BABA KINĀRĀM’S LIFE AND LEGENDS By Baba Harihar Ram

Baba Kinārām was born in seventeenth century India into a kshatriya family in Rāmgarh,
in the Chandauli district of Varanasi. Scholars dispute his exact year of birth and the year he
relinquished his body, but all agree that he lived a very long life, until well over 100 years of
age. He is widely regarded as an enlightened being and a master of Aghor. He was also a
unique, and at times mischievous, non-sectarian social reformer who helped those in need
regardless of their caste or religion. Baba Kinārām established four Vaishnava monasteries
and four Aghor monasteries 1  and authored many texts, including Viveksār, Gītāvalī, Rām-

Rasāl, Rām-Gītā, Unmunī Rām. Other works that have been attributed to him but are not
available include Rām Capeṭā and Rām-Maṅgal.

From the time of Baba Kinārām’s youth, miracles happened around him. At age 12,
despite his resistance, he was married to a girl of a nearby village, according to the custom of
the time. A day before he was to bring his new wife to his family residence, he insisted on
having a meal of boiled rice and milk — a dish that is typically only consumed in death
rituals. The following day, his family learned that his young wife had died the night before.
How he came to know of his wife’s death was a mystery.

Baba Kinārām set out to wander at around the age of 15. His travels took him to Karo, a
village in Gazipur, where he met Saint Shivarām (sometimes referred to as Shivadās) of the
Rā̄mā̄nuja sect and he was initiated into the Vaishnava tradition. Although he ended up
leaving the saint’s household, the initial teachings he received remained strongly with him
throughout his lifetime.
Baba Kinārām pays homage to his Vaishnava guru first in the beginning of Viveksār :

I have known the wish-fulfilling tree of all wishes, the compassionate Guru
whose auspicious Name is Shiva Rām. Kinārām has recognized him.
(Viveksār, verse 7)

     Scholars believe that Baba Kinārām retained the name “Rām” at the end of his own name
to keep his link with saint Shivarām alive, a tradition that continues in the Aghor lineage that

he established. It is also probable that Shivarām had given him the name of Rāma as a mantra
to meditate upon:

Remembering the name of Rām in my heart and carrying the holy dust of
my Guru’s feet on my heart, I set out to reveal the thoughts of wisdom in the
form of a dialog between Guru and disciple in Viveksār. (Viveksār, verse 1)

References in his writings indicate that Baba Kinārām traveled extensively throughout
India, including modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Notably, Baba Kinārām journeyed to
Girnar, an ancient and sacred mountain located in Junagadh, Gujarat, where it is said he met
with the legendary Guru Dattātreya, an avatār of Lord Shiva. At this auspicious meeting,
Baba Kinārām was introduced to the Aghor tradition. Their discourse is the context of
Viveksār:

 The great Sage, the great compassionate One smiled, placed His hand on
my head, and revealed to me the Gyān (knowledge), the Vigyān (inner
wisdom), and established stable devotion in my heart. (Viveksār, verse 12)

     As legend tells us, Baba Kinārām was making his way to the top of a hill in the Girnar
Mountains when he met an old sādhu. The sādhu was eating a piece of meat and offered
some to Baba Kinārām, who, being a Vaishnava, did not eat meat. After some hesitation,
Baba Kinārām received the meat with grace and ate it. At that very moment he acquired
omniscience. He knew by intuition that the old sādhu before him was Bhagwān Dattātreya
himself.

In this story, Baba Kinārām is said to have been wandering in what the scriptures call the
‘unmanī state’, searching for truth. 2 He came again into the presence of Bhagwān Dattātreya,
in various forms and received many teachings. As he meditated on the Self (Ātmā), he
realized pure knowledge, a harmonious view of the universe, the oneness of everything. 3

Bhagwān Dattātreya called this knowledge the immortal seed. After knowing it, it is never
lost, and no sorrows develop in the seeker. Baba Kinārām had received the grace of Bhagwān
Dattātreya and absorbed his teachings.

As Baba Kinārām continued to wander, he encountered the Divine Mother at Hingalaj, 4
in the form of a woman who offered him food as a mother to a son. She directed him to travel
to the holy city of Varanasi, to a place called Krīṃ Kund and told him that she herself would
go with him.

Baba Kinārām left the solitude of the forest and undertook the long, arduous journey
back to Varanasi. When he arrived, he walked along the banks of the Ganges until he came to
the cremation ground at Harischandra Ghat. There he came across a yogi, tall and dark
skinned, feeding roasted chickpeas to the skulls of skeletons lying at the cremation grounds.
In a playful mood, Baba Kinārām ordered the skulls to stop eating. They stopped. The yogi
looked at him and said in a rather sly tone, “I am hungry. Can you feed me?”

Baba Kinārām, facing the Ganges, said, “O Gangā, please give us food for three.” Three
large fish jumped out of the river into the dhūni (sacred fire). When the yogi saw the fish in
the fire, he was silent for a moment. Then he pointed his finger and cried, “There’s a dead
body floating in the river!”

