Rani was told in the early 1970s by a psychic, "You are a Sufi." "What's a Sufi?" she asked. Years later she met Pir-o-Murshid Hidayat Inayat Khan, the second son of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and was inspired by his devotion to his father’s vision of the unity of Religious Ideals. Rani’s years of academic training, having earned a Master of Theology degree from Harvard Divinity School (1969) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the California Institute of Integral Studies (1977), and her years of academic teaching as an Associate Professor of World Religions, (Lewis and Clark College, 1970 – 1987) had also led her to the realization of the unity of religions. During her academic career she had approached the subject through publishing articles in journals in England, America, and India on subjects that included Jungian depth psychology, meditation, mythology, Goddess symbols, and Buddhist psychology.
She had also trained extensively in Eastern meditation traditions, especially Vedantic (Hindu)and Vipassana (Theravadin Buddhist) in India, Myanmar, and the US. Her exploration of, and experience in, these and other psychological and spiritual practices led her to join this path of Universal Sufism.

After leaving her academic career, she earned a Master of Social Work degree at Portland State University (1990), and has been in private practice since that time in Portland Oregon. She is also a certified psychoanalyst (Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, 2005). Her background in the academic study of religion, meditation, western and eastern psychology, and psychoanalysis express her lifelong interest in the interrelationship between spirituality and psychology, and the actual impact that spiritual practices have on the people who practice them.