Babaji Nagaraj

WHO AM I?

I am, indeed Brahman, the basic principle from which the whole universe seems to have come. I am the same in each and everything. I am all peace and all calm within myself. I am of the nature of Being, Brightness and Bliss Absolute. This is My eternal Truth.

I am that Supreme Self before whose magnitude the suns and moons and all their systems appear as insignificant specks in the ocean and before whose glory space melts away into nothingness, time vanishes into non-existence, and causation dwindles into emptiness. Truth flows from Me just as light radiates from the sun and fragrance emanates from a flower. I am the transcendental Bliss, the Absolute intelligence, the Supreme Synthesis of Consciousness that shines in the shrine of every heart. I am the divine inner harmony of the universe in the unruffled stillness of the soul.

I am the one music of all life in the deepest depths. I am the immutable and indescribable Atman, the dynamic principle of Existence and the infinite ocean of everlasting Glee. In my presence all hells and heavens are effaced into shadowy nothingness and the whole universe is a mere bubble ever ready to burst.

WHO IS BABAJI?

In 1946, Paramahansa Yogananda, one of modern India's greatest yogis, revealed in his classic "Autobiography of a Yogi," the existence of a Christ-like saint, an immortal yogi, Mahavatar Babaji. Babaji was a great siddha, one who had overcome ordinary human limitations, and who worked silently, behind the scenes for the spiritual evolution of all humanity. Yogananda also revealed that it was Babaji who taught a powerful series of yogic techniques, know as "Kriya Yoga," to Lahiri Mahasaya, around 1861, and who subsequently initiated many others, including Yogananda..s own Christ-like guru, Sri Yukteswar, some thirty years later.

Babaji was given the name "Nagaraj," which means "serpent king," referring to "kundalini," our great divine potential power and consciousness. He was born on the 30th day of November 203 A.D., in a small coastal village now known as Parangipettai, in Tamil Nadu, India, near where the Cauvery River flows into the Indian Ocean. His birth coincided with the ascendancy (Nakshatra) of the star of Rohini, under which Krishna was also born. The birth took place during the celebration of Kartikai Deepam, the Festival of Lights, the night before the new moon during the Tamil month of Kartikai. His parents were Nambudri Brahmins who had immigrated there from the Malabar coast on the western side of south India. His father was the priest in the Shiva temple of this village, which is today a temple dedicated to Muruga, Shiva's son.