There are not many people on this planet that have captured my imagination but Troilanga Swami is one of them. Imagine a 3oo plus pound spiritual master who spent his whole life walking the streets of Benares butt naked or “sky clad” as they say  “as carefree as a child”.

  A little of his history. Born sometime between 1530 and 1600, he took to the spiritual life at age 40 after his parents died. He decided to do the Shiva thing renouncing the world and lived in a cremation ground( obviously it must have been a peaceful place to meditate)  practicinghis sadhana for 20 years before meeting his Guru, Bhagirathananda Saraswati. He reportedly led a life of extreme austerities, went on a pilgrimage and ended up in Varanasi. According to the biographers he lived nearly 300 years!  While in Varanasi he crossed paths with some of the big shots of the spiritual world, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Mahendranath Gupta, Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Bhaskarananda and Vijaykrishna Goswami (his disciple)

 Ramakrishna said that “all Benares was illuminated by his stay there”, he also described him as the moving Shiva.

 There are some classic stories about him that crack me up and have really endeared him to me.

 Troilanga was famed for his spiritual and occult powers. Guru said he had tremendous spiritual and occult power. Once he lobbed into a kings palace, the king and his queen were swimming in his pool, there was a big commotion.When Troilangas disciples arrived they tried to calm the situation but the King decided to put Troilanga on the spot and offered him meat ( Hindu yogis don,t eat meat). Troilanga said yes he would eat the kings meat but first the king must eat his food, the king agreed, Triolanga then proceded to “drop a turd” in front of them. Then, wait for it….He ate it! Evidently the fragrance of Triolangas turd was sandalwood, and there was happiness all round!……Gurus take on that event….

 ”The beauty of a childlike, innocent flower-heart gives off a special fragrance everywhere, not only from what it has within itself, but also from the fragrance it gets from the beauty that it sees all around.

It was not Troilanga Swami’s so-called curiosity that compelled him to go to the swimming pool, but it was his equality-vision which wanted to show to the world the evenness of reality everywhere. Discrimination abolished, equality’s universality reigns”.

Once he went into a Kali temple with Bijoy Krishna Goswami( who would later become his disciple), and urinatedon a statue of Kali to Bijoys shock. This is Guru,s take on the event…….”The Source is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. It is Reality omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. The lover of the Source, the know-er of the Source, the dweller in the Source and the possessor of the Source are all the same. Troilanga Swami as the lover of Kali and the beloved of Kali is the self-same reality”.

Once the police threw him in the slammer for his “skyclad” antics, but they soon found him on the roof in all his “skyclad” glory. They locked him up several more times, he dropped another one his sacred turds in the prison cell and reappeared in the Prison Wardens office and preceded to give him a lesson in spirituality.  The police gave up and let him continue walking the streets of Varanasi naked…..Gurus take on this incident….” A truly God-realised person is he who has the capacity not to be affected by others and, at the same time, not to affect others. He protects himself from the rest of the world and he protects the world from himself. This miraculous achievement of his is due to the inseparable oneness of his body’s divinity with his soul’s supreme universality. The body enjoys the soul’s freedom. The soul enjoys the body’s acceptance of the soul’s reality”.

Troilanga used to levitate on top of the Ganges for days at a time, he would also disappear under the water and reappear unharmed. He also raised a person from the dead according to Guru.

He died on Monday evening, December 26, 1887.

I love radical people. A radical person is someone who follows his faith with complete disregard to what society expects. That was one of the reasons i was attracted to Guru.His radical manifestation, his weight lifting, his art, his music, his writing, his peace concerts…. his whole life… was radical. He followed his spirituality with complete disregard to what society expected. Its the Yogis, the Masters and the Avatars that are the real radicals. That’s why i choose to follow one!…………..and a quote from one.

My Lord Supreme,

I was born to love You only.

I was born to place myself

At Your Feet only.

I was born to please You

In Your own Way only. Sri Chinmoy

…………and not society!

Eamon.