Babaji - Message from the Himalayas. Maria-Gabriele Wosien

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