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Mahavatar Babaji

An icebreaker

As Paramahansa Yogananda told it in his 1946 autobiography, a Himalayan master has lived for centuries without aging, appearing only rarely to a chosen few, and revived a meditation practice passed down through his students. No historical record confirms any of it independently.

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Worth knowing · 1 of 5
Where does this figure first appear in writing?
As the tradition holds, he is described at length in a 1946 spiritual autobiography, where he is introduced as a deathless master dwelling in the Himalayas who has kept a youthful body for centuries through spiritual means, revealing himself only to a chosen few.
Worth knowing · 2 of 5
What role does he play in the meditation lineage?
As the tradition recounts it, he is said to have revived and taught a specific meditation technique to a teacher in the 1860s, a technique that then passed down through two more generations of teachers before reaching the West in the twentieth century.
Worth knowing · 3 of 5
Why is so little concrete detail given about him?
The autobiography gives no ordinary biographical facts, like family or birthplace, and presents him as a realized being beyond such categories. What's told comes as a story within the lineage, not as documented history.
Worth knowing · 4 of 5
Is there independent historical evidence he existed?
No outside historical record confirms his existence, birth, or life story; everything known comes from the testimony of the teachers and students within this specific lineage, passed down and written into their own accounts of it.
Worth knowing · 5 of 5
How do practitioners within the tradition treat these claims?
Within the tradition, the accounts are generally held as direct testimony from teachers considered trustworthy by their own students, not as claims requiring outside historical verification, a distinction the tradition itself draws explicitly.
Words to know
MahavatarA term for a 'great avatar,' a divine incarnation considered exceptional even among other spiritually realized beings.
Kriya YogaA meditation technique this lineage holds was revived in the 1860s and passed down through successive teachers.
Guru lineageA chain of teacher-to-student transmission through which a tradition's teachings and authority are said to pass.
More words
Self-Realization FellowshipThe organization founded to spread this lineage's teachings in the West, built around the 1946 autobiography.
A voice · 1 of 3
Paramahansa Yogananda · Author who introduced him to Western readers

In his 1946 autobiography, he described meeting a deathless Himalayan master before leaving for America, and wrote that the master had chosen him to carry Kriya Yoga to the West.

A voice · 2 of 3
Lahiri Mahasaya · Teacher said to have met him in 1861

As the tradition holds, around 1861 in the Himalayas he received a meditation technique directly from this master and began teaching it to students in India, becoming the first link in the lineage that would later reach Yogananda.

A voice · 3 of 3
Sri Yukteswar · Teacher said to have met him in 1894

As Yogananda recounted his own teacher's account, at a religious gathering in 1894 he met the master, who asked him to write a book on the shared truths underlying Hindu and Christian scripture, a request that became Sri Yukteswar's own book.

A line to leave them with
The tradition says he never dies. The record outside it stays silent.
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