Baba Kinārām responded, “No, he’s not dead. He is alive.” He called the body, which
slowly floated to the bank of the river and stood up.
The three people now sitting together in the cremation grounds ate the roasted fish. After
their meal, Baba Kinārām told the so-called dead man to go to his village where his relatives
had put him into the river because he had died of smallpox. Instead, the man requested to stay
with Baba Kinārām, who granted his wish. The yogi introduced himself as Baba Kālūrām and
took Baba Kinārām to Krīṃ Kund, exactly where the Divine Mother had instructed him to
go. After telling Baba Kinārām that the ashram was now his, Baba Kālūrām disappeared.

Being omniscient, Baba Kinārām recognized these experiences as tests and knew that

Bhagwān Dattātreya had appeared to him again, disguised as Baba Kālūrām, to be sure his
teachings had taken root. During the long years of Baba Kinārām’s life, until he left his body,
he always felt the close presence of the Goddess of Hingalāj and Bhagwān Dattātreya at Krīṃ
Kund.

Baba Kinārām’s life story is full of miraculous incidents where he acted on behalf of the
poor, the oppressed, and women, without worrying about the consequences. 5

Baba Kinārām was notorious for challenging unjust authorities. In fact, he could be
considered an activist saint who introduced a unique form of passive resistance: getting
himself arrested on purpose, going to jail, and then creating so much havoc within the jail that
the rulers were forced to negotiate with him for the release of him and other prisoners. After
he was excluded from a feast organized by the chief priest of Varanasi, he arrived at the event
and the vegetarian dishes on the guests’ plates turned to fish and the water in their cups
turned to wine. On another occasion, after being taunted by Raja Chet Singh, Baba Kinārām
cursed the king that his lineage would be barren and he would need to abandon his palace.
This curse lasted until modern times until the Maharaja of Varanasi asked for forgiveness
from Aghoreshwar Bhagwān Rām for Raja Chet Singh’s offenses to break the curse.

Baba Kinārām lived at a pivotal time in the history of India during the Moghul Empire
when India’s culture was being destroyed and the caste system was instituted to disempower
common people. Witnessing the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised, he became
engaged in social movements to help them. A true visionary, he appointed people from lower
castes to key positions in the various ashrams he established, upsetting the prevailing custom.
Further, he introduced initiation of women into the Aghor tradition and welcomed whole
families to do practices. In these ways he resisted the orthodox restraints that were causing so
much suffering. His good works became legendary.

Like the dhūni that he consecrated, which burns continuously to this day at Krīṃ Kund,
Baba Kinārām’s wisdom continues to illuminate the path of a true seeker.

NOTES:

1 Vaishnava monasteries: Rāmgarh (Chandauli District, Varanasi), Mahuwar, Marukpur (Varanasi),
Nayidih District (Gajipur); Aghor monasteries: Krīṃ Kund (Varanasi), Hariharpur Sthal (Chandvak

District, Jaunpur), Rāmshala (Ramgarh, Chandauli, Varanasi), Deval (Jamaniya District, Gajipur).

2 Aghoreshwar Bhagwān Rām described this condition as “when the seeker is neither sleeping nor
awake, neither conscious nor unconscious, neither accepting nor relinquishing and experiencing
neither ‘being’ nor ‘non-being’. At that time, being one with prāṇa, the life force, the seeker is in
ecstasy.”
3 Understanding the difference between self and non-self, Baba Kinārām saw that everything — the
body, as well as the universe — consisted of five elements and three guṇas. “The human body is a
rare thing,” he said, “and only when God completed the creation of the human body was he satisfied.”
Learning to transcend his mind with the help of prāṇāyāma and praṇava, Baba Kinārām reposed in
his own inner self. As he resonated Om continuously on the breath and listened to the internal sounds

of the breath, eventually awareness of breath, prāṇa, and sound disappeared, and only a pure
enlightened mind was left.

4 Hinglāj Mātā (also Hinglāj Devī and Hingula,), the Goddess of Āshāpuri. A shrine to Hinglāj Mātā is
located in Hinglāj, a town in modern-day Pakistan, an area that has been an important pilgrimage
place for many traditions and is currently on the UNESCO tentative list of world heritage sites. It is
one of the most important Shakti pīṭhs, the locations where pieces of the body of Sati, Lord Shiva’s
first wife, are believed to have fallen to earth during his dance of destruction. Hinglāj is where Sati’s
head or Brahmarandhra is believed to have fallen. In the legends of Baba Kinārām, he took her with
him to Krīṃ Kund. Today there is a yantra dedicated to Hinglāj Mātā at Krīṃ Kund near to the Baba
Kinārām Sthal.

5 Examples of Baba Kinārām’s miracles as told in local legends include freeing a poor boy from the
clutches of a zamindār (landlord) for non-payment of taxes; interceding on behalf of faqīrs (Muslim
holy men) and saints imprisoned by the Mughal ruler of Junagadh by making all the stone mills in the
jail turn by themselves; blessing an infertile woman with four sons after four taps with his stick;
curing a sick child by having him bathe in Kriṃ Kund; intervening on behalf of a woman and her so-
called illegitimate child and saving them from being thrown into the sea, among many other incidents.
See Shri Sarveshwari Samooh, Brief Pictorial Life-History of Baba Kinaram (Allahabad, U.P.: Sri
Sarveshwari Samooh, N.d.)

From the book “ Viveksar: The Essence of Discernment ”

by Aghorāchārya Baba Kinārām