The Baba of Haidakhan

Thus far I had only found one person who claimed to have seen Babaji in the flesh. But then I heard that thousands had flocked to India in the late seventies and early eighties to visit a Himalayan teacher known as Haidakhan Baba, believed by some to be the true Babaji. While he bears no physical resemblance to the Babaji of Yogananda fame, he did, in 1970, suddenly appear in a local temple in Haidakhan, India, the same region that had, almost a hundred years before, played host to an appearance of yet another yogi whom many felt was the true Babaji. The mysterious tales of this early-twentieth-century ascetic had developed into a local legend, and he became commonly known in the area as Haidakhan Baba. So when a new yogi appeared in the temple dedicated to this long-remembered sage, many were quick to declare him to be the return of Haidakhan Baba, or Babaji. Possessing a powerful energetic presence and the ability to read minds, this new Haidakhan Baba's fame grew quickly. It was helped along by an influential student he attracted from the West named Leonard Orr.

While he has pursued many paths in his years as a New Age pioneer, Orr is best known by far as the founder and guiding force behind the international rebirthing movement. Orr invented rebirthing over two and a half decades ago, and since then this powerful therapeutic breathing technique has spread quickly, attracting the interest of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world. In 1978 Orr met Haidakhan Baba in India and immediately recognized the yogi to be a modern manifestation of the immortal Babaji. When he announced to the world that the legendary avatar from the pages of Autobiography of a Yogi was now living in a body in Northern India, the effect was instantaneous, and a great many soon headed for Asia to receive darshan at the Master's feet.

Curious to know more about Haidakhan Baba as seen through the eyes of one of his best-known disciples, I spoke with Leonard Orr last January and asked him, "Who is Babaji?"

"Babaji is the eternal father in human form, who, in the Eastern traditions, is known as Shiva yogi, the eternal youth. You have to realize that Babaji can have as many bodies as he wants. He has several bodies on the planet now.

"Babaji walks through the pages of all the great scriptures. In the Koran he's known as Khidir. In the Bible, he's known as the Angel of the Lord. He's the one who walked in the garden with Adam and Eve and who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and who trained Enoch and Elijah. One of Babaji's bodies is also Krishna. And as Krishna he said that if he didn't constantly work in creation, humanity would destroy itself.

"So he is not an absentee landlord, he constantly participates in human history. He plays in several different bodies in order to participate in a way that does a minimum amount of violation to the principle of freedom of choice. But he does work behind the scenes of history constantly in order to bring about the spiritual evolution and maturity of his children."

So what made Orr certain that Haidakhan Baba was actually the same Babaji about whom Yogananda had written in Autobiography of a Yogi?

"I talked with Babaji personally about Lahiri Mahasaya and Yogananda. The first time I went to see him, he told me that Yogananda had reincarnated, that he was about twelve years old at that time, and that I would meet him in Africa. I didn't go to Africa until twenty years later, and in fact I did meet Yogananda there, but he wasn't a he, he was a she. And she lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a member of the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. She was actually born in Australia, and was taken to South Africa as a child."

"Was she aware of her former life?"

"She was—on an unconscious level."

During the course of the conversation, Orr made it clear that while human beings may never attain the same state of consciousness as Babaji, physical immortality is still our true destiny and the goal of human evolution.

"If you read the Shiva Purana, that has always been the ideal—for human beings to become immortal yogis. Until enlightenment includes the physical body, it is very superficial. Yoga was the original religion and it has always been the ultimate path. But we can never become like Babaji. For example, I met a devotee of Babaji who is two thousand years old. When I came away from that meeting and was meditating on it, I realized that the difference between him and Babaji was infinite.

"When Babaji creates a body, he is descending into physical existence, and when immortal yogis evolve into Godlike beings, then they are ascending. So there is a big difference between a manifestation of Babaji himself and a human being. Even the great seers who are millions of years old are still learning God-realization."

