“My aim in life is to be able to develop my own inner capacities and change the things within myself which cause me unhappiness and others too sometimes. I know that this will happen through deepening my relationship with God, which is what we call meditation or yoga. My first experience of God’s love was many years ago, when I first started on this path, but the relationship with God is very much a journey, in which the soul is constantly discovering new things about God and the self.

Another of my aims has been to serve humanity. When I returned to India aged 15, having been away for seven years, I became aware of abject poverty for the first time. This experience gave me a very deep sense of needing to serve people, rather than living life just for my own comfort and satisfaction.”