Early Life
Born Chunriwala Mataji, Jani grew up in Charada village in Mehsana district. According to Jani, he left his home in Rajasthan at the age of seven, and went to live in the jungle.
At the age of 11, Jani underwent a religious experience and became a follower of the Hindu goddess Amba. From that time, he chose to dress as a female devotee of Amba, wearing a red sari-like garment, jewellery and crimson flowers in his shoulder-length hair. Jani is commonly known as Mataji (" The Great Mother"). Jani believes that the goddess provides him a liquid sustenance or water, which drops down through a hole in his palate, allowing him to live without food or water.
Since the 1970s, Jani has lived as a hermit in a cave in the rainforest near the Gujarati temple of Ambaji, awakening at 4am each day and spending most of his time meditating.
Read more about this topic: Prahlad Jani
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)