Beginnings in England
I've found this new sort of yoga
The area where I used to live was round by Euston, near Tolmers Square in London and that area was a sort of high energy area. There were a lot of squatters and things like that there. We had a little community club there and one day in 1973 this fellow turned up, Mukund Shah, to teach us yoga. Over a year he tried all sorts of different yogas and meditations and then one day he went to see Shri Mataji and, because he had so much experience of so many sorts of yoga, he tended to be a bit skeptical and he felt vibrations, but not to sort of quantify it.
So he had this group of half a dozen of us that he used to teach yoga. So he said, “Look, I’ve found this new sort of yoga and all we have to do is sit down in front of this photograph of Shri Mataji and put your hands to it.” And he produced a little black and white photograph. It wasn’t much bigger than a postcard. And we sat there in his rather cold, drafty, old bank that we used to use as a social club and we sat there with our hands like this before Shri Mataji’s photograph. There was about five or six of us. And he came round and felt our hands and asked us what we felt and we all felt different sorts of things because we were all in different sorts of states of awareness due to what we’d done before. And anyway, we all obviously felt something and he said, “You get these vibrations from Shri Mataji. Would you like to come and meet Her at the Bharata Vidya Bhavan?” which was, at that time, on New Oxford Street.
The following Friday, we went off to the Bharata Vidya Bhavan. We met Shri Mataji and we sat at the back and listened to what She had to say and we realized it was something really nice. She was working on somebody at the time. We were aware that it was something special, but we had an inkling of what it might be, but weren’t prepared to admit to anybody, least of all ourselves, that we had actually met Adi Shakti. But I think, basically, we knew that it was special.
We went to Bharata Vidya Bhavan about two or three times and then, because the series was over, we moved to a house in Clare Court, Judd Street, where Mukund Shah used to live, just over the road from Kings Cross. We had a few meetings there and Shri Mataji told us about raising kundalini and this was one of the first experiences we had of actually hearing through Sahasrara.
She told us all our Sahasraras were open and She said, “Put your hands over your ears and cover them up completely and you’ll still be able to hear Me.” And we could. We had our hands over our ears and we could actually clearly hear what Shri Mataji was saying because we were hearing through our Sahasraras. Our Sahasraras had actually opened. So that was perhaps the first amazing experience, apart from feeling the vibrations, that we all had.
Douglas F.
How could someone like this be here
I’d seen Shri Mataji’s photograph before I met Mother. I’d heard about these meetings and I came to the last meeting at Judd Street. One damp Sunday afternoon, it was raining, and I came with my sister, Maureen. It had a huge impact on me because I’d heard that there was a yogi lady and I had this kind of idea that I’d walk into a room full of silence and perhaps there would be little bells tinkling somewhere. But it was so unlike what I’d expected that the effect on me was really quite profound. I immediately felt that this is what it must have been like to come across Christ teaching in the marketplace. It completely hit me like that, which was quite strange because religion wasn’t part of my life. Quite the opposite, I came from a hippie background. And I just felt that here was an amazing personality and my feeling was, “How can a being like this exist? How could someone like that be here?”
The whole room seemed full of light and there was a tremendous impression of how powerful Shri Mataji was, but She was just very sweet. She asked us to come and see Her and I came up and She put Her hand on me and said, “This one’s sick,” I think were the first words She said to me. And the meeting went on. It was amazing and magical. I didn’t really have a chance to figure out what it was all about, but I knew it was something quite momentous. That was the first meeting. She said I was sick and that I needed something for my stomach and She asked for a bottle and the strange thing was — no one else seemed to see this — but it seemed to me that I saw Her take the bottle, turn round and open a sort of door into some kind of an atomic furnace and put the bottle in, take it out, shut the door and give it to me. And I was quite astonished. And I took it home, drank it and it had the most extraordinary effect. It cleared me out. She said I had six months to live. Yes, I was really in quite a bad way. We went back for more meetings and I had a whole series of extraordinary experiences when She was there, but I think the thing that really hit me was a kind of gut reaction, a kind of recognition that this was someone. I kept getting the feeling that this was someone like Christ.
Pat A.
