My first time meeting a Guru
When I Met Babaji in Person
Staff Writer
As a work-study student at Shoshoni Yoga Retreat, most of my contact with Babaji had been through the weekly Zoom sessions. The staff and students would gather in the main temple, often still carrying the warmth from the wood stoves that heat the buildings through winter. We listened as he guided us through meditation, fielded questions, and spoke with the calm, direct presence he is known for. Over time, the rhythm of asanas, chanting, meditating, japa, and seva shaped my days, and I thought I had a fair sense of who he was.
I had read Spontaneous Recognition, joined the morning chants, and sat through long stretches of the Guru Gita and meditations in the temple at Shoshoni. I assumed I understood his energy and the field he created. Yet seeing him in person showed me how limited that idea had been.
On December 1st, a group of us from Shoshoni traveled to Eldorado Yoga Ashram for a sangha gathering. The Eldorado ashram has its own flavor—a mountain warmth, a closeness that comes from years of people sitting shoulder to shoulder in that little hall. Their Facebook photos often show students glowing after chanting, malas resting in their hands, their eyes soft from meditation. That evening carried the same feel as people packed the room, smiling, shifting on cushions, and waiting in joyful expectation.
I slipped into a seat near the back. Babaji sat at the front of the room. The moment I saw him, I sensed that something in the air had changed. His presence filled the space in a way that felt both subtle and strong, like a wide field settling over the room, like a heater warming a place chilled by winter. People grew quiet, but it was not the quiet of tension. It was the quiet of awe and unspoken hopes.
I had brought prasad, wrapped with care earlier in the day, but kept it tucked beside me. The thought of standing before him felt intimidating, so I stayed in the small comfort of anonymity. It felt like a moment of grace, where nothing was asked of me except to sit still and take in what was happening.
When the chanting began—Om Namah Shivaya, the heart of ShambhavAnanda Yoga—the whole room seemed to rise in a single breath. At Shoshoni, this chant weaves through the mornings, echoing through the main temple as the sun lifts over the mountains and lights the evergreens. It was familiar to me, yet that evening the sound struck a deeper place in my heart. I closed my eyes and followed the call-and-response as best I could. I believe Faith Stone led the chant, though the room echoed so fully that her voice blended into what felt like an angelic chorus.
I reached toward the cosmic awareness behind the sound, that still presence that holds all thought, and felt something open in my chest. My eyes grew misty and tears slid from their corners. The chant lifted me into a higher state of feeling and being.
Then came the Medicine Buddha chant, which I knew well from our Sunday practice at Shoshoni. Each word pressed against my heart chakra with a steady, uplifting force. It felt as if someone placed a warm and reassuring hand inside my chest. I stayed with the sound, and the sound stayed with me, until the room dissolved into one shared pulse of devotion.
When the chanting ended, the question-and-answer period called satsang began, but I was floating in a state that softened all edges. I could hear the voices, yet they reached me like sound traveling through water—clear enough to know speech was happening, yet too distant to form into meaning. I stayed still, breathing slowly, letting that field of awareness settle deeper into my spine.
I rose only after Babaji left the room with Faith. People gathered their coats and boots, spoke in soft tones, or bowed to each other before stepping out into the cold Boulder night. I sat a little longer, trying to understand what had shifted in me.
What stayed with me was this: there is an inner being in me that is not my ego, not my story, and not the part of me that tries to work life out. It is quieter. It watches. It knows. Meeting Babaji in person did not introduce me to something outside myself. It reminded me of something inside myself that I had forgotten—something vast, rooted, and awake.
And once you feel even a trace of that presence, it changes the way you walk in the world.