Shri Anandi Ma, enlightened Master of Kundalini Maha Yoga, is offering free public meditations in Concord, Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30. Shaktipat initiation, the awakening and stabilization of the kundalini energy, will be available on March 31 by appointment.

More than a century ago in India, a young boy named Kashinath Mishra ran away from home to begin his spiritual quest. After attaining realization, he returned from the mountains as Dhyanyogi, master of meditation. His adventures continued until at age 94, he discovered the thirteenyear- old girl destined to be his spiritual heir. This House is on Fire is the story of this beloved saint, who touched the lives of thousands of seekers all over the world. The following excerpts describe the passing of the lineage from Shri Dhyanyogi to Shri Anandi Ma:

By 1972, Shri Dhyanyogi had two ashrams and thousands of disciples, several of whom had attained the final goal of liberation. He was six years shy of having lived for a century, but he still had tremendous energy and enthusiasm for his work. Given his age, however, it was inevitable that eventually he would have to slow down and turn everything over to someone else. But there was no one new in sight who had a sufficiently elevated spiritual level to transmit the energy of the lineage through shaktipat and guide others on the path to liberation. Some of his students began to wonder: Would this ancient lineage end with Shri Dhyanyogi?

To those who knew him, Shri Dhyanyogi was one of a kind. It was inconceivable that someone else could assume his role and carry on the lineage. But privately, Shri Dhyanyogi was searching for the person who could take his place. Several times he appeared excited about a new disciple. Perhaps it seemed to him that this might be "the one." But each time, his initial enthusiasm faded.

In the fall of 1972, another possible successor to the lineage appeared, this time in a suburb of Mumbai. She was just a slip of a girl, shy and quiet, with her mother's dark eyes, and on the surface it hardly seemed possible that she could be the one chosen to carry on Shri Dhyanyogi's work in the world. For months before their meeting she was entering spontaneous states of samadhi. At times the ecstasy took the form of dancing or wild laughter as she embodied divine energies but most often she would simply fall into deep states of meditation that lasted for hours and even days, with a blissful smile upon her face.

Several days after they first met, Shri Dhyanyogi gave her shaktipat. "She does not need the initiation to awaken her energy," he said, "but to connect her to the lineage this is a necessary step. I have not met anyone like her in all my life. For a person at so young an age to attain such a level! The potential seed has been found. If God wills and the lineage chooses, there is hope that my work can continue."

This young girl stood out among all others, Shri Dhyanyogi explained, because the divine energy that flowed in her was so strong. Such intensity is necessary for one soul to be able to raise the souls of others, and indicates a tremendous level of spiritual evolution. Indeed twenty years later when he formally announced the passing of the lineage to her, he gave her the spiritual name Anandi Ma, which means one who puts others in bliss and remains in bliss.

"When I first met her," American disciple Tom Thompson recalls, "Shri Dhyanyogi was still training her to stay in the body and control her energy. In those days, it seemed like she'd rather go on some mountaintop with him rather than deal with all the disciples, but he trained her and she became the Guru.

"I remember a very profound experience I had with her when I really began to understand who she was. I came home from work late and everyone else was in bed. She was waiting to call India, to call Shri Dhyanyogi. She was sitting on the floor and I sat down with her. It was a very informal situation. I asked her, 'Do you experience God all the time?' and she laughed and said yes and looked at me, and I had a direct experience of God for just a few seconds. Everything opened up in that moment."