Hari Puri Baba

Naga Baba Hari Puri Ji Maharaj (1902-1972) was the guru of Baba Rampuri, a president of Bharat Sadhu Samaj, a mahant of Juna Akhara.

Rampuri Baba:  If I were a rishi-sage, a suta-bard, or some other ancient hearer or teller of tales, or even an overzealous devotee, I might say that when Hari Puri Baba was born, the gods and the goddesses rained fragrant flowers from heaven, cows tripled their flow of milk for a month, and for once, there was peace on Earth. But, no, I won't say that. I will give you only the facts. I will tell you that he was a far from ordinary child. He came from a Brahmin family, the royal astrologers to the kings of Mandi, in what is now Himachal Pradesh. An old traditional family, it passed the treasure trove of the knowledge of past and future as well as the timing and suitability of important events from father to son from at least the time of the Rishi Bhrigu, millennia ago. Kings from the four directions, yogis, scholars, and even great astrologers would come for consultation for the predictions and advice were infallible.

Hari Puri Baba's mother fainted when informed by her husband that their firstborn son would become a great sannyasi. Anything but that. She knew her husband had the power to counteract certain influences that could be interpreted from the heavens, and begged him to do something. Not that Hari Puri Baba's father wanted his son to become a sadhu, but he knew a baba when he saw one.

On the day of a lunar eclipse, when the world hides in fear inside their homes, Sandhya Puri Baba, the great and famous Siddha, a wizard who had accomplished superhuman yogic powers, came for consultation with Hari Puri Baba's father. On that day ten-year-old Hari Puri Baba's world changed. Enchanted by the baba, and always hardheaded, the boy decided to follow Sandhya Puri Baba. He didn't want to become an astrologer, telling other people what to do. He wanted to be free as the wind, wandering here and there, learning and practicing siddhis like Sandhya Puri Maharaj. His mother's tears couldn't stop him (his mother did, however, give him both permission and blessings to leave), and his father, impressed by Sandhya Puri Baba, reasoned that if his son were to be a sadhu, then at least he would be the disciple of a great saint.

Even by the time he left home, however, he had already achieved mastery over several intellectual/spiritual traditions in Sanskrit (including astrology), and was considered somewhat of a prodigy in language and mantra.

As a disciple, he trained under Sandhya Puri, wandering barefoot "hither and thither," as he would later say, throughout the Himalayas, in Kashmir, Punjab, Nepal, Yarkhand, Tibet, and other parts of what is now China. Sandhya Puri would take him for darshan, the auspicious seeing and meeting of other siddhas who lived and practiced austerities in high Himalayan caves. He would leave his young disciple there for a year at a time to perform seva, auspicious service, to the great ones.

This is the guru shishya parampara, the path of discipleship: Perform service to the guru, please him, and if you are lucky, then perhaps he will give you his blessing, an ashirvad. Let the ashirvad grow, and over decades a transmission takes place in which the disciple absorbs the Tradition as well as the personality of the guru. Please him a lot, and you may compel him to do your bidding, as humans have compelled gods, by pleasing them a lot, since story took birth.

Over the years, Hari Puri Baba obtained a number of siddhis. I knew him for only a short time and cannot vouch for whatever powers he might (or might not) have had, but I can attest to his great knowledge of language. Sanskrit and Indian languages, even Tamil, Telegu, and Maliyalam are one thing. His sophisticated "foreign-returned" sounding English is not rare in a country like India. The European languages-French, Italian, and Spanish-raised my eyebrows a little, even more when I heard him speak German, which he had picked up in less than a day. But when I saw him in conversation with crows, my order of things became disorderly. He spoke Ka Bhasha (crow language), the language of birds.

Until recently I never met another Naga Sannyasi of Juna Akhara, the Old Order, who spoke any English. It was a boon for me that my sharp transition into Hindi would be cushioned by the fact that my guru spoke my mother tongue.

