The Swiss SWAMI JNANANANDA took the formal vows & garb of a Hindu monk & then spent years wandering & meditating in the Himalyas in the company of yogis. Today he is a beloved teacher residing in the foothills of the Himalayas. Bill Aitken is a noted author of booka about his adopted homeland. Atmananda, an Austrian claaical pianist, translated & edited the primary works about her Guru Anandamayi Ma into English, & ultimately became a Hindu sannyasini. Lucia Osborne, wife of the write Arthur Osborne, was a close follower of the great sage Ramana Maharshi. Father Bede Griffith, the Benedicting monk & well-known author, spent his life formulating a synthesis of Christianity & Hinduism. Anandamayi Ma, India’s most widely known woman saint, has attracted number of followers. Her name means “Bliss-intoxicated Mother”; indeed she is said to have been in an unbroken state of divine consciousness since childhood. Her physical beauty in itself has been extraordinary, & although she is now in her middle eighties, much of that beauty remains. Her spiritual magnetism is unchanged. She now rarely sings her bhajans, and never gives formal discourses. It is enough to be in her many ashrams. The day I arrived in her Kankhal ashram in the holy Himalayan town of Hardwar, the arrangements for me to interview several foreigners who were permanent residents there were wiped out: she decided to give a four-hour darshan, something she had not done for years. No devotee is going to get up & walk away from his guru to be interviwed by a stranger—the overwhelming desire is just to sit there & absorb. I, too, sat & absorbed: there was nothing else for me to do. Perhaps I absorbed too much of her charged radiation because after Ma retired to her room & we were free to disperse, there was in fact a sort of repulsion at the thought of carrying out my plan to go from ashram to ashram, from devotee to devotee asking silly questions. Vijayananda:- Ram Alexander has been kind enough to tell me you want to know about my background… well… you see, there are two people: one who died on 2nd February 1951, the other who was born on 2nd February 1951. Now do you want to hear about the dead man or the living man? Could we try the dead man first? The dead man has no great interest—he happened to be a doctor interested in spirituality. He already had one guru in France where he had been born, & had practiced meditation for 16 years before coming to India. You see, from the age of 10 he was rather religious—he was a Jew by birth—so this boy, instead of playing like other children, was thinking: What is the nature of God? And it was a big problem & it lasted many years. Finally he decided that God not being material, the mind or spirit did not exist. So he became an atheist. Melita Maschman:- Fitst… I never came to India looking for gurus. Ma I met accidentally. How?—you will ask. Then it is for you to listen. In 1962 I was working in Afghanistan as a journalist. Jourualists have holidays, so I wanted to spend three weeks with a German family in Mussoorie—that’s where you live, right? Right, We started from Kabul—all fine—but by the time we reached the nice Himalayan foothills, the rains washed away the road. That meant their fat Mercedes couldn’t move. I got out, took my bundle & went to Dehra Dun, making myself independent. After passing a boring hour there I asked