MEDITATION IS HIS MESSAGE

Here is the story about the awakening, struggle, and transformation of a humble cloth weaver into one of the world’s greatest saints. Sivabalayogi was born on January 24, 1935, at Adivarapupeta, Andhra Pradesh in South India of very poor Saivite weaver parents. Two years later, his father Allaka Bhimanna died. The widowed mother Parvathamma, thus needed the help of her father Goli Sathyam to bring up her son. The family was so poor that Sathyaraju (his name at birth) even as a boy of six began working on the handweaving looms and could be educated only up to the fourth primary standard in the village elementary school. His early character development was molded by his grandfather Goli Sathyam’s guidance. He taught his grandson that "poverty, though unfortunate, was not a sin and one need not be ashamed of it. Self-respecting persons should prefer to live honorably and without obligation. Honest ways, though difficult, are desirable; while insincerity and falsehood are harmful."

During the early 1940’s India’s freedom struggle gained momentum everywhere and in 1943 his village friends selected him as leader of the local Youth Congress because of his courage, honesty, and intelligence. Sathyaraju also had the economic intelligence to realize that weaving would not redeem his mother and grandfather from poverty. So as an enterprising boy of just twelve, he opened up a beedi shop selling the popular Indian mini-cigarettes. He deposited his earnings with his mother and grandfather. In late July 1949 his mother Parvathamma went with Goli Sathyam to the Kakinada General Hospital because the old man had to undergo an operation for the removal of an eye cataract. But unknown to the enterprising fourteen year old lad God was mysteriously planning to perform a spiritual operation on Sathyaraju that would transform him into the saint called Sivabalayogi.

While the old man Goli Sathyam needed an operation to see in this material world, the young boy Sathyaraju by God’s grace was about to have his vision opened to the spiritual world in a fantastic way that reads like a page from Ripley’s "Believe It Or Not". On Sunday, August 7^th, 1949 at 3 in the afternoon, Sathyaraju and about ten boys were plucking palmyra fruits along a canal of the Godavari river on the outskirts of Adivarapupeta. While trying to squeeze the juice out of a palmyra fruit, his body began to shake all over from strange energy vibrations. From inside the fruit, he heard an out of this world Aum sound like the beating of big drums. Then the fruit flashed forth a radiant blinding light. The nut of the fruit exploded and a sparkling Sivalinga (a Hindu religious symbol of the deity Siva in the form of an oval figure placed upon a circular vertical base at the top of which extends a horizontal sprout) came out. The shining Sivalinga then split in half and a luminous seven foot tall divine figure with matted hair, ash smeared body, and holding a trident materialized out of another time and space dimension world before the terrified boy. God by his mysterious grace appeared in the form of Siva the Lord of Yoga in order to initiate this simple lad into the practice of yoga meditation. Then the Lord in the form of Siva ordered him to sit down in a cross-legged meditative posture with his eyes closed. As soon as Siva pressed the boy’s brow center with his middle finger and gently patted the top of his head, Sathyaraju immediately lost worldly consciousness. After completing twelve years of yoga meditation in the midst of many painful obstacles, he attained the ultimate level of God consciousness or Samadhi and is now called Sivabalayogi.

While God in the form of Siva used divine grace to spontaneously transform the boy into a yogi, Sivabalayogi had on his part to triumph over painful tests to show that he was a worthy candidate for spiritual enlightenment. At first the boys near Sivabalayogi when his divine experience occurred thought that he was pretending to be a yogi. So they viciously teased him by hitting him, beating him with sticks, throwing stones at him, and some sadistic person even put a burning kerosene rag on his leg. But the boy yogi was so absorbed in deep meditation that he felt no bodily sensations. Two days later his mother Parvathamma and his grandfather Goli Sathyam returned home and pleaded with the silent boy to return to the normal life and continue to be the family’s economic mainstay. This failed. As Sivabalayogi remained sitting like a dead statue, nature in the form of cobras, rabbits, ants, mosquitoes, and rats caused him many bloody wounds through repeated bites. The boy had superhuman courage and determination and refused to give up his intense practice of yoga meditation.

