How did you meet Mooji?
I met him in 2007,
in Brixton, in his home, in a Satsang there.
It was one of these love at first sight kind of moments
that I had never experienced before.
Meeting someone, and love just starts to pour out of you,
that had never happened to me before, so it was quite a profound meeting.
It was one of the events in life
where you know your life is going to change forever.
And it really did, in the most profound, beautiful, godly way.
There was just a sea of people and an empty chair.
I didn't know anything about Satsang or gurus.
My culture or my upbringing didn't inform me about any of that at all.
But I found myself going there,
and I had no idea what it was about.
But I see this room full of people, there is absolutely no space,
and yet, one guy says, 'Come', he's sitting right next to Guruji.
And I said, 'But there's no space!' And he was just like, 'Come!'
So I just went and this tiny little space opened up.
And I was sitting there like this.
And I will never forget this first time.
I had no idea, I hadn't watched the Youtubes, seen a photo, nothing.
So this first time was very impactful!
Moojibaba just walked in from the door to his seat.
The colours, the smell, the presence ...
This was the first time I experienced the presence.
I didn't know that at the time.
Now I can tell you that maybe that's what it was.
It was just an energy that moved into the room,
like an undeniable presence.
And, I remember he sat down,
and I was looking up wondering, 'What is this'?
Meeting someone that has such an impact on you.
And I experienced love inside.
I just felt love.
And he didn't want anything from me.
I've never met anyone like that.
There was just no expectation of an exchange or anything.
He just had everything to give.
How was life at Monte Sahaja in the early days?
Those were the most fun times.
I mean, it is still fun,
and it has always been fun,
but those times were especially special,
because there was no electricity, no water.
We were all city folk,
and we came, ready to do what, we didn't know.
And the land hadn't been lived on at all for many, many, many years,
so it was full of brambles.
I remember the first time we came, ready to do something,
and the ruins were full of brambles.
We came with our garden scissors, ready to take on the brambles.
That was our first lesson, that we needed help.
So, back then it was fun.
Guruji was in a very small caravan, very, very small.
And the rest of us were all in tents.
So the first things we were doing,
we had to hoe out platforms for our tents.
We were all on landcare then,
because we had to free all the trees and ruins from brambles.
We would all go out and pull the brambles out.
It was such a beautiful satsang;
we all took it like we were pulling out the ego.
And we were coming back with all scratches on,
and living very, very simply, very simply.
Having showers ... I remember Prema built the first toilet.
She single handedly dug a hole for the toilet.
That was our first toilet.
And we would actually have water from the Buddha Pond.
We would go and get our water and shower with that.
So it was very, very basic.
The ruins didn't have a roof,
so we would come together with Moojibaba,
and make a fireplace there, with stars all above us.
I remember when Omi came, music arrived in Sahaja.
So we would sit together and play music, and Guruji would give satsang.
A very, very precious time, beautiful, beautiful time.
In those early years, did Mooji have an idea
about how the land would develop?
No. And it reminds me of ... This story is coming.
I feel it is really indicative of what happened then.
I remember the first year that I was working as Guruji's PA,
in Tiruvannamalai.
What would happen is, I would run down to the rice mill,
get on the bike, drive through the field, Arunachala in the background,
then get to the rice mill and be waiting there for when he would arrive.
But on this particular day, I was doing the usual routine,
getting ready to run out, and on this day he said,
Lakshmi, wait for me today!
And, it felt a bit weird, like it was a very unusual request.
But of course, happily, I went downstairs,
and was waiting on my bike for him.
He got dressed, and I remember him walking down.
I think he was wearing white that day, short sleeves,
walking down the stairs, coming, ready for Satsang.
He gets on his bike and it doesn't start.
Three times he is attempting to start the bike. It just does not start.
So, he is definitely going to be late. But, my bike is there.
So we all jump on my bike and drive off,
through the field, Arunachala in the background.
And I'm saying to Guruji, 'Guruji, you know everything'.
And he says, 'No. I know nothing'.
And since then, honestly, this is what Sahaja has been,
from that space, Sahaja came.
He knew nothing. Nothing has been planned.
And yet, all of this beauty has come out of that space.
That's how he has always approached everything, from that space.
When did you know that Monte Sahaja would be an Ashram?
I think that feeling came very, very, very, very early on.
I have to say it came from the beginning,
because what makes Sahaja so magical
is that it has been built by a living, awakened Master
and those of us who have come to learn from him.
So the whole space has been built on our satsang, with our satsang.
So from the very beginning,
that relationship has been there, with the land as well,
this deep respect and love for the land.
And the people that came,
everyone always came at the right time,
to have this kind of interaction with Guruji
that is now shaping the ashram that you see today.
It started back then already.
Have you experienced growth in yourself
and the Sangha since those early days?
There has been a lot of growth, definitely!
Because I remember that when we all came,
actually predating Sahaja even,
I am not so proud of this, but I remember being in Tiru,
and a whole bunch of us that are still here today,
I remember Guruji saying to us,
'If I wasn't here, would you guys love each other?
Would you guys still be together?'
And I remember we were all looking around.
