In the course of living in New York City, and Shri Mataji visiting there a number of times, we would go out with Her on various shopping experiences. To call it shopping was like calling the ocean a big body of water – it doesn’t quite describe it. In many cases, Shri Mataji was buying gifts for people in other countries, and She would pick out gifts for hundreds of people. They were all appropriate, and very aesthetic. But the main thing about these excursions with Her was aesthetics.
I had a background in Fine Art, and Shri Mataji would take us to shops that had a gallery quality, such as carpet shops, sculptures and glassware. She would examine them critically, vibrationally and from the point of view of aesthetics. We were with Shri Saraswati, getting art history lessons – telling us about the origin of silk, carpets, bronze sculptures, carvings of wood and stone, and what part of the world they came from. Shri Mataji had a great deal of knowledge about the people involved in this. When She looked at an object and felt the vibrations She was able to see a direct line to the creative spirit of the individual who had made it, to that creativity, and all this in some shop in a busy corner of New York City. It was a transformative experience.
Shri Mataji uses art and beauty to transform things through vibrations. It is not just that things are superficially beautiful, but the way She arranges Her homes – the way She arranges the aesthetics, the way She directs the visual, the textural, the colour and even the materials that Her homes are built with. They are all built with a sense of harmony and the correct materials. Sometimes She would use styles that you wouldn’t think would work together; wooden screens from Rajasthan with stone work from another area. They would work together marvellously well. She would take classical European Italian Baroque decorative images and patterns and use them together with those of the east. There was always an amazing balance, such as one sees in the Sistine Chapel.
Part of Her role on this earth was to bring back the Shri Saraswati principle, a sense of aesthetics, of taste. She did it in art, music, dress, and architecture. Meanwhile She raised the Kundalini of the whole world, a pretty amazing undertaking!
Phil Trumbo