THE LORD IS BORN UPON EARTH

Havaa Maseeh nafas gusht va baad naafaa

kushaa

Darakht sabz shudo murg dar kharosh

aamad

The air is now invigorating and the breeze

scatters scent

The trees are turning green and the

nightingales are singing

Is it possible for us to imagine God in human form, walking in the midst of a modern, materialistic world? Our concepts of “Avatars,” hover around personalities of ancient history, like Rama, and Krishna. But what if the avatar were to don a modern dress and step into the world of today. Would we recognize him? Would we believe in him?

And yet, such a thing could happen. If God could come down to the earth in human form in the past, there is nothing to prevent Him from coming down in human form in the present. After all, He can do as He wills. He can come down to earth as often as He wishes to. He can come down to this earth every century if it so pleases Him, or else He can come down after gaps of thousands of years. He can come down to save only a limited few. He can come down and be recognised by the whole world or else He can come down and be recognised by no one.

Imagine, then, the ‘Avatar’ in the twentieth century, born in one of the poorest countries in the whole world, India, walking in the midst of mankind like a stranger; only the hearts of genuine seekers may spot him and understand him. His entry into the world is not attended to by any fanfare of thunderbolts and lightning flashes or celestial music. He steals into the darkness of the world like a thief at night, takes a human shape inside a womb, and is born a mortal amongst mortals.

Such an event occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century. It was 1902 A.D. and the place was Abottabad, District Peshawar, then in the Punjab in India. There, in the hills, on June 23, at 5:45 a.m. in the early hours of the morning, a light was born to illumine mankind. The Avatar of God upon earth came into this world in the form of Bhola Nathji, the son of Shri Devi Das Mehta.

Shri Devi Das Mehta

Shri Devi Das Mehta was born in Kangra on the 20th of January 1867 at 11:15 p.m. in the night. He belonged to a wealthy family of Batala, Punjab. His father was Lala Hargopal Mehta. Before he was born, all the children that had been born to his parents had died one after another. Immediately after his birth, his parents had taken him to Kangra Devi Temple, and had placed the child before the idol of the Devi, offering the babe to the Devi, and had, thereafter, given him the name of Devi Das.

Lala Hargopal Mehta

When Devi Das was still a child a very unusual event had occurred in his life. His father, Lala Hargopal Mehta, who had been a very righteous man all his life, suddenly decided to leave the world.

One day, when he was in excellent health, he called together all his family members and relatives. He then lay down on the floor of his house and covered his body with a white sheet. His family members were aghast, and asked him what he was doing.

“I am preparing to leave the world,” he said, “the last moments of my life have come!”

Everyone was surprised, because he was apparently in the best of health. They began to cry with grief.

“Why do you weep? It is I, who must weep. I spent the time of my life amidst attachments towards you and the world. But you still have time. Seek your salvation, energetically,” he said.

“No matter whether you become prophets or Kings or Emperors, never forget that, one day, you must lie down on the floor like I am doing today. This moment must come before all. The swift current of time leaves only Death in its wake!”

And Lala Hargopal Mehta recited this

PersianVerse:

“Umram bahavas guzasht, hai haat!

Yak dam ba Khudaa na raft, hai haat!

Sheeshaye umram barsange fanaa shikast,

hai haat!

Hai haat! Hai haat! Hai haat!”

“My life was spent in the pursuit of desires–

alas!

Not a breath was spent in the quest of God–

alas!

The mirror of my existence was shattered to

pieces,

On the Rock of Death–alas!

Alas! Alas! Alas!”

And with the utterance of this verse, he covered his head with the sheet, and left his body. It was a self-willed death, which was the envy of even saints and sages.

His legacy to the world was this warning. Time was slipping by. When one was a child, one was too young to know of anything; when one was a youth, one was lost in the pleasures of the flesh; and when one was old, one was racked by illness and disease. There was no time to know of God. Such was the plight of man. Childhood gave

way to youth and youth gave way to old age–and finally, old age gave way to Death. Man had to hasten and seek to know God before the end of life came. This was the real purpose for his existence in the world.

