I apologized and sat down. She asked me,
“Tu ishwar mein vishwas nahin karta?
(Don’t you believe in God?)”
I admitted I did not.
“Bahut ghamand hai tere mein.
(You are full of pride.)
Isi liye itna bakwass likhta hai.
(That is why you write such rubbish.)”
She invited me to spend some time with her at the Hathroi Fort in Jaipur, so as to teach me how to write. She spoke for over an hour. Her tone changed to one of affection. I was enchanted by her rough, loving tone. When I took her leave, I touched her feet and received her blessings. It was too dark for me to see what she looked like.
A few weeks later I went to Jaipur – the photographer Raghu Rai was with me. Armed with a basket of fruit, we arrived at the Hathroi Fort: it was in fact a miniature fortress atop a hill overlooking the All India Radio Station and the city of Jaipur. As haunted a place as I have ever seen. There were lots of dogs and snakes about. We climbed the stairs to the first floor. Shraddha Mata was sitting on a charpoy, with four puppies playing at her feet. We touched her feet. As ordered by her, we took the basket of fruit to the tower where there was a temple. Shraddha Mata was known to spend her nights there practicing tantra.
While Raghu Rai got busy clicking photographs I sat at her feet and had a good look at her. She must have then been in her seventies: light-skinned and full-bosomed. In her younger days she must have been stunningly beautiful. From the time she became a sadhvi she took to wearing a leopard skin round her middle weaving her hair in a chignon like those seen in pictures of Lord Shiva and carrying a
trishul
in her hand. To the anglicized Nehru she must have looked like an incarnation of the Mother India of his fantasies.
It was at the Lucknow circuit house that Panditji invited her over one evening after his day’s work was done. Panditji did what any man would have done to an attractive young woman dressed in no more than a leopard skin. When she wrote to him of its consequences Panditji stopped writing to her. Nobody knows whether she bore him a son or a daughter, or what became of him or her.
Shraddha Mata was more taken up by Raghu Rai than me. He was, as he is still, a handsome fellow. She invited him to spend the night at the Hathroi Fort to get the atmosphere of the place. Raghu funked accepting her invitation.
The next time I called on Shraddha Mata was in winter. She was having a bath in a tub placed on the parapet. She shouted to me to sit down in the verandah outside her bedroom. I could see her from where I sat. She continued talking loudly as she rubbed herself dry with a towel. It was very titillating.
She came away looking fresh and cheerful. She had been abroad meeting her disciples.
She invited me to spend the night in the fortress. Like Raghu Rai, I too funked accepting her offer.
I wrote several pieces on her. Among the many letters I received, one was from a lawyer in Bareilly who claimed to be her husband. He offered to tell me everything about Shraddha Mata if I gave him a large sum of money. He ended his letter saying, “This woman was not even born a virgin.”
I asked Shraddha Mata about this man. She dismissed him with scorn. She told me she was born into a zamindar family (very distantly related to Union Minister for External Affairs Dinesh Singh). As a child she was named Parvati but was addressed as Bacchasahib.
After she became a sadhvi, she took on the name Shraddha Devi Jijnasu. Everyone called her Shraddha Mata. She had been given away in marriage at the age of twelve. She refused to live with her husband and instead went off to join Gandhiji who advised her to return to her husband or her parents. She did neither; she turned into a sadhvi.
Although I met Shraddha Mata no more than six or seven times, each meeting was for me a memorable occasion. I have never met a more unusual woman.
The next time I go to Jaipur I will visit her grave at the Hathroi Fort to strew rose petals and some tears.
27/8/94
“A
prophet is never recognized in his own country till after the world has acclaimed him,” said a London-based physician at a Press conference in Hotel Meridian. His words were largely directed at me because I had questioned the utility of
Sahaj
Yoga and meditation. The prophet in question was Mata Nirmala Devi. A galaxy of doctors from the United States, England, Russia and India were present to vouch for the beneficial effects of
Sahaj
Yoga on minds and bodies of practitioners. They maintained that it cures bronchial asthma, epilepsy, migraine, arthritis, paralysis, high blood pressure, diabetes, blood cancer and even AIDS. Two men and a woman came forward to testify that when other conventional methods of treatment failed they were cured by
Sahaj
Yoga. Who was I to question their testimony?
