Yogiraj: The Life and Teachings of Shri Shankar Maharaj

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Yogiraj Shri Shankar Maharaj was a Siddha yogi, a compassionate and unusual Guru not bound by rules or convention. He was bent and deformed in body, and usually appeared to be half-witted and inebriated from the brandy he drank. However when situation demanded, he would use his yogic powers to appear like a child to some, a tall muscular yogi to others, and even as Lord Shiva and Lord Hanuman to some others.

Shri Shankar Maharaj belonged to the Nath Panth though he never wore the traditional attire of the sect. Maharaj spoke with a lisp and preferred not to preach himself, using instead disciples like Taisaheb Mehendale and Sardar Mirikar to spread the message of Dnyaneshwari, a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by Sage Dnyaneshwar- a work that was very dear to Maharaj.

Maharaj extended his abundant grace to the rich and poor alike and was loved by all. Also his teachings were not limited to the Hindu tradition. In fact, he taught Muslims like Khansaheb the true meaning of Islam and induced them to do daily namaz. His contemporaries - Chile Maharaj of Kolhapur, known as the avatar of Lord Dattatreya, Fakir Baba, well-known sage from Maharashtra, and Hazrat Babajan, the renowned lady Sufi sage from Pune-considered him as their spiritual 'brother'

When Maharaj took samadhi in 1947 in Pune he was about 150 years of age. To this day hundreds of devotees visit his samadhi located on Pune-Satara road.

Yogiraj chronicles the life and teachings of this spiritual giant in the words of some of his most prominent disciples.

This biography of Shri Shankar Maharaj was originally intended to be published as a regular book. However, since most of the devotees of Shri Shankar Maharaj are used to reading Marathi literature, potential publishers did not find it practical to publish this book which was in English. Fortunately, use of the Internet became widespread In mid 1900's and an extract was posted in February 2000 on the Internet that gave devotees access to information depicting the personality of Shri Shankar Maharaj at the following URL as a sub-page of my English translation of Dnyaneshwari: www.hinduweb.org/home/dharma_and_philosophy/ushirvaikar/ Dnyaneshwari.

The text was quite popular. Unfortunately after some time the Website managers of Hinduweb stopped access to it making it impossible to upload revisions and updates. By this time the biography of Shri Shankar Maharaj was in the final stage of completion. This and other spiritual writings by the author were shifted to the 'geocities' platform at http://www.geocities.com/ vshirvaikar offered by Yahoo! until Yahoo! too discontinued Geocities in 2009. The Webpages were then transferred to the present URL www.vvshirvaikar.de at the domain owned by my good friend Mr. Dietrich Platthaus from Essen, Germany.