The first time I met Shri Mataji was in 1979. There was a series of public programmes that Shri Mataji held in Delhi. They were in the Mavlankar Auditorium behind All India Radio. In those days Mother used to have week-long programmes, and generally She would address a chakra each day. Every evening She would send the people home and tell them to come back the next day and She would tell us about the next chakra.
My father and I went to all the consecutive evenings that first week. I was about ten years old. At the end of the week, an announcement was made that on the coming Sunday there would be a puja and the address was given. A general condition was made that all those who had felt the cool breeze during the week’s discourse and meditation could come to the puja. My brother and I had felt it but my father had not, so on the Sunday my father had us get dressed and get ready for the puja. Only my father and I went, to Sarva Priya Vihar, and we later came to know that it was Sadhana Didi’s residence in Delhi. It was a one floor house, and Shri Mataji was sitting in the living room. There was a dilemma, because my father had not felt the cool breeze, so he sent me and he stayed back on his scooter across the street.
I was just a boy, and I went and knocked on the door of this house. A tall Sahaja Yogi opened the door and would not let me in. He did not know where this young boy had come from, and I told him that we had been asked to come if we had felt the cool breeze. Somehow Shri Mataji got to hear of all this going on, and told him to let me in.
‘Let him come,’ She said, when the man said I was only a boy, alone. So I went in and even Shri Mataji was wondering how a ten year old boy could have found his way there. She asked me who I was and where I had come from, and I think I called Her ‘auntie’, but She said I should call Her Mother. I told Her that my father had brought me, but it was said that only those who had felt the cool breeze should come to the puja, so he had brought me, but was waiting outside on the street. Then I told Her my full name, Jayant Patankar.
‘You’re Maharashtrian!’ She said. Shri Mataji immediately started talking in Marathi and She said I was to go and call my father. So I went out and across the road, and told my father what had happened. He was a bit hesitant because he had not felt it, but Mother was very nice and kind and explained that sometimes our condition was not perfect, especially, She said, ‘with us grown ups’, as if trying to say it was not only him. She told us to go upstairs onto the terrace, and said She would come up for the puja when She was ready.
It so happened that on that day, our first puja, the sky was completely overcast. The people were rather forward in those days, and were telling Mother not to have the puja on the terrace because it could rain at any moment. Shri Mataji kept on insisting that it would not rain. My father and I were very much at the back.
It was a nice puja. In those days pujas used to take a long time, they could go for half a day or more. There would be the thousand and eight names and so on. We knew what a puja was, being Hindus. All attention was on Shri Mataji and nobody noticed anything else.
After the puja, Shri Mataji told us to look up at the sky. We all looked up and the fully loaded dark clouds had settled around the house in a circle. There was a big opening in the sky, right on top of the house. Mother pointed to the big hole in the sky right above our heads.
‘See, this is like your open Sahasrara,’ She said. Then the miracle happened. Mother asked all of us to look at the clear blue sky and asked us if we could see anything, after we had focused on it for a minute or two. Most people didn’t respond.
‘Yes,’ some said.
‘What do you see?’ She said.
‘We see these little specks of light like spots or dots, and they are luminous and glowing and moving so rapidly, in a random way,’ some people said. I also saw them.
‘These are the vibrations that flow through you,’ Shri Mataji said. ‘And this is the same power to which you are connected, as well.’ I could see all this, although I had not put my hand up. That was my first puja and I remember it as if it had happened yesterday, not twenty-six years ago.
Jayant Patankar