Recollections with Nigel Powell and Pamela, Mio, Felicity, Malcom & Chris

 

Was there a point which you can remember which was kind of a secondary profound experience? Something which was so impactful on you that it took you to another point of understanding who Shri Mataji was, a recognition if you like, apart from the initial self-realization, it was a start. Did anybody have, it’s almost like, oh, she’s really God? These kind of moments, it that anything you had later on when you were with her or she was doing something or something occurred to you, an experience you had?

We used to get invited to Shri Mataji’s flat in Ashley Gardens and we used to go there quite often and one morning, somehow I arrived first and I came up and I was alone with Mother. Mother came in and it was sun and she really looked like divine. she said, do you want some breakfast? I said, no, Mother. Have some breakfast. A cook brought some halwa, Indian halwa and she said, sit. She showed me to sit next to her, I didn’t, I sat on the floor. We had breakfast. I tell you, I really felt that she was really God. It was incredible to have her attention on you personally. I was long with Mother. It was quite amazing.

I think my first profound experience after that was going to my first puja which was 2 December 1979, which was guru puja. Not only had I been asked to put Kumkum all over Mother’s feet which was amazing itself, Mother gave this talk where she declared who she was, I am the one who has come again and again so to itself. I just couldn’t believe there were just so dew of us, these few people in the whole world and how lucky that I was there, that I was there in these few people when Mother declared who she was. She said, this is for Sahaja yogis’ ears only.

She did. It was so historic, you felt, because you knew, you know all this time who Mother was, you’d known all this time who Mother was. It was just accepted, everybody knew who Mother was but this was the first time she actually said it. And you felt, wow, this is historic. Everything changed, like something fundamentally deep I felt changed at that point. It was like although she said, I remember, she said, don’t tell anyone else, you felt we’re moving out now.

Myself and Douglas we were transcribing that talk in ashram and we got so high just transcribing the talk, listen to it and typing it out. It was incredible.

She’s the only incarnation, isn’t she, that declared who she is.

And then this little two-up two-down terraced house, Mother would go upstairs and sleep and all the yoginis could sit around her.

And sleep, because we were so few when we would travel with Shri Mataji, we would all travel together and we always stayed, she so generously stayed in people’s houses and often she stayed at Pam’s and the ladies would all be invited in to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags in Mother’s room and so it was very, quite blessing being a lady in this lifetime.

Boys as well, we used to sleep, boys and girls in our sleeping bags and sleep around Mother.

I guess we should say that, it sounds a little odd sleeping with Shri Mataji but we soon learned and she showed us that actually this was her way of working out the left side. We would go to Dollis Hill every Sunday, she would come and sit and we would sit around and she would discuss everybody’s problems and what was happening outside in the world and then she would literally make us go to sleep, she would fall asleep and we would all fall asleep and then when we’d wake up she’d go, ah, better now. She would go into the subconscious and work out the left side.

And she would let us rub her feet.

Quite often that she wouldn’t sleep much, sometimes wouldn’t sleep much at all because she’d be working on somebody. At the time, people would be pressing her, she would be pressing them and the rest of trying to get a little bit of sleep but she didn’t sleep much sometimes.

And then there would be this funny maya. I remember one night being invited to sleep in her room with Hester and I remember laying down to go to sleep and Hester was sitting still meditating and I felt, oh, maybe I shouldn’t sleep so I sort of sat up too and Shri Mataji was literally in a deep sleep but every so often I noticed myself, thoughts would come in my mind and she would cough. I would get more alert, oh, not that thought sort of thing and then after some time she just sort of said, go to sleep now Hester, from this deep, deep sleep she was in and Hester laid down and went to sleep. I thought it’s okay too.Wherever she was, whatever state she was in, she knew everything about every person who was there, everything that was going on. You just could not help but know who Shri Mataji was because all the time she was constantly surprising us with details of things that, how could she know that? How could she know that about me, I never said anything. Just little things it was just like she was constantly… There was a question what miracles do you remember, there were so many little things that you would count as miracles, that how could this happen, it was hard to pick out the big ones.

