Still today the Goswami name is and has been well-known in Northern Bengal for some 700 years. One of Sri Goswami’s ancestors became the guru of King Hatnabati who lived at a time when the great bhakti yogi and reformer Chaitanya (1486-1533) came to Puri where he would end his life (the legend says Chaitanya’ body disappeared mysteriously). The famous bhakti yogi had then passed his spiritual responsibilities over to Goswami, the King’s guru. However, the Goswamis were known even before the Chaitanya legacy to Sri Goswami’s ancestor took place. Sri Goswami mentions Vasya as a plausible origin of his ancient lineage.
One of the pivotal yogis to influence Sri Goswami was Balak Bharati, a hermit endowed with extraordinary powers who lived close the Goswami family house, in Santipur.
During his spiritual quest, Sri Goswami would meet an other great yogi master who initiated him into the science of the chakras - Layayoga - (also called Kundalini Yoga), a path that assumes a mid-position between Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga. It is the same Layayoga master who later initiated and married Ma Santi Devi.
Ma Santi Devi Sri Dijwapada Sharma Raya
(1904-2002) "Masterjee" (1870-ca 1935)
Born on Dec. 25th 1904 in a village of Northern Bengal, at the age of 13 Ma Santi Devi was fetched by her future husband, a teacher in close the village of Pavana and likewise a Laya Yoga master, named Sri Dijwapada Sharma Raya. For eight consecutive years made her to follow the rules of brahmacharya before granting her diksha. From that time, the teacher started to show his young disciple the path of devotion and the rituals related to it – puja, braja, japa as prescribed in Hindu scriptures (shastras). The Laya Yoga adept “Masterjee”, as Ma Santi Devi used to call her Guru-spouse, passed away when she only was in her early thirties, widow with one son, his wife and their three children.
Soon after, an other misfortune would hit the yogini: Her son was killed in a tragic car accident living the devoted yogini suddenly alone had with the responsibility to look after her frail step-daughter and three grand children. Split but enriched, Ma Santi Devi’s life became divided between spiritual practice and a high sense of her household responsibilities.
With the help of faithful and generous disciples like Sri Shyam Sundar Goswami and his disciples, Ma Santi Devi was given a piece of land in Gopalpur upon which she would build a home of her own share with her stepdaughter Arati and three grandchildren Devkumar, Shibani and Sarbani.
Formally illiterate but filled with spiritual wisdom, the yogini of Gopalpur was both a pragmatist and humanist. Ma Santi Devi was would display throughout her whole life a rare sense of equanimity. She would treat equally her family members, native and foreign disciples as her own offspring - a vision of sameness (sama-darshana) that is typical of accomplished yogi(ni)s according to Baghavad Gita (II, 48).
