Babuji was born in the north Indian town of Shahjahanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, India, on 30 April 1899. He was named Ram Chandra after one of the great figures of Indian history. His father was a lawyer and noted scholar who educated his son extensively in English, Urdu and Persian, perhaps hoping that he would follow in his father's footsteps. But from an early age Ram Chandra displayed a craving for spiritual realisation which overshadowed all other interests.

Ram Chandra became a babu, which in his native tongue designates a clerk, and it was from this profession that his affectionate nickname arose, Babuji. The suffix "ji" is an honorific, an expression of respect often appended to names or titles in India.

He began his spiritual education on his own, experimenting with the forms of devotion available in the Hindu religion and with certain yogic practices such as pranayama (the control of the breath). In June of 1922, at the comparatively young age of twenty-three, he first met his Master, a man with the same name as himself who lived in the town of Fatehgarh, not far from Shahjahanpur. Ram Chandra of Fatehgarh, affectionately known as Lalaji, was a saint of the highest calibre. He recognised Babuji as the man who had appeared to him in a dream years before, the one who was destined to succeed him as the leader of the great spiritual renaissance which he, Lalaji, had already initiated.

Of his spiritual condition Babuji wrote, "There seems to be uniformity in love. Ties of relationship seem to have been severed. I have as much respect for my servant as for my respected father. I have as much love for the sons of other people as I feel for my own sons. I have as much regard for a dog as I have for my own person, as if my own existence and that of a dog are identical. I also consider gold and earth to be the same. I see the pious and the wicked with one eye."

Following Lalaji's death, Babuji began to use the gift of transmission, or pranahuti (a yogic technique rediscovered by Lalaji and passed on to his successor as the basis for the Sahaj Marg system of raja yoga) all over India. In 1945, Babuji founded the Shri Ram Chandra Mission in honour of his Master.

Convinced that God is simple and can be arrived at by simple means, he began travelling outside of India to bring the method of the Sahaj Marg (the natural path) to the cultures of Europe and America in 1972. He was accompanied on these travels by his attendant and long-time general secretary of the Mission, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari of Madras. Parthasarathi, known by his associates as Chariji, was chosen by Babuji to be his spiritual representative and to carry on the work he had started.