Nirmala Srivastava (née Nirmala Salve; 21 March 1923 – 23 February 2011), also known as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, was the founder and guru[1]ofSahaja Yoga, a new religious movement.[2][3] She claimed to have been born fully realised and spent her life working for peace by developing and promoting a simple technique through which people can achieve their self-realization.[4][5]
Born in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, India to a Hindu father and a Christian mother Prasad and Cornelia Salve, her parents named her Nirmala, which means "immaculate".[6][7] She said that she was born self-realised.[8] Her father, a scholar of fourteen languages, translated the Quran into Marathi, and her mother was the first woman in India to receive an honours degree in mathematics.[5] Shri Mataji descended from the royal Shalivahana/Satavahana dynasty.[8] 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.[citation needed]
Nirmala Srivastava founded Sahaja Yoga in 1970.[17]
Practitioners believe that during meditation they experience a state of self-realization produced by kundalini awakening, and that this is accompanied by the experience of thoughtless awareness or mental silence.[18]
Shri Mataji described Sahaja Yoga as the pure, universal religion integrating all other religions.[19] She claimed that she was a divine incarnation,[20] 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.[19][21] This is also how she is regarded by most of her devotees.[22] Sahaja Yoga has sometimes been characterized as a cult.[23][24]
In 2003 a charity house for the rehabilitation of destitute women was set up in Delhi (the Vishwa Nirmala Prem Ashram).[25] She set up the Shri P.K. Salve Kala Pratishthan in Nagpur as an international music school in the same year, to promote classical music and fine art.[5][26]
Until 2004, during her travels, she gave numerous public lectures, pujas, and interviews to newspapers, television and radio. In 2004 her official website announced that she had completed her work and Sahaja Yoga centers exist in almost every country of the world.[27] She continued to give talks to her devotees[28] and allowed them to offer her puja.[29][better source needed]
She spoke on several occasions about the harms of drinking alcohol[30] and that many people were cured from addiction when they got their self realization through Sahaja Yoga.[31]
Italy, 1986. Declared "Personality of the Year" by the Italian Government.[32]
New York, 1990–1994. Invited by the United Nations for four consecutive years to speak about means to achieve world peace.[33]
St. Peterburg, Russia, 1993. Appointed as honorary member of the Petrovskaya Academy of Art and Science.[34]
Romania, 1995. Awarded honorary doctorate in cognitive science by the Ecological University Bucharest.[35]
China, 1995. Official guest of the Chinese Government to speak at the United Nations International Women's Conference.[36]
Pune, India, 1996. On the occasion of the 700th Anniversary of Saint Gyaneshwara, she addressed the "World Philosophers Meet '96 - A Parliament of Science, Religion and Philosophy" at Maharashtra Institute of Technology.[37]
London, 1997. Claes Nobel, grandnephew of Alfred Nobel, chairman of United Earth, honoured her life and work in a public speech at the Royal Albert Hall.[38]
A road in Navi Mumbai, near the Sahaja Yoga Health and Research Center, was named in her honor.[39]
Cabella Ligure, Italy, 2006. She was awarded honorary Italian citizenship.[40]
^ abConey, Judith (1999). Sahaja Yoga: Socializing Processes in a South Asian New Movement. Richmond: Curzon Press. ISBN0-7007-1061-2.
^INFORM staff. "Meditation and Mindfulness". INFORM – the information network on religious movements. Archived from the original on 4 July 2017. Retrieved 9 May 2017.
^Sudhir Kakar (1991). Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions. University of Chicago Press. ISBN0226422798.: 191
Kakar, Sudhir (1984) Shamans, mystics and doctors: a psychological inquiry into India and its healing traditions, ISBN0-226-42279-8
Coney, Judith (1999) Sahaja yoga: socializing processes in a South Asian new religious movement, (London: Curzon Press) ISBN0-7007-1061-2
H.P. Salve [her brother], My memoirs (New Delhi: LET Books, 2000)
Gregoire de Kalbermatten, The advent (Bombay, 1979: reprint: New York: daisyamerica, 2002) ISBN1-932406-00-X
Gregoire de Kalbermatten, The third advent (New York: daisyamerica, 2003; Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2004; Delhi: Penguin India, 2004) ISBN1-932406-07-7
Media related to Nirmala Srivastava at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Nirmala Srivastava at Wikiquote
