced that a great soul had been born and that the family line would come to an end, as it had fulfilled its purpose on earth.
Shivapuri Baba taught the principle of Swadharma: as humans we have three principle duties: 1) physical duty towards our self -- maintaining body and mind through proper livelihood, including the obligation to help one’s dependents to accomplish the same, 2) moral duty -- remaining sensitive to the obligation to seek the truth 24 hours a day. 3) spiritual duty -- worship of the Divine.
Physical discipline, he noted, brings pleasure. Moral discipline gives us serenity. Spiritual discipline yields deep peace and ultimate happiness.
In 1844, at the age of eighteen, the future saint was ready to leave civilization and attempt the vision of God. For the next quarter of a century, he lived alone in the remote forest beside the Narmada river, in the upper Deccan of southern India. What he was after was yoga, complete union with the Absolute. To achieve that, the young renunciate had to live austerely so he could empty his mind of all its contents, thereby enabling him to make that supreme act of total surrender and to remain in anxious suspension until the Breakthrough arrived.
After twenty-five years of non-stop practice, in his words "God was seen in a flash and all problems were solved."
Shivapuri Baba was the first modern yogi to transplant the wisdom of the Indian sub-continent to the West. While on a visit to England, he had no fewer than 18 audiences with Queen Victoria, who was deeply influenced by his ability to make her see beyond “the veil of death.” His stay in England was the longest part of his pilgrimage although he was equally popular across the Atlantic, where he was received by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. While analyzing the immense popularity of Govindanath, author J. G. Bennett observed, “His excellent English, enlivened with the apt stories from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, or even, I suspect, sometimes invented by himself, his quick wit, and his profound wisdom; and no doubt, most of all, the irresistible attraction that the power of sanctity exerts upon even half-receptive people-combined to make him sought after by the hostesses of the end of the century.”
During George Bernard Shaw's encounter with Shivapuri Baba, he said, “You Indian saints are the most useless of men; you have no respect for time.” The latter’s reply was something like this, “It is you who are the slaves of time. I live in eternity.” No wonder, the Baba was blessed with a very long life, which, after his awakening at the age of 50, he dedicated entirely to the spiritual welfare of others.
The Saint returned to India in 1915, whereupon he helped found a university in Benares, with some diamonds his grandfather had set aside, but of course he refused the Chancellorship; revealed the route up Mount Everest that the Hunt expedition finally chose in 1952; taught B.G. Tilak a "little" astronomy; settled down alone in a small hut outside of Katmandu, in the Shiva Puri Forest, where a wild leopard used to come sit beside him like a domestic house cat; received tons of visitors all asking questions about God; took up smoking at one hundred and seven; still looked like the picture of health and vitality at one hundred and twenty-nine; and eventually died in 1963, shortly after he had approved the draft for his biography, titled "Long Pilgrimage," by John G. Bennett.
- excerpted, with edits, from Kathmandu Post and wnso.org, 2006
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