Shri Devi Das Comes Into His Own

After the passing away of Lala Hargopal Mehta, his son Shri Devi Das Mehta came into his own. At a very young age he found himself in possession of untold wealth. He had no brothers and was thus an only child. He had inherited all the wealth left behind by his father. He was doted upon by his mother and all the family favours were bestowed upon him liberally.

Durga Devi – Paarvati

Bowing to the wishes of his mother, he entered into marriage at a very young age. He was married to Paarvati, later named Durga Devi, who was renowned as one of the most beautiful women of her time, and belonged to the well-known, wealthy and respectable Kaura family. Durga Devi was a deeply spiritual woman of pristine beauty and perfection, the likes of which had not been seen before. Shri Devi Das himself was a beautiful person with aquiline features and a fair complexion, and wise, penetrating eyes that contained a depth of spirituality in them.

Durga Devi was the only daughter of her parents, and, therefore, her parents bestowed great wealth upon her at the time of her marriage. It was thus that Shri Devi Das became a millionaire two-fold. He had his own wealth to contend with, plus the wealth given by his father-in-law. So much of wealth in the hands of one so young could easily have led him astray, but not so Shri Devi Das. He was an intensely spiritual person and had a unique destiny waiting for him. It was a destiny that was beckoning to him, calling him in various ways.

of spiritual attainment for him.

Here was materialism under the dictates of spiritualism. Here was the flesh under control of the spirit. The element of the divine existed in this rich and powerful youth. He had realized that real happiness did not lie in the perishable things of the world. Real happiness lay only in God-realization.

His spirituality manifested itself as love– love for humanity. Was it possible for a man to feel real sympathy and affection for a total stranger? A man could feel as much for his own kith and kin. But could he go out of his way and experience the same feelings for the humanity around him. Logically, it would be difficult, almost impossible. A man loves his son almost spontaneously. There is the bond of the flesh. But what would induce him to love a total stranger equally? Herein lies the essence of spiritual realization. Only those who have experienced such a feeling can tell us. Their actions reveal to mankind that they have transcended the human plane. Shri Devi Dasji was such a person. God realization was being made manifest in all his thoughts, words and actions.

He loved everyone including his enemies. He did not adhere to any one religion, but had equal respect for all faiths, for he considered them all as different paths leading to the same goal, like the different rivers running down to the same ocean. He was brave, fearless. He was wise, an intellectual of the first order. He contained in himself qualities that were altogether godly and spiritual. A Great Soul had appeared in the midst of mankind.

And he came to be known as Shri Babaji Maharaj. But he was not to be an end in

himself. Through him would come the final fruit of God’s evolution–the Avatar. In

1902, he left Batala and went to the hills of Abottabad, in district Peshawar, Punjab. It was there that the most important event in his life took place.

Shri Bhola Nathji

On June 23, 1902, in the early hours of the morning at forty-seven minutes past five, a son was born to Shri Devi Das Mehta and Smt. Durga Devi. The child was named Bhola Nathji. He was as beautiful as the Sun, and radiant with Divine Beauty. All of Nature paid homage to this most beautiful of all its flowers. God had been born upon this earth in the form of a little babe. The mightiest of the mighty had taken upon Himself the frailest of human forms.

The child had an orange sign in his right eye. It was the sign of the Avatar which no mortal upon earth possessed.

All who came before him experienced the presence of God in him. It was the individual soul recognising the Universal Soul through an inner attraction placed there since eternity. Saints and sages, holy men, mahatmas, men, women and children, all who saw the child felt the presence of an indefinable power in the child.

