Mata Ji (mother of Guru Maharaj Ji)
Prempal (then known as Guru Maharaj Ji)	Bal Bhagwan Ji (now known as Satpal)
Bhole Ji
Raja Ji

Maharaj Ji simply answered, "It is not my fault. The blame must be placed on God. For God places divinity in the heart of every man, the Brahmin and the Sudra alike, and there is nothing that I can do to alter the fact."

Cutting through a maze of superstition, ritual and rhetoric, Shri Maharaj Ji led all those who would follow him into the true brotherhood of man.

Meanwhile, Shri Maharaj Ji was raising a family, Mata Ji had given him four sons. The autumnal equinox is that day of the year when the sun has reached its highest point in the sky, and is giving light for the same amount of time to all people. It is the moment of the peak of creation. Mahatma Satyanand Ji one of the greatest disciples of Shri Maharaj Ji, predicted that the Master's first son would be born on this equinox. So it was that Shri Bal Bhagwan Ji came into this world the very instant the sun reached its zenith on September 21, 1951.

A keenly observant parent can often determine a child's personality at a very early age. With the four Hans children it was not a difficult task. The disciples of Shri Maharaj Ji had constructed a beautiful chariot in which the three-year-old Bal Bhagwan Ji sat. A procession celebrating the child's birthday was to be held with all of Shri Maharaj Ji's disciples parading joyfully through the streets of Delhi.

Above the confusion of hundreds of thousands of people, little Bal Bhagwan Ji watched quietly as crowds pressed so tightly that the chariot came to a halt A disciple anxiously asked Shri Maharaj Ji if the procession should be discontinued. Shri Maharaj Ji replied, "Let he who is running the procession decide."

Then Bal Bhagwan Ji stood up, and taking a large stick, he began to direct the chariot throng. The chariot moved forward and the parade continued. Onlookers threw flowers from their windows and balconies and all of the people began to sing.

Shri Maharaj Ji's middle two sons were named Raja Ji and Bhole Ji. Their childhood activities also foreshadowed what would later be their roles in the spreading of Knowledge. Little Raja Ji would always break away from the endless games of the boys and go to find someone who would tell him stories. Invariably, the stories he demanded to hear were those of the great servants of the Perfect Master, such as Hanuman or St. John.

There was a young man, Bihari Singh Ji, who would later become such a disciple for Guru Maharaj Ji. Often upon arising early in the morning, the family of Shri Maharaj Ji would find that Raja Ji had gotten up in the middle of the night and gone back to sleep lying at the foot of Bihari Singh Ji's bed. He wanted to be a servant of the servant of the Lord.

As for Bhole Ji no one could quite figure out what to do with him. He never stopped moving. Almost before he could sit up, Bhole Ji was dancing. Much to everyone's astonishment, he did just that at a festival Mata Ji took him to when he was nine months old.

Young Bhole Ji was constantly gathering the poorer children around him and scattering his toys and food through outreached hands. When at last everyone was happy, he would entertain them with a dance or a lively song played on the tabla. Soon all the children would be dancing, not a sad face in sight.

The youngest of the four sons was called Sant Ji or Prempal, “Savior of Love." At his birth the sky lit up in brilliant colors and a sweet music could be heard all around. It is said that when Sant Ji Maharaj, now known as Guru Maharaj Ji, was an infant, Mata Ji used to walk along the River Ganges, holding the baby in her arms.

But she would not go there too often, for on those occasions the waters of that holy river would rise up and envelop her, almost drowning her. The Ganges would rise just until it touched the feel of Sant Ji and then recede back into its channel.


There was a time when Shri Maharaj Ji and his family lived in what is now the sewing room of their residence in India. The house was located in Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalayas. It is a magnificent home surrounded by beautiful gardens. In those days, however, it belonged to a queen.

She was a very proud woman, but had actually been only one of several wives to whom the king was married. When the king died, his son banished all the queens but gave each woman a place in which to live. There was one condition, however, each queen was never to marry again.

Just outside the window which looked out from the room rented by the Hans family, there grew a patch of very beautiful flowers. Now the queen had fallen in love and knew that she would have to leave her house and sell it back to the prince. The queen's lover saw Maharaj Ji's flowers and said to her, “We should pick these flowers and take them with us." Reluctantly, the queen agreed.

When Shri Maharaj Ji came home, he saw immediately that the flowers were gone. "Who took those flowers?" he shouted in a voice full of anger. The very earth shook at the sound and the Satguru's voice pierced the hearts of everyone within the house.

