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Thankyou,ShriMataji
A
Sahaja Yogi living in New Jersey, USA
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
I
first met Shri Mataji in Mumbai, India, in January 1982. It was
at the end of a public program, and she was still sitting on
a chair on the stage, meeting people. I was told to go up and
introduce myself. She said something to me, and I bowed to her,
and then sat on the stage near her and watched her. I had been
practising Sahaja Yoga meditation for less than a month, and
I did not accept any of the stories or theories which I had heard
about Sahaja Yoga or Shri Mataji.
I had one amazing
experience and one little, strange experience in the first few
months. It was strange to feel my heart, which I had never felt
before. It hurt a little a few times. Somehow I understood, intuitively,
that it was healing; it was being rebuilt, brick by brick, from
a shattered, numb state.
And the amazing experience:
Once I sat with about 90 other people in India, around Shri Mataji.
We entered a state of Sahaja meditation -- all of us. Inside
my being was exquisite silence. I felt calm and comfortable inside
myself. And then I discovered that Shri Mataji and I were one.
She said where on my head was my attention. And at that moment,
that was exactly where my attention was! She was feeling exactly
what I was feeling, as if we shared the same nervous system.
A few minutes later, she said where the attention had moved to,
and again, that was where my attention had moved to. In this
awareness that somehow I was connected to Shri Mataji, I entered
a state of ecstasy -- of divine bliss. I had only one thought
-- "please don't stop." Only now can I more fully appreciate
how that one experience taught me that the intimacy of a true
spiritual connection is absolutely immaculate and pure. (Shri
Mataji's first name is "Nirmala" which means "immaculate.")
I stayed with that
group of 90 Sahaja Yogis and with Shri Mataji for about two months
in India, visiting auspicious places in Maharashtra and then
travelling by train to Delhi. Then I spent nearly a month in
England as a very welcome guest of Sahaja Yogis in London, Brighton
and Bristol. (Shri Mataji lived in England at that time; her
husband worked for a U.N. division that had its headquarters
in London.) During the three months, I didn't notice anything
special happening to me; I felt no different when I returned
to Canada.
The first person
to notice that I was different was my mother. And I started to
notice that I was different. I was no longer angry at my parents.
I was no longer a sucker for the come-ons used to manipulate
me by an organization that wanted my money. I had started to
transform.
I had a lot of things
from my past to resolve, a lot of confusion to clear up about
who I was and what my mission was. After several years practising
Sahaja Yoga on a daily basis, I felt I was enough "unconfused"
to get married, and was married by Shri Mataji in India in 1990.
Twenty years after
first encountering Sahaja Yoga, with now with eleven years of
blissful marriage, I have learned many things. I know that all
the great teachers of the world are related to each other. They
are like different facets of one divine jewel. The people who
profess to follow those teachers and then kill or torture other
human beings have not known the true experience of connection
to divinity. Once connected, in a state of yoga, you can feel
that there are no boundaries or categories of human beings. We
are all one species, and all the great teachers (divine incarnations)
have said we are all the spirit.
Today my problems
are quite different from what they were in 1981. Then, I had
the problems of loneliness, depression, and self-loathing. Now,
my problems are: How to tell the maximum number of people in
the shortest amount of time how joyous and contented I feel and
how I became that way. Also, how to express the ocean of love
that is in my heart to all the good friends I know from so many
different countries. And finally, how to adequately express my
gratitude and awe towards Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, who has loved
me all these years with pure divine love -- unwavering, nonjudgemental,
patient, gracious, and overwhelming in her forgiveness and generosity.
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