When Shri Mataji came back to England in 1976, after we had first met Her in '75, we didn't have public programs. We just had these meetings at Gavin and Jane [Brown]'s house. At one stage She called me and said that She had to go to an Indian ladies' meeting somewhere in west London. And She wanted me to come and talk about Sahaja Yoga.

We'd never done anything like that before and I was absolutely terrified. I was twenty-one. She took me on the tube and all the way there on the tube She schooled me as to what I was going to say and what was going to happen and how it would be. "It'll be all right." I just couldn't believe this. And we walked from the tube. I mean, can you imagine all this? Going on the tube with Mother.

We got to this place and the Indian ladies were very respectful of Mother, which was something new for me to see, how they regarded Her. We went through the whole thing of Her taking Her socks off so that they could get to Her Feet as well. They understood about touching Her Feet momentarily, whereas we had just been told, "Put your hands under Her Feet to get the vibrations." So it was again a new experience to see that whole thing.

And then She got me to sit in front of all these ladies and She sat just a little way from me and She fed me lines to say. Then someone translated them. After about ten minutes it was like learning to ride a bike. She sort of gave me a final push and I was off and She didn't have to prompt me any more because suddenly here were people who actually wanted to know about Shri Mataji. It didn't matter that they didn't understand me and they had to wait to have it translated and perhaps would never do it again. It was this incredible surge of feeling that I could tell people about Mother and it was my first experience of talking to people.

And the way in which She literally hand-led me along that path was incredible. And I didn't want to stop. They kind of had to haul me off. "Well, thank you very much. Come and have some tea" or something. And we went back by tube.

2) Pat Anslow said: It was like Sahaja Yoga just changed gear

That was literally a complete sea change. It was like Sahaja Yoga just changed gear. Up to that time it had just been a small group of people going around to different houses with Mother. Then She announced that She would like to have a public program and we were all mystified. We were quite frightened and didn't know what would happen. We put a big advert in "Time Out" [magazine] and we hired a room in Caxton Hall [in London] and we went there. We didn't know if anyone would turn up.

The program started around October 1977 in Caxton Hall, formal programs, which we had on Monday. In those days, if I remember very well, I think the first advertisements were in Time Out. And at the same time, we had posters, which we put up on shops and on shop windows. A lot of the seekers actually came from the Time Out advertisement.

In the end about two hundred people came. Mother made us sit on the stage with Her in a row, which was extremely embarrassing. Gavin [Brown] gave a talk and then Mother gave a talk and we all sat there desperately trying to look all evolved and spiritual. It was actually very painful because we felt huge things going on in the chakras—incredible pains and movements. I remember sitting there and trying to sort of keep a pleasant look on my face and being in agony.

When I first came to Sahaj, I went to a meeting [the first meeting held at Caxton Hall] at which there were about half a dozen very sick looking people sitting on the stage and Shri Mataji was sitting in the middle of them and there was an English guy, rather scruffily dressed, standing and talking. I was in the audience of about thirty people and I had gone because the advertisement said "your divine birthright" and "no money will be taken" which rang true for something spiritual. I thought I would check it out before I went to India to find my guru.

I sat listening to the Englishman's talk, which became extremely boring and I thought, "I can't sit here any longer and I am going to leave."

As always, I had sat near the door so I could make a quick exit. Just as this thought came to my mind and the energy flowed to my legs to stand up, Mataji signalled to this guy, who was boring me to death, and asked him to stop talking. Then She got up and started talking. It was everything that I had expected, at least verbally and mentally.

When we were supposed to feel the vibrations, I didn't feel anything at all, but I did feel something happen in my heart when Shri Mataji said, "All I am here for is to give you love." I felt this distinct churning in my chest, which was the only experience I had that day.

Most of the seekers, virtually ninety per cent of the seekers who came in those days, were from other movements, false gurus of all kinds. In fact, we used to work almost exclusively on people who had been to other false gurus, some on drugs as well. A lot of them, if they were more hippyish, of course, they had done drugs. Mostly they had either been in drugs or they had been to false gurus. She used to work on them individually and She gave them so much love. She really worked very hard.