The queen herself then realised what power resided in Dehra Dun. Trembling, she fell at Shri Maharaj Ji's feet and begged forgiveness for her greed. To prove her sincerity, the queen gave him the house.

Shri Maharaj Ji did not remain with his family for long periods of time. He continued to travel throughout India on toot, horse and bicycle, using any means he could find to spread his message of peace. For the first time in centuries, there was rejoicing in the homes of hundreds of thousands of India's poor as the divine Knowledge entered their lives. Weeping with joy, they would listen to Shri Maharaj Ji as he sang this song:

O Saints,
I have seen a great wonder.

There is a well in the sky
from which nectar is falling,
and a lame man climbs up to it
and drinks his fill.

There are gongs ringing,
drums beating, cymbals clashing
and trumpets sounding,
yet no one is playing them;
a deaf man listens to them
and dances, beside himself with joy.

There is a palace
built where no world exists,
and it shines with a brilliant light
day and night.
A blind man is overcome with joy
simply to behold it.

There are living people who die
and are brought back to life again.
They are full of vitality,
yet they take no food.

Brahmanand has this to say:
Rare and fortunate among holy men
are those
who understand my riddle.

For the first time in existence, countless numbers of human beings could understand that ancient song, for they had received the Knowledge and partaken of those splendors. Now their lives were spent in worshipping the Giver. As one disciple of Shri Maharaj Ji said: "Shri Maharaj Ji was a flash of light and the embodiment of love. I fell in love with him at first sight. I found in him the fruition of all my hopes and expectations."

Yet the more Shri Maharaj Ji uplifted the people of India, the more he was attacked. The established religions could not brook someone who was in a position to answer the prayers of their members. They began violently to oppose the mission of Shri Maharaj Ji and to slander his name. Attempts were made to take his life. Those who could experience the Creator directly had no need of chanting, of ornate temples, prayer beads and high priests. Shri Maharaj Ji, like all God-realized souls before him, did not bring to people another rite to perform, another hierarchy of priests who must be fed by their parishioners, or any external substitutes for God. He brought hungry souls back to communion with their Father.

Directly, simply and practically Shri Maharaj Ji's love, his unceasing effort to reach all of India's people with the Knowledge of truth and to inspire his disciples with the same desire and strength, bore fruit in 1960 when he founded Divya Sandesh Parishad or Divine Light Mission. This would not be a new sect or religion, but merely a practical means to help spread the Knowledge.

At that time, no one except the Satguru himself could foresee the magnitude of what was being done. Those who had personally experienced the power and glory of God's Infinite Form, seers of that purest light within men, banded together. The divine energy created by their union was to begin a revolution of spirit in every country of the world. Yet only he knew.

And so Param Sant Satgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj commanded his close disciples to learn English. There would be no more hiding in the caves of the Himalayas or retiring to a peaceful existence on a small country farm. The sun of divine Knowledge was just barely over the horizon; soon the whole world would be witnessing its first delicate rays. The long, long night was finally over.

Shri Maharaj Ji had not slept during that night. He had been busy preparing the world gathering together an army of saints. The work of Shri Maharaj Ji was done. Early in the morning of July 19, 1966, Shri Maharaj Ji sat in silent meditation, and in perfect peace he left.

Before leaving his mortal body, Shri Maharaj Ji sent a letter to his family who, as so often in the past were hundreds of miles away. In that letter the Satguru gave infinite prostrations to his youngest son, thus identifying his successor as Satguru, the present Guru Maharaj Ji.

But it was not only Guru Maharaj Ji who had work to do. All of the Hans family would have to carry on the duty of spreading the Knowledge of God. As it was Shri Maharaj Ji's task to take the Knowledge throughout India, so it would be theirs to bring it to all the peoples of the world.

Mata Ji had always been reserved, appearing in public only at the request of Shri Maharaj Ji. At programs, she would sit at the front of the stage listening with the thousands of other devotees. On July 31, 1966, when she first spoke in Maharaj Ji's absence (see her satsang in this issue of And it 1s Divine) she insisted that it was only grace that allowed her to address such a large crowd.

Yet through the veil of tears and these moments of distress, Mata Ji's divine role became very clear. She rose above her personal grief and promised the devotees that she would care for her husband's Divine Light Mission and strive to fulfill all his desires.

Then she listened to her eight year-old son explaining that he had heard a voice which said, "You are he, you are the one to go and take this Knowledge to the world." Weeping tears of joy, Mata Ji knew that her Shri Maharaj Ji had indeed kept his promise that he would never leave her, and her heart filled with great inspiration.