Divine Beauty

Such beauty had never before been seen in a child. A divine glow emanated from his face that was from another plane. An irresistible feeling of Love came from him that won the hearts of all and made them fall in love with him. It was as if he were their nearest and dearest loved one. Those who came before him found themselves miraculously at peace within, as if their sorrows and sufferings had evaporated in a moment, and they were face to face with God Himself.

It was in Batala that the first ARTI–a worshipful homage to God–of the child was performed by his aunts. His closest relatives loved him as a child, but worshipped him as God. People thronged to get a glimpse of this babe born to one of the richest and noblest men of their times.

Shri Devi Das Mehta was an extraordinarily fair complexioned and handsome man, and

his wife, Smt. Durga Devi, was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women of her time. But the beauty which the child possessed was not of this earth. People would stand for hours and gaze at the child with wonder. Something within their souls told them that they were looking upon God in human form.

As the child began to grow, his divine beauty reached astonishing heights. His innocence and love continued to capture the hearts of people. He loved animals and birds, and was particularly fond of calves. He would love them all, and they would, in turn, love him. Passers-by, strangers, would stop and stare at the little boy and marvel at his beauty.

At times people would play games with the child and follow him into his house, so strongly were they drawn by an invisible force which they could not define. A man

who ran after the child came face to face, with Shri Babaji Maharaj. “Forgive me, Sir,” he said, “I have not come of my own

will. I have been brought here by force – by him! He was playing by the roadside with other children. I saw him and was drawn

towards him irresistibly. I ran after him and here I am before you.”

The Seeress

An old lady who was considered to be a seeress, and who often made predictions that came true, spotted the child as he was returning from school. She turned to the people in the street and said:

“Look! Look at the child! You do not know who he is. The time shall come when many in the world shall bow before him and follow him. He will be the living image of Love, Grace and Mercy. People shall discover from him the secret of life and shall desire salvation at his hands. The light of God shall emanate from him.”

The words of the seeress were to soon come true.

The Orange Sign

Once, the child was playing with a water-tap by the road, and he splattered the water accidentally on a mahatma, who happened to be passing by. The mahatma was enraged. He came close to the child to scold him. Coming within inches, he stopped suddenly and stared with great awe and surprise.

“No, No,” he said to the child, “don’t apologize. It shall pain me. But tell me who are you? What are you? Where do you live? And what is this strange sign in your right eye?”

He looked at the orange sign in his right eye that distinguished him at once from the rest of humanity, and which was the Sign of the Avatar.

The child said he did not know anything about the sign, nor why it was there. But the mahatma said:

“Do not feign ignorance. Do not try to hide yourself. Forgive me for my impatience. I bow before you. Your appearance is that of a child but you are great, very great. The sign in your eye is not an ordinary one. It is the sign of Lord Shankar. All glory unto you. May the world know of your Divine Form one day!”

All who saw the child experienced a new sensation of awe, reverence, and an irresistible attraction. Those who understood spiritual truths instantly felt the presence of the divine.

Shri Babaji Maharaj was well aware of the child’s divinity.

“What is your name?” he asked the child, jokingly, one day.

“Rama,” said the boy.

“What! What did you say?” said Shri Babaji Maharaj, pretending amazement.

“Nath! Bhola Nath!” said the child.

“No! No! I don’t believe you now!”

Shri Babaji Maharaj would frequently hail

Shri Nathji with the following words:

“Nand ghar anand bhayo, jai Kanhaiyalal ki! Joy has come to the house of Nand. All glory unto Kanhaiya!”

Shri Babaji Maharaj would be reliving the past when God had come as Kanhaiya – Krishna–to the house of his adopted father Nand.

Shri Nathji

As the child grew, he came to be called Shri Nathji. He was the very living incarnation of Divine Beauty and Divine Love.

Such a beauty could not belong to the world; it had to come from a divine sphere. His voice and his words were like the nectar of life. Such a beauty could belong to God alone. Such was the beauty of Shri Nathji.

