When I was still new to Sahaja Yoga, Shri Mataji always had a way of verifying for me that She was with me all the time. When I would be in Her presence, She would sometimes comment about something that She only could have known if She were inside me. I had been in Sahaja Yoga about a year and a half and one day at my work place, which was Chemical Bank in those days, I got a telephone call from Shri Mataji Herself. It was really a shock when you get a phone call from the Adi Shakti!
‘Why not try to get your relationship back together again with your husband? He has the vibrations of a seeker, and if he got into Sahaja Yoga your children would get into Sahaja Yoga, and what more could a mother want?’ She said. How did Shri Mataji know I was divorced and in great agony about this? I had never discussed it with Her out loud. I was utterly flabbergasted and yet overwhelmingly happy to have the opportunity to try and redeem myself. She gave me some strategies for how to communicate with my ex-husband. I went to live in Washington for about six months, but my husband didn’t want anything to do with it. Nevertheless it transformed all of us. After about six months Shri Mataji said that I had given my ex a chance, my children had forgiven me, and I needed to come back to New York.
That telephone conversation came when Shri Mataji came on a surprise visit with Sir CP, who came to attend a fortieth birthday celebrations of the United Nations. Shri Mataji decided to join him at the last moment, and we didn’t get the call that She was coming until She reached there. They were booked into an international hotel near the UN. We had a tiny ashram out in New Jersey, at Bergenfield.
All the yogis came, from Boston, Maine and Ohio, and Shri Mataji would come out of the ashram and sit in the one comfortable chair we had. She must have spoken to us for ten hours on Sahaja Yoga culture almost in a chat form. The house was filled with yogis sitting at Her Lotus Feet with such awe. She spoke about Sahaja Yoga culture and we had a little puja in the basement and She talked about personal details with us: career suggestions, ashram suggestions, and we would get involved, marriages and so on. Shri Mataji looked over all the marriage applications, and when She came to mine She looked at me.
‘Carolyn Vance, I would like to marry you Myself!’ She said. I was in my forties and everyone else was much younger so I hadn’t taken this marriage business too seriously. She was just trying to say something nice!
Carolyn Vance