Papaji (H.W.L. Poonja)

Hariwansh Lal Poonja, later known to his students as Papaji, was born into a Saraswat Brāhmaṇa family at Gujranwala in the Punjab (now in Pakistan). A lifelong Krishna devotee in his youth, he met Ramana Maharshi at Tiruvannamalai in 1944 and there underwent the realization of the Self that reoriented his life toward Ramana's path of self-enquiry. After the 1947 Partition he relocated his family from the Punjab and, after years of work (including in mining), eventually settled in Lucknow, where from the 1970s onward he received a growing stream of Indian and Western seekers, teaching a direct, practice-light message of immediate freedom. Several prominent contemporary non-dual teachers (Mooji, Andrew Cohen, and his biographer David Godman among those associated with him) came through his satsangs. He died in Lucknow in 1997. His life is well documented, partly through Godman's biographical work.