Gurudev was a man who made mountains out of mountains, who thought they were molehills.
Born as Rajinder Chanan, he started his life as any kid next door, in Hariana, a village 17kms from Hoshiyarpur, in Punjab.
One of six children, he was born to a trader and a housewife. Brought up in a humble home, he completed his schooling at DAV school, making a mark as one of the naughty students. Quite mischievous as a young boy, he and his friends plucked radish and carrots from fields and were often chased away. The only unique thing about him was that he lit an earthen oil lamp at a dargah every Thursday and spent hours at a temple near his house.
As he grew up, he got into the habit of disappearing for hours, spending time with holy men, much older than him. He completed many siddhis in order to acquire spiritual energy. After he managed to pass school, which was a surprise and shock to all alike, he worked as a bus conductor in Delhi. His account always running short because he found it impossible to charge poor people. As luck would have it, he got admission to an overseer’s course at the PUSA Agricultural University in Delhi. After graduating, he joined the agricultural ministry and became a soil surveyor.
Till this point his life was following a normal trajectory. At the age of 35, a spiritual somersault happened; an inner voice told him he needed to go to Hari ki Pawri at Haridwar and give up all his Siddhis in the Ganges river. When he finished doing this, he knew it marked the beginning of his spiritual life, but he knew not how it would happen.
Later he was told by the inner voice, that an Om was formed in his right palm, and he could see it visibly. As time went by, he acquired the symbols of Trishul, Shivling and Gileri, Ganpati, Nandi bull etc. He was asked to start healing people, and he did. Starting with a handful, there came a time when there were 35,000-40,000 people waiting in queue to meet him. The sthans (home temples), a concept that he established spread to all parts of the country and beyond.
He gave the power to heal to over a 100 people. They all ran these sthans in their homes. These disciples spread their wings further and trained others. This one man tree became an orchard. In 20 years he and his spiritual family of shishyas had served millions of people (he cured my rheumatoid arthritis of over 10 years in less than a minute). I was lucky to be one of the people he picked, trained and helped evolve. Without him my life would not have been worth it.
Ordinary people who had very little to write home about spiritualism became giants under his tutelage. They saw themselves as molehills and he saw them as the mountains they became. They judged themselves in the present, he evaluated them from their past, present and future. They saw themselves as people, in his vision, they were beings. A part of the whole, and a part of him.