of the Divinity), about a foot and a half tall, appeared in his hands. The lingam broke in two and a tall, handsome man emerged standing in front of the boy. The man was in the form of a jangama devara, an ascetic who worships and dresses like Lord Shiva. His dark skin appeared smeared with light ash. He wore a white dhoti, a necklace of rudraksha beads, and his matted hair piled on top of his head, in the manner of the yogis of ancient times. He was extremely handsome with large, beautiful eyes. A bright light emanated from him, and all Sathyaraju could see was the yogi and the divine light. The yogi instructed Sathyaraju to sit in a cross-legged position and close his eyes. The yogi touched the boy's forehead at the spiritual third eye (bhrikuti) between the eyebrows, then gently tapped him on top of the head. Sathyaraju immediately passed into samadhi. His friends saw him sitting as if in deep meditation, leading them to think that he was acting. But when they were unable to rouse him from this state, they were afraid Sathyaraju was either possessed by a spirit or dead. Tapas Sathyaraju became known as Adivarapupeta Balayogi, the boy yogi of Adivarapupeta. Many of the villagers believed he was acting, to earn fame and money as a holy man (sadhu). Some abused the boy. The Balayogi was said to have been in samadhi for twenty-three hours a day for eight years. The Balayogi moved the place of his meditation to a field where the villagers buried children who died young. It was a place the villagers feared at night, so they mostly left the boy alone. There his body suffered from bites, and the skin on his legs began to rot during the rainy season. His body became stiff from the constant meditation until, as Shivabalayogi described, the yogi who had initiated him into tapas, his divine guru, cured all but his hands. He claimed to have mastered meditation in all four cardinal directions (east, north, west and south). Then he claimed his divine guru instructed him to meditate twelve hours a day for another four years to complete a full twelve-year cycle. Through this process, he supposedly achieved nirvikalpa samadhi which is described as follows: "Thus with all doubts and thoughts extinguished, His mind now absorbed back completely into that Self from