Category: Chapter 19

Shri Mataji worked on me a lot and would often have me with Her in 1980. In Her presence I found it easy to meditate and would feel full of love and joy and peace. Then She would ask me to go home and meditate in front of Her photo. This would sometimes be very…

It was a Friday afternoon in June, 1980, I had just come home from school and my mum told me she had spotted a poster advertising a talk by an ‘Indian Yogini’ at Hampstead Friends Meeting House and was I interested in going? So that evening we set off very early, maybe our Kundalinis knew better – as we…

Shri Mataji was always inspiring us and encouraging us in so many ways. She would try to raise us out of our personal problems, so that we could see the bigger picture, the greater vision that She was creating for us. I remember when Grazyna Anslow first came, in 1980. ‘Ah, really? Now we can…

The hall in the house at Old Alresford near Stonehenge in England was lined with wood so the acoustics were incredibly noisy. There must have been sixty of us there when we had that seminar in 1980. Shri Mataji spoke really, really softly with Her head down and you could hear a pin drop. That’s…

‘You need to do lemons and chillies,’ Shri Mataji used to say, and She would ask us to bring Her seven lemons and seven green chillies in a plastic bag. We would give the bag and its contents to Her, and She would put Her hand in it and touch all the lemons and chillies…

There were just a few of us in England in 1980, so we were all like a big family. Shri Mataji cooked for us, gave us presents, talked about our problems, always wanting to help us and give us encouragement. Mother was always very open about everything. Each new person felt straightaway trusted and included…

In London in the eighties, Shri Mataji used to have us hold lemons in our right hand to clear the left side and also put them on different chakras depending on what chakra needed to be worked on. We had to burn them with the flame afterwards until they were black all around and then…

It was in May 1980, and Mother was still living in Ashley Gardens, before She was in Brompton Square. It had been a hard year in Switzerland for the little bunch of yogis there because the negativity was hovering around us like a nasty dragon looking for someone to devour. When I was preparing my trip to…

‘You have been with me before, and much before,’ Shri Mataji often used to say when She spoke to the collective at pujas and meetings around the time my sister and I got realisation in 1980. We were also told repeatedly we were saints, this powerful insistence frequently clashing with our own rather more mundane understanding…

There were times when Shri Mataji would give saris to women to sew the seams and falls on them. I remember sewing a few saris and how this helped my attention and my liver. Ann Lewis