Part 53 (1/2)
At the age of 23, in 1851, Lahiri Mahasaya took the post of accountant in the Military Engineering Departovern the time of his service Thus not only was he a master before God's eyes, but also a success in the little huiven role as an office worker in the world
As the offices of the Army Department were shi+fted, Lahiri Mahasaya was transferred to Gazipur, Mirjapur, Danapur, Naini Tal, Benares, and other localities After the death of his father, Lahiri had to assuht a quiet residence in the Garudeswar Mohulla neighborhood of Benares
It was in his thirty-third year that Lahiri Mahasaya saw fulfillment of the purpose for which he had been reincarnated on earth
The ash-hidden fla, received its opportunity to burst into flas, works s into outer uru, Babaji, near Ranikhet, and was initiated by him into KRIYA YOGA
This auspicious event did not happen to him alone; it was a fortunate moed 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 victiht 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 enerally twice or thrice) to nareat Indian teachers
{FN32-7} One of the trinity of Godhead-Brahma, Vishnu, shi+va-whose universal work is, respectively, that of creation, preservation, and dissolution-restoration shi+va (soy 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
CHAPTER: 33
BABAJI, THE YOGI-CHRIST OF MODERN INDIA
The northern His 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 e of spiritual advanceressed fro”) 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 s on the world
An avatar is unsubject to the universal econoe, is free fro extraordinary in an avatar's forround These are outward symbolic proofs of an inward lack of darkness and e Such a God-man alone knows the Truth behind the relativities of life and death O of this liberated man in his iht who know'st no wane, The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again; How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this saht” is God, eternal Polaris, anachronous never
The ”Moon of Heav'n” is the outward cosmos, fettered to the law of periodic recurrence Its chains had been dissolved forever by the Persian seer through his self-realization ”How oft hereafter rising shall she lookafter me-in vain!” What frustration of search by a frantic universe for an absolute omission!
Christ expressed his freedom in another way: ”And a certain scribe came, and said unto hioest And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” {FN33-1}