Carol Garrido: “I need a Guru…”

I was in Sheffield at the time and I think what happened really is in retrospect that I walked, I was studying in Sheffield landscape architecture, and I walked past this bookshop where they sold incense and all sorts of things. I sort of walked back again because I saw this picture on the door and it was of a lady with long hair and I just sort of read what was underneath. To this day I can’t remember what it was but I saw the picture and then I just walked on. I forgot all about it but before that, I would never be someone who was looking, reading anything that I thought was unusual or doing anything like that. I mean I come from a very so Christian background and everything. I think after that incident and seeing Mother’s picture which is with it was that I started reading things and allowing myself to sort of seek and even to sort of go back and read the Bible as though I was just sort of reading it for my own sake rather than the sort of anything else. Then I came across a book which was by …, someone I never heard of or didn’t know anything about but inside it said, you need a guru, somewhere in that …. I thought, oh my God, yes, I need a guru, that’s why I need a guru. I was looking and I started going back to church because I stopped doing that, going to the baha’is because my brother was trying that and finally somebody in the house that I was living in said, oh, we’ve gone to this thing, you’d be good at that, you’re looking around, you’re asking questions, you come to this. We went this public, just a program in Sheffield. Ray Harris was talking and he was talking about evolution and everything. I thought, this is interesting. Then they put this tape of Mother on and Mother started talking about God made this beautiful world, he just put rivers here and trees there and mountains here just to make it beautiful. I thought that was interesting because I was studying landscape architecture and trying to design things and everything. I thought, well, that sounds good. Then, I was worked on. I think it was John Glover and Graham’s wife, Gayle, Gayle Pottinger and they worked for me and asking me, what are you feeling, what are you feeling? are you feeling the cool breeze on your hand or on your head and I couldn’t feel anything out of the top of my head and then I started to cry because I was I was in an emotional place at that time. Then they said but can you feel anything else? I said, yes, I can feel this cool coming down on my knees. That’s good, that’s good, they said. I went home, oh yes and they asked me, why do you think we’re here, oh yes, why do you think we’re here? I said we’re here to enjoy because strangely enough before I’d come for program, I have been sitting under a tree somewhere, thinking, why are we here? And this thought had come into my head from somewhere, we’re here to enjoy and I was so not enjoying myself at that time, I thought this is very strange. Then Ray asked me and he said, yes, yes, yes, that’s what we’re here, we’re here to enjoy. There was Mother’s photographs and it was a puja photo actually at the meeting and I kept saying to John Glover, yes but who is this lady? Because I felt that, coming from Christian background, icon is not a, you know, it’s a photo and you’re all sort of … Who is this lady? Okay, so I kept wanting to know who is this lady. In a few months’ time, I think was in the summer that I came to the program in Sheffield, I think it was maybe three months or two months later, we all went down to a puja in Chelsam Road and Mother was there sitting next to the fireplace and I was almost at the back and it was, you know, I was sitting like this and there were a million people around, it was very tight and just looking at Mother and saying, Mother, who are you? Who you know? Coming back home and sort of looking at Mother’s photograph again and thinking, I know who you are. Then going again to the next puja, we went down to the next puja and again, the first puja I went to to Mother’s feet when she asked for new people to come and she said, what are you doing? I said architecture or landscape architecture and she told us to say, Mother, you’re the architect of all architects. You say that three times and suddenly you feel it’s all sort of cleared out. Now, after the second puja, I asked her about the Baha’is and she said, well, you know they do drink and smoke. I thought, that’s an interesting answer. I knew that because my brother couldn’t give up smoking and he was a Baha’is. Coming back from that puja, I just felt, well, I just love you and that was really it for me and I think later on then, I went to a meeting at somebody’s house and Mrs. Harris, Ray’s mum was there, bless her and there was this big photo of Mother with the blue saree and people were talking about Shri Mataji and Mrs. Harris just said, well you know that they do say she might be the Virgin Mary. I sort of thought, yes, I took this on board so I thought, yes, this is a possibility. I think that was it really. A big blessing really to come to Sahaj.


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