But she looked like one who was far away, completely detached from all these feats, untouched by the thrill of executing them. This body, however, doe not exclude anything. In this instance, she seems to filter the ingredients of the ancient cosmogony - the archetypes, if you like - out of a larger common stream and impress them with the stamp of her own personality within the given limits of the immediate situation; a plot of land with its own contours and configurations on the north-eastern outskirts of Dhaka. Subsequently Virendra Dada was made to get up and I was asked to sit on it. Mataji never, at any point in her life, did that - not even for a day. That it took place on a serious festival day, Sivaratri, suggests that the mood was serious. Only when Consciousness is rooted in Truth can there be Bliss. She married at 13 years of age to Ramani Mohan Cakravarti or Bholanath as So under the pull of the world I said, Well I'll have to pick up some money from home. She now assumed a very serene aspect. Stranded in the middle of nowhere and in tears, she was finally rescued by a helpful Bangladeshi on a motorcycle who took her to her destination. Hitherto, she had never sat in this manner and enlarged on profound topics to a large group of listeners. The Beloved is comparable to ice, which is nothing but water, and consequently He is without form, without quality and the question of manifestation does not arise. His sensitivity for the subject and his determination to overcome formidable technical hazards are greatly appreciated. . "Now you've given these trees the names of gods," Didi declared in wonder. Just as a king when acting the part of a sweeper has, for the time being, to imagine he is a sweeper. The marvellously lambent plasticity in the grouping, the radiant lyricism of Mataji on the Varanasi terrace surrounded by a little group of kirtanis, the treasured intimacy on verandahs - these I never saw again. With marvellous plasticity, with "concrete" poetry she makes a murti image of a deity out of words - samudra means sea; sva mudra, His own expression; taranga, a wave; tar, His; anga, limb, intrinsic part. Everything is but His form. In Didi's account of the Vasanti Puja, it may be remembered, she specifically mentioned that there was a large white ant-hill beneath the vedi, that white ants continued to make mudcakes in the shrine room and that, on Nirmala's instructions, this mud was mixed with mud from the dome-shaped mound to make the image of the goddess. The body is in love with the mind and the mind with the vital prana. To form a mental picture of Kheora it is necessary to appreciate how very remote it was, just one among many villages of the deltaic region. Only to the eyes of the beholder did she seem to pass through a succession of diverse intensities. Through Bholanath's initiative another was set up in Uttarkashi, where he was to spend three years in intensive sadhana away from Mataji. A sense of agony and dryness of the soul followed by the bliss of union had their own places in this self-enacted drama. The theme of the Witnessing Consciousness is central to classical Indian yoga. I would return to the ashram and take my place with the others at the foot of Anandamayi's bed. For this reason the phase of her sadhana lila is crucial. I imagine, too, the woodland glades, the rice fields and the ponds in that film would not be so very dissimilar to those she knew. in ashrams and attending religious festivals. What had touched him to the quick nobody could tell. Even this very day, as I am writing this, the newspaper carries on its front page a ten-day-exposure photograph from the camera of the Hubble space telescope of galaxies which exploded into existence at the creation of the universe. But her movements could reach the speed of lightning, making it impossible for even the keenest eye to follow them. This is so when one has entered the stream, and then present, future and past are no longer separate. Today I see the entire universe as my Guru. . You must be adamant in your pursuit. This is what human birth is meant for. Just as one can acquire worldly knowledge so also is Reality known by becoming possessed of one's inner power - and then there is Awakening. On any occasion when this inauguration is related, as it is here, the entire community, including the living and the dead, is renewed; it rediscovers its "source", relives its "origins". 'You construct what-ever you can, then whatever has to happen will happen' she said. She is so unusual that there is no woman, not even an example known to us from the past, with whom she can be compared except in the vaguest of terms. By virtue of the yoga of sustained practice, the veil will be torn asunder and the Self stand revealed - one will advance towards one's real home. The Siddheshwari hierophany contains implicit links with the cosmogony. Curled up in the vedi, her physical state is a graphic verification of her assertion that 'this body is That'. Finally this body seemed to arrive at its destination and walked round a particular plot of land as if performing pradakshina, circumambulation of a sacred entity. Where there is the Divine Bliss of Ananda all contradictions and conflicts lose their strength of opposition and become one with the One. Now suppose I ask you to remain here, will you be able to do that?. A little later she came out of it and asked Bholanath to sit there. Yet this is what you have to seize - it can be done at the point of juncture where the opposites melt into one. Through sustained spiritual practice one may be released from it. Ma was in bhava leaning on me and walking slowly. Anandamayi was born on 30 April 1896, of a poor but prestigious Brahmin family in a small village called Kheora, in the district