We spoke about it afterwards and since then,
that we all looked around at each other and couldn't say that.
And now, I could definitely say that, of course.
What happened when we first came here,
everyone comes with their stuff, and how they were brought up,
their conditioning, their person, their ego.
For a while we were bashing those against each other.
I feel Guruji was so patient with us.
But he was very much always side by side with us.
Nothing was really allowed to grow in any kind of egoic way.
So it was cut very quickly.
So as a sangha, I would say we came in quite dense,
and have become more and more subtle as time has gone by.
And what is so beautiful, I find,
is that those that are coming in now don't have to start where we started.
It's almost like the consciousness has evolved enough,
that those that come in just slip into that same stream of consciousness.
And we continue to grow in subtler and subtler levels of understanding.
Which means, for me, more love and openness and kindness.
So we are bound together in a way
that is very unusual, but it is very natural.
It actually should be very common,
but unfortunately, I don't know if it is so common.
But it definitely exists here.
What is the relationship like
between Monte Sahaja and the nearby local village?
Our relationship with the village is beautiful.
We love the village.
That was a very beautiful thing from the beginning.
Moojibaba has always said that we are visitors here.
And it was very important for him
that we always move with the utmost respect and love.
And they love Moojibaba because he goes to the village,
and he speaks to everyone in the village.
And all the different shops we go to,
Moojibaba goes in and he has a direct relationship with each one.
And they come to Sahaja as well.
The beautiful thing is to see Portuguese people that come,
they have such a beautiful, beautiful heart.
It is quite an easy match, actually.
It is quite an easy match, because I think it is very obvious,
the love that is here and the love that is in them.
They can really appreciate what is happening here
without really understanding anything of Guruji's pointings.
It is one of the things that I found very beautiful.
One farmer that lives nearby,
he was here right at the beginning.
He was helping us a little bit.
His dad died recently.
When he was on his deathbed,
Guruji was asked to pray for him.
Guruji made this prayer for him.
His name is Silva.
As he was passing, his daughter was reading Guruji's words to him.
And this is without ever coming to Satsang.
And then Guruji ended up going for lunch with the whole family.
And the way that they received him, without ever coming to Satsang,
or being in connection with the teachings ...
They knew who he was. They had felt the miracle of who he is.
So a lot of the village,
they know there is something very special about Moojibaba.
They might not be able to pinpoint what it is,
but they all come with such love and respect to him.
And, of course, we just embrace them fully as the ones that took us in.
What changes have you experienced in your life
since meeting Mooji and coming to Monte Sahaja?
I would say my life started when I met Moojibaba,
because prior to that, maybe I would have moments of happiness,
which maybe was more like excitement than genuine happiness.
And I feel I was born angry.
I was just really angry a lot of the time.
And now I would say,
happiness and joy is a natural feeling inside.
It's not excited. I don't wake up excited.
But I wake up happy and grateful.
And if I get angry, it's like,
'Whoa, I haven't experienced that in a long time'.
So these things give me a bit of a reference
of how much things have changed.
I feel there is a capacity that I've learned from Moojibaba,
to keep the mind really open, not to close down around certain ideas.
And that, in itself, has been such a gift.
It means you can meet life, people
and different situations with such openness.
You can learn from everything!
Whereas before, maybe I had really strong ideas
which shut a lot of people and maybe valuable lessons out of my life.
So, yes, I feel I've changed.
And I feel like in this sangha,
the beautiful thing about living together in this way,
and not even living together,
people around the world that are in the same teaching as we are,
is that we see it in each other.
We see it when the being and God
is reflecting and shining through one another.
Sometimes it will happen in this one more,
and that will elevate everyone up together.
And then it will happen in this one and we all elevate together.
So it is a very beautiful way to live together.
To discover the being inside ourselves.
To discover the space and God inside of ourselves
and see it in each other.
What is Mooji like in day to day life?
Moojibaba, I've heard him say many, many times,
that this time in Monte Sahaja is one of the best of his life.
He loves Sahaja.
One of my favourite things
is to watch Moojibaba move around the land in his buggy.
He is involved in every project that happens here, and you can tell that.
In every space you go into,
you can tell that it is imbued with his presence.
He often says how he will go into a space and sit there,
and this is a beautiful thing to watch actually,
how he sits there, and the space starts to speak to him.
And he starts to carve out the space.
By the time he is done, it is as if it has always been there.
So he is having a relationship with the space.
He never sits down and plans it with an architect.
Or, maybe that might happen,
but what comes out of it is this exchange with the land.
So he is very, very much present with the land,
and inside the land, and in communion with the land.
Sometimes I've heard him speak about
how God speaks to him through the wind and the trees,
and so through these different movements
he is always in communion with God.
It is through that that Sahaja is being built. So, yes, he loves Sahaja
and he spends his days, when he is in Sahaja, kind of moving about.
Then again, the people aren't separate from that.
People are a part of that growth and that communion.
So as he is moving along the land, he'll meet this one or meet that one,
and it is exactly always perfectly timed.
Why he went to go and do this small thing was actually to meet this one.
It is very obvious that his life
is moved from an inner core of divinity, really.