I am Harmony. Radhe Shyam

Babaji conversed with them in their own language, telling them about His having been a lama in Tibet. This was the first time He had mentioned this to anyone. In reply, the lamas hailed Him with 'Lama Baba ki jai!' [Hail to Lama Baba.]

      "This whole incident has also been confirmed by the present day, well-known saint, Gangotri Baba, also known as Swami Akhananda, who, on instruction of Bhagwan Haidakhan, has been living in the Himalayas... for the last fifty years. This covers the period of Bhagwan Haidakhan's disappearance [after] 1922.

      "When Gangotri Baba came to Vrindaban in February 1973, I had a satsang [religious discussion] with him. During our conversation, he told me that Jaukshu Lama, he himself, and I had all been devotees of Bhagwan Haidakhan in Tibet during the time of His being Lama Baba, and that we all have been His disciples for many lifetimes."²²

       Stories of 'Old Haidakhan Baba'

      The manifestation of Shri Babaji in the 19^th century and into the 20^th century is well documented and remembered by living per­sons. There are several books in print (mostly in Hindi) which relate the stories of people's experiences of this incarnation, which, for the sake of easy differentiation, Babaji's present devotees call 'Old Haidakhan Baba.'

      Mahendra Baba and Baba Hari Das wrote that this incarnation of Babaji, in the Kumaon Hills area, began around the year 1890²³ in an unnamed village in the hills east of Nainital. The residents of this village saw, on several consecutive days, a bright light (jyoti) which appeared on a nearby hill, stayed for some time, and then vanished. The villagers concluded this was a divine sign and assembled one day, before the usual time of this appearance, and began to sing bhajans - devotional songs. This time, when the light appeared, a divine youth emerged from it. The people begged him to come to their village. He stayed in the house of the forest guard, Shri Dhansingh. Dhansingh, afraid that this divine youth might leave, locked him in his room ev­ery day when he (Dhansingh) went off to his work. One day during Dhansingh's absence, the curious and enchanted villagers broke open the lock and discovered that Babaji had disappeared.

      Some time later, Shri Babaji appeared in the village of Haida-khan (closer to Nainital), on the banks of the Gautam Ganga. (In its lower stretches, above and below Haldwani, this river is known as the Gola River.) He stayed in Haidakhan for some time and returned there often when He traveled around northern India and through the Himalayas. This gave Him the name - among many other names - of Haidakhan Baba. He built a small ashram in Haidakhan and in the mid-1890's He designed and helped construct a unique octagonal temple in the ashram.²⁴ An interesting feature of this temple is that the stone slabs used in this small temple are not available anywhere near the locality. Elders of Haidakhan village in the 1970' s recalled their parents telling them that Babaji took workers to a hill and, after putting a mark on the rocks, asked them to take out the slabs. These rocks changed into entirely different nature.²⁵

      Babaji was well known throughout the Kumaon area and the Himalayas, which He covered on foot many times, traveling with a small band of devotees. His miracles and His more 'normal' routine of living were unusual even in this area where miracle-working saints were numerous. His food habits were also unusual. It is said that He never ate cereal foods. Occasionally, when a devotee insisted, He would eat fruits or milk. Shri Shiromani Pathak, of Sheetlakhet in the Almora District, where the Siddhashram was built for Babaji, stayed with Babaji for a period of six months and did not see Him take food or water during that time. Neither was Babaji ever found asleep.²⁶

      "One day in February some saints who had heard of the fame of Shri Munindra Baba [one of Haidakhan Baba's names] went to see him. During their conversation with him, they began to talk about kaphal fruit. Some local people noted that kaphal was available in the hills only in May and June, and never in the winter. The desire arose in them that Babaji would give them kaphal as prasad. Responding to their thoughts, Shri Babaji went a little distance away and brought back - from who knows where - some ripe kaphal fruits still on the branch, and distributed the fruits to them as prasad."²⁷

      Babaji daily used to perform yagya, or hawan, a religious fire ceremony in which offerings of Earth's bounty are made to the fire which is viewed as a symbol of the mouth of the Divine. When ghee (purified butter), which is used as an oil, was not available, Babaji used water, instead. Once, in Ranikhet, the son of Shri Ram Datt told the Christian principal of his college about this practice of Babaji. The principal was curious and went to see Babaji, who was doing hawan on the flat roof of a devotee's house. Whenever Babaji poured water into the hawan pit, the fire flared up to a height of eight to ten meters. The principal became an ardent devotee of Shri Babaji.²⁸

      Another of the widely-observed miracles of Babaji was to sit in the center of four or five fires, for hours at a time. Elderly people in Haidakhan still tell their grandchildren of seeing Babaji sit in the midst of fire - or of gathering wood for these fires. Giridhari Lal Mishra wrote of this practice.

      "Nobody has ever seen another incarnation or saint who has such a complete and clear control over the five fires as Munindra Bhagwan had. Wonderful was his tapasya with five fires; it gave evidence that he was the form of Lord Sadashiv.

      "Shri Moti Singh, who is about 100 years old and lives near Devguru, described with moving words in his hill dialect the fire tapasya of Prabhu [God]. When he was a child, Moti Singh used to go with his mother to see the fire tapasya of the Lord.

      "In the summer, Shri Babaji would collect heaps of wood and cow dung, each heap being only a short distance from the others. He would sit in the middle of the heaps and the fires would ignite themselves by his yogic powers. At that time, Babaji used to wear just a sheet of light cloth. Intense fires burned all around him. He would sit in the middle of the fires for many days. When the fires burned low, more wood was added.

      "The people who saw this used to fear that his body would burn to ashes. Shri Moti Singh used to tell his mother, with tears flowing from his eyes: 'Mother, look! The yogi must have been burned by now.'

      "After the intensity of the fire subsided, the great Yogi's body used to shine like the rising sun; it was almost impossible to look at him. When he stood up and removed the sheet from his body, water dripped from the cloth.

      "Once he sat amid the fires continuously for 45 days. He came out of it only because of the intense prayers of his devotees.

      "Wonderful is the Lord and limitless are his yogic powers."²⁹

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      "Shri Jwaladatt Joshi was a great devotee of Shri Babaji. He was a high-ranking officer in the service of the rajah (king) of Gwalior. The king of Gwalior was a great devotee of God and habitually served saints.

      "Once at the court, Shri Jwaladatt described the divine leelas of Shri Babaji and from that day on, the king had a great desire to have Babaji's darshan. As Shri Bhagwan did not have a fixed place to stay, Jwaladattji said he was unable to help the king meet Babaji.

      "After some time, Shri Babaji unexpectedly came to Jwaladattji's house. Jwaladattji was very pleased to have Babaji's darshan, and he immediately sent word to the king.

      "The king went immediately to Jwaladattji's house and requested Babaji to go to the palace and give his darshan. Touched by the king's feelings, Babaji consented and went to the palace in the evening. There the queen and the rest of the royal company had their lives blessed by having Shri Babaji's darshan.

      "After Babaji had left the palace, the king asked the queen, 'How old do you think Shri Munindra Maharaj is?' The queen answered, 'He is not less than 80 years old.'

      The king was astonished by her answer, be­cause he had seen Babaji as an eleven-year-old boy."³⁰

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      One summer, Shri Munindra Bhagwan [Babaji] was in the Khurpatal Ashram in Nainital. One day an educated young man heard about Babaji's leelas from people who had seen him. He also learned that Babaji wore a cap which covered his ears, and from this the young man guessed that maybe Babaji was Ashvatthama [one of the immortal warriors who