And then bang! It worked out. Everything had changed. Suddenly Mother was down among the audience, worked on everyone. The whole hall felt like one family. And then the whole thing changed. We had seventy people coming to the ashram, to see Mother for long weekends.

Shri Mataji came down and looked at all of us and She looked at me. I was sitting at the back, as I said, ready to make a rapid exit. She said something to me in Hindi from a distance and I thought, "Well, you know, if she is a guru, how come she doesn't know that I can't speak Hindi?" And then She told one of the older yogis that was with Her that I had "got it" and, of course, I felt nothing. And then Shri Mataji came up to me, stood right in front of me, put Her hand over my head and said, "You've got it. You've got it!" And I replied, "No, I don't feel anything at all."

Now, there was a person sitting on my right, who started saying, "Oh wow, I feel it. I feel it!" And I thought, "You know, this is just auto-suggestion." And then the person on my left started saying, "Oh, I feel the Cool Breeze." Meanwhile, I felt absolutely no breeze at all.

I was quite disappointed. And, of course, Mother was insisting that I'd "got it." So, for a sceptical aerospace engineer, just out of college, that wasn't very helpful.

9) Djamel Metouri said: Just barefooted students

Now what I actually remember most is the fact Sahaja Yoga was not at all what it is today. It was so informal as well. First, we didn't have any programs which were with a lot of people. We used to go and meet at Gavin [Brown]'s place on a Sunday afternoon. Mother used to come by train to Victoria Station and then She would come by taxi.

We didn't have this. One of the things I find, when you look at Sahaja Yogis today, now they all have cars. They all go and organize their programs. They all have money. They have all kinds of means. They have a lot more facilities than we had at the time.

I remember when we were staying at Finchley, in the ashram, we started organizing meetings at Caxton Hall, but we never did anything like today, which means we didn't have all the facilities like having cars and vans and things like that. We were just barefooted students. We used to actually take a picture of Mother and take anything we could take—candles and incense and so on—and we went by bus. And I remember in the early days, even Mother coming by train to London from Oxted, where She lived. And then She would take a taxi. And I even remember Her coming by tube to come to the program at Gavin's.

It seems that we have come a long way. A lot of Sahaja Yogis don't realize that their standard of living has risen so much. They don't realize that Sahaja Yoga never started like this. You know, it started with very little means, with the very little that the Sahaja Yogis that were there at the time had. And, in fact, the Sahaja Yogis used everything they had in their hands to help Sahaja Yoga.

10) Derek Ferguson said: This Sahaja Yoga's really good

When I first came to my first meeting, they said, "Sit down, you'll gain this experience." And they told me what chakras I was catching on. I was catching on left heart, and they said, "Something to do with your mother." So afterwards I thought, "Ah, yes" because I'd left home and I wasn't contacting my mother a lot and I was doing plastering and I had a pain in my left heart. I thought it was something to do with overworking because I used to get home and just collapse, so tired. So I thought, "Okay, I need to contact my parents more often." So I went to see my mother. I thought I'd see her anyway, but afterwards I discovered because she was worried about me, I was getting the pain in my chest. And as soon as I went round there and said, "I'm all right. Everything's fine," it fizzled. It was like someone had hit me in the left Heart. It was really painful. So when I had gone round to see her—"I'm all right," this and that, she stopped worrying. That pain went away. So I thought, "Wow, this Sahaja Yoga's really good."

And when I left the meeting my whole body felt light. I skipped all the way home. I felt, "Wow! I've found it."

11) Gail Pottinger said:We were very smallish

I remember Maureen [Rossi] giving me a poster which Mother had put vibrated kumkum on and it was for Caxton Hall, the earliest Caxton Hall program. Mother just put kumkum over the photograph. And Maureen gave me one of them.

Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji

Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 1
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 2
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 3
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 4
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 5
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 6
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 7
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 8
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 9
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 10
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 11
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 12
Memories of our Divine Mother Shri Mataji 13