Shri Mataji: “A day will dawn, when the whole world would bow to this country in reverence.”

“We are made out of Yoga. Ours is the land of Yoga. We are not egoistic, nor do we want to be so. We desire to live on this land as Yogis. A day will dawn, when the whole world would bow to this country (India) in reverence. Then people would know who Jesus Christ was, and from where He came! He would then be worshipped with due respect on this sacred land. In India, even today, the modesty of women is protected and they are treated with proper respect. All over our country, we regard The Mother with great reverence. When the people from other countries would visit this land they would know that it is in this country that real Christianity is practiced with great devotion, but not in countries which profess the Christian religion.”- Shri Mataji

Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald
"India is the land of the profound and the profane: a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I have learnt much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life while Islam taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here is to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength. I thank the gurus for trying to pierce my ego armour and my girlfriends for making me laugh. And most of all I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine.”- Sarah MacDonald


Holy Cow, a best-seller by Sarah MacDonald

(Sarah a journalist and girl friend of the ABC's South Asia correspondent deals with her experiences in India. These extracts are from the concluding pages of the book where she summarises her experience.)

The ABC has found a new correspondent and now it is time to leave for Australia and let the tide of a billion lives ebb and flow without us.....

In Sydney I rediscover my relationship with nature. The ocean becomes my temple and my Ganges......I walk through the pristine quiet of the suburban bush of my childhood as fluorescent orange streaks across the sky...Gleaming cars zoom fast on empty, wide and clean roads. A couple bent double laughs with hysterical abandon at a cafe table. I delight to see such open joy and such easy lives, yet at times the luxury and space sit uneasily. My country and I want it all - to be part of a war and not to face its consequences, to be part of the global community but not a port for its refugees. The city rants religiously of real estate and fashion.......The worship of land ownership, the body beautiful, self-help and self obsession for beings blinded by option over load is strangely unfamiliar.

I went to India for love and that country tested that love to a large degree....We now both have a new view of our so lucky lives, yet our innocent optimism has been sucked from our hearts. The overall feeling about our adventure is positive though. Jonathan's career has taken off and I have gained much in my karma chameleon journey. I am reborn as a better person, less reliant on others for my happiness and full of a desire to replace anger with love. Plus I have gained another home. For, I have two spiritual homes now - the quite empty lands of my birth and the cataclysmic crowded land of my rebirth. When I remember India, I think of its ability to find beauty in small things - the tattoo of circles on a camel's rump, a bright silk saree in a dark slum, a peacock feather in a plastic jar, a delicate earring glinting by a worn face and a lotus painted on a truck. I miss the sheer exuberance of a billion individuals and their pantomime of festivals............

India is the land of the profound and the profane: a place where spirituality and sanctimoniousness sit miles apart. I have learnt much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life while Islam taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me to the power of music. Here is to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength. I thank the gurus for trying to pierce my ego armour and my girlfriends for making me laugh. And most of all I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine......

Yet, I have brought back something even more important than sacred knowledge. A baby is growing inside me. A baby conceived during our last weekend in the country. This child will forever remind me of the land I lived in and what it took and what it gave. And this baby made in India, will always remind me that India to some extent made me.

Holy Cow, Sarah MacDonald

Broadway (April 13, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0767915747
ISBN-13: 978-0767915748




"Gorgeous splashes of color among filth, flies, and forlorn"
April 21, 2004
By S. Calhoun"rhymeswithorange" (Chicago, IL United States)

Eleven years after backpacking through India with complaints of the poverty, heat and pollution Australian Sarah Macdonald relented to never return; she even went to the extreme of flipping the middle finger to the ground below as her plane ascended into the sky. Sarah wasn't necessarily happy to quit her successful job in Sydney to relocate to New Delhi to live with her journalist boyfriend; she often wondered if she was making the right decision. Upon arrival she started having flashbacks of pugnant body odor and beggars with leprosy. The pollution and thick smog affected her health and wellbeing. It is clear that she isn't quite cut out to live in New Delhi.

After reading the first couple chapters I expected HOLY COW to be filled with constant whining of India's derelict living conditions and complaints based on a Westernized perspective resulting in a mediocre travel narrative. But low and behold, I was soon pleasantly surprised how Sarah slowly evolved and reevaluated the country that she has scorned for so many years. After she started becoming reacquainted in her new home she started looking beyond the mayhem and dirt and began to see the beauty of India. Being a devout atheist when she first moved to New Delhi she slowly awoke and embraced the dynamic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism; she began to appreciate the sounds and surroundings of her new home.

While her husband is busy working Sarah was able to travel throughout India with her new perspectives and begins to enjoy the dichotomies that India offers. My favorite side trip was the Buddhist retreat in the Himalayan footsteps that taught her to meditate by concentrating on her breathing. I cannot imagine undergoing anything close to that endeavor.

Throughout HOLY COW Sarah Macdonald succeeded in digging past a traveler's first impressions of India to highlight the beauty of this varied land. By reading HOLY COW I now understand just a little bit more of India, and that was my initial goal when I first picked up this book.




Honest, irreverent, illuminating memoir and travelogue
April 14, 2005
By Marie GG"Addicted to reading" (Portland, OR)

I, too, traveled in India in my 20s (in my case, when I was 24). My boyfriend (now husband) and I traveled through Asia for 2-1/2 months after leaving Japan, where we had lived and worked for 3 years. We spent a month in India, focusing our time on Delhi, Agra, and Rajasthan. We traveled on a shoestring with only one notable splurge.