I had no idea what I had, but I knew I had it
It was the 16th September 1975 that we first met Shri Mataji in that Judd Street flat and, similar to my brother, Pat Anslow, it was a most momentous feeling. Even walking up the street to go to that flat, I had the strongest urge to run away I’ve ever had in my life. Even though I didn’t know where I was going and I had only been told, “This lady is a yoga teacher, but she doesn’t teach Hatha Yoga.” But I can remember thinking that if I wasn’t with people that I felt all right about all this — and would say, “What on Earth are you up to?” — I’d have run away. That’s how strong I could feel the force I was walking towards. And when we went in the flat and we were told to take off our shoes, which was strange for me, and told to sit down, I saw Shri Mataji working on this Indian gentleman, very strongly and sort of telling him off and sorting him out and I thought, “She is a Goddess.” That was my first thought that came into my head and then I thought, “What on Earth do I mean by that? I don’t even know what a Goddess is.” But that’s what it felt like. Then She got on with seeing to everybody and when my turn came, She actually got up and walked around, as well as sat down, and She told me to put my hands out and asked me what I felt. And that second I felt my attention drawn to my hands and said, “Oh, I feel something.” She just said, “May God bless you. You’ve got it.”
I thought, “I’ve got it.” I had no idea what I had, but I knew I had it. And that was it. And She then went on to everybody else. It was just great. I was dealt with.
Maureen R.
I am back home
I am back home I remember entering in Shri Mataji’s house in Oxted in 1975. I was in jeans and waswearing an old US Army jacket full of holes. I kissed Her hand and gave Her flowers. Interestingly, I remember bowing and looking at the ground, so spontaneously. She commanded immediate respect. But my heart felt such a relief almost immediately. It is hard to say when exactly I started recognizing Mother, but clearly the heart was faster than the brain. It was greatly helped, no doubt, by the contagious feeling of lightness and joy, an enveloping feeling of affection and well-being that made you feel, “I am back home! Home, sweet home!”
Gregoire de K.
It’s great being a kid
I got my Realization when I was seven years old in ‘75. The first time I met Mother was quite a marked memory. My father, sometimes used to bring me up to London for the weekend as I lived with my grandparents until my father remarried. He first met Shri Mataji about that time, so he said I was going to meet this very special Indian lady. I had never actually met an Indian lady of any description before that point, which made it a little bit daunting, coming from a middle class commuter town just near Brighton. Shri Mataji was very different from what I imagined because an Indian lady, to me, would have been a distant person in a sari. And there was this quite remarkable lady who was very friendly. Instead of being anxious and not knowing what to do because it was a strange adult, it was really rather fun.
She asked me questions and Her eyes lit up and there was a huge smile and for some mysterious reason — being an adult now, I can’t remember why, I decided I had to be an elephant. It was in this flat in Gower Street where there was seventies-style furniture, including some wickerwork drink things to put your drinks inside. I turned these things upside down and stuck them on my feet and legs and kind of roared around the room and pretended to be an elephant.
When I did this, Mother just pitched Her head back with laughter and laughed and laughed. My father was horrified, sort of “Oh no, what’s he doing?” But Shri Mataji really brought the situation alive and made it all rather fun. And there was no sort of anxiety or anything like that. It’s great being a kid. With Shri Mataji, you don’t have to think, “Do I have to be this or that?” You just sort of are.
93
A different universe altogether
Mother arranged this weekend at Her house at Hurst Green — Icehouse Wood, Hurst Green in Sussex. It was near Oxted. We all went down there by train. It was extraordinary because here we were, a very strange collection of people in an extremely nice neighbourhood, extremely nice. Shri Mataji once described it, “Not even a rat was allowed to enter in or would enter in because the houses there were so perfect.” They never had visitors, let alone about fifteen straggling, hippie-type people dressed in jeans and any old gear. In Shri Mataji’s house there was a big drawing room downstairs with beautiful Indian rugs and things like that and then this room up the stairs that was on the mezzanine. It was very sunny and there were large statues of deities and a beautiful Shri Ganesha there.
Maureen R.
