Laytonville, California
The candle does not make the fire. It carries it.
That is what the West received, and what the West now holds. This is the story of the Divine Mother Center, and what the saptarishi incarnation Sri Sai Kaleshwara Swami built.
Begin the Walk
01
First Waypoint · His Words
A Message to the Students
“America is your country, your Mother country… The globe is so hungry; you need to take care of the society. Create peace and wisdom there. Try to give amazing love, immortal love, to every person who is attending there as a unity. Show you are the students of Swami Kaleshwar.”Sri Kaleshwar · Private Video Message, 2008
It is not new to the West. It has returned. Twenty years ago, the spiritual knowledge of an ancient Indian Master lineage was not just taught in the West — a new power spot of that lineage was created in it.
02
Rishi Knowledge · Penukonda
Written Into Palm Leaf, Kept in Two Ways at Once
The knowledge was written into palm-leaf manuscripts at Penukonda, encoded, and put away until the right time. Texts alone could not hold a transmission across thousands of years. So it was kept in two ways at once: in the manuscripts, and in living beings.
In the lineage framework, the turn into Sai Yuga, “The Golden Age,” began around the year 2000 and runs across a thousand-year cycle. The release the rishis waited for is not ahead of us. It is underway.
Palm-leaf manuscripts · Penukonda
03
Brahma Consciousness
What the System Returns a Person To
“In Satya Yuga, everything is Brahma Consciousness. There's no incarnation of any god.”Sri Kaleshwar
Roughly a third of the original ancient knowledge has been lost over the millennia — through war, through corruption, through simple forgetting. But the key body of it survived: the knowledge of the soul, its awakening into god-consciousness, and how to free it from the obligatory karmic bondage that keeps it in the endless cycle of birth and death.
04
Soul Science
The Whole System of Creation Is in You
“The Whole System of Creation Is in You, but you don't know it. You can do wonders, but you don't know that. How to get that experience?”Sri Kaleshwar · Divine Mother Center, November 2005
In the lineage account, the maharishis are people, still in their bodies, holding the field open until the knowledge could be released. Their work — and the work of every serious student — is the same work: to give every soul in human form the keys to free itself, in a single lifetime, from the karmas of past lives, leading to the watershed event, the phase shift, the new birth of the god-energy that is the soul, transformed into its next divine stage.
The human life is the only lifetime in the creation, on any planet, in which a soul can achieve this stage. Every soul that comes in a human body, knowingly or not, looking for these keys.
05
Lineage Masters
A Fourteen-Year-Old, and an Old Man Who Knew Him
“Jesus researched with the maharishis. Still, his saint friends are alive on the Penukonda mountain in physical form.”Sri Kaleshwar
The knowledge needed a carrier. Sri Kaleshwar's life is the account of how it was carried out. By his own telling, he was fourteen, with no interest in religion, when an old man approached him and spoke about details of his life no one could have known. When Kaleshwar asked how, the man said he was Shirdi Sai Baba, who had left his body in 1918.
06
The Land · 225 Acres
Overlooking the Mendocino National Forest
The Divine Mother Center is a 225-acre consecrated Shakti Peeth overlooking the Mendocino National Forest, established by Sri Kaleshwar. When he first came to these mountains in 1999, he recognized the extraordinary energy of the land and envisioned it becoming a spiritual and healing center for the West.
“These vibrations are just like Sri Sailam. I've never experienced these vibrations anywhere outside of India. Baba's been in this forest for a long time.”Sri Kaleshwar · His First Night on the Land, 1999
Across six personal visits between 1999 and 2011, Sri Kaleshwar was doing something that has not been done in the modern era outside of India: he was creating, in the West, a power spot of the ancient Indian Master tradition — the same one ancient kings maintained dynasties through.
The land at night · Laytonville
07
Baba's Temple
A Temple That Never Stops Receiving Him
The Divine Mother Center is home to a beautiful Shirdi Sai Baba temple. Every Thursday, on Guru Day, Baba receives abhishek, shared through streaming with devotees around the world. Fire pujas on the Full Moon and New Moon are also broadcast globally, monthly.