Although I have some fond memories of India—my husband proposed to me at the beautiful Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur—when we left the country, I was extremely ready to leave. I am fascinated with India—its food, its history, its literature, and its culture. However, I have not returned to India since I left 16 years ago, and have no immediate desire to do so. Therefore, I can relate to Sarah Macdonald's first impressions of the country and her new appreciation for it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of her irreverent, honest look at Indian culture, customs, and religions. It's interesting to note how many reviewers feel that Macdonald is being disrespectful to Indians in her portrayal of the country, because I feel it's quite the contrary. Although she is critical of individual Indians and was exhausted and angered by the treatment of women (and I can definitely relate to that), she cried when she left the country because of the close relationships she had formed and the fondness she developed for the whole country.

I enjoyed her forays into Indian religions. She was the first to comment that she realized that she didn't have a full picture of these religions. I did not conclude that she was drawing a broad brush on all people following these religions because of her brief samplings into their cultures and beliefs. As a progressive Christian, I'm very interested in other religions and believe there are many paths to God. Macdonald was fascinated to learn about what makes people believe what they do. When she observed that some of the Jews she encountered practiced their religion in an exclusive way, I did not read that to mean that she felt all Jews were that way...just as she herself could not be compared to all Christians or people who grew up with a Christian background.

I particularly appreciated her observations around September 11 and her sadness about violence begetting more violence and a lack of effort to bridge our cultures and move toward a greater level of global and cross-cultural understanding.

If you read it as a factual account of all things Indian, you will find it lacking. I read Holy Cow as a travelogue, memoir, and one western person's perspective on India, and I found it refreshing, fascinating, and fun.




The Great Adi Shakti Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
"We are made out of Yoga. Ours is the land of Yoga. We are not egoistic, nor do we want to be so. We desire to live on this land as Yogis. A day will dawn, when the whole world would bow to this country (India) in reverence. Then people would know who Jesus Christ was, and from where He came! He would then be worshipped with due respect on this sacred land. In India, even today, the modesty of women is protected and they are treated with proper respect. All over our country, we regard The Mother with great reverence. When the people from other countries would visit this land they would know that it is in this country that real Christianity is practiced with great devotion, but not in countries which profess the Christian religion.

Jesus Christ said that we should be born again. In our country we refer to this process as Dwija or born for the second time. The second birth of any human being is possible only by awakening of Kundalini Power. So long as the Kundalini is not awakened, one will not acquire the second birth, and so long as we do not have rebirth we will not be able to recognise God. You read the Bible after Realization. You will be surprised to know that Jesus Christ has told nothing but the importance of Sahaja Yoga. Everything has been explained with minor details. Those who have no insight, misrepresent the matters.”

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Shri Kundalini Shakti And Shri Jesus Christ
Bombay, India — September 26, 1979


Articles based on Shri Mataji quotes:
“A day will dawn when whole world would bow to this country India"
“A great war is taking place between satanic forces and Divine Forces"
“About Sahasrara nowhere in the scriptures something was described"
“Achieve your Self, become your Self"
“After all we are all human beings created by one God"
“All the people laugh at us, nobody believes us.”
“All these rituals have entered into Sahaja Yoga.”
“Among Muslims there are Sufis... who are realized souls"
“And now the time has come for it to be blasted.
“Announce it to all the seekers of truth, to all the nations.”
“Anyone can commit any sins in the name of religion.”
“But if you put one little fish and two eggs for ten people"
“But the Muslims do not want to talk about Resurrection at all"
“But this Judgment is so beautiful ... you enjoy the bliss of your Spirit"
“But you know that you have eternal life. You can never die.”
“Death does not exist for you — It is finished... your spirit is free.”
“Do not destroy your spirit by going to such people.”
“Every religion has said you have to have Self-realization"
“For all people whom I gave Self Realization yesterday"
“He (Jesus) was the Holiest of the Holy. You accept that position.”
“I don't care for your protocols and rituals. It is nonsense for me.”
“I have to warn all the SYs ... Sahaja Yoga is the Last Judgment"
“I must say they are committing the greatest sin ...”
“I was with Him (Guru Nanak Ji), in fact with all of Them.”- 1
“I was with Him (Guru Nanak Ji), in fact with all of Them.”- 2
.”... if you see around the world is in chaos"
“Indians have no goal as far as spiritual life is concerned"
“It is the greatest event of all spiritual happenings of the Universe.”
“It means the Last Judgment has begun with full force"
“It will be slowly revealed by Me because ...”
“Like all the thieves of the world ... have taken over.”
“Meditation is not to sit before the photograph"
“My actual sign name is Lalita ... the name of the Primordial Mother"
“Nobody has to change dresses or anything - it's nothing outside.”
“Now watch. I will change the direction of the waves.”
“No reality in those religions...no Divine Force working"
“Pure knowledge is not of chakras, vibrations, kundalini but of God"
“Self-Realization will progressively lead to the creation of a new race"
“Some are money-oriented ... some are violent"
“Tell Jagbir now to leave it to Her.”
“That's not the way it (Al-Qiyamah) is going to work out.'"
“The expression of the Adi Shakti within you is the Kundalini.”
“Christianity has nothing to do with Christ.”
“The time has come for you to get all that is promised"
“The ultimate act against Spirit is to worship that which has no Spirit"
“The whole Cosmos is waiting for their arrival.”
“They are stagnated at the point of dharma, so they start telling ...”
“There is so much blind faith, there is so much of wrong ideas"
“They came to Sahaja but they said"We cannot worship Goddess.”
“They made Christ look like a TB patient"
“You have to enter into the Kingdom of God"
“Your job is, in a way, greater than the saints and sages.”




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