Skeptics' after-dinner speaker finds something to believe in?

- 1 November 1990

The following item was sent by Mr A.S. Hamlyn of Dargaville. It appeared in The Northland Times of 23 March 1990 under the headline “Sceptic flabbergasted by Indian holy woman”.

Auckland: Arch sceptic Brian Edwards has been left flabbergasted by his meeting with an Indian holy woman, known to her disciples simply as “Mother.”

Edwards, who has always proclaimed himself an atheist during his colourful broadcasting career, said he had been given something to think on after what he believed was an extraordinary event during a radio broadcast with Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi.

“I’ll have to have a long think about what has happened. It has certainly taken me aback. But whether it will change my views…I’ll have to go home and think about it.”

Mr Edwards said his extraordinary experience occurred as he interviewed Shri Mataji, 65, in a sealed room onair for Radio Pacific.

Shri Mataji, hailed as a living saint in her native India, and an exponent of Sahaja Yoga, was telling her host about people’s inner spiritual force, which she calls kundalini.

It is a power, she says, that manifests itself as pulsations rising up the spine to the crown of the head and as a cool wind on the hands, similar to descriptions in Christian writings about the power of the Holy Ghost.

“I was listening to what she was saying but not really believing it,” Mr Edwards said.

“My impression was she was a smart, maternal and intelligent woman.

“Then one moment I had the distinct impression I was holding in my left hand what I can only describe as being a ball of cold air.”

Groping for words to describe the experience, Mr Edwards later said it was like a “weightless ball of ice.”

“I said to her ‘Are you responsible for this?’ and she replied she was,” he recalled.

“Next I felt the same thing in my right hand and bringing the two together, it was like a football of chilled air in my hands. This was all live on air. I had a feeling of this cold air moving behind my head. That is where it stopped. It didn’t reach the crown of my head, which is where the believers think the power resides.

“If I had to try to describe it, it would be like feeling the air on your hands from the airconditioning system in a car—but this was in the studio.”

Mr Edwards said the incident had not suddenly altered his atheistic views but it had given him something to mull over for quite some time.

Shri Mataji was in New Zealand for a three-day speaking tour around Auckland.

NZPA.

Footnote for the historically curious.

Dr Brian Edwards was a last minute replacement for the scheduled after-dinner speaker at the 1987 NZCSICOP conference in Wellington. After listening to the preliminaries, Edwards in his speech accused the Skeptics of being self-congratulatory. (Although an intelligent person, Edwards seemed to think conference dinners should be an occasion for soul-searching and breast-beating.) In the course of a general lambasting he told us we should believe in something. (Taking the hint, the A.G.M. of the NZCSICOP the following day passed this resolution: “The New Zealand Skeptics affirms its belief in Santa Claus but confesses to lingering doubts about the tooth fairy”.) —Ed.