An unexpected transfer

Lahiri Mahasaya was an accountant in the British military engineering department. In 1861 he was abruptly transferred to a remote post at Ranikhet, in the Himalayas — a posting that seemed an inconvenience, but which his soul had been drawn toward across lifetimes.

The call in the hills

One evening, wandering in the hills above Ranikhet, Lahiri heard a voice calling his name. Following it, he was led to a cave where a radiant young yogi awaited him — Babaji, the deathless guru. Babaji revealed that Lahiri had been his disciple in a previous life, and that they had at last been reunited so that Kriya Yoga could be restored to the world.

The restoration of Kriya

There Babaji initiated Lahiri into the ancient technique of Kriya Yoga, lost to the general world for ages. But Babaji gave a revolutionary instruction: this time Kriya was not to be hidden away among forest renunciates. It was to be given freely to householders — to ordinary men and women living and working in the world.

Why every Kriyaban looks back to Ranikhet

From this meeting the entire modern lineage flows — through Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda and the masters of today. Ranikhet in 1861 is the fountainhead: the moment the deathless guru reached out of the mountains and handed the science of Self-realisation back to humanity. Read more in The Kriya Lineage.

The science restored on that night in 1861 flows on, unbroken, into our own age. See Kundalini Kriya Yoga, the path of Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath.