When I was a small child, I believed my mother was all-knowing, all-powerful, and essentially ever-present in my life. It felt as though she was always keeping a close watch on me, ready to step in at any moment to give me comfort or protection.

Once, during our family’s summer vacation, I was asleep at night in our hotel room. I must have been three or four. I dreamt I was walking in a forest where I suddenly encountered a big bear. It began to growl, and then came bounding toward me. I ran and ran, finally racing up a mountain, only to fall off a cliff, into a dark abyss.

I remember waking up with a shudder, only to find myself in the comforting presence of my mother, asleep next to me.

“Ah,” I thought, sighing with relief and putting my small arm around her, “Mama will always be here by my side. She will never allow me to fall over a cliff like that, or die.”

As I grew older, I began to sense that there was actually a deeper presence moving through my mother, and in fact, through every experience I was having in life. It was the creative force in the universe, whom India had taught me to see as the Divine Mother: an all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, loving intelligence, the source of all life and all creation.

I have come to believe that this loving intelligence keeps a protective eye on me—and perhaps on you, too—through every moment of our lives.

The Escalator Moment I Will Never Forget

Sometimes, the deft touch of this protective force is so silent and fleeting that we hardly even notice it.

Our baby daughter was less than a year old when one day, we took her to the mall in a stroller. At the escalator, I didn’t even pause to think, boldly pushing the stroller onto it.

As we came to the top of the escalator, the stroller got stuck, unable to roll smoothly onto the floor above. But the escalator under my feet kept advancing up, and I found myself suddenly being pushed backward by the stuck stroller. For a millisecond, all of life was a blur. I visualized myself falling backward, with the stroller falling on me, with our baby dropping out of it…

Suddenly, of its own accord, the stroller got unstuck and rolled on to the floor above, allowing me to recapture my balance and walk on to the floor at the top of the escalator.

I have quietly asked myself a thousand times since then, “What if our little one had fallen out of the stroller and rolled down the escalator? What if…?”

Whenever I find myself lamenting for a brief moment that the universe is not on my side, all I have to do is go back to that moment at the top of the escalator to realize how incalculable a debt I owe Divine Mother.

The Exquisite Timing of Divine Interventions

Sometimes the Divine Mother will quietly protect us from trouble we have not even seen yet.

In September 2025, our Mentora team booked a beautiful retreat facility for a 50-person event planned for June 2026. Three strong options had emerged during our search, and something about this one prompted me to say “yes,” almost intuitively.

By November, though, I began to feel a subtle disquiet—a growing sense that June of 2026 might not be the right time for that gathering. Yet everything was confirmed: the rooms, the contract, the announcement timelines. The arrow had already left the bow.

One day in early December, I looked at the images on my meditation altar—spiritual Masters who speak deeply to my soul: Christ, Krishna, Yogananda and his lineage. Occasionally, I find it more practical to converse with these embodied Masters as a pathway to Divine Mother. I said to them, “You are aware that we booked this facility to accomplish good things in the world. But, look, I got the timing messed up. It’s my fault, I know. You’ve got to find a way to help here. Can you get me out of this mess?”

If I stayed attuned, I told myself, these Masters may perhaps transmit an idea to me on how we could reuse the booked property for a different purpose. But no such idea came to me.

Instead, a few days later in December, we received a note from the property.

“We are dearly sorry to inform you,” they wrote, “that we need to cancel your booking. Our property has just been sold to another organization.

“As part of the terms of the sale, we have had to cancel all future bookings, including yours. We regret the inconvenience this may cause you and will help you find an alternate location if you wish.”

Oh, what a relief! In ways I could never have planned or foreseen, help had arrived. We were released from the contract.

That whole week, I was on a high. I was sure the great Masters had stepped in to help me, engineering the property’s sale as a divine escape clause.

But then I started to reflect more carefully about the mathematics of the whole affair. Would the great ones—who live in perfect harmony with love for all—intervene in a way that disrupted other people’s plans, or jeopardized jobs and communities? Did the Masters go too far?

Then a story came to mind—one that offered the clarity I was seeking (shared below as a P.S.).

I realized that, even back in September, these Masters may have been aware that I was going down the wrong path. My attachment to doing this event in June 2026 may have been too strong for me to hear their inner counsel. Instead, they found a quieter opening—one small decision where they could nudge my thinking. Knowing that this one property would be getting sold in the future, they quietly influenced my thoughts on what seemed at that point to be a relatively inconsequential decision for which I had no strong attachment, to get me to select this property over the others.

