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Lahiri Mahasaya's Christlike Life

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Brief overview

Lahiri Mahasaya, the yoga avatar, opened Kriya to all men while living as an ordinary householder.

  1. Guru and disciple across lifetimesJohn and Jesus, like Babaji and Lahiri Mahasaya, are presented as the same bond carried between incarnations.
  2. A householder can reach the highest realizationEarning a modest salary and raising a family, he answered the question of where the time for devotional meditation is.
  3. Kriya belongs to every faithMuslims, Christians, monists, dualists and the casteless were received and instructed by the universal guru.
Executive Summary AI
  • The chapter argues from the Bible, read from an oriental viewpoint, that John the Baptist and Jesus were in their last incarnations Elijah and his disciple Elisha, with the guru-disciple roles later reversed.
  • The same deathless guru-disciple bond held between Babaji and Lahiri Mahasaya, whom Babaji openly re-established contact with near Raniket only in the disciple's thirty-third year, then sent out for a worldly mission from Benares.
  • Living as an ideal householder on a modest salary, Lahiri Mahasaya told his employer that his critically ill wife in England was recovering and quoted her unwritten letter, and the woman later came to India to say his haloed form at her London sick-bed had healed her.
  • He gave Kriya initiation to Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike, graded it into four progressive initiations, told each follower to keep his own worship four times daily, and refused all publicity, saying the Kriya flower's fragrance should waft naturally.
  • Retired on a pension in 1886, twenty-five years after his Raniket initiation, he sat mostly in silence exhibiting breathlessness and cessation of pulse, left twenty-six scriptural commentaries recorded by disciples, and is called the yoga avatara who reduced yoga's complexities to a simplicity within ordinary grasp.
Key Quote
“Sir, she said, it was your form, haloed in glorious light that i beheld months ago by my sick-bed in london at that moment i was completely healed”
— The Englishwoman
Key Quote
“Always remember that you belong to no one and no one belongs to you. Reflect that someday you will suddenly have to leave everything in this world.”
— Lahiri Mahasaya
Key Quote
“A Muslim should perform his namaj, worship, four times daily, the master pointed out.”
— Narrator

Transcript

0:00 CHAPTER XXXV. The Christlike life of Lahiri Mahasaya.
0:28 Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
0:33 In these words to John the Baptist and in asking John to baptise him,
0:37 Jesus was acknowledging the divine rights of his Guru.
0:41 From a reverent study of the Bible from an oriental viewpoint and from intuitional perception,
0:44 I am convinced that John the Baptist was, in past lives,
0:47 the Guru of Christ. There are numerous passages in the Bible which infer that John and Jesus,
0:53 in their last incarnations, were, respectively, Elijah and his disciple Elisha. These are the
1:00 spellings in the Old Testament. The Greek translators spell the names of Elias and Elisios.
1:07 They reappear in the New Testament in these changed forms.
1:11 The very end of the Old Testament is a prediction of the reincarnation of Elijah and Elisha.
1:17 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
1:22 Thus John, sent before the coming of the Lord, was born slightly earlier to serve as a herald for christ an angel appeared to zacharias the father to testify that thee a son and thou shalt call his name john and many of the children of israel shall he turn to the lord their god and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the lord jesus twice unequivocally identified el if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
2:28 When John denied that he was Elias, Elijah,
2:31 he meant that in the humble gob of John
2:33 he came no longer in the outward elevation of Elijah the great guru.
2:37 In his former incarnation he had given the mantle of his glory
2:41 and his spiritual wealth to his disciple Elisha.
2:45 And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me and he said thou hast asked a hard thing nevertheless if thou see me when i am taken from thee it should be so unto thee
2:58 and he took the mantle of elijah that fell from him the roles became reversed because el Elijah John was no longer needed to be the
3:06 ostensible guru of Elisha Jesus, now perfected in divine realization, when Christ was transfigured
3:13 on the mountain, it was his guru, Elias, with Moses, whom he saw. Again, in his hour of extremity
3:20 on the cross, Jesus cried out the divine name, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say, my God, my God,
3:28 why hast thou forsaken me? Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, this man
3:34 calleth for Elias. Let us see whether Elias will come to save him. The eternal bond of guru and
3:40 disciple that existed between John and Jesus was present also for Babaji and Lahiri Mahasaya,
3:47 with tender solicitude, the deathless Guru swam the Lithian waters that swell between the last
3:52 two lives of his chela, and guided the successive steps taken by the child and then by the man
3:57 Lahiri Mahasaya. It was not until the disciple had reached his thirty-third year that Babaji
4:03 deemed the time to be ripe to openly re-establish the never-severed link then after their brief meeting near raniket the selfless master banished his daily loved disciple from the little mountain group releasing him for an outward world mission me, what mortal lover can bestow that infinite promise? Unknown to society in general, the great spiritual renaissance began to flow from a remote corner
4:29 of Benares, just as the fragrance of flowers cannot be suppressed.
4:34 So Lahiri Mahasaya, quietly living as an ideal householder, could not hide his innate glory.
4:40 Slowly, from every part of India, the devotee bees sought the divine nectar of the liberated master the made this sympathetic inquiry one morning to his employer.
5:05 "'My wife in England is critically ill.
5:08 I'm torn by anxiety.
5:10 I shall get you some word about her.'
5:12 Lahiri Mahasaya left the room and sat for a short time in a secluded spot.
5:18 On his return he smiled consolingly.
5:20 "'Your wife is improving.
5:23 She is now writing you a letter.'

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