Sahaja Yoga Experiences

I was very young in Sahaja Yoga and I was on the India tour with Shri Mataji for about five weeks. It was round about 1984/5. We were in Brahmapuri, staying in a big tent. The Krishna river is there. Every day we had a bath in the river and washed our saris and dried them on the stones. On the other side of the river we could see an old castle and we heard that Shri Mataji was staying there. One day we were on the river and I had bathed, foot soaked, meditated, and I had only one dry sari left. I put it on and we heard that Shri Mataji was coming to the river.

We were all very excited. She came, sat down on a stone and put Her Feet into the river. Then whoever wanted, could come and do namaste to Her Feet. To begin with I was worried that my sari would get wet and I would have nothing to wear, so I lifted my sari up. I was in the water up to my knees and was concerned about getting wet. We were queuing and the nearer I came to Shri Mataji the more I became thoughtless sand didn’t worry. I put my whole head and body under the water and touched Shri Mataji’s Feet. The river went over me and I lost any awareness of time and place and I don’t know how long I was there under the water, without breathing.  After what seemed like a long time someone took my arm and said I could go to the side. I stepped aside and it was the next person’s turn. I was standing on the side of Shri Mataji, completely wet and completely thoughtless. It was a very deep experience for me.
Sabine H.

This is a beautiful memory from the 1985 India Tour, at Brahmapuri. We were camping beside the river and it was the most beautiful idyllic camping site. In the morning we all went down to the river and a rumour went around that Shri Mataji was arriving. So we made a path of coloured saris and shawls all along the embankment for Shri Mataji to walk on. We waited, and just as we had decided that Shri Mataji was not coming after all, She arrived. The path of coloured cloth was thrown down again and everyone reassembled. Shri Mataji sat with Her Feet in the water and one by one we went to Her Feet. She then told us to get into the river downstream of Her Feet. The river was pouring over Her Feet and then over us. We immersed ourselves completely and the blue sky was full of vibrations and the river sparkled as it flowed over Her Feet. It was the most beautiful moment of my life.

In December 1984 I was taking part in the annual tour of India with Shri Mataji and about two hundred Sahaja Yogis. I had been very struck by the enormous respect and adoration in which the Indian Sahaja Yogis held Shri Mataji. In Vaitarna, a village some distance from Mumbai, the Indians had one day organized a procession in which Shri Mataji would be carried around the village on an ox-cart, decorated with garlands. The Sahaja Yogis, western and Indian, danced around the cart as it advanced through the village streets accompanied by local musicians.

I started to dance and gradually approached Shri Mataji’s ox-cart. Shri Mataji saw me and greeted me with the gesture of namaste. I approached the ox-cart and started to walk alongside. From the ox-cart, Shri Mataji extended Her hand and I approached closer to kiss it. At this moment the cart wheel, wooden with an iron rim, ran over my foot.  ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing,’ I said to all those around who were looking at me, horror-stricken. Some people carried me under a tree where one Sahaja Yogini, a nurse, tried to stop the bleeding and an English doctor stitched my foot up. Mr. Pradhan, the leader of the Vaitarna Sahaja Yogis, came over to see me.

‘Shri Mataji is very sorry for what happened,’ he said. ‘She sends Her vibrations and tonight She will work on your foot.’
Mr. Pradhan returned to tell me that Shri Mataji was too tired. She would work on me the next day. I was taken in a jeep back to the bungalow where we were staying. Unknown to me, Shri Mataji was staying in the same bungalow. Next morning, I was sitting in my sleeping bag in the little corridor where we slept, suddenly everyone stood up. Shri Mataji was there. I also tried to stand up. Shri Mataji came towards me.

‘I am here for you,’ She said. ‘Come to my room.’ I followed Her, hopping on my good foot. The other had swollen up and I could not put my weight on it. Shri Mataji, conversing with me all the while, began to give vibrations to my foot. Having first assured Her that I could move all my toes, She put Her foot on top of mine, at first horizontally, pressing on the toes, and then pressing first on one side of my foot and then on the other, vertically. Her foot was completely pressed against mine and I not only felt the vibrations on my foot, but I had the impression that my foot had become a band of vibrations after some time.

‘Go now and don’t think any more about it,’ She said. Having entered Mother’s room hopping, I left it walking normally, without feeling any pain.
Sandra C.

The first time we saw Mother was in Mumbai in 1980. There were thirty Australians on that tour, five English, two French and one American. My first impression of meeting Mother was when She walked through the door with Sir C.P. I had a garland for Sir C.P. and Mother smiled at us all. We were all waiting in anticipation because most of us had never ever met Her, but we had all been in Sahaja Yoga for at least a year.
‘This isn’t the first time we’ve met or been together,’ were Her first words.

The second India tour was 1979-80 and that began with flying from the UK to Delhi with Shri Mataji. We stayed at Shri Mataji’s daughter’s house. It was a tour, but it wasn’t like the ones that followed because we used to just travel around in either the car with Mother or we used to go in the train between places. We were there two and a half months.