Pat Anslow took me upstairs to the first floor and showed me this big statue of Shri Ganesha. And he said, “See this statue has such vibrations.” And I said, “Hang on.” Being from a Muslim background, I thought, “What is he talking about?” So I tried just feeling the vibrations, while stepping back. And it did have vibrations. That is the wooden statue we had in Chelsham Road ashram in London. One of the things that struck me also in the house of Mother was that it looked and felt as if every statue that She had in the house was vibrating with power. Everywhere you went, you felt a kind of silent, peaceful, but extremely powerful environment, which is very difficult to describe, except to say that you knew something very powerful was working very deep inside you and working it out. Yet, you were in the middle of this and you felt you were in a different universe altogether.
Djamel M.
Shri Mataji worked on us and talked to us and there was an incredible smell of Indian cooking for about three hours. They started cooking so early and then I started to be ill. I had to keep rushing off and being ill, but I felt brilliant. It was just a fantastic clearout and then everybody went down to this big drawing room and fell asleep on the floor. We’ve got pictures of these bodies all over this floor just everywhere. Then we had another session with Shri Mataji working on us and I had to keep dashing in and out, but it was like being totally divorced from the actual bodily feeling. I felt fantastic. But because I’d been ill, Shri Mataji said, “Maureen, you can come and sleep in My room.” When it came to bedtime, I tried to hide behind everybody because I was convinced that Shri Mataji disappeared when She went out of the room. She went up these stairs curved round the middle of the house and She went half up the stairs and spotted me and hauled me out from the crowd and I was so scared as to what was going to happen. She had this enormous and lovely bed. Being from a sort of hippie background, I hadn’t come with nightclothes that were particularly smart or anything and She dressed me in petticoats and cardigans. She worked on my back all night in Her sleep and I kept having to get up to be sick. She slept and then She’d stop sleeping and say, “That’s better now.” Then She’d carry on putting Her hand on my back and various places and then She’d sleep for a bit longer and then stop and say, “How do you feel now?” It just went on all night and in the morning I was allowed to have bananas and cardamom seeds. That was the absolute minute attention She’d give us.
It’s just incredible to think of Her doing that for us. Then She went to India for about six months and we used to meet together, a handful of us, to try to meditate, but we weren’t very good at all. Shri Mataji, before She went, had said, “You can come to India next year when I go. You can come with Me and meet all the Sahaja Yogis there.” So we started saving and when She came back we were in such a state She said, “Forget it. You’re not up to it.” But then She again started meeting us each week, generally on a Sunday or Saturday, and She again had us to Her house.
Maureen R.
How am I going to visit you?
We went to Shri Mataji’s house in Oxted, but I can only remember patchy things because I was quite young at the time. One of them was that I used to love drawing maps. I drew this map which had some islands. There was an island for me and an island for Shri Mataji.
So She said, “Well, that’s no good because how am I going to visit you?”
And I said, “Well, I can’t take the ordinary train. Well, what about an underground train?”
So Mother said, “Okay, that’s fine.”
So, with Her direction, we drew in this little sort of underground train track. That solved the problem.
93
We felt what Shri Mataji felt
We were painting various bits of the house in Hurst Green in Sussex in about 1974. Now, one particular experience that I remember was that Shri Mataji went out with Sir, then Mr., Srivastava to go to a meeting, a reception of some sort. He was at that time the directorgeneral of IMCO, International Maritime Consultative Organization, and She left us. We were just cleaning this wall and painting it. About halfway through the night, we suddenly got this terrific headache and it felt really strange, but we just carried on working. So it passed.
So when Shri Mataji came home and asked us how we were, I said, “I got this really terrible headache halfway through. I didn’t know what was happening.” She said, “Oh, what happened was that we were at this reception and somebody, by mistake, gave me a glass of wine and I drank it.” So what happened was we felt the effects of the wine that Shri Mataji drank because it had an effect on the unconscious and we actually felt it from Her. So obviously, at that time, we were in such deep meditation that we actually felt what Shri Mataji felt through the
collective unconscious. That was quite an amazing experience.
Douglas F.
