The book
Fire of Transformation - a story of love between a woman and the Divine, between soul and spirit, between earth and sky, unique and precious. this is a deeply moving and personal account of challenge and revelation, of joy, struggle and surrender, of the outer and inner journeying towards self-discovery.
Valeria Bonnazola (Gora Devi) was a young student in Milan when an inner prompting called her to India in a search for love, the love for God. There she encountered the legendary Hairakhan Babaji -- referred to by Yogananda in his book, Autobiography of a Yogi -- the revolutionary teacher and acclaimed Mahavatar who transformed her life completely.
The author
Gora Devi was born in 10th April 1946. She obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University Statale in Milan with a thesis on Utopia and the New World. Travelling to India in 1972 she spent 12 years with Babaji, the renowned Yogi of the Himalayas. she was one of the first Western people to meet Babaji and his first Italian disciple. The life journey on which she embarked is both mystical and entrancing, simple and yet extraordinary; a story of courage and endurance, of human frailty and the absolute wonder of human potential. She continues to live primarily in India.
Gora Devi
Fire of Transformation
My life with Babaji
Table of Contents
Cover
Meeting the Great Master, Babaji
Tibetan Initiation - Lama Sakya Trinzin
The West has come to Hairakhan
Foreword
by Peter Dawkins
In this book Gora Devi writes of her personal experiences as a disciple of Shri Hairakhan Wale Baba, the Mahavatar Babaji who appeared publicly in India at the end of the last century and millennium. It is a beautiful account - beautiful in its honesty - and is based upon the diary that Gora Devi kept during her time with Babaji. As she says herself in her own preface, this diary is intended to be a personal witness to a divine encounter. I always find it very touching, very moving, to hear or read about someone's personal encounter with Babaji, and even more so with Gora Devi, who was one of the few people in the 1970's to become a disciple of Babaji rather than just a devotee, and to be by Babaji's side during the last crucial years of his public appearance as Hairakhan Baba. This diary concerns Gora Devi's life and experiences with Babaji as a disciple during the years 1972-1984, and gives a unique insight not only into Babaji and his way of teaching (or one of his ways, as he himself is beyond limitation), but also into the transformational process undertaken by his beloved disciple.
Hairakhan Baba is known as a Mahavatar - a Great Avatar. Avatar means 'incarnation or manifestation of God', Maha means 'great'. In the Hindu Saivite tradition, Babaji is the Mahavatar of Samba-Sada-Shiva, the Supreme Being who is described as 'He who gives happiness at all times'. When he appeared in 1970 in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas, at Hairakhan, Babaji was recognised as such by many great yogis and saints, who were called to him and who had been preparing for his reappearance. Babaji has many names to describe him, amongst them being the Mahayogi (i.e. the Great Yogi or Yogi of all yogis) and Visva-Guru (i.e. the Guru of all gurus), who gave the world the yogic teachings and who has been with this world from its beginning, manifesting himself whenever appropriate throughout the ages. It is said that such manifestations rarely occur and that when they do it is when a major crisis confronts humanity and the planet, and the world needs greater help than can be given by an ordinary Avatar. Such a time is now, as we move from one Great Age (i.e. a 26,000-year cycle of twelve zodiacal