(From Radio Interview 1983 Oct 01, Santa Cruz USA)
Interviewer: Mother, today there are many, many things said about Sahaja Yoga, about Your philosophy, and very little is said about who You are as a person. [Shri Mataji laughs] And, I thought it would be good to start out with some, some questions about who You are; who were You as a child; what people influenced You; what brought You to the place You are today as a Luminous Being sitting before me and before us.
Shri Mataji: I am a very ancient being – that problem is like this. [laughter] I had to… what can I tell you about Myself? I just don’t know what part will interest you, but only thing I can say that I was born with this understanding and awareness that I have to find out a method by which I could give en masse Realization to people. I was a Realized Soul, of course. I knew all about it from My very childhood. But the problem was that how to make many people get it, because if one person gets it or one person has it; if one person is an incarnation, people don’t understand it. Not only that but they may even try to destroy such a person. That’s what happened to all the saints who came on this earth. Christ was crucified; Mohammed Sahib was given poison – because they were
ignorant. They did not know what it was, what was He saying.
So, it was important first of all to find out a method how to give them en masse Realization, and from that angle I just thought that “this is why I am on this earth and I have to do this job” for which I wanted to study about human beings. I took My birth in a Christian family and that too a family which was Protestant family, because I felt that Protestants are fanatics but very sophisticated. [laughter] And, they rationalize everything to such an extent that nobody can see beyond it. So, I better take My birth in them and My father and mother had already taken birth whom I had chosen as My parents. They were great people, realized souls and specially My father was a person who knew why I was on this earth. Even My mother knew about it.
So, a special rapport was between them and Me and they could understand why I was busy meditating or finding out about how to give realization to others. Then, I would say My father was a very learned man, who knew about fourteen languages, who translated Quran-e-Sharif into Hindi, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly. He made our Constitution. Also, he was the only Christian to be elected in those days. And, then My mother was a honors in Mathematics. All very well-educated and nice people!
They dedicated their life to the cause of freedom of India. And, I also felt that that was very important, because if we are not free we cannot do anything on religious basis. There’s one thing is to be free from this level. And, that’s how I also helped them a lot and our whole family suffered a lot. And, I went through terrible times, terrible times since very young age.
I was with Mahatma Gandhi also because he liked Me very much as a child. So, I stayed on with him then I used to come back to study again, go back to him. He used to call Me “Nepali” because My face is a Nepali face. And, he used to talk to Me as if he is talking to his grandmother sometimes. [laughter] It was very sweet and he was a very sweet man – extremely sweet person to children. Very strict with himself and strict with others – elderly people – but with children he was very, very sweet and kind and would try to learn from children lot of things. It was surprising how he understood that there’s lot of wisdom with the children sometimes than with the older people who are mixed up.
Now, we got our independence and we had a very bad setback because of the partition we had in our country. And, I was studying in Lahore Medical College there because I wanted to know about medicine – what these people call such and such thing. Because I knew all this but … I knew about the body, I knew about everything, what you call the complete nervous system, but I did not know what was the vocabulary attached to it, so I studied there for two years. Now after that, this war broke out. So, I had to discontinue with My studies and My parents wanted Me to get married. And, then I found that My marriage was important, I agreed to marry and I married this gentleman, Mr. C.P. Srivastava.
Then during all that time, My only pastime or the full-time work was to find out about human beings – what’s the problem they have. How they avoid reality? How they shun it? How they run away from it? What are their problems? How are they seeking? What do they have to offer? What will they accept? How to handle them? It was quite a intricate question. Every person provided a new sample of problems and I had to fight it out. In a way that it was a system which I knew how to do it, because to enter into somebody subtly, to understand the problems of the Kundalini – you can go into the journey and find out about a person.
And, then I found out the permutations and combinations of their problems. So, like it is like, you can say that like periodic tables. You had to divide them into three, then into seven, then into their permutations and combinations. So, you can imagine – three into seven, raised to power eternity – it was like that. But doesn’t matter! It worked out and in the year 1970 on the fifth of May. I was little bit hesitant at that time. I thought I should wait but certain circumstances made Me to open the last center.
And, when I opened the last center, it started working with others on en masse scale. But still I gave Realization only to one lady who came to My house. I tried if it works out with her and she … I gave her Realization by touching her centers one by one – six centers and then bringing out the Kundalini on top of the head.