My remembrance of Delhi was that it was a circle of about half a dozen Sahaja Yogis and we had a Shivaratri Puja, which was on the roof of Sadhana didi’s house. There couldn’t have been more than fifty, a hundred people at the very most because the roof wasn’t that big. Mother said Delhi was a bit westernised and that’s why they’re all thinking too much, and there was a lot of corruption. At that time, She was never very positive about Delhi, but since then they’ve become so good.

Then we went down to Mumbai for perhaps a couple of weeks and during that time there were public programmes. The programmes were large by English standards, but there weren’t fields and fields of people. They were in their hundreds, rather than in their thousands. After that we set off into the interior of Maharashtra. We went to Pune, Rahuri, Aurangabad and all these places.
That led to the next year, which was 1980-81, which was the first proper tour, in a way, because that’s when they hired the first coach, just the one coach and that fitted in whoever came. The majority of the thirty-five or more people were Australian. That constituted the first tour and it went to the same places as the previous year.

Shri Mataji took us to villages and we had processions. There was one particular village that we used to go to for maybe two or three years, where Mother would be on a bullock cart with the banana leaves in big arcs and then the Sahaja Yogis and the band would be in front dancing. You lost that shyness of dancing in front and you even lost your shyness of dancing in front of Shri Mataji. We really enjoyed it.
We had a lot of close contact with Shri Mataji on that tour because quite often after the pujas we would go to Mother’s room and Mother would always tell us to take the vibrations that weren’t absorbed by the Sahaja Yogis. Quite often when you did take the vibrations like that, you’d literally shake with the vibrations.

This is a story from 1973-4. My mother was just recently introduced to Sahaja Yoga and to Shri Mataji. She was at the early stages of experiencing vibrations, experiencing within herself. At that time my parents were living in Ambanath, which is a suburb of Mumbai, and one day  someone rang the doorbell and my mum opened the door, and there was a sadhu or sanyasi wearing saffron robes. He presented himself and said that his guru had sent him because he had heard that my mother was a disciple of Shri Adi Shakti. My mother was dumbfounded because she didn’t expect anyone to come and ring the doorbell and say that. So my mum gave him self realisation, took his contact details and reported this to Shri Mataji.

In fact after a few months  Shri Mataji came to our home in Ambanath and wanted to meet this person. And here he was,  with his guru, and Shri Mataji has told this story in many of Her speeches. This guru was one of the Naonath, that is one of the nine great masters who stay in the Himalayas. He was a disciple of this great master, and then Shri Mataji went to his ashram. We noticed that this man was very silent, very humble, and very respectful  towards Shri Mataji, and this was because he had a total recognition  of who Shri Mataji was. We had a whole night of bhajans and all the night he was just silent, watching Shri Mataji’s Lotus Feet very very respectfully, as if he was doing some kind of a puja within his heart.

At the end he opened up a little bit and said ‘only You can do this job of giving Self Realisation.’ He said he had no hope for human beings and Shri Mataji asked why that was. He said that there were two of his disciples, who after many years of his training, of his meditation, were still smoking and still had a very bad agnya chakra. He didn’t know how to open it and could not forgive them. He said it was only a mother’s job to help them. So of course Shri Mataji promptly opened their agnya chakra and gave them Self Realisation.

These two disciples came running to Shri Mataji’s Feet and thanked Her, and said that their guru was very strict with them. In fact one of the disciples was hung upside down over a well because he was caught smoking. So this was a big memory which is very close to my heart, our first exposure of who Shri Mataji really was.
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The first time I saw Shri Mataji was in Her house at Jeevan Jyot, Mumbai, in about 1971 or ’72. I was a schoolgirl of about eleven at the time. Shri Mataji used to invite people to the house. My mother went to see Shri Mataji quite a few times before I was taken. I used to wonder where she was going. One day she took a photo of me to Shri Mataji, and Shri Mataji said ‘bring her along!’ I didn’t know where I was going but I was told by my mother that I was going to see somebody, and I had to be quiet when She spoke because my mum had something important to discuss, and if I was quiet I could be taken again. As soon as we, that is my mother, sister and I  got there, we were greeted by little dogs at the door. Apparently they recognised yogis and their bark was completely different then. If a seeker knocked they knew. We were led into a little room at the side and Shri Mataji came in the evening. Immediately She saw us kids She called the cook and asked the cook to go and get something to eat for the children. We were admiring a little carved coffee table, painted white,  that was there, and it had been designed by Shri Mataji. The cook brought in chips and occupied us throughout so we didn’t disturb the talk, and obviously Shri Mataji was working on us through our nabhis. We always wanted to go back after that! Shri Mataji was forcing us to eat the chips – we would just eat one or two, but She would encourage us to eat them all and said that these were for us.

If people arrived and Shri Mataji was in deep meditation, on occasions even Sir CP would  welcome them and make them comfortable until such time as SM could see them, and even right from the start Shri Mataji and the Sahaja Yogi’s had so much support from Her family.
Anonymous