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Mahavatar Babaji is said to be a ‘deathless’ guru, who has maintained a youthful form like millennial, and is still roaming in the Himalayas with his saintly presence and power of his Yoga, which we all know as Kriya Yoga today. He is supposed to have been born on November 30th, 203 AD in a small coastal village, known as Parangipettai in Tamil Nadu. He was a most unusual boy and was obviously an adept in the practice of the Kundalini Yoga from a previous life. His father was the priest of the temple of Muruga or Kartikeya, next to their house. He obviously prayed to Kartikeya to be born as his son. In answer to his prayers, the Lord took birth as his son, Nagaraja. Kartikeya is the eldest son of Lord Shiva.
When Nagaraja was 5 years old, it is said that someone kidnapped him and sold him as a slave to a shopkeeper in Calcutta. His owner however was a kind man and released him and told him to go where he wanted. The boy joined a group of wandering yogis who had great love for God. The radiance in their faces attracted him so much that he followed them wherever they went. For the next ten years he wandered around the sub-continent with them, studying all the Holy Scriptures of Hinduism like the Vedas, Upanishads and the Puranas.
At the age of 15 Babaji went to Katirgamam where he met his guru Bogar. He performed intense sadhana for a long time with him. Bhogarnatha who was a great siddha, conferred many powers on him including the secret of “Kaya Kalpa” or the method of preserving the body in a youthful state for thousands of years. This is how Babaji still looks like a young boy even though he is centuries old
Bogar then directed him to go to Pothigai hill in Coutrallam in Tamil Nadu where the great sage Agastiyar was living incognito. Nagaraja went and sat with him without knowing who he was. Seeing his deep potential, Agastya revealed himself and initiated him into the Kriya Kundalini Pranayama also known as “vasi yogam”, which is a most powerful breathing technique for attaining higher states of consciousness. After he finished his course of study, the sage Agastiyar advised him to go to the famous Himalayan temple known as Badrinatha.
Babaji (Nagaraja) followed his guru’s advice and went to Badrinatha where he earnestly started to practice all that he had learnt from both his gurus –Bhogarnatha and Agastya. For many years he lived alone in a cave practicing the yogic techniques that had been taught to him until he became a true siddha — a perfected soul who had mastered both his body and the elements and had merged into the infinite, supreme power that resided in him as well as the universe. He came to be known Baba Brahmananda.
Babaji had many great disciples out of which Lahiri Mahasaya is the one known to most people since he has been mentioned in the famous book, “The Autobiography of a Yogi”, by Paramahamsa Yogananda. His meetings with Babaji took place between the years 1861 and 1935. It was in the year 1861 that Babaji taught him a powerful series of yogic techniques known as “Kriya Yoga. This was taught in the cave which is now known as Babaji’s cave, near Dwarahat in the Kumaon District of Uttarakhand.
Lahiri Mahasaya later taught the technique to his disciple Yukteswara who taught it to Paramahamsa Yogananda who mentions in his book that he was given the order to go to the west and teach the technique to the westerners by Babaji himself.