While Sant Ji Maharaj was completing his studies at St. Joseph's Academy, Mata Ji began travelling all over India actively propagating the Knowledge.

Mata Ji arrived in North America the spring following Guru Maharaj Ji's first visit. People came from as far away as Florida, Denver, and California to welcome her at Toronto's International Airport in May, 1972. Her presence gave pause to one newsman who reflected. "You do not have to believe that Mata Ji is the actual mother of God's earthly incarnation to recognize that she is one very special lady. There is something completed about her presence. She speaks only Hindi, but there is a grace and a merriment about her that filled the room."

It was in this Toronto airport that Mata Ji announced, "I have come to take care of my children." The newsman reports, "And you should have seen them (the devotees) when she said that! They turned their faces toward her like flowers before the sun, they laughed like children beneath a fountain. I have not seen such faces before."

Who can claim to understand what it is to be the wife of a perfect saint and the mother of a child with such divine power that he is completely changing the course of human life? Mata Ji could have been speaking of herself when she said:

"For whom do saints live in the world? For whom does the river flow? To whom does the tree give fruit? For their own sakes? No. Saints, trees, rivers, mountains and earth exist for the good of humanity and the welfare of others.

Meanwhile, Bal Bhagwan Ji came into this world for one purpose, and that is to render service to the Perfect Master. He served his Father and now he is serving Guru Maharaj Ji. As he himself has said:

"Guru Maharaj Ji has served us by giving us hands, limbs, such a good face, our whole body. He served us first and now in turn we have to serve him. See, we are not immortal. We have to use the short span of our life in such a way that not even a moment or even a second is lost in the tempest."

In 1970, it was the nineteen-year old Bal Bhagwan Ji who was put in charge of coordinating the largest festival ever held. That festival culminated in Guru Maharaj Ji's famous Peace Bomb address before an audience of over one million listeners.

In 1971, he gathered the materials for the World Spiritual Exhibition while at the same time raising the funds to take care of the three hundred Westerners who were coming to spend two months as guests in the Indian ashrams. He also arranged the transportation of the hundreds of thousands of disciples who wished to attend the Hans Jayanti Festival in Delhi and the exhibition in Bihar.

At the same time, Bal Bhagwan It was personally helping to construct Guru Maharaj Ji's stage. When other disciples lagged in their work, he would become furious. But in the midst of sternly admonishing one unfortunate or, perhaps, blessed worker, he turned to another and said softly. "Sometimes you have to shout, otherwise what we have to do will never get done."

For the past two years Shri Bal Bhagwan Ji has been travelling throughout the world giving inspiration and direction to the newly formed Divine Light Mission, whose purpose it is to bring humankind to the Knowledge that the Perfect Master reveals. Now he is at work organizing Millennium '73, this year's Hans Jayanti. In this way Bal Bhagwan Ji is helping to set in motion a process of change which will turn the world right side up and bring it to peace.

When Bhole Ji, age twenty, landed in London even Guru Maharaj Ji's Anand Band was feeling lost. They found that no matter how they tried, they couldn't get a hold on that dynamic energy which gives birth to irresistible sound. The band was housed at the Wandsworth Music Ashram. Once or twice a week Bhole Ji went to jam with the group, but his plan called for something more.

No one believed Bhole Ji could pull it off. By the time of the Guru Puja festival that summer, Bhole Ji wanted to assemble a fifty-piece orchestra which would create and arrange its own music and which would be so good that not one person could sit still while they played. The band was to be his present to Guru Maharaj Ji.

Blue Aquarius became a band unlike any other. Everything which was produced came from intimate Knowledge of the Soul, from joyous contact with the source of creativity itself. Their music found its highest form in glorification of the giver of that contact, Guru Maharaj Ji:

"Oh Satguru,
There's nothing left for me to do
just to lose my mind and fall in love,
in love with you."

Said one of the troupe. "Bhole It doesn't talk much, he just laughs, dances, moves. He doesn't know music. He is music." When the lead singer is joined by Bhole Ji, they become as one power that shoots an arrow of light through the heart of the crowd. As Bhole Ji directs Aquarius, so he changes the consciousness of his audience, taking them through happiness, nostalgia and excitement into worship.

When more established musicians become excited by the charisma of Blue Aquarius and Bhole Ji (three members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra asked to join the band after its London concert, and Santana has offered to play with them for free at MILLENNIUM), Bhole Ji has a stock answer: Receive Knowledge first and find out where music comes from.

