Shivapuri Baba, also known as Swami Govindanath Bharati, was a Hindu saint who reportedly lived from 1826 to 1963, making him 137 years old at the time of his death.
According to the biography written by John G. Bennett, Long Pilgrimage - The Life and Teaching of the Shivapuri Baba, Shivapuri Baba was born in the Indian State of Kerala as Jayanthan Nambudiripad in 1826 and became a seeker after truth at the age of 18.
He was one of the first spiritual teachers to travel to the West, where he met various European heads of state, as well as U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, before returning to India in 1915.[1]
He spent the last decades of his life in Nepal, where Bennett visited him twice in the early 1960s.
Shivapuri Baba appears to have been the first modern yoga master to transplant the wisdom of India to the West. He had no fewer than 18 audiences with Queen Victoria, who considered this great sage a friend. He was blessed with a very long life, which, after his awakening at the age of 50, he dedicated entirely to the spiritual welfare of others.He was also known for good well being personality because of his spiritual power and divine.
Shivapuri Baba taught that as humans we have three principal duties: first, physical duty, consists mainly in maintaining body and mind through proper livelihood, including the obligation to help one’s dependents to accomplish the same. Second, moral duty, consisting in remaining sensitive to the obligation to seek the truth 24 hours a day. Third, spiritual duty, by which he meant the worship of the Divine. He felt certain that if we attend carefully to the first two duties for a decade, we will naturally become able to fulfill the third duty. Physical discipline, he noted, brings pleasure. Moral discipline gives us serenity. Spiritual discipline yields deep peace and ultimate happiness.
Shivapuri Baba was dismissive of conventional yogic paths, because he saw in them potential distractions that might keep a person from performing the three duties. On closer inspection, his own sensible prescriptions are in fact a form of yoga.
He is said to have not been harmed by dangerous animals such as tigers or snakes in the forest. Instead, they were his "good friends" and would visit him regularly to eat what he offered to them.
John Godolphin Bennett; Thakur Lal Manandhar (2006). Long pilgrimage: the life and teaching of Sri Govindananda Bharati, known as the Shivapuri Baba. Giridhar Lal Manandhar. ISBN 9789994695676. http://books.google.com/books?id=nkaJPwAACAAJ. Retrieved 2 December 2010.