Anandamayi Ma

Anandamayi Ma, born as Nirmala Sundari on April 30, 1896, in the village of Kheora, in what is now Bangladesh, exhibited spiritual inclinations from a young age. She was the second of thirteen children in her family. Even as a child, she displayed a deep sense of inner peace and an inclination towards prayer and meditation. Her family recognized her spiritual nature and encouraged her in her pursuits.

 

Little Nirmala, a blithe and happy child spent her childhood in agreeable village surroundings. She was a favourite with everyone – ready to fetch and carry and to render whatever service she was capable of to anyone who asked for it. The entire village, consisting mainly of Muslim families, extended to her a love and affection which has endured through the years. Even now the Muslim population of Kheora refer to her as “Our own Ma.”

 

Sri Ma was barely thirteen when she was married to Sri Ramani Mohan Chakravarty of Atpara.

From a carefree childhood in her parents’ home she was catapulted into a demanding situation of considerable physical hard work in an atmosphere of restrictive discipline. She cooked, cleaned, fetched water, took care of the children and served her sister-in-law in every way possible. Hard work is the lot of village women not only in India but all over the world. What sets Sri Ma apart from all such girls placed in similar situations is the fact of her total adequacy and a little extra, as it were. She remained uniformly cheerful, good-humoured, and more than willing to shoulder other people’s burdens. Nothing was a chore to her. Her serene and equable temper was never disrupted by thoughtlessness or unfair treatment at the hands of the elders.

 

She spent a few years living in her brother-in-law's house after her brother-in-law died she went to live with her husband at age 18. It was a celibate marriage though not by her husband's choice. When thoughts of sexuality occurred to Bholanath, Anandamayi's body would take on the qualities of death and she would grow faint. He had to repeat mantras to bring her back to normal consciousness. Sometimes in such situations, her body would become distorted in various ways or it would stiffen. She later said that she had given her husband spontaneous electrical shocks when he touched her the wrong way. Bholanath thought the situation was temporary but it proved to be permanent. His relatives said he should remarry but he did not follow their advice. Later, Bholanath took initiation from her and accepted Anandamayi as his guru.

 

While living in Dacca, others came to recognize her spiritual qualities. At the sound of religious chanting, she would become stiff and even fall to the ground in a faint. Her body would occasionally become deformed during these events. Sometimes it would lengthen. At others, it would shrink or its limbs would seemingly go into impossible positions as if the skeletal structure had changed shape beneath her skin. She would hold difficult yogic positions (asanas) for long periods and spontaneously form complex tantric hand positions (mudras) and gestures.

 

Her husband thought she might be possessed, and took her to exorcists. One physician suggested she was not mad in the conventional sense but instead had a kind of god intoxication - a divine madness for which there was no secular cure.

 

In the history of Indian devotional traditions, changes in bodily structure and state are considered to be spontaneous expressions of religious emotion. Anandamayi's changes were more extreme than these more common sattvika bhavas (sweating, fainting, crying, change in skin color, hair standing on end, etc.) which also normally indicate strong religious emotion. Some respected Indian saints of the past were described as having had similar bodily changes.

 

 

Anandamayi was sensitive to environmental influences as was demonstrated when she once passed a Muslim tomb. She immediately began to recite portions of the Quran, and to perform the Namaj ritual (Muslim prayers). These and other similar acts showed Anandamayi to be someone always moving through a wide variety of psychic and religious states, each one expressing itself through her. She often objectified her body by describing her actions in phases like "this body did this" or "this body went there". She believed her chaotic actions were expressions of the divine will.

 

 

Though she was never formally initiated by a guru, one evening she spontaneously performed her own initiation, visualizing both the ritual scene and movements. Simultaneously, she heard the chanting of initiatory sacred words (mantras) inwardly.

She explained that there were four stages in her spiritual evolution. In the first, the mind was "dried" of desire and passion so it could catch the fire of spiritual knowledge easily. Next the body became still and the mind was drawn inward, as religious emotion flowed in the heart like a stream. Thirdly, her personal identity was absorbed by an individual deity, but some distinction between form and formlessness still remained. Lastly, there was a melting away of all duality. Here the mind was completely free from the movement of thought. There was also full consciousness even in what is normally characterized as the dream state.

 

While sometimes speaking of spiritual evolution, she also maintained that her spiritual identity had not changed since early childhood. She claimed that all the outer changes in her life were for the benefit of her disciples.

 

When Paramahansa Yogananda met Anandamayi Ma and asked her about her life, she answered:

 

"Father, there is little to tell." She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, 'I was the same.' As a little girl, 'I was the same.' I grew into womanhood, but still 'I was the same.' When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, 'I was the same.' ...

And, Father, in front of you now, 'I am the same.' Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change[s] around me in the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"

Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, (New York, Philosophical Library in New York City, 1946), Chapter 46

 

Anandamayi Ma would sometimes express a variety of roles, and later explain that this was a performance staged to teach one of the people present some lesson. However, such actions were not a function of her will and occurred without planning or intent.

Anandamayi was a holy woman without formal religious training or initiation whose status was based entirely on her ecstatic states. She did not have an outer guru, though she did hear voices that told her what religious and meditative practices to perform. She emphasized the importance of detachment from the world and religious devotion. She also encouraged her devotees to serve others. She did much traveling and wandering, at times refusing to stay at the ashrams her devotees provided for her. While her parents worshiped Krishna, she could not be placed in any definite tradition. An ecstatic child of ecstatic parents, she became a famous saint who like many other female Indian saints stood on the edge of several religious traditions, and in the midst of none. She influenced the spirituality of thousands of people who came to see her throughout her long life, and died in 1981.