Who is Tripura Charan Devasharma?
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Yogacharya Tripura Charan Devasharma was born on 22nd May in the year 1906, at a village named Lachipur, under Ghatal sub-Division of West Medinipur, a District in West Bengal (India). The village Lachipur is about 125 Km south off Calcutta (Now called Kolkata), the capital of West Bengal.
He was the eldest son of Krittibas Harh (Devasharma). Krittibas Harh was a very pious man having high spiritual ideas. He used to devote most of his days time in worshipping God and chanting mantras (hymn). He used to read Ramayan and Mahabharat and other religious books and recited from those for the willing listeners, who used to gather in his house every evening. Thus Tripura Charan was brought up in a religious atmosphere. He became a devotee of God from the very childhood and the impulses of God grew into his hunger for eternal knowledge.
Lachipur being a remote village had no school, not to speak of any college in the vast locality. Accordingly he could not get any formal education from any school. Following the tradition of ancient Indian educational system, the little boy was sent by his father to a ‘toll’ (a residential Sanskrit School where Sanskrit was taught by a teacher called pundit) at Radhanagar a village at a distance of 8 Km from Lachipur. The boy had to stay at the Pundit’s house against household work. After completing his education there he went to another toll at a village named ‘Narajol’, to get higher education in Sanskrit. At the time of his final Examination of Sanskrit degree of the University of Calcutta, his father fell ill. Tripura Charanji gave up his studies and plunged into nursing of his father. On his father’s death he had to maintain a big family left by his father. They had some paddy fields and some cows which were the main source of income of the family. He used to go to distant fields to tend cows. With his own hand he cut grasses for the cows and would carry those to the house holding on his head. Apart from his family duties, the spiritual questions, which he nourished from boyhood, waved his mind. He asked his father – What is life ? Where from we have come ? where to go after death ? what is the purpose of such coming and going ? His father did not answer him but assured him that in due time he would get the answers from ‘Sat-Guru’.
After his father’s death those eternal questions made him restless and sleepless. He moved from place to place, Ashram to Ashram in search of a ‘Sat-Guru’. But how to identify the ‘Sat-Guru’ ?
At last the moment came when he got the ‘darsan’ of Yogacharya Satchidananda Maharaj popularly known as Motilal Thakur and came to know who is ‘Sat-Guru’. He got all the answers of his eternal queries before putting any question to his Lord. He got the initiation from Sri Sri Satchidananda, the disciple of Swami Yukteswar Giri Maharaj. Yukteswar Giri maharaj was the direct disciple of Yogiraj Sri Sri Shyamacharan Lahiri, the name needs no reference.
In this way Yogacharya Tripura Charan Devasharma got Kriya Yoga Diksha. Thenafter for some years he stayed with his Gurudev at ‘Chatra Sri Guru Ashram’ at Srirampur, another place in Hoghly District in West Bengal. That ashram was also the main ashram of Yukteswar Giriji Maharaj. There his Sadhana began and within a short period he crossed all the stages of ‘Kriya-Yoga’ and became ‘Acharya’. He had and still has thousands and thousands of disciples and a good number of Ashrams in West Bengal. His main Ashram is at Lachipur. The Ashram was founded by his Gurudev Satchidananda Maharaj.
In time Yogacharya Tripura Charan became a great Kriya-Yogi and Guru. One of his very famous disciple was swami Ganeshananda, the Ganesh Baba. Ganeshananda received third Kriya from Yogacharya Tripura Charan.
He gave Kriya-Yoga to person desiring it, irrespective of caste and creed, race or religion. He had some disciples from foreign countries also who used to speak English and French. Although Tripura Charan got no English education, he faced no difficulty to have conversations with them.
Tripura Charan always asked his disciples to do their duties to their family first and at the same time practice Kriya. He always told them to maintain their family and simultaneously maintain their religious life keeping their faith on God through the realisation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent.
He has kept his ideas and thinking on some of his religious books namely ‘Sadhan Bhajan’, ‘Kriya-Yoga’, ‘Diksha Shiksha’, ‘Atma Parichay’ etc.
After completion of his work and fulfillment of his mission, he entered into ‘Maha Samadhi’ on the 8th February, 1982, the auspicious day of Maghi Purnima (The full-moon night of the 10th month "Magha" of the Bengali Calendar).
Anybody interested may contact at gurudham@bluebottle.com
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