I wondered how Orr viewed Babaji as he is represented by other traditions and lineages—in particular, the immortal yogi that Marshall Govindan and Yogi Ramaiah write about.

"Babaji in that tradition is actually Sunanda, who is the son of Shiva and was created out of light. And that particular body is alive in the upper regions of the Himalayas near Badrinath. But I wouldn't call him Babaji's body any more than we would say that your body or my body is Babaji's body. Because he's a son of Babaji. He was created by Babaji at a particular point in history and he is a great immortal being who has only been on the planet, I guess, for nine hundred to a thousand years."

Whatever the true story of Haidakhan Baba and his fourteen years of teaching, his impact on people all over the world was quite profound, as I found out in my brief foray into the story of his life. But it also seems that he failed to convince anyone but his own students of his connection to Yogananda's Babaji. Most of the individuals to whom I spoke in the yoga world, regardless of what they thought of his teachings, dismissed his claim to the throne.

Haidakhan Baba passed away in 1984, although his physical death did little to affect the faith of devotees, who simply saw it as a final teaching by a great immortal yogi on what it means to be a mortal human being.

The New Babaji

The latest information I had heard regarding Babaji was that a young man from Canada was declaring himself to be the reincarnation of the deathless avatar. "I'm now writing a book about the story," one of Leonard Orr's former associates told me, halfway into our conversation about the "new Babaji," as he is sometimes called. It all started when Orr moved to Walton, New York, in 1997 to spread the rebirthing creed to the residents of his former hometown. In this small upstate New York community, Orr's unconventional ideas didn't exactly find a receptive audience, and his announcement that Babaji, the ageless immortal, was now manifesting in the body of a twenty-year-old from Canada, who was giving teachings and darshan in the area, didn't improve Orr's standing among the locals. This new Babaji was working with a woman named Durga, who was reportedly the first to appreciate the great Master's new incarnation. In fact, over the couple of years that Orr lived in Walton, there were several "Babajis" who came through town, at least two of whom were encouraged to teach as incarnations of the immortal yogi by Durga, herself an alleged incarnation of the Indian goddess of the same name. Curious to track down one of these individuals, it only took me a few phone calls to be close to making contact.

"I probably know more about Babaji than anyone," the forty-something-year-old Durga told me as we spoke together one evening last January. "After all, he's my husband." She was not speaking in strictly legal terms, I soon realized, but referring to Hindu mythology in which Babaji is the Shiva avatar and Durga is Shiva's wife. And in fact Babaji, or the latest young man whom she recognizes to be an incarnation of the deathless sage, was sitting next to her on the other end of the line. Hesitant to speak to me directly, he asked Durga to function as our intermediary. "At what point did you recognize your true identity?" I asked the young Babaji.

"In a certain way this body was prepared when I was born. When you plant a seed, it doesn't yet have petals like a flower. It takes time to grow. You only see it when it opens. But when I met Durga, the flower opened."

"What is Babaji's role in spiritual evolution?"

Durga answered this one: "Babaji has been left in control of the Earth. He's the one who's supposed to be monitoring the evolution of this planet."

Over the next thirty minutes, Durga and I continued our conversation with the distant voice of Babaji chiming in from the background. We spoke about the events at Walton, about how Babaji can manifest in up to seven bodies at one time, about the demonic forces that we must now battle during this dangerous moment in the history of the planet, about spiritual evolution, about Yogananda's legacy, and even about Sri Yukteswar's current reincarnation.

The next day I sat at my computer drafting this article. Deadline approaching, I wondered how best to bring my search to an end. Suddenly a chime sounded indicating that I had just received a new email. Absentmindedly, I clicked on the screen. From across the etheric fibers of cyberspace, another incarnation of the Mahavatar Babaji had agreed to an interview.

"Well, you have reached me," the email began. "I suppose in cases like this I must 'grant' an interview. How lordly that makes me sound. If my words can help people see their own divine nature, I would be happy to speak to you." And it was signed simply, "Yours, Babaji Mahadeva."