Bhole Ji is not dedicated to music: he is dedicated to Guru Maharaj Ji. His love of music has brought an incredible band together, but he knows that Guru Maharaj Ji's love will bring a world together. That's why when he sings for the Satguru, he sings with all his being.

Raja Ji has been playing a different part. More than any other member of the Holy Family, he carries out his work behind the scenes. Though he often gives satsang at programs, he is not so prominent as Mata Ji or Bal Bhagwan Ji unless one has a keen enough eye to perceive his presence in everything which is happening off stage.

Raja Ji is the Chief Commander of Guru Maharaj Ji's World Peace Corps. Under his direct supervision, the W.P.C. provides all the support systems that allow Divine Light Mission to help Guru Maharaj Ji spread the Knowledge.

In India, thousands of devotees are on call at a moment's notice for any service which needs to be done. The Corps is mainly known for its relief work in disaster areas, and for assisting in maintaining order in large crowds. It is well-trained and efficient and it coordinates all aspects of Guru Maharaj Ji's programs in India. "The job of W.P.C.," Raja Ji has said, "is to make sure that whatever is happening, happens correctly."

When Raja Ji first arrived in the West, the World Peace Corps had barely gotten off the ground. He immediately began to draw around himself scores of disciples who had been waiting for a chance to serve Guru Maharaj Ji. Without a tightly structured back-up system, a festival the size of the London Guru Puja Celebration which filled the Alexandra Palace, could have turned into a catastrophe.

But by that time, the World Peace Corps in England had grown to ten times the size it was when Raja Ji first came. Moreover, every day Raja Ji supervised the training of the Corps members and every night he met with the entire British W.P.C. to give satsang and inspire them to become perfect at their various tasks. The result was obvious to anyone who was fortunate enough to attend Guru Pula. The W.P.C. members were so well-organized that they could run an electronics system, take care of the gigantic stage which they built themselves, arrange flowers, man a day-care center, print and sell brochures, act as usher, and a security force, keep thousands of overly excited people from mobbing Guru Maharaj Ji, and feed and house the people who had come from all over the world to attend the festival - all at the same time.

Raja Ji is now back at school in London, England. Soon, however, he will be coming to America to make sure that the World Peace Corps is properly prepared for the MILLENNIUM festivities.

But of the four brothers, it is Guru Maharaj Ji, the youngest, who has been doing the most work of all.

At the 1970 Hans Jayanti Festival, a celebration of Shri Maharaj Ji's birthdav, there could be little doubt that this small child possessed such power as could unite the world. Before an audience of over one million people, Guru Maharaj Ji revealed his plan, "I declare I shall bring in the Golden Age of Peace to the whole world."

There it is. Three years ago the final phase of human evolution began, ushered in by a twelve-year old boy.

The reverberation of that speech, known as the Peace Bomb, brought the first Western disciples on a chartered jumbo jet to India the next year. Guru Maharaj Ji had come to Europe and America and gathered them together. It happened so quickly that no one knew what to expect. No one except Guru Maharaj Ji. He stated that these young people were only the beginning of his plan, and that ten times as many Western disciples would come to India in 1972.

The following November, five jumbo jets left Kennedy International Airport to carry disciples of Guru Maharaj Ji to the 1972 celebration of Hans Jayanti. Citizens from all seven continents were converging on the Ram Lila grounds in Delhi. Guru Maharaj Ji was uniting the world at his feet.

"God is one regardless of where we come from - if we come from India or America, from Europe or Japan, God is still one; if we fly over the South Pole: still one. After all, whether we believe In Mohammedanism, or Hinduism, or Christianity, we still believe in one God.

"But why then if we are children of God, why should there be communism in one country and commonwealth in another country? Because we have not been able to understand the fundamental humanity, the fundamental truth that exists among all human beings. We have failed to understand what we have got in common between ourselves as human beings."

There was an alternative, Guru Maharaj Ji was manifesting it. He had gathered together 3,300 people from every continent, race, religion and class to manifest a practical example of harmony. And it had worked. At Hans Jayanti, 1972 Guru Maharaj Ji demonstrated that the union one experiences in true meditation can be translated into a viable blueprint for a world community.

Guru Maharaj Ji has worked very quickly to fulfill his promise of 1970. At that time, the Knowledge had been revealed to millions in the East, but to only a handful of Westerners. Now Guru Maharaj Ji is operating two massive world-wide organizations, Divine Light Mission and Divine United Organization, which help to bring his message to countless numbers of people every day.

Guru Maharaj Ji is bringing peace on earth.

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