I’d seen Shri Mataji’s photograph before I met Mother. I’d heard about these meetings and I came to the last meeting at Judd Street. One damp Sunday afternoon, it was raining, and I came with my sister, Maureen. It had a huge impact on me because I’d heard that there was a yogi lady and I had this kind of idea that I’d walk into a room full of silence and perhaps there would be little bells tinkling somewhere. But it was so unlike what I’d expected that the effect on me was really quite profound. I immediately felt that this is what it must have been like to come across Christ teaching in the marketplace. It completely hit me like that, which was quite strange because religion wasn’t part of my life. Quite the opposite, I came from a hippie background. And I just felt that here was an amazing personality and my feeling was, “How can a being like this exist? How could someone like that be here?”
The whole room seemed full of light and there was a tremendous impression of how powerful Shri Mataji was, but She was just very sweet. She asked us to come and see Her and I came up and She put Her hand on me and said, “This one’s sick,” I think were the first words She said to me. And the meeting went on. It was amazing and magical. I didn’t really have a chance to figure out what it was all about, but I knew it was something quite momentous. That was the first meeting. She said I was sick and that I needed something for my stomach and She asked for a bottle and the strange thing was — no one else seemed to see this — but it seemed to me that I saw Her take the bottle, turn round and open a sort of door into some kind of an atomic furnace and put the bottle in, take it out, shut the door and give it to me. And I was quite astonished. And I took it home, drank it and it had the most extraordinary effect. It cleared me out. She said I had six months to live. Yes, I was really in quite a bad way. We went back for more meetings and I had a whole series of extraordinary experiences when She was there, but I think the thing that really hit me was a kind of gut reaction, a kind of recognition that this was someone. I kept getting the feeling that this was someone like Christ.
Pat A.