Category: Chapter 6

I remember entering Shri Mataji’s house in Oxted in 1975. I was in jeans and was wearing an old US Army jacket full of holes. I kissed Her hand and gave Her flowers. Interestingly, I remember bowing and looking at the ground, so spontaneously. She commanded immediate respect. But my heart felt such a relief…

It was the 16th September 1975 that we first met Shri Mataji in that Judd Street flat and, similar to my brother, Pat Anslow, it was a most momentous feeling. ‘This lady is a yoga teacher, but She doesn’t teach Hatha Yoga,’ I had been told and I remember thinking that if I was not…

I first met Shri Mataji in London in the late summer of 1975. I had been living in London for some years, and my search for spiritual truth had been growing increasingly desperate, when I heard one day that a ‘yogi lady’ had appeared from India. The flat where Shri Mataji was meeting seekers at…

From 1975 to 1980 we had seminars in Bordi and Lonavala and Sahaja Yoga starting growing a lot in India at that time. Then Shri Mataji went to Pune and other parts. She had a touring programme, visiting many districts in Maharashtra and in the later seventies foreigners would come. The tour was at least…

Shri Mataji would invite the small group of seekers who were coming regularly to meetings to Her house in Hurst Green, Oxted, south of London, and She would work on us individually and collectively for hours. I remember these early sessions with Shri Mataji as beautiful moments of sanctuary in a cocoon of motherly love,…

I don’t know how many times this happened, but sometimes Shri Mataji would have the Sahaja Yogis — there were about five or six of them — sleep in Her bedroom at night. They would all be laid out on the floor, and She would be up on a couch. One evening I couldn’t sleep,…

I saw from the very first days the colossal meaning of what Shri Mataji was doing. I recognized She brings the total, the grand revolution, the most radical factor of global change for mankind. The French and Russian revolutions were nothing compared to this. On the other hand, I was looking around me. ‘How on…

My first experience of shoe-beating took place at Gavin Brown’s house in North Gower Street in Euston, central London, in the mid 1970’s.  I quote from my book: ‘Shri Mataji demonstrates a technique She calls ‘shoe-beating’, explaining that it can help to separate our attention from people we feel are affecting us in a negative…

Foot soaking was the first cleansing technique that I learnt from Shri Mataji and She asked us to do this right from the beginning. She simply told us to ‘sit in the water’; to put warm water and salt  into a suitable plastic bowl, sit with our feet in the water and place both hands out…

After this I met Shri Mataji at similar gatherings of seekers in a house in Euston. Shri Mataji would come every week, usually on a Sunday, and accompanied by a servant, although occasionally by Herself. It is difficult to imagine now the situations that Shri Mataji subjected Herself to in order to find and rescue…