Monika 'Mataji' Penukonda also wrote a beautiful English translation of the Sri Sai Satcharita. Blessed in Shirdi, published by the Divine Mother Center, and now available worldwide, it extends the stories, teachings, and presence of Baba to English-speaking devotees wherever they may be.
08
Datta · May 2006
A Murthi That Arrived Unannounced the Night Before
In May 2006, on a piece of forested mountain land in Mendocino County, California, Sri Kaleshwar performed the Prāṇa Pratiṣṭhā of a five-foot black marble Dattatreya Murthi that had arrived from India unannounced the night before. Dattatreya represents all three energies in the creation.
“I did the pratistha; pratistha means I gave the power to that statue. It is quite amazing.”Sri Kaleshwar · Chandra Nadi Initiation, October 15, 2009
The Dattatreya Murthi
09
Kanaka Durga · Tirupati
A Sister Murthi to the One at His Samadhi
A seven-foot granite murthi of Kanaka Durga — a form of the Divine Mother that Sri Kaleshwar personally envisioned and guided into being — sister to the maha murthi that stands outside his samadhi in Penukonda. Carved near Tirupati by the chief sculptor of the Tirupati Venkateshwara temple complex, son of the master who carved the original.
10
The Teachers · Fourteen Years
Yurts, Long Past Their Promise
All of this is made possible by a small group of people who have remained here to care for what their teacher entrusted to them. Before Sri Kaleshwar took Samadhi in 2012, his students received his instruction to move to this land and care for the power spot. They did. They came to a remote, largely undeveloped mountain, and stayed.
To create immediate housing, they erected yurts. Those yurts became homes for the teachers and caretakers who tend Baba's temple, maintain the power spot and sacred grounds, perform the practices and ceremonies, welcome students and visitors, and make it possible for what happens here to reach devotees throughout the world.
Fourteen years later, those temporary structures have served far beyond what anyone could reasonably have expected. Now it is time to replace them with something that will endure.
For those who love Baba, this is a very direct form of seva: helping sustain the people and the sacred place from which this service flows. The students came when their teacher asked them to come. They stayed. They have faithfully cared for what he entrusted to them.
A Global Community · One Sacred Place
Preserving the Knowledge, Reaching the World
The Divine Mother Center is also undertaking an extraordinary preservation effort: a Sacred Knowledge AI Initiative, built from Sri Kaleshwar's teachings and sacred palm leaf sources — using emerging technology to preserve ancient knowledge without separating it from its lineage. A global community rooted in one sacred place, reaching students through DEVI LOKA, the Virtual Ashram, Divine Mother School, and sacred ceremonies and teaching programs.
174,000+
Searchable teaching segments
12,468
Archived teachings
263
Term Vedic ontology
41
Countries reached
225
Acres of consecrated land
14
Years the yurts have served
Now we are asking the community to help care for them, so that they can continue caring for this home in the West, and sharing its blessings with the world.
The Temple · Baba's Grace
$5.6M
The Divine Mother Center, Laytonville, California. Six visits. Twelve years. A power spot of the ancient Indian Master tradition, built into Western ground.
“When this place is developed, it will prove the energy of the Divine Lineage to the planet.”Sri Kaleshwar · May 2011
The blueprint for the future temple complex is recorded — in writing, on film — for future generations. And the land that Sri Kaleshwar predicted will one day be “another Tirupati,” the most pilgrimaged site in the world, is here, waiting, working.
The only question this places before the person hearing it is whether they will be present when it reaches them.
We are asking you to help us fund our immediate needs: to build small, simple, fire-hardened homes for the teachers, and ensure that Baba's temple, the sacred ceremonies performed here, the preservation and sharing of his teachings, and this extraordinary power spot can continue to serve devotees around the world for generations to come.
Give to Baba's Grace
The Divine Mother Center · Laytonville, California · Give to Baba's Grace