About the author
Dada Bhagwan (7 November 1908 – 2 January 1988), also known as Dadashri, born Ambalal Muljibhai Patel, was an Indian spiritual leader from Gujarat who founded the Akram Vignan Movement. He was spiritually inclined from an early age. He worked as a contractor for a company maintaining dry docks in Bombay before attaining "self-realization" in 1958. He left business and focused on his spiritual goals. The movement around his teaching grew into the Akram Vignan movement gaining followers in western India and abroad. Ahimsa (non-violence) and vegetarianism are an important part of Dada's teachings. == Biography == === Early life === Ambalal Muljibhai Patel (A. M. Patel) was born on 7 November 1908 in Tarsali, a village near Baroda (now in Gujarat, India). His parents, Muljibhai and Jhaverba, were Vaishnava Patidars. He grew up in Bhadran, Kheda district in central Gujarat. A. M. Patel credited his mother for instilling an early appreciation of the values of nonviolence, empathy, selfless generosity, and spiritual penance within him. It is said that he was blessed by a saint when he was thirteen who told him that he would attain liberation.
