Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

(1923-2011)

Born in Chindawara, Madhya Pradesh, India to a Hindu father and a Christian mother Prasad and Cornelia Salve, her parents named her Nirmala, which means "immaculate". She said that she was born self-realised. Her father, a scholar of fourteen languages, translated the Koran into Marathi, and her mother was the first woman in India to receive an honours degree in mathematics. Shri Mataji descended from the royal Shalivahana/Satavahana dynasty. The former union minister N.K.P. Salve was her brother and the lawyer Harish Salve is her nephew. The Salve surname is one of several in the Satavahana Maratha clan.

She founded Sahaja Yoga in 1970. During meditation, seekers of truth experience a state of self-realization produced by kundalini awakening, and this is accompanied by the experience of thoughtless awareness or mental silence.

Shri Mataji described Sahaja Yoga as the pure, universal religion integrating all other religions.She claimed that she was a divine incarnation,more precisely an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, or the Adi Shakti of the Hindu tradition, the great mother goddess who had come to save humanity. This is also how she is regarded by most of her devotees. [cited Wikipedia]