So they were protecting me even before I became aware anything was wrong—even before I reached out to ask for their help.

I felt so deeply comforted, and grateful.

Where might grace have already protected you before you even knew you needed help?

What Heartbreak Once Taught Me

Now you might say, “Well, Hitendra, if this loving intelligence and the Masters she places among humanity are so loving and protective, then why would there ever be suffering in the world?”

Divine Mother is all-loving, but that does not mean she will indulge our every whim, or correct our every stumble. Sometimes she brings us material protection, and at other times, she offers something far more precious: a chance to feed the deeper hunger of the soul, if we allow her to.

When I was twenty-five, I experienced a profound heartbreak. If your heart has ever been broken in young adulthood, you know how devastating it can feel, as if the world is ending. After two days of hugging a pillow and crying, I turned to Divine Mother and asked, “Why did this happen to me?”

Instead of an answer, I received questions.

“What were you seeking in that relationship, my son?

“Understanding? Kinship? Intimacy? True love?

“Am I not all of these things to you—and more?

“Has it not been my love that has flowed to you through every caring gaze, every helping hand, from the day you were born?

“If you feel my love behind every human bond, if you approach relationships without feeling possessively that someone is “yours,” you will honor and celebrate the special relationships I bring into your life, without getting attached to any of them. And you will feel that same love from me in the fragrance of flowers, the taste of fruit, and the kindness of strangers who cross your path.”

From that day on, I promised myself that I would never let my happiness depend on another human being—on how they behaved, or whether they were present in my life. I would honor the sweetness of human connection, celebrate the presence of special people in my life, but never would I let my happiness be held hostage by them. I have striven since then to open my heart to the love that flows freely, universally, unconditionally, across the universe.

Much later, I came across this prayer by Mother Teresa that so beautifully captures what Divine Mother taught me when I was twenty-five. “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

A Prayer for this Season

My prayer this holiday season is simple: May the creative force in the universe—you can call it Heavenly Father, Divine Mother, God, the Source, or something else—keep a loving eye on each of us. May we feel quiet guidance when we are confused, protection when we are vulnerable, and love when we momentarily forget our own divinity.

And may we live nobly, serve generously, and discover again and again that we are never walking alone. For as we play our part with faith and integrity, perhaps the great Masters are, even now, walking with us unseen, gently guiding the course of our times toward freedom and flourishing for all.

What would shift if you walked into 2026 with the awareness that you are being accompanied every step of the way?

With love and gratitude,
Hitendra

***

P.S. The Story that Gave Me the Insight

The idea that the Masters sometimes influence events long before our conscious mind has caught up—nudging us gently toward the right decisions—was seeded in me during the 2024 Convocation of Self‑Realization Fellowship. In his talk, SRF President Brother Chidananda said, “There are powerful spiritual forces for good that are active in this world to the degree that our spirituality and good actions, in other words our spiritual karma, permit.”

He recounted something Yogananda once said: “Some of the Masters and saints who have attained liberation continue to work for this world. The Masters are not sitting still by any means. They are busy for us. They work with the thoughts of men, but they could not work unless certain karmic conditions are there.”

Brother Chidananda spoke of World War II, of how there were many critical moments when the outcome of the war hung in the balance. Moments that seemed, on the surface, to be matters of chance or luck—Battle of Midway, Dunkirk, the North Africa campaign, Imphal east of Calcutta, and others. “Amazing,” he said, “and inexplicable.”

Yogananda had explained that these events were not merely luck. Something deeper was at work.

“The two militarist powers were prevented from controlling the world,” Yogananda said. “If they had conquered, we would have lived under dictators for many, many years.”

Then, Yogananda added words that invite deep reflection: “Hitler was winning the war until the Masters planted thoughts in his mind that caused him to make the wrong moves.”

It is a remarkable proposition—that at critical moments, the course of history may be quietly shaped by liberated souls influencing the thoughts of certain key players.

Might this, from a spiritual perspective, explain why Hitler broke the Nazi-Soviet Pact and attacked Russia, forcing a war on two fronts that ultimately stretched the Nazi forces thin? And declared war on the United States, drawing America’s full industrial and technological power into Europe?

I leave that for historians to debate. But in this story, I found my answer.

If it is true that the Masters may have planted thoughts in Hitler’s mind to disrupt his campaign, they might too at times be planting thoughts in me—such as the decision to select the very property for our misguided June 2026 plans that would in a few months be pushed to cancel our contract on its own!

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