I’ve just returned from a busy 10-day visit to Russia on Maharaj’s behalf. He had seen in vision since childhood that Russians would be the most faithful followers, even though Russia was at that time officially atheistic, and this prophecy is coming true.

Before I left, Maharaj spoke to me about carrying his mission:

Speak only about what you have seen and heard at Gobind Sadan, and nothing else, for this will have a great effect. For your whole life, only speak from your own experiences at Gobind Sadan. Even if everyone is against you, don’t be frightened. People will be wonderstruck with happiness—‘What is she saying?’—like when Jesus spoke. And the newsletters will break the forts [boundaries between religions and people].

After five months, these things will have more effect. The blessings from heaven and the voice from the earth will unite. There will be no chance of clouds’ coming before the sun.

People will be looking for you, for you have led them out of the waves to the Boatman. Many people will have dreams and visions of you, and those hidden people who are reciting Nam will have visions of Gobind Sadan. After two and a half years, there will be a great impression on the minds of the whole world. Then this circle will continue: Many people will have visions and will come here. A flood of people will come, and many people will do parchar (preaching about the mission). Many people from Russia will join you. Speak a lot—it will have quite an effect.

I am no speaker; I have no good memory from which to make a speech. As Maharaj said, I can only speak about my own experience. But what I have witnessed at Gobind Sadan is so powerful and so transformational that I happily speak about it to anyone who will listen.

In Russia there are many people ready to listen. The main followers come from the International Association for Peace through Culture, whose headquarters are in Moscow. Some of them first met Maharaj Ji in 1992 when Father Gregorios brought leaders of Peace through Culture to Gobind Sadan after their international interfaith meeting in Rishikesh, the Congress of Spiritual Concord, which Major Sahib and I also attended. Their president and spiritual leader is Professor Valentin Sidorov, a well-known figure in spiritual and literary circles in Moscow with strong interest in relationships between Indian and Russian spirituality. He often quotes the famous Russian painter, philosopher, theosophist, and archaeologist Nicholas Roerich, who said, “Russia will lead the world in spirituality, but India will show the way.” Although Professor Sidorov had many followers, he himself was in a longtime search for his own teacher in physical form, and determined that it was his life’s mission to find his teacher. Meeting Maharaj Ji had a tremendous impact on him. He wrote,

I knew that Babaji is one of the most revered spiritual teachers of India. I knew that only because of his moral authority the bloody conflict in Punjab was avoided. But at that time I did not know how heartfelt were his feelings for Russia and relations with Russia, which were expressed in Babaji’s words, “Russia is the most suitable country for God’s mission.” In our meeting after the Congress, I told him, “The country is in a very difficult situation and unusual measures are required to prevent it from disaster. I came for your help: First of all, spiritual help. And I ask you to bless New Russia.” Then there was a silence. We were sitting in his garden under a many-branched tree and the twinkling stars, and we lost the feeling of time. The Teacher was in a state of meditation. Even the wind for some moments stopped moving the leaves. Then from the silence, I heard words addressed to me: “I am 100 percent with you. Not 90, but 100.” And again silence. And again his voice: “I not only bless but also I will pray to God to help your mission.” And at last his exclamation, which pierced me like a fiery current: “Your teacher is blessing you, your beautiful teacher.” When I regained my ability to talk, I said, “I consider my mission fulfilled, because the meeting on the earth for which I longed for many years has taken place.”*

            While I was in Moscow, I met with members of Peace through Culture many times, including three meetings in their gathering space within a fine library next to the park of the Danilov Monastery, which is now headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church. In one of these meetings they arranged my videotaped interview about Gobind Sadan for a spiritually-oriented Siberian television programme. Peace through Culture had adopted Maharaj’s message as their credo, and they eagerly awaited any message I brought from him. He had suggested that I speak about feminine spiritual power, which is highly respected in India, and also caution people not to present themselves as spiritual authorities. Instead, one should go deeper and deeper in meditation so that one will naturally bring light into the world. The group wants to bring Maharaj Ji to Russia and also to visit India and hold a joint conference with Gobind Sadan on “New Russia and Spiritual India.” They plan to send one of their members to stay at Gobind Sadan for several months to help coordinate our mutual work. Professor Sidorov told me to tell Maharaj Ji that they all send him their great love: “He is with us and we are with him.”

I also met with an assortment of people such as Stephan Pozenian, whose video team accompanied Maharaj in 1989 when he visited Moscow with Swaranjit Singh, Ludmila Kokhlova, a Punjabi Professor from Moscow State University who is translating Jaap Sahib into Russian for Gobind Sadan, space scientists with interest in spirituality, and members of the Unification Movement living in Moscow who are translating my textbook Living Religions into Russian. One afternoon, many dear Russian sisters and I sqeezed cozily together on the benches around a round table in the home of Ludmila Eliseeva, a spiritual painter who deeply loves Maharaj Ji. As we drank tea and ate home-made foods they had brought to share, we talked about Gobind Sadan and spiritual subjects that are close to all our hearts. They took me to special sacred places, of which my favourite was the sixteenth-century Kolomenskoye Church of the Ascension. An unseen choir was softly singing Orthodox hymns in beautiful polyphony, and those uplifting sounds wafted upward through the extraordinary spiral architecture. All the arts in Russia have deep spiritual wellsprings, and seventy years of official atheism could not quash those sentiments.

            Russia has been dear to my heart since my childhood, so I am very grateful that Maharaj’s mission is closely aligned with Russian spirituality. May our Russian sisters and brothers keep coming to Gobind Sadan and carrying Maharaj’s message throughout their homeland.

*[Valentin Sidorov, The Signs of Christ, Moscow: Art Literature, 2000, pp. 350-351]