Siddha Coffee

During some of the “Be in the Temple” satsangs that have taken place thus far in 2020, the pujari—the person performing puja—has offered naivedya; they have made a sacred offering of food to Bhagavan Nityananda. As part of this food offering, the pujari has often offered to Bade Baba a very special beverage, a beverage that has become beloved on the Siddha Yoga path—and that is Siddha Coffee.

Siddha Coffee was created by Baba Muktananda in homage to Bade Baba, his Guru. Bade Baba was from South India, where coffee plants are cultivated and coffee is a traditional beverage that many people drink.

Baba made Siddha Coffee for the first time in 1975 in the kitchen of the Siddha Yoga Ashram in Oakland. Originally, it was known as “Baba’s Coffee,” and it was distinct for its addition of Indian spices—cardamom and nutmeg—to the sweet, milky coffee. It was an instant hit! But that was not unusual with Baba’s food.

Baba was masterful with cooking, and he loved to feed people. In the course of his travels across India as a young seeker, Baba had helped with the cooking in Siddharudha Swami’s Ashram. Later, when Baba became the Guru and embarked on his World Tours, he would feed people wherever he went.

It was a great joy and privilege to witness Baba when he was in the kitchen, to see how he treated food with such reverence, and how he guided everyone else in holding the awareness that Food Is God. Baba cooked with exuberance, efficiency, and incredible ingenuity. He would mix flavors that we might not have expected to go together, but inevitably, they would—and more wonderfully than we could imagine. He would always know when a dish needed more of a certain spice, or another squeeze of lemon. And with Baba, nothing edible was to be wasted—not even broccoli stalks.

The sum total of all of this was, of course, greater than its component parts. In Baba’s food you could not only taste ambrosial flavors, you could experience his grace, his love. Baba’s recipes did not just satiate the stomach; they satisfied the soul. Truly, in Baba’s cooking, there was divine alchemy.

This recipe for Siddha Coffee represents the best efforts of those people who cooked with Baba over the years to translate his spontaneous creation into written form. The addition of the spices is for flavor, as well as to support digestion. You see, Baba had an extensive knowledge of Ayurveda and knew how to craft food as medicine, how to select and adjust spices to aid in the digestion of specific foods, according to Ayurvedic principles. So it was with this coffee, his coffee, Siddha Coffee. Nourishing, in all ways.