Shri Viṣṇu Datta Mishra
„Wake up! Stand up! Go to the wise men and seek knowledge from them.“ In His later talks, Shri Babaji often quoted these words from the Vedas, without the devotees realizing how quickly such a thing could happen. Shri Mahaprabhuji – The Great Lord – as Babaji was known to those around Him, was everything that a seeker of the divine, of truth, of the fully incarnated living presence of supreme spiritual and practical wisdom could hope to find in his lifetime.
When Shri Babaji “left” His body in January 1984, what remained was the legacy of His spoken words as well as the grace of the few He really came close to. Shri Shastriji is such a person.
He said of himself that he “followed Babaji like a shadow”, accompanying him on many of His journeys through India in the function as chief priest, celebrating the ancient Vedic ritual – Yajna, the fire ceremony, in hundreds of places.
Shri Shastriji was a prolific writer, Sanskrit scholar of repute and was one of Mahendra Baba’s closest disciples, who already two decades earlier had prophesied Babaji’s incarnation as the Lord of Lords and world-teacher. During his discipleship with Mahendra Baba, Shastriji had received a profound preparation to recognize and serve the Lord in His thirteen-year physical sojourn on earth. In fact, he had written most of his works on Haidakhan Baba in mantric verse many years before Babaji’s physical appearance in 1970. (“Shri Sadguru Stuti Kusumanjali”, Bombay, 1957, and Shri Sadashiva Caritramrita, Alwar, 1958, second complete edition, Haidakhan 1983)
When asked, Shastriji emphasizes the fact that whatever he has written, “was by the grace of my master and by the direct inspiration of the Lord Himself … I’m merely a writing instrument”.
Whenever Babaji gave His short, informal talks at His ashram in Haidakhan, at the Himalayan foothills, Shastriji would be asked by Him to repeat His every word, before they were translated into English, Shastriji was the mouth-piece of Him (Babaji), whose coming he had helped to prepare with his writings; and when He had come, Shastriji was the one who directly interpreted His spoken word, the timeless wisdom of Sanatana Dharma.
(taken from Haidakhandi Sapta Shati)
