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Maa, Shree (1950– ) teacher of bhakti yoga

After spending her childhood and early adult

years meditating and worshipping virtually in

solitude, Shree Maa emerged in the 1980s as a

teacher and religious singer in India. In 1984 she

founded the Devi Mandir temple in California and

began spreading her teachings through worldwide

tours and music recordings.

Shree Maa was born in Assam in northeastern

India around 1950. Although no records exist

for her name and date of birth, she reportedly

was born in the year a great earthquake shook

the region. She is from a family, that included

businessmen as well as advanced yogis and is a

descendant of the 18th-century Bengali poet-saint

and KALI devotee Ramprasad Sen. She received

her early education from her grandmother, whose

attentiveness to worship in daily activities made a

great impression upon her. She spent much of her

childhood in meditation at the local temple and in

the family shrine room.

In her early teens, Shree Maa spent many

hours in solitude and worship, both at home and

in the nearby caves of the Himalayas. She knew

as a child that the 19th-century priest of Kali,

Sri RAMAKRISHNA, would be her personal GURU.

In high school and college she continued to live

introspectively and to worship in seclusion, show-

ing little interest in family and social gatherings.

After completing college she left home and trav-

eled to KAMAKHYA, the famous pilgrimage site in

the foothills of the HIMALAYAS. She spent the next

eight years wandering in the area living the life

of an ascetic. Villagers always found her in deep

meditation. She spoke very little and ate only basil

leaves and sandal water. Devotees claimed that she

reached SAMADHI, the highest state of conscious-

ness, and gave her the name Shree Maa, Respected

Holy Mother.

Breaking her solitude in the late 1970s, Shree

Maa began worshipping in temples and sing-

ing publicly, exposure that drew an increasing

audience of devotees. In 1980, at a temple in

Bakreswar, West Bengal, Shree Maa met Swami

Satyananda Saraswati, an American-born trav-

eler who had been studying under a number of

gurus in India since the 1960s. The two traveled

together throughout India, performing religious

rituals wherever they were invited.

In the early 1980s, Shree Maa received divine

instruction from Sri Ramakrishna to move to

America and teach the meaning of DHARMA, the path

of righteousness. In 1984, with few possessions

and almost no money she and Swami Satyananda

M