At the end of 1986 I began work on a book about Christ called Sophia. My writing, which began very slowly with a few chapters, received an added impetus when my wife Ruth went to stay with Shri Mataji in Rosary Gardens, in London, in mid-November 1987. Mother had just watched a programme on TV about the Gnostics and was enthusiastic about it. She told Ruth that Thomas, the apostle, was a good man.
Later, in April 1989, after I had finished Sophia, I was traveling back in the train from Margate to London after the Shri Hanuman Puja when Mother waved for me to come into Her compartment. Another Sahaja Yogi had been telling Mother what Sophia was about just before I went in, but She had forestalled him by saying, ‘I know. I know everything.’
She told me that I should mention Her directly in the book and only then would it be published. Erring on the side of discretion, I had not mentioned Her. She said that I should say I had got the knowledge in the book through my self realisation. She added reassuringly that they wouldn’t get after me the way they were getting after Rushdie, in a reference to the then current fatwa on the writer Salman Rushdie, for writing a book on religious matters.
Chris Greaves