After successfully withstanding these dreadful tests, Lord Siva again showed his grace toward the boy yogi by putting him in contact with Tapasvi Maharaj. In January 1951, this one hundred and eighty year old North Indian saint came to meet the sixteen year old boy yogi. Tapasvi Maharaj was so impressed by the boy’s level of spiritual attainment in meditation, that he publicly described Sivabalayogi as the incarnated soul channel of the supreme spiritual force of Lord Siva. Tapasvi Maharaj helped reduce Sivabalayogi’s physical hardships by initiating him into a mantra prayer to the sun god Surya to improve his health and by rubbing special Kaya-kalpa medicated oil over the young yogi’s body to relieve his burning sensation due to the awakened Kundalini life force fire within. Although Tapasvi Maharaj died in 1955, Sivabalayogi by his exalted power of yogic concentration has been able to communicate with Tapasvi Maharaj on a high level spiritual plane beyond the dead called the world of Brahma Loka. By 1951 Sivabalayogi’s yogic path was made easier when some local government officials and admirers gave him a tiger skin and built a small room in which he could continue his meditation undisturbed.

Sivabalayogi has told his disciples that Lord Siva accompanied by his sakti power the Divine Mother Parvati came to him a number of times in the physical form to give necessary instructions for his spiritual development in the path of yoga meditation. Lord Siva caused Sivabalayogi to successfully do intense yoga meditation for a twelve year period in which he sat facing East for about four years, North for about two years, West for about one year, South for about one year, and East for the remaining four years. While facing West, the yogi had to overcome very bad visions and experiences from low level astral worlds which tested his firmness. But the yogi gained mastery facing the western direction and began to experience the highest levels of samadhi or God realization in 1956. During most of the period of his twelve year meditation penance he observed silence which caused him to develop more and more spiritual power within. His only food was milk and he frequently fasted for months on end because he had learned the secret of drawing upon God’s inner source of cosmic energy. By the power of his intense meditation and the awakened fire of the Kundalini life force his dark skin changed to a fair and rosy color.

At times during his twelve year meditation penance, his hands and legs became paralyzed. But the healing touch of Lord Siva and the Kaya-kalpa medicated oil of Tapasvi Maharaj helped restore the blood circulation and movement of his hands and legs. Inside his meditation room, he kept a picture and statue of Lord Siva which he would worship with devotion whenever he came out of the divine communion of samadhi down to the level of normal waking state consciousness. At times during his meditation penance, he was heard loudly chanting the Aum sound, which automatically came up from his heart center with each act of respiration, although he was unconscious to the physical world. By surrendering his mind with the attention focused within the eyebrow center and remaining as a silent receptive channel, he joined his human consciousness into experiencing the highest level of God’s cosmic consciousness whenever he went into samadhi.

On August 7, 1961 Sivabalayogi’s twelve years of difficult meditation penance came to a triumphant conclusion with his chanting Aum in a melodious voice. The humble cloth weaver by Lord Siva’s grace had now become transformed into the awesome Sivabalayogi who had attained by his meditation penance several supernatural spiritual powers. Three hundred thousand people gathered to see the victorious yogi. Then he delivered a message for world peace. The yogi’s message read: "Today the human mind is in a dangerous state. It is foolish for the spacemen and scientists to say that they will even conquer the sun for this will bring darkness upon the world. I challenge that no man can conquer the sun. If man wants real peace for himself, people should meditate to know themselves and find out whether this body is really theirs. This is the answer for bringing true peace to the world." As Sivabalayogi discovered that the common people could not easily understand the significance of his message, he evolved the technique of trance possession by projecting his liberated thought wave force on people so that they may reap through him the spiritual benefits. During the congregational bhajan songs, the yogi comes by his astral bodies into his devotees, puts them in contact with visions of divine personalities, and awakens their latent Kundalini life force. In reference to this trance possession technique, the great Indian sage Patanjali wrote over fifteen hundred years ago in his Yoga Aphorisms: "When the yogi’s mental bonds caused by the chain of action have been destroyed, he can enter into another’s body by knowing how its astral nerve currents operate. The liberated yogi can produce astral mind bodies. Though the activities of the different created astral mind bodies are various, the liberated yogi’s consciousness controls them all."

Sivabalayogi’s second method for the people’s spiritual upliftment is mass initiation into meditation whereby they get into direct contact with the divine power which is hidden in themselves. During his meditation classes, the people see within various lights, divine personalities, feel electric energy vibrations, bliss, and expanding mental peace. During the last several years in his meditation for world peace mission, Sivabalayogi has toured all over India and the West to spiritually serve the general public and has established ashrams and centers to give practical training to the people in meditation. His South India headquarters are in Bangalore and Adivarapupeta and his North India headquarters are in Dehra Dun and Agra. The inspiring life of Sivabalayogi makes one aware that God realization, be it through meditation or devotion, depends upon the intensity of the truth seeker’s effort which will invoke the divine grace on the spiritual path.