In 1959, Hari Puri Baba visited the Bhrigu Shastri, a great astrologer, in Hosharpur, Punjab, who possessed the Bhrigu Shastra, a text composed thousands of years ago by the Rishi Bhrigu, his ancestor. The Bhrigu Shastri also has a highly guarded section of that ancient text, which contains horoscopes for those who would approach his lineage for thousands of years to come. He is able to find the horoscope for anyone who approaches him. He simply notes down the precise moment the client crosses the threshold of his simple house, makes a few calculations, and then starts poring through his palm leaf manuscripts, looking for that particular individual in his nonlinear chronology of horoscopes. Hari Puri Baba stayed with the Shastri for several weeks while they went through Baba Ji's life, as well as his past lives.

Baba Ji learned that he would have only three disciples. One would perish in a fire, one would lose his powers and eventually be murdered, and the third would be a foreigner. I asked Hari Puri Baba Ji several times what would happen to the foreigner, but he never told me. All he would say was that he knew the exact moment I would cross the threshold of his ashram at Amloda Kund in Rajasthan ten years later.

A joker and sometimes comedian, Hari Puri Baba would have fun with some of the most sacred traditions and idioms of the Sanatan Dharma, what is often called Hinduism today. He would play devil’s advocate, constantly challenging his own tradition. A blasphemer in any other religion, a true believer in his own.

Hari Puri Baba: Our tradition maintains the qualifications of a guru. The first is that since the guru has crossed over death and rebirth, he has the capacity to lead others along the same path. How do you know where I’ve been? “In the case of the spiritual seeker who pursues knowledge of Brahman, which is the knowledge of the Self, a close personal association between the guru and disciple is established. The goal of such a relationship is transformation whereby the student, after his self-realization, becomes a guru himself.
“Shastra is the only source of the knowledge of the truths regarding what is beyond the senses. What do I mean by Shastral You would probably translate it as scripture or text, but I’m talking about a different kind of text from what you are used to. It is not written; it’s not a book. This is text that goes way off the page, way beyond its front and back covers. Yes, you can print the mantras and the other sounds. You can print some version of the story, but its authority and power lie in the empty spaces. On the paper these are the white spaces that haven’t been touched by ink. The printing can be perceived from as many different perspectives as there are people and spirits and gods. The text is the tradition manifested through its knower.”
 “The knowledge that leads to liberation can be achieved through traditional authority, and that authority comes through a line of teachers. Traditional authority is the way of effectively passing down knowledge through time. There is no pursuit of wisdom independent of one’s gurus. In this way, the path is the goal. In our tradition the guru is the patron of the disciple, willing to travel to any of the three worlds to save his rear end.”

The tradition is not to be found in books. Okay, you can purchase the books of Adi Shankara, but even if you can understand what he says in Sanskrit, you will discover that he says that without the commentary of the tradition—interpretation by a teacher in the lineage—the sound of the guru s voice is missing, and the written words on their own have no meaning. By themselves, books, ancient or modern, are useless.

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I can only show you the path. That is my duty. Then you must walk.

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“What? You think the Rishi Patanjali and the Rishi Panini were sitting in some Angrezi university, teaching in great halls, writing books published at university expense? You think that they had ideas that just came into their heads, that they did research?” he said one day. “You will never understand these things.
“No, these men were great sadhus who lived at their dhunis surrounded by disciples who didn’t spend their time studying, but selflessly serving their gurus. And the gurus gave to their disciples what they had received from their own gurus. Not just the ‘teachings,’ or instruction, but the gurus transferred their own nature, so that the very personality of the guru became that of the disciple. With this as a foundation, these seeds of knowledge you call ‘teachings,’ when passed down bore fruit, and that fruit bears more seeds. This is the tradition.”

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Sangharsh hone se sona shudh ho jata hai!
Gold becomes pure through strife!
It’s opposition that forms the story and spins the chakra of the Sanatan Dharma. Without opposition, you have no story to tell, and no one to become.