June 1981 — we were sailing across the Channel towards the French coast, eleven yogis from London travelling to France to the seminar the Parisians had organized. Shri Mataji would be there, too. I spent part of the night chatting with two or three yogis, while the rest of them kept silently together.
‘I’ve been around for seven months now and I don’t even know how to balance my right and left channels of energy. These people stick together and don’t know how to help others,’ I was grumbling to myself.
The following morning, we reached the place of the seminar in a beautiful village outside Paris. About thirty people were there: French, Swiss and English. For each meal, the tables were shaped together as a U and Shri Mataji would take a place at the central table, according to the traditional rules of feasts. Everybody would then sit around Her and all around the tables and I remembered, with emotion in my heart, Christ eating with His disciples. Shri Mataji was so majestic and bringing such justice to Christ.
As usual, I was keeping away from Her. Her sweetness and Her force both combined, intimidated me and, above all, it was not easy to accept that somebody else might have known my hidden being much better than myself, as I was slowly discovering, She could do very well.
In fact, Shri Mataji proved it once more the day after, on Sunday morning. We were all seated around Her in a small room and She was looking around, smiling to the group before starting to speak. Her vivid black eyes were pouring a rain of life, love and well-being. Without doing or saying anything, that invisible rain was already flooding our whole being, binding all of us with a sweet warmth. We remained a few minutes in that exquisite silence, then Shri Mataji asked a straightforward question.
‘Well,’ She said, ‘let’s start with practical things today. Suppose you want to balance your right and left channel, how will you do it?’
In a fraction of a second, Her powerful, dark and shining eyes embraced the whole group, looking for an answer, and stopped on me — two huge penetrating eyes questioning me. Shri Mataji lifted Her eyebrows and with a prompt movement of the head asked me, ‘Mmh?’
I was seated at the back of the room. My heart jumped into my breast and I blushed violently. Shri Mataji scrutinized me for a few seconds, but what a shower on me! Then She looked away and nobody had been aware of Her play, as everything had been shaken around me at such a speed. When She gave the answer, which was less important to me now than the fact She had heard me a couple of nights before, I was stunned indeed. If She had caught my demand on the boat, that meant She had equally caught my accusations, of which I was not proud now. To be able to satisfy and correct at the same time, to be able to correct without bringing out shame or humiliation in front of others — that, I had never seen. I was full of admiration, facing such grace and subtlety.
Guillemette Metouri