As a little boy, Shri Nathji would always stand first in class. His teachers would be amazed by his wisdom. He would frequently recite Persian verses with a profound depth of meaning at a very young age when children could scarcely speak well.

One day, he took a magnifying lens and focussed the rays of the sun on a dark cloth, causing it to burn, and said: “This is how the Divine Rays of Mercy shine through a personality and burn away the sins of man.”

His compassion for humanity was legend. He would go hungry himself and feed those in hunger; he would remove the clothes from his body and give them to those who had only rags to wear.

He would never assert his own will on anyone. He was the personification of an unlimited love in a limited body. Birds would alight upon him and he would fondle

them with affection. Once a sparrow flew to him and clung to him in an embrace.

He used to say: “Love is the easiest way of reaching God.”

A fly caught in a spider’s web would pose a problem for him. To free the fly would be to deprive the spider of its food; and to let it remain in the web would be to send it to its doom. Shri Nathji had compassion for both. In this complex problem he saw the misery of the world.

Shri Nathji had impeccably clean habits. His body would be ever clean, his hands repeatedly washed, and his clothes spotless. People would say to him: “Surely you belong to another world where there is only purity.”

Shri Nathji had a beautiful white and rose coloured complexion, a pink and white skin that often led people to mistake him for a European child. Whenever he would bathe in the open, people would stop and stare at his beautiful form. He would look unusually attractive in new clothes.

There was a time when Shri Babaji Maharaj saw him in a new coat, and became so awed at the sight of his beauty that he lowered his eyes:

“It is not possible to look upon such divine beauty! I cannot bear to look upon you! Betaa kaheen meri nazar na lag jaaye!”

As a child, Shri Nathji would frequently amuse Shri Babaji Maharaj with childish antics. He would bring freshly fallen snow into their house in Simla and pour it into the milk. This would result in his throat becoming sore and his voice hoarse.

Then, again, each day, as Shri Babaji Maharaj would make ready to go out, Shri Nathji would ask him to touch the ceiling of the room with his ballam, stick.

Playing God

It was in Simla, that Shri Nathji, as a child, played God. He did something only God could have done. He awakened in the middle of the night and suddenly wished that it might be day.

“Din charh jaa!” he said in a loud tone, “Let it be day!”

And that very instant the rays of the sun appeared to spread everywhere. It must have been an old habit of Shri Nathji. As the Creator, he had said, “Let there be light,” in the beginning of creation.

During the early years of his life he lived like a child with his father. And as he began to grow up he performed his worldly duties to perfection. He would show an ideal respect for Shri Babaji Maharaj–a respect no son had ever shown his father before. He

was so conscious of obedience to his father’s wishes that he would not even

perform his daily ablutions without taking permission from him.

There was the time when Shri Nathji served Shri Babaji Maharaj day and night. At one point, he became so exhausted that he thought he would collapse if he had to do one more chore. But, then, he told himself that he would go on working until he col-lapsed, rather than stop work for fear of collapse.

There was one hurt that was to remain in Shri Nathji’s heart forever. Shri Babaji

Maharaj had his hand on the ground and Shri Nathji had accidentally stepped on his thumb. The nail had turned blue. No matter how hard Shri Babaji Maharaj tried to

placate Shri Nathji, the bruise never left Shri Nathji’s heart.

It had been a great desire in Shri Nathji’s mind that he leave the world before Shri Babaji Maharaj, that the years of his life be added to those of Shri Babaji Maharaj. This was, however, mere wishful thinking on the

part of the young Shri Nathji. His love for his father was part of his manushya leela, his drama as a human upon earth–a part he played to perfection.

Shri Babaji Maharaj would often say to Shri Nathji: “Nathji, even though you are so

great, you still speak with the innocence of a child.”

“Nathji aap itne bare hokar bhee dandiyaan vilak ke baat karte hain!”

