I first met Dadi Janki in the fall of 1996 at the Brahma Kumaris’ Baker Street center in San Francisco, not long after I’d resigned my leadership of a local church to become the founding executive director of the United Religions Initiative. I was both eager and a little nervous when I was taken upstairs and seated on a sofa next to Dadi in her chair. Sister Chandru introduced us. Sister Jayanti served as interpreter.
Strangely, I felt both comfortable and out of my depth sitting in the company of three powerful yoginis. Dadi looked at me with a smile, her dark dancing eyes seeming to see into my heart. She asked me why I was doing the work I was doing. Before I could answer, traffic control music began playing and we dropped into silence.
Sister Chandru indicated that I should take drishti from Dadi, so I sat face-to-face, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul with her in timeless time. It felt as if I was connected to the source of light and love that I believe animates the universe. It felt as if the physical boundaries of my body dissolved and what remained was a bright consciousness that seemed both immediate and from eons and light years away.
Over the years, I have been blessed with many more meetings with Dadi in many parts of the world, including two opportunities to interview her. My abiding memories are of her arched eyebrows and impish grin; and of her sitting in meditation in Baba’s room at the Global Cooperation House, where she seemed at once both rooted as a mountain – no force could move her if she chose not to be moved – and pure, radiant light.
Beyond those blessed opportunities to be in Dadi’s physical presence, there has never been a time since that first meeting when she hasn’t been an enlightening and enlivening presence in my life, helping to lift me up when I was down and to shine the path forward with the blazing light of her unconditional love and surrender in service. And I know I am only one of millions she has touched in this way.
