The Perfect Gift

She got us everything
The first London ashram was in Acton in about 1976, and we were there about six weeks. Gus, an Australian hippie was there. He had collapsed in the street, literally dying of hepatitis, and Mother took him up and took him home and looked after him in Her house for six weeks. because he was literally dying. Mother kept him in Her house all that time and fed him and looked after him and worked on him until he was fit again.
The first ashram we got was a rented place in Acton. It was a little house at the bottom of a hill right next to a railway line. So out at the back you had trains thundering by and at the front you had lorries making that huge hissing noise on their brakes or revving up to go up the hill. Djamel M. and I slept in the lounge. It was really exciting.
Shri Mataji found it and arranged it all for us. She got us everything, even the ironing board.
Patrick A.

The coat and the love
I was at Ashley Gardens once and I didn’t really have any clothes much and Mother gave me a coat, a beautiful coat. I remember going back home to Brighton, and while I was on the train, feeling the love of having been there with Shri Mataji and Her patience and Her working on me and totally covered in this coat. It was an amazing feeling. I’ve still got the coat and the shoes and the shawl She gave me and everything else.
Pamela B.

Always the gifts would be perfect
Most of the Sahaja Yogis from England went to work and help at Brompton Square. Shri Mataji always wanted to buy something for them, to give something to them. She went out and bought these wonderful suits. You would come there and there would be ten or fifteen suits laid out.
‘Oh this one will be good for John, as it is his size and this is good for Pat and this is good for Fergy,’ Shri Mataji would say. Every single one of them, She knew exactly what to buy and what to get. Shri Mataji would say to each of us, ‘Try this one.’ And the size would be perfect. Sometimes it is true, She would say, ‘No that one doesn’t look good on you, change it over.’ But always the gifts would be perfect. We were so looked after by Her. We were working on Her house, but She was working on us. She would always go out and buy us a suit or jumpers or ties. She always, all the time, would come back with something for us.
Antonio S.

Christmas presents
Mother usually used to give the Christmas presents. She used to give to the children. She used to give to us as well. At Chelsham Road for a couple of years there, Shri Mataji was giving me presents for Christmas.
Malcolm M.

Shri Mataji had a whole shipment of gifts for all of us, a couple of crates. She brought them to Chelsham Road and had us unpack them in the meditation room and there was packing material all over the floor. Out of the crates came loads of ceramic animals and other objects. We had to lay them all out and then She assigned each one to one of the people in the collective. Mother is amazing in the way She remembered all the names of the people in the collective at that particular time and there were quite a few of us. She gave each of those people a gift for Christmas.
Auriol W.


You give us our own powers
One evening, Mother came to Chelsham Road to see us. She often came on a Friday evening to see those of us who were Sahaja Yogis.
She came and sat down and we usually gave Her a cup of tea soon after She arrived.
‘How do you know I am not a fake?’ She said to us. We were shocked, but tried to answer Her.
‘Well, you give us presents, Mother,’ we said, and other things like that.
‘That is not it.’ She replied.
‘You cook meals for us.’
‘You cure us of diseases.’ But none of these were what Mother was looking for because, as She said, maybe She did these things to make us follow Her.
‘Mother, you give us our own powers and the ability to know right from wrong and you give us discrimination,’ said David S., at that time a young intern. This, Mother said, was the right answer.
Anonymous English Sahaja Yogi

Just barefooted students
Sahaja Yoga was not at all what it is today. It was so informal, as well. First, we didn’t have any programmemes which were with a lot of people. We used to go and meet at Gavin Brown’s place on a Sunday afternoon. Mother used to come by train to Victoria Station, London from Oxted, where She lived and then She would come by taxi. I even remember Her coming to a programmeme by tube.When you look at Sahaja Yogis today, now they all have cars. They all go and organize their programmemes. They all have money. They have all kinds of means. They have a lot more facilities than we had at the time.
I remember when we were staying at Finchley, in the ashram, we started organizing meetings at Caxton Hall, but we never did anything like today, which means we didn’t have all the facilities like having cars and vans and things like that. We were just barefooted students. We used to actually take a picture of Mother and take anything we could take, candles and incense and so on, and we went by bus. A lot of Sahaja Yogis don’t realize that their standard of living has risen so much. They don’t realize that Sahaja Yoga never started like this. It started with very little means, with the very little that the Sahaja Yogis that were there at the time had.
Djamel M.


She wanted to buy books
One day at Shudy Camps, Shri Mataji asked to go into Cambridge to buy some books. We thought She meant a few. How wrong we were.
We went to Dillons bookstore in the centre of Cambridge with Sir C.P. and a couple of yogis. Shri Mataji started walking round selecting books — not just a few, but whole shelves full and we came to understand that She was buying for Pratisthaan for the guest rooms. She bought whole collections of Agatha Christie, A.J. Cronin, Somerset Maugham and Sherlock Holmes, books on paintings, flowers, gardens and art of all kinds, novels, biographies, encyclopedias and on and on and even a book about chakras by Shirley Maclaine.
‘I’d better find out what she’s saying,’ Shri Mataji said.
We finally had all the books boxed up and, to our amazement, they just fitted in the very capacious trunk of the Mercedes with absolutely no room to spare.
Chris M.