In later years, when Shri Nathji became a young man and began speaking to multitudes, he would never deliver a sermon if Shri Babaji Maharaj were present. Once he was delivering a magnificent speech at Aror Bans Hall in Lahore when Shri Babaji Maharaj entered. Shri Nathji immediately stopped speaking. He had far too much respect for Shri Babaji Maharaj to speak before him.

The only time in his life that Shri Babaji Maharaj ever heard Shri Nathji speak was many years later, over Lahore radio. With

one ear close to the radio set, Shri Babaji Maharaj remarked: “Wah Beta! Khush raho!

Wonderful, son! May you ever remain happy!”

The Face of Shri Nathji

By the time Shri Nathji had become a young man his beauty had reached such astonishing heights that people continued to gaze at him. There was always a divine glow that surrounded his face, which was not seen on the face of any other mortal on earth. If face alone was an index of the mind, Shri Nathji’s face had a lot to tell.

Future generations would do well to study the face of the avatar. If the eyes were the mirrors of the soul, Shri Nathji’s eyes mirrored the Universal Soul. Such gentleness of expression, such an infinite humility of bearing, such a divine radiance, such great love and compassion, could be evident only on the face of the avatar.

Portraits of Rama and Krishna do not exist before us, today. Perhaps they had faces like that of Shri Nathji.

Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. God is Truth, God is Divine, and God is Beautiful.

A man’s vocation in life often moulded his features. A police officer, an office clerk, a truck driver, a businessman, a professor, a musician or an artist, each had an

appearance that distinguished him. Shri Nathji’s vocation in life was that of The

Servant of The Earth. And he had a face to match. It was not a commonplace occurrence for man to look like God.

And what of his royal bearing and majestic personality? Did it in any way detract from his avatar-hood? On the contrary, it confirmed it. Rama and Krishna both had royal bearing. They came to the world not as ascetics.

Even if one were to observe Shri Nathji’s face with this simplified view, one could not but find absolute bliss and absolute goodness within it. If all of divinity were to manifest itself in a face, the face would be that of Shri Nathji, such a face could belong only to the avatar. It was the face of God.

The faces of saints, rishis, sadhus, mahatmas and yogis were the faces of man in which the soul had reached God. The face of the avatar was a face in which the soul was ever God.

Many would frequently say: “No other spiritual personality of our age can compare with Shri Nathji, even when it comes to face alone! No one is as beautiful as He.”

Many would feel that Shri Nathji had the eternal face of Lord Vishnu. If that were so then Ram and Krishna, who were also incarnations of Lord Vishnu, must have had the face Shri Nathji had. The avatar of God in the form of Shri Nathji proved the existence of the avatars that were. Shri

Rama and Shri Krishna were proved by Shri Nathji.

Here were the two faces of the same ocean. One, its mighty expanse of water, and the other its fragile shape as a tiny bubble. The ocean was powerful and frail at the same time. Behind the fragility of the bubble lay the strength of the ocean. The avatar was a combination of these two qualities and hence a study in contrast. One could recall Lord Krishna. On the one hand he was powerful enough to subdue the monster snake, Kali-Naag, and on the other, he would run with fear each time his mother drew the picture of a snake on the wall.

There were some who understood the avatar only when he was completely God. There were others who understood him when he was God as well as man. And very few who understood him as God when he appeared to be completely man. Fortunate were the ones to whom he had explained all his forms.

And yet, there were millions all over the world who had neither seen him nor knew of him. For them, he was to exist in an invisible form, like the air.

Miracles

Miracles followed him wherever he went. The incurably sick were cured. People were raised from the dead. Peace was given to the inconsolable. Hopeless failures succeeded in life. People saw him even when he was thousands of miles away from them. The forces of nature were held in abeyance. Rivers in spate were halted. Wars were averted. And yet he attached no importance to these miracles and used to say:

“Speak not to me of miracles,

For I have left miracles behind.”

The greatest miracle, according to Shri Nathji, was the lamp of faith he lit in the hearts of people, which could weather the worst storms of life, and never be extinguished.