Kripalu
Maharaj the First
Jagadguru in over 700 Years
Kripalu Maharaj was born into a
highly respected Bramin family in the village of Mangarth,
near the city of Allahabad, on the Sharat Poornima, the
night of the full moon, in October of 1922.
For Hindus, Sharat
Poornima is the time when Krisna and Shri Raseshwari Raha
Rani are thought to have revealed the true bliss of
Vrindavan on a night some 5000 years ago.
Kripalu
Maharaj is only the 5th personality
in the last 2500 years, and the first in over 700 years
to be accorded the status of Supreme Jagadguru, ‘world
teacher,’ or ‘master of masters.’
His followers hold
that his spiritual stature and divine personality are
beyond the understanding of the material mind, and that his
divinity can never be comprehended abstractly, but only by
direct experience through his presence.
He is known to his adoring devotees as Shri Maharaji Ji,
and at 81 years of age, Kripalu Maharaj still takes an
active role in teaching the devotional philosophy of Bhakti
yoga to thousands of adoring followers in northern India
and throughout the world.
According to his followers, Kripalu
Maharaj belongs to a special
category of saints that are called rasik saints. The
personalities of these rasik saints is such that they
are viewed as the most loving and intimate
manifestations of the divine self, and to experience
their presence is to experience the dissolution of all
formalities into pure and all encompassing divine love.
From the time of
his birth and while he was growing up, Kripalu Maharaj
impressed others with his unique and virtuous being. At the
age of 14, he traveled to Indore for the purpose of
studying Sanskrit literature.
Once in Indore, Kripalu
Maharaj astounded his teachers by
mastering all of his subjects in just two years. He left
Indore at the age of 16, in a state of divinely absorbed
consciousness and walked to Chitakroot and Sharbang.
Everywhere Kripalu Maharaj went, people saw the physical
expressions of his Bhao consciousness, the state of divine
ecstasy, and invited him into their homes, where he stayed
sometimes for hours and sometimes for days, but all the
while, always in the Bhao state.
From Citrakoot and
Sharbang, Kripalu Maharaj traveled on the Mahoba and to
Jhansi. Everyplace he went, everyone who encountered him
experienced the manifestation of his loving being and
glimpsed through his being his divine state of
consciousness.