We went by train once to Birmingham I think, just Shri Mataji and a few yogis and I was sitting opposite her in the carriage and she said, Mio, you have done karate haven’t you? I said, yes Mother. I thought, how did she know that? It’s quite incredible to have someone like that in front of you, something else.

We hear on old audio tapes, these fantastic tapes of Shri Mataji chopping in the kitchen and chatting and it’s a completely, it’s something that is so otherworldly to us who came later, this this relationship you have, this day-to-day experience of the goddess. I think people would really like to know what was that like, obviously in one way it was incredibly just amazing but there must be also this intense side as well, there must have been period where it was just so mind numbing to go shopping or to hallelujah.

After Caxton Hall, we usually used to go to this Italian restaurant, Spaghetti House, and most of us have been there and very often Shri Mataji went there with us and many times she invited us to her flat as well where there was nobody there. That was quite amazing as well just having a meal or she would cook for us.

There’s one incident at the Spaghetti House, I remember that a Shri Mataji just went into the ladies just before coming to me and I was waiting outside for her and then she came out and she’s just given the talk and she said to me what do you think of that talk? Wasn’t it wonderful? Completely detached.

And another point, Shri Mataji knew all about us that when I came to see her for the first time at somebody’s house she said, have you been to any gurus? Actually I didn’t really know what a guru was although I’d done an awful lot of terrible seeking and I said, no and she said ah Krishnamurti and somebody had read that to me every day for about two years. She knew.

Just thought that knowing everything, I went up to London, I was a big Miles Davis fan, that jazz trumpeter and he had come out of retirement. He was a very mixed up caught up person, a brilliant artist and he’d come out of retirement I really wanted to see him before the end and this was, I can’t remember when this was, but Ruth, my wife, said to me, you must call in on Shri Mataji when he got up to London because she said, if you’re in London come and see me and I thought, I don’t really want to do that but it was like a challenge thrown down and so I very shyly knocked on the door, this was in Bromton Square, her house there and she said, oh, come in, come in. She talked about how she was setting up a brains trust and I should be on there and so on and then somebody said, are you ready for the meeting tonight? I had no idea that she was actually giving a public program tonight and I thought, oh my God and I was going to see this musician because I was in two minds, this is God but I did want to see Miles Davis. she said, no, no, you must go, you must go. Give him his realization. I tried to imagine myself giving, but I worked very hard during that concert. She said, he’s an old man, he hasn’t got much longer to live, he must get his realization. I thought, how does she know about Miles Davis because this is not her kind of music. She knew everything. So kind the way she said, she made the decision for me, that by going to that concert I’d be doing something worthwhile.

This question of Mother being divine and yet an everyday human personality at the same time, it’s something very hard to describe but because you’re living in the present when you’re with Mother, it all flows very naturally. I felt, from the moment I saw her, one of the main things I felt was awe and I always felt this awe for Mother, as I’m sure everyone has but it was always there with me. I didn’t have a mother, I don’t remember my own mother so this idea of what a mother is was rather alien to me and it took a long time to sort of get a little bit closer to understanding that this is your mother, it’s all right, she’s your mother. Once when she came to Bristol to stay with us for two or three days, I remember greeting her at the door, you do aarti and she said, how are you? I said, a bit nervous. She said, don’t be nervous, just dispelling it like that. Just in an hour with Shri Mataji so much happens, important things, really serious spiritual things, life things. virtually everybody laughs and it’s just you are really living, it’s just very beautiful and deepening experience. What can I say, we went shopping that day and she was looking for pop socks, I mean, it’s so kind of mundane and she wanted a tie for sir CP. Bristol, she had said, is the Vishuddhi of England and she was touching, we went to this big department store, she was touching every tie in the shop though she didn’t actually buy one but it was like working on the Vishudhi and lots of other things she did when she was in Bristol were clearly symbolically, but I think without any thought about it, just working on the collective Vishuddhi.

 


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