I did not. I conceded that meditation and yoga reduce stress and are perhaps the most efficacious method of restoring balance in unbalanced minds. Mind and body interact on each other: a sick mind will induce sickness in the body. What I questioned was their uses for people with healthy minds and bodies. Why should they waste their time trying to rouse the imaginary serpent (
kundalini
) lying curled up at the base of their spines, make it rise through imaginary
chakras
(circles) to the top of the skull? What kind of self-realization is this? What does it achieve besides a sense of self-satisfaction?
My questions were at first not understood. The learned doctor who proceeded to denounce me for not recognizing a new world teacher in our midst assured me that peace of mind that meditation produced was not static as in a vegetable but helped creative minds to renewed creativity. I was not convinced. Then Mataji beckoned to me to come and sit beside her. Till then she had addressed me as ‘Sardar Sahib’; she got my name and discerned what troubled me. “You have too much anger in you,” she said taking both my hands in hers. She has very silken, soft hands and a soothing maternal voice. Although she is younger than me, I surrendered to her ministrations. She ran her fingers over my arm and hands many times chanting, “It is out, it is out”. Then waved her arms round my body and asked, “How do you feel now?” I replied honestly, “I enjoy having my hands held.” She gave me a beaming smile. She held the flat of her palm above my head. “Do you feel cooler?” she asked. “I do. But it could be the air-conditioning. Or auto-suggestion,” I replied. I was a gone case. “You must come and see me alone. I am sure I can help you.”
I warmed towards Mata Nirmala Devi; I will go to see her. But how do I tell her that I have no problems of mind or body, and need no help?
3/4/1993
The Wealthy and the Business of
Sahaj
Yoga
O
ne article I had carried excerpts from Osho Rajneesh’s book about his opinion of Mata Nirmala Devi. He did not have anything kind to say about her. I felt it was only fair to make my own assessment and met her alone to clear my doubts. My introduction came through a young and attractive neophyte Vinnie Vohra. It was she who first took me to Mataji’s press conference at Hotel Le Méridien and it was she again who made the appointment for me at the Sahaj Yoga Ashram a day before Mataji was due to return to England, where she lives with her husband.
On the way to the Ashram I asked Vinnie where money for the extensive publicity and public meeting came from: at a rough guess, half-page insertions in all the national newspapers for many days, thousands of posters and
bandobast
for meetings must have come to about Rs 50 lakh. It was almost on the same scale as publicity arranged for Maharshi Mahesh Yogi. “I wouldn’t know,” admitted Vinnie. “I expect that her followers make contributions. We pay in rupees; foreigners in dollars. Her open meetings draw large crowds of between 10,000 to 20,000.
We arrived at the Ashram. It is a four-storeyed stone building facing open rocky, scrub land with the Qu tub Minar at a short distance. From the number of cars lined outside I could guage
Sahaj
Yogis were well-to-do and Mata Nirmala Devi had no money problem.
We were received by her chief acolyte, Dr Tal war, an ever-smiling portly Punjabi and a relative of Mataji. We were taken up by a lift. It was 10.30 a.m. Mataji was still at her breakfast. While we awaited her a few other disciples came and squatted on the red carpet. Besides me, there was only one young man Dr Verma, a scholar of comparative religious studies, who was seated on a chair. “You see I am her son-in-law but not yet a disciple. I am studying her techniques with an open mind,” he explained.
Enter Mataji. Dr Talwar who had been explaining the basis of
Sahaj
Yoga by the help of charts and diagrams resumed his monologue on
kundalini
and its upwards progress through
chakras
to the cranium with an occasional nod of approval from Mataji. I interrupted: “Surely
kundalini
and
chakras
are notional concepts, You can’t see them through X-Ray or in a post-mortem examination.”
There was a chorus of protests “No, no, no. Not notional. Real. Their existence can be established scientifically.” I don’t know what they thought the word notional meant; it sounded like an abuse to them. I let it pass but wanted to know what was new in Mataji’s teaching. “Nothing new,” she conceded.
