During her visit to the UK and Ireland in late August and September, I asked Mother Meera to bless my work with Benjamin, and she said yes. She also told me I could share that publicly. This is the story of how I came to ask, and why it matters so much to me.
I first went to her darshan thirty-four years ago, in the summer of 1992, and we have had a long, steady and gently deepening relationship ever since. Each time I spend several days with her, I seem to go through the same process. Initially, I normalise her presence. She is so quiet and unassuming that it is easy to settle into the ordinariness of being with her. Then, again and again, I touch something that takes me beyond the ordinary: a recognition of how vast and unknowable the energy is that moves through her and with her.
Meeting her at the airport
On Monday, 31 August this year, I drove to Heathrow with my friend Shari to collect Mother. A small group from the organising team had gathered at international arrivals to welcome her and the three people travelling with her. There was an atmosphere of muted excitement. Then came a swish of bright yellow and ochre sari, the warmth and radiance of a smile, and she was with us.
I was struck, as ever, by the beauty and warmth of her presence, and nervous, as ever. Was I starstruck? Did I feel inadequate? And yet here I was, invited to be close to her and in service for the next few days. I helped her buckle into the front seat, and on the forty-minute drive to our hotel I overshot a couple of turns, still adjusting to having Mother beside me.
How it began: 1992
When I first went to Mother Meera in July 1992, my three children were two, four and five, my marriage was in a very rocky place, and a clairvoyant friend had suggested that I connect with the Divine Feminine.
My friend Pamela and I drove from Frankfurt Airport to Thalheim with a large paper map, in the days before GPS. We checked into our B&B and, at six o’clock, joined about a hundred people gathered in the village hall car park. What were we about to experience?
A tall man led us up the hill, along a couple of streets, to a courtyard and a largish house. We were ushered in one by one as our names were crossed off the reservation list.
For the next four evenings, we sat quietly in her sitting room. Chairs stood in rows, some people sat on cushions, and others filled the hallway, the stairs and a small anteroom. It was packed and extraordinarily quiet.
Mother Meera entered at seven precisely each evening and sat facing the room. One by one, people knelt before her. She placed her hands on their heads, looked into their eyes, and they returned to their seats. It was so simple, so quiet, so soothing.
I felt love in my heart and was comfortable in her presence. But this woman was said to be an embodiment of the Divine Feminine, and I wondered what that actually meant. It was a huge claim. Pamela was having intense inner experiences, while I felt something very simple: calm and restored. It wasn’t the drama Andrew Harvey described in Hidden Journey. Was I a little disappointed?
Reflecting on the gap between my experience and my expectations, I found myself asking for a sign. I said inwardly, a little cheekily:
“I haven’t seen anything that proves you are not what you say you are, but I haven’t seen or felt anything that confirms it either. Please give me a sign.”
Then came an experience that challenged everything.
Back home in West Sussex, I had placed a photograph of Mother Meera on the kitchen island. That first evening, after settling the children into bed, I was pottering about in the kitchen when I felt an immense energy begin to fill the room. It seemed to be coming from the photograph.
It felt raw and impersonal, a power that commanded respect. I felt like a child discovering that an electric cable can shock her, or that the beautiful flames of a fire can burn if she goes too close.
This was not something to be disrespected, disregarded or approached superficially. The word “respect” kept coming to me. I felt chastised. It was as though something in me was being corrected.
I have carried that lesson with me ever since, and it has influenced how I approach every circle I hold.
Back to the present
At the hotel the next morning, I woke early. I had gone to bed after such a sweet, ordinary evening with Mother that I wondered again whether the days ahead might disappoint.
Then, as I surfaced from sleep, I felt an ineffable beauty and blessedness pervading the room, almost as if she were sending energy out. I remembered how often, in her company, I have moved from questioning to awe.
That movement has been a recurring pattern throughout my journey with her. My rational mind questions and challenges; then my felt experience takes me somewhere beyond the constraints of the rational. I watch her at work, deeply grounded in the world, loving construction and practical problem-solving. And then, quite unexpectedly, a felt sense of exquisite beauty arrives, or a miracle quietly happens.
Over the next three days, I drove Mother to Kenton Hall, where she gave four darshans in a day, then on to Solihull for two afternoon darshan ceremonies, and finally to the Holyhead ferry terminal. I accompanied her on the crossing to Dublin and drove on to her hotel, where she was to give darshan in Ireland.
During the journeys, Mother didn’t eat or leave the car, but she was happy to talk. I decided to tell her about the developments in my work with Benjamin and the channelling.
The blessing
I first spoke to Mother about the channelling in 2011, when I was doing a great deal of due diligence to establish its validity and quality. She asked me, “How do you feel when you do this?”
I answered, “I feel good, and often uplifted.”
She said, “Carry on so long as you feel good.”
I would have stopped immediately if she had told me to. I have carried on quietly.
This year, with Mother’s encouragement, my intention has been to develop the work further. I spent six nights at darshan over New Year and returned to be with Mother in May, travelling with her to Salzburg and Munich. Now, during this latest time together, I told her about the direction the work with Benjamin was taking: the Benjamin Circles, the online groups and my plans to develop the memoir and make more of this work accessible to others. She smiled.
“Keep going, grow this work,” she said.
“Will you bless this work, Mother?” I asked, as I always do.
I explained that whenever I hold a Benjamin circle, I place her photograph beside a candle. I tell those attending that she is my spiritual teacher and that she blesses and supports this work.
As I spoke, I felt a rush of beautiful energy, a sense of transmission.
She smiled and said yes. She blessed the work and told me that I could share her blessing publicly.
That is why I am sharing it with you now.
There is something about my relationship with Mother that I find difficult to put into words. It is always the ineffable: the energetic fields, the exquisite beauty, the moments when the rational mind reaches its limits and something deeper takes over.
And now, after thirty-four years of questioning, experiencing, learning and deepening, I have her blessing to continue with the work I feel so drawn to do.
“Keep going.”
I intend to.
If you would like to experience Benjamin’s work for yourself, you are warmly welcome to join the mailing list or find out more about the Benjamin Circle.
