At Baba Nityananda’s Ashram

Does renunciation come from knowledge or does knowledge come after renunciation?

Param Poojya Swamiji remembers:
“I experienced everything in this world as a child. After my experience of self-realisation, I understood that there is nothing else in this world to know and there is no one in this world who can teach ME anything else.

“Yet, when I was taken to Baba Nityananda, the experience of meeting Him was extremely powerful. At Baba’s ashram, I was scared of a big snake, and used to implicitly follow Baba in all His activities, right from getting up at 3 AM and bathing in the hot springs there. Had I been older than the 11 year-old I was when I met Baba, He would have sent ME away. He showed ME how I had been following Him over MY last sixteen births. MY experiences staying with Him at His ashram for the next 15 days were numerous. The gist of them all is described in ‘Reminiscences’.

“That is how, from knowledge (gyan), I achieved renunciation (vairagya). People ask ME why I took sanyas at such a young age. I had realized that I could not afford to lose the Guru’s grace in this birth, since there never would be another chance.”