Sahaja Yoga
Sahaja Yoga (सहज योग) is a new religious movement founded in 1970 by Nirmala Srivastava (1923–2011). Nirmala Srivastava is known as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi (trans: Revered Immaculate Mother) or simply as “Mother” by her followers, who are called Sahaja yogis.
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.
Shri Mataji described Sahaja Yoga as the pure, universal religion integrating all other religions. She claimed that she was a divine incarnation, 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. This is also how she is regarded by most of her devotees. Sahaja Yoga has sometimes been characterized as a cult.
