February 7, 2025
5 min
I know many calm and quiet places in the lap of the Himalayas where one can live and meditate without being disturbed. Whenever I get tired, I think of recharging myself by going to the Himalayas for a short period. One of my favorite places for such a retreat is in the district of Garhwal, twelve miles north of Lansdowne, where at the height of 6,500 feet there is a small Shiva temple surrounded by thick fir trees.
In that region nobody eats corn without offering it to the deity of that temple. According to the local folklore, if anyone forgets to make this offering, their house starts shaking and they behave strangely. When I first heard this story at the age of fourteen, I had a desire to visit that temple. I thought that people create such myths out of their imagination and spread stories which are believed by everyone, though they have no basis in reality. I decided to visit that place to see for myself.
It was seven o’clock in the evening as I approached the temple, and it was already dark. I was traveling along the edge of a cliff. I did not have a light with me, and in those days I wore wooden sandals, which were very unstable. I slipped and was on the verge of falling off the steep cliff when suddenly a tall old man dressed in white caught me in his arms and brought me back to the footpath. He said, “This is a holy place and you are fully protected. I will take you to your destination.” He led me along the path for about ten minutes, until we neared a thatched cottage with a torch burning outside.
“This is a holy place and you are fully protected. I will take you to your destination.”
When we came to the stone wall surrounding the cottage, I thought he was walking just behind me, but when I turned to thank him, I could not find him anywhere. I shouted after him, and the sadhu who lived in the cottage heard me and came out. He was pleased to have a guest and told me to follow him to his small room, where a fire was burning. I told the sadhu about the old man who had shown me the path in the dark. I described his appearance and explained how he had saved me from falling off the cliff.
The sadhu started weeping and said, “You were fortunate to encounter that great man. Do you know why I am here? Seven years ago I also lost my way at exactly the same place. It was eleven o’clock at night. The same old man took hold of my arm and brought me to this thatched hut where I now live. I have never seen him again. I call him Siddha Baba. His loving arms also saved me.”
The next morning I searched the whole area, but did not find any such man. I went to the cliff and saw the marks where I had slipped. It was a dangerous place, and had I fallen, there would have been no chance of survival. Later I talked to the villagers about my experience, and they all knew about this siddha. They believe that he protects their women and children in the forest, but none of the villagers have seen him. During that time I was strictly following the austerities and instructions of my master, and I did not possess anything or carry anything with me. My experience has often confirmed the belief that those who have nothing and rely solely on the Divine are cared for by the Divine. I often remember those loving arms that protected me.
The thatched cottage in which the sadhu lived was just a hundred yards from the small Shiva temple. The temple was in a small clearing in the woods surrounded by tall fir trees. That place was highly charged with spiritual vibrations. I learned that a great siddha had lived there six hundred years ago. He instructed and guided those who lived in the area, although he remained in silence. After his death a six-foot-square temple was built where he lived. Inside is a Shiva lingam (an oval-shaped stone which is a symbol of Shiva). Even today the villagers visit the temple every three months, before each new season begins, to keep their memories of that great man alive. I stayed in a small room near the temple for several months, remaining alone and practicing silence and austerities.
A few years after my first visit to that temple, some brahmins decided to build a larger, more solid, and more majestic temple in place of the small old temple which was no longer in good repair. When the laborers began digging around the foundation to remove the old temple, they found that the earth was full of small snakes of various colors. So they started picking up the snakes along with the dirt and throwing both aside. But the deeper they dug, the more the snakes appeared. An old woman from a nearby village came to the temple each morning and evening. In the evening she walked three miles to the temple to light the lamp inside, and in the morning she came and extinguished it. She had done this regularly for several years. She didn’t want the temple to be modified and warned the builders not to disturb it, but the engineer who was in charge of the project didn’t pay her any heed.
After digging for six days, they found there was no end to the snakes. The more they removed, the more they found. They dug around the Shiva lingam in order to move it but found that it was buried deep in the ground. They dug down eight feet but could not remove it. On the eighth night the engineer had a dream in which the old yogi who had rescued me appeared with his white beard and long gown. He told the engineer that the Shiva lingam was sacred and should not be moved, and that the temple should not be enlarged. So the old temple was rebuilt exactly as it had stood for six centuries.
I visited this place again in the spring of 1973 with a small group of students. We stayed there for six days in a small two-storied earthen and stone house which had been built a few hundred feet from the temple. Another old sadhu lives there now and serves anyone who comes to visit the temple. The place is serene and beautiful. At the top of the tall hills that surround the valley you can see the long ranges of the Himalayas as though all the snowy peaks are tightly clinging to one another, determined to stand firmly from eternity to eternity.
