is viewed as a symbol of the mouth of the Divine. When ghee (purified butter), which is used as an oil, was not available, Babaji used water, instead. Once, in Ranikhet, the son of Shri Ram Datt told the Christian principal of his college about this practice of Babaji. The principal was curious and went to see Babaji, who was doing hawan on the flat roof of a devotee's house. Whenever Babaji poured water into the hawan pit, the fire flared up to a height of eight to ten meters. The principal became an ardent devotee of Shri Babaji.28
Another of the widely-observed miracles of Babaji was to sit in the center of four or five fires, for hours at a time. Elderly people in Haidakhan still tell their grandchildren of seeing Babaji sit in the midst of fire - or of gathering wood for these fires. Giridhari Lal Mishra wrote of this practice.
"Nobody has ever seen another incarnation or saint who has such a complete and clear control over the five fires as Munindra Bhagwan had. Wonderful was his tapasya with five fires; it gave evidence that he was the form of Lord Sadashiv.
"Shri Moti Singh, who is about 100 years old and lives near Devguru, described with moving words in his hill dialect the fire tapasya of Prabhu [God]. When he was a child, Moti Singh used to go with his mother to see the fire tapasya of the Lord.
"In the summer, Shri Babaji would collect heaps of wood and cow dung, each heap being only a short distance from the others. He would sit in the middle of the heaps and the fires would ignite themselves by his yogic powers. At that time, Babaji used to wear just a sheet of light cloth. Intense fires burned all around him. He would sit in the middle of the fires for many days. When the fires burned low, more wood was added.
"The people who saw this used to fear that his body would burn to ashes. Shri Moti Singh used to tell his mother, with tears flowing from his eyes: 'Mother, look! The yogi must have been burned by now.'
"After the intensity of the fire subsided, the great Yogi's body used to shine like the rising sun; it was almost impossible to look at him. When he stood up and removed the sheet from his body, water dripped from the cloth.
"Once he sat amid the fires continuously for 45 days. He came out of it only because of the intense prayers of his devotees.
"Wonderful is the Lord and limitless are his yogic powers."29
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"Shri Jwaladatt Joshi was a great devotee of Shri Babaji. He was a high-ranking officer in the service of the rajah (king) of Gwalior. The king of Gwalior was a great devotee of God and habitually served saints.
"Once at the court, Shri Jwaladatt described the divine leelas of Shri Babaji and from that day on, the king had a great desire to have Babaji's darshan. As Shri Bhagwan did not have a fixed place to stay, Jwaladattji said he was unable to help the king meet Babaji.
"After some time, Shri Babaji unexpectedly came to Jwaladattji's house. Jwaladattji was very pleased to have Babaji's darshan, and he immediately sent word to the king.
"The king went immediately to Jwaladattji's house and requested Babaji to go to the palace and give his darshan. Touched by the king's feelings, Babaji consented and went to the palace in the evening. There the queen and the rest of the royal company had their lives blessed by having Shri Babaji's darshan.
"After Babaji had left the palace, the king asked the queen, 'How old do you think Shri Munindra Maharaj is?' The queen answered, 'He is not less than 80 years old.'
The king was astonished by her answer, because he had seen Babaji as an eleven-year-old boy."30
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One summer, Shri Munindra Bhagwan [Babaji] was in the Khurpatal Ashram in Nainital. One day an educated young man heard about Babaji's leelas from people who had seen him. He also learned that Babaji wore a cap which covered his ears, and from this the young man guessed that maybe Babaji was Ashvatthama [one of the immortal warriors who fought in the battle at Kurukshetra in the Mahabharata epic], because people said Babaji had some wounds dating back to the Mahabharata war. The young man thought that maybe Babaji wore such a cap to hide the head wound that Ashwatthama received after the battle at Kurukshetra. The young man went to the Khurpatal Ashram to check into this.
"As soon as the young man reached the ashram, Shri Babaji told him that he wanted to have a bath, because it was so hot. Hearing this, the young man pressed to be allowed to bring water from the lake for Babaji's bath. He thought that Babaji would take off his cap to have his bath, which would give an opportunity to see the wound.
"Babaji asked the young man to carry his lunghoti and towel and go to the lake for the bath. The young man was very happy, thinking that at the lake he would have enough time to check for the wound.
"When they reached the lake, Babaji told the man to take off his (Babaji's) kurta (shirt) and cap and give him a bath. Strangely enough, before removing Babaji's cap, the young man forgot his desire to check on Babaji's wound. After removing Babaji's kurta and cap, the young man gave Babaji his bath with much faith, and dried his body. He dressed Babaji again with lunghoti, kurta and cap.
"The whole process took almost half an hour, but the thought of checking Babaji's wounds did not come to the young man's mind until Babaji was completely dressed again; only then did he remember and regretted having forgotten to check.
"Shri Babaji then said to the young man, with great love: 'When one goes to a great soul, one should go with faith, compassion and love; and if one has some doubts, one should pray to God Himself to remove them. By the Lord's Grace only, the knowledge of a saint's greatness comes. Only a saint can test a saint - or one on whom the saint's grace falls, whose heart is simple and who is without ego. When a human being does not even know himself, how can he test a great saint? A saint is a form of God, and to judge a saint is as difficult as judging God 'Himself'."31
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Yogi Jalendar Nath, a third-generation Babaji devotee, relates the following experiences of his grandfather, Shri Birshan Singh Gusain, with Shri Babaji. Yogiji heard these stories from his grandmother as a child, and from his 90-year-old uncle, who was a child when some of these incidents occurred. Most of these stories are well known throughout the area where Birshan Singh lived.
Near the village of Barrechina in the Almora District of Uttar Pradesh is a locally famous temple called Shakteshwar Mahadev Temple. It and its predecessors are believed to have existed on this spot for three thousand years or more. Shri Babaji used to visit the ancient ashram here quite frequently. Babaji used a very old dhuni (sacred fire pit) and stayed in a hut with an open side from which He could talk to people who came to see Him.
Birshan Singh Gusain met Shri Babaji there in the 1890's. Birshan Singh was then in his mid-60's, a widower with a mostly-grown-up family. Babaji told Birshan Singh that he should marry again, and Birshan was married to a thirty-year-old woman. After the marriage, the bride declared she wanted nothing to do with this old man and she refused to leave her father's house. Several times Birshan Singh went to the bride's father's house to ask her to come to his home, but he was rudely rebuffed.
The old man was a great devotee of Shri Babaji and he decided to live and travel with Babaji, serving Him in any possible way. Leaving family matters in the hands of his mature eldest son, Birshan Singh stayed with Babaji for seven years, walking through the Himalayas - to Nepal, Tibet, and China - and here and there in northern India.
At the end of those seven years, when Birshan was about 74, he and Shri Babaji were in Haldwani. Babaji told Birshan it was time for