She gave us so much affection
We are talking about early days and for me early days were the spring and summer of 1977. What was special was that Shri Mataji had just a few Sahaja Yogis. She was trying to bring them up to the level where they could be strong enough, so we could then expand our
collectivity. When I arrived there were perhaps about six or seven people — I was probably the eighth. Some of us who came in those days have left. I remember how She worked on an Australian boy, Gus, for so many weeks. She took him home, She looked after him and She cured him. He was like an encyclopedia of drugs, really bad. He had so many problems and She worked on him day in and day out, every day. She never spared any effort. The most extraordinary thing is that She gave him all Her love and, after three months, he just left. He
left Sahaja Yoga. When you look at it from our point of view, he wasted Mother’s efforts. But She never actually talked about it that way. She just gave love and there was no condition put on that love.
The most extraordinary thing about Shri Mataji is and was Her capacity as a Mother to nourish the Sahaja Yogis who came at that time, to nourish them with enough love so they stayed in Sahaja Yoga, so they felt, “Maybe She gives us what we didn’t have,” so as Sai Nath of
Shirdi said, “We may want what She wants to give us.” She worked tirelessly, taking us to Her home. She never hesitated to cook for us. Just
think, the Adi Shakti in Her home, cooking for the few of us. There may have been seven, eight, nine, even ten Sahaja Yogis. She would, Herself, cook food for us because obviously She wanted to put those vibrations in our Nabhis and improve our Nabhis, which were in such a state. It was so great, the way She actually received us in Her home, whether it was the house She had in Hurst Green or in the flat in Ashley Gardens. She did everything for us and gave us so much affection.
Djamel M.
One is power and one is purity
Because I wasn’t properly centred, I had a bit of an Agnya problem at that time. I used to see Shri Mataji flash from different colours. She used to go this beautiful rainbow green and this beautiful rainbow red and I’d just see this light sort of flashing from Her. But apparently, the reason for that was because I had an Agnya problem. I mentioned this to Shri Mataji and She said, “You shouldn’t actually see that.” She said, “One colour is power and one is purity.” I could actually see them, but She said, “If you can actually see those colours, it means you are not actually in the centre. You are off to one side.”
Douglas F.
She tried things out with people
Shri Mataji used to give me little presents sometimes. My memory is fragmentary because it’s a long, long time ago. I remember in Gower Street. My father says the older Sahaja Yogis at the time were a collection of ex-hippies and I was younger and clearer. They had had a bit of a wild time and it had left its imprint on their chakras. Shri Mataji sometimes used to use me to sort of try things out or to clear things out. She discovered the neck crick on me. This is a form of treatment which no longer exists.
Shri Mataji had me sitting down and said, “I’ve discovered this great new treatment for the Vishuddhi.” She got my head and went ‘huwhump!’ and it went ‘click!’ I was very surprised and She laughed. It worked. There was this sense that Sahaja Yoga at this time was experimental. She tried things out with people. She would get them to do things and see if it worked or not. I mean, I think it sort of goes on, on a larger scale, as well today.
93
She never tired of clearing us out
We were all sitting in a line. Somebody had a hand on Shri Mataji and we all had one hand on each other. The end person had their hand out of the window and we were just sitting there and it just went on hour after hour after hour. And eventually, we all fell asleep. And I woke up early in the morning and we were all lying, still holding on to each other. I looked up and Shri Mataji was sitting, watching me and She said, “Ready? Okay, let’s carry on.” A lot of it I remember as being quite hard work. It was really quite difficult at times,
quite painful. But it was always magical. A lot of clearing out went on.
Pat A.
Then in the afternoon She would say, “Okay, you should go and watch a movie,” to have a change of atmosphere. But She would work actually virtually twenty-four hours. How many human beings are capable of doing that? So She put so much love into us and She worked so hard and yet we were really — we had our own problems. We were far from perfect and yet She always had this sort of love for us. She always received us. If you think of all the love She has given us — as She Herself said later on, “If you can’t love others, considering the love I give you, you can’t love anyone” — and it is true because the love She gave us was so powerful. There was so much of it and She
showed it at every single moment. She never tired of loving every one of us and She never tired of clearing us out. Every time we went to see Her, She always looked at our vibrations. She always worked on us. It was a non-stop job for many years.
Djamel M.