My father felt that I would do something great in this life.

I don’t know if he dreamed it or simply understood it, but all the time he used to say, “You have to find out the way of giving en masse Realization.” By Realization he was meaning the need for a deep, spiritual awakening in people.

He gave me a good education in different religions and also a good education about human beings: what are their problems, why do they act the way they do, why don’t they take to God, why are they hypocritical. All kinds of things he told me.

I knew all about it from my very childhood. I was a very aware person, but I did not know who to talk to because people did not have the same awareness then. You could not talk to anyone just like that.

My mother was a very strict lady. She taught me so many things. Indeed all of my sisters and I are expert cooks and in each of our lives we are doing very well. We do not trouble anyone. All these things have come from our mother, who was a strict lady and she would not tolerate any nonsense. She would never tell a lie. If you told her, “When this gentleman comes, you tell him that I am not in the house,” she would say, “Don’t tell me to tell lies. I’ll tell him that you told me to tell the lie.” That is how she was and that is how she treated us. We lived with that, but we did not mind it because what she did was for our good. We knew that she was doing it for our good.

Even President Roosevelt once said that an Indian woman is like a magnolia in a forest. Even one flower in the forest may be hidden. You cannot see it, but you can smell it. The whole forest is fragrant. You cannot see it anywhere. The fragrance is only in one flower, but yet you know this magnolia very well. It has the greatest quality, that of love. Love is the most attractive thing in this world.

My parents were great people, realized souls. My father was a person who knew why I was on this Earth. Even my mother knew about it. When I was small, I used to tell my father that it was my desire that like the stars in the sky, many people on Earth should also shine and spread the light of God.

So there was a special rapport between us, and they could understand why I was busy meditating or finding out about how to give Realization to others.