Shri Mataji gave us a great deal of support and advice about establishing ashrams. She was accustomed to changing Her place of residence about once a year — usually in order to better accommodate Sir CP’s diplomatic needs. She said the good part about moving often is that it stops our habits from getting too entrenched.
Nearly every year, Shri Mataji would help us reorganize our ashram situation in New York. In Her talks to all of us, She would try to raise our awareness of the important role the ashram played for new people — how they would be learning about the culture of Sahaja Yoga from us and how important ashrams were for our own individual ascent, as we dealt with our own ego reactions and could learn to transcend the material, and know the importance of love.
At one point, She said there are a certain minimum number of yogis needed in the ashram to be able to solve the problems easily. At that time, the number was eight. The highest joy of all the experiences of ashram living was the fact that the divine attention was on us all the time.
Carolyn Vance