“Kundalini
yoga has been known to Indians for centuries but they made its realization very arduous. That is where
Sahaj
Yoga comes in. It makes realization easy and painless.”
There is no mention of
kundalini
in the Rig Veda but it became currency by the time
Mahabharat
and
Ramayan
came to be written. In Benjamin Walker’s
Hindu World,
an encyclopaedic survey of Hinduism,
kundalini
is defined as ‘curled’ potent occult energy symbolized by a serpent having three-and-a-half coils, and sleeping with its tail in the mouth. It is often referred to as a goddess and has its home in the subtle body
sooksham shareera,
occupying a point near the base of the spine at the
mooladhaara
plexus two fingers above the rectum and two fingers below the generative organs.”
In most cases the
kundalini
is in deep slumber. “The controlled awakening of the
kundalini
is the object of several branches of occultism, including yoga, and tantrism. The traditional methods prescribed to arouse it are a combination of
asanas
and
mudras
and regulated breathing. The pressure of controlled breathing awakens the serpent. It uncoils itself, becomes stiff as a rod and begins to climb upwards through the spine, passes through seven
chakras
represented by inverted lotus flowers. They turn upwards and blossom. The serpent’s journey ends on the top of the skull and releases all the potential mental and spiritual energy contained in the body. Practitioners are warned not to indulge in the exercise without a proper guide otherwise the consequences can be disastrous. Mata Nirmala Devi’s
Sahaj
Yoga makes it all very easy and as quick as Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation.
“What exactly does the exercise achieve?” I asked. An Indian doctor practising in Canada replied by giving an example: “I visited the Birla Mandir in Jaipur. There was a tablet with all the names of Ganpati on it. They meant nothing to the people thronging the temple. But to a
Sahaj
Yogi their symbolism was clear.” This went above my head.
Dr Talwar took over. “I used to drink heavily; four to five cocktail parties every evening. Almost a bottle of Scotch Whisky a day. I came to
Sahaj
Yoga and have never touched a drop again.”
“Don’t you miss it?” I asked.
“Not a bit,” he replied. “I feel on top of the world without external stimulants.”
“Mataji has not been able to turn her brother into a teetotaller,” I interrupted. Her brother is Union minister N.K.P. Salve. The Salves are Maharashtrian Christians. “I have had vintage Scotch in his house,” I added.
Mataji smiled and replied, “I don’t take a glass of water in his house.”
I cannot claim to have understood what I heard that morning. On the way back I asked Vinnie Vohra what she made of it. “If it does not do you any good, it cannot do you any harm. Mataji went to see Lai Bahadur Shastri’s wife in hospital where she was being treated for cancer. She was in great pain. Mataji was able to relieve her of pain and promised to cure her if she gave up radium and other kinds of therapy. The doctors refused to comply. She should have given
Sahaj
Yoga a try.” (Mrs Shastri died a week later). I could sense Vinnie had become a
Sahaj
Yogin.
25/4/93
F
our years ago I was persuaded to pay a courtesy call on Bhola Nath/i, founder of the World Prayer Movement and regarded by his followers as the
Kalki
Avatar. Being an agnostic I approached him with a certain amount of scepticism. But no sooner he embraced me lying in bed my resistance collapsed. He was as handsome a man of his age – he was nearing 90 – that I had seen and exuding warmth I had not felt before. He welcomed me with an Urdu couplet:
Rindon kee talab par kausar ko bhee josh aayaa
Paimaana bakaf aayaa, maikhaana badosh aayaa
(When thirsting sinners asked for the wine of truth The wine-server was so overcome, he came running Carrying a goblet in his hand And the tavern on his shoulders.)
I was overwhelmed by the torrent of Persian, Urdu and Hindi poetry that poured out of his lips. When he died six months ago, I wondered if I would see another man like him. A fortnight ago I met his son Priya Nath Mehta whom I had seen earlier by his father’s bedside. I was started by the close resemblance to his distinguished sire. The same voice and the same flow of Persian, Urdu and Hindi poetry and quotations from the scriptures. He looks a living example of the
guru-chela parampara,
the belief that the spirit passes from one body to its successor as one lamp lights another.