It was the day when Sathyaraju, a fourteen-year-old boy from a poor village family, attained enlightenment (samadhi) and began the transformation into a yogi. After twelve years of intense tapas (spiritual austerities) meditating 23 hours a day, not returning to ordinary consciousness for months at a time, he emerged as a liberated God-realized soul. This is his story of how it began, in his own words and based on his own descriptions.
“When Swamiji was a boy of about fourteen years, he was playing with his friends on the banks of a canal of the River Godavari. They had a little swim, then they came out and they wanted to have some palmyra fruit. They found some fruit that had fallen to the ground and they distributed them among themselves. Swamiji started to squeeze the fruit to get out the juice. The sound of Omkara [Om] emerged from the fruit. Then his body started shaking and shivering. Then he saw a light coming out of the fruit, and out of the light he saw a Shivalinga. Then the Shivalinga split into half, and out of that emerged a well built person. It was he who made Swamiji sit in tapas.”
The man was dressed in the attire of a jangama devara, an ascetic devoted to Shiva who lives by begging, wears his hair matted, and smears his body with ash. He was well over seven feet tall, with a strong, well knit and beautifully proportioned body. He had a dark complexion and an extremely handsome and attractive appearance, with large and beautiful eyes. His long matted hair was piled up on his head in the manner of the ancient rishis. He had a necklace of rudraksha beads with a small Shivalinga resting on his broad chest. He wore a white dhoti, again in the manner of the old rishis. A bright light came from him that blotted out all other vision. All Sathyaraju could see was the yogi surrounded by a bright radiance.
“That person who came out and asked Swamiji to sit, ‘You sit down.’”
“Swamiji at that time was only a child. He asked, ‘Why should I sit?’ “
“‘Just shut your mouth and sit down.’”
“‘After that, after sitting down, then what should I do?’”
“‘First you sit. Then I will let you know.’”
“After Swamiji was made to sit, he asked Swamiji to close his eyes. Swamiji asked, ‘What should I do closing the eyes?’”
“‘You first close your eyes.’ After Swamiji closed his eyes, he touched Swamiji in between the eyebrows, in this point, with his hand. And also hit him on the head. That’s the way he was made to sit in tapas. Then he lost his consciousness. He went into samadhi.”
This was the beginning of a period of deep meditation and intensive tapas. Neither rain, sun, heat or cold could distract him from his single minded concentration. . .
Distractions and obstacles were many. A few tried to pull his legs, a few tried to pry open his closed eyelids, a few threw filth and even burning rags on him as if to test his resolve. Insects and rodents bit and gnawed on him while he was in deep samadhi, oblivious to his body or physical surroundings, twenty-three hours a day.
In the twenty-fourth hour (midnight) he returned to ordinary consciousness to take perhaps a cup of milk and bathe himself. That was when he felt the suffering of his body. On more than one occasion as he went to bathe he was bitten by cobra snakes that inhabited the area.
Although his body was poisoned and racked with pain, each night he concentrated and resumed his meditation. He never deviated from his twenty-three hour daily austerity. The balayogi (child yogi), as he became known, never broke his concentration and remained in samadhi.
Swamiji once said, “A true yogi must never back down or change the course of his determined path no matter what the obstacles.”
Some of the villagers, recognizing the truly divine manifestation of the yogi, began to come to his aid . . . . .
The villagers first constructed hut of sticks and gunny sacks to shield his body from the intense heat of the south Indian sun. Then some land was donated and a more permanent structure was planned. Within a little more than a year after he began his tapas, his devotees had constructed a twelve by twelve foot masonry meditation temple (dhyana mandir). Here the young Swamiji could be protected form the dangers of man and animal while completing the long years of his rigorous tapas.
It was the day of completion, and out of the crucible of tapas emerged one of the greatest souls of the 20th Century — Shri Shri Shri Shivabalayogi Maharaj.
The night before, Shri Swamiji’s mother and a few other witnesses saw divine light come down from the sky and enter the meditation temple (dhyana mandir) where Shivabalayogi was sitting in meditation. They described it as a very great light, brilliant in intensity.
The next day, August 7th, a crowd estimated by reporters to be around a hundred thousand gathered to see the yogi emerge from his tapas. The media had been notified of this extraordinary event and people were eagerly awaiting the precious moment when they would have darshan, the blessings of the great yogi’s presence.
Shivabalayogi emerged and appeared on a platform lashed to the second story of the meditation temple. The vast crowd surged and pressed against the poles holding the platform and threatened to push people into the nearby deep pond. There were a hundred and eighty police plus many volunteers, but they were helpless against so many thousands of people. Serious injury seemed certain when Shivabalayogi gazed upon the crowd. The pushing and shoving immediately stopped and the crowd became calm.
Shivabalayogi then spoke to the crowd and explained that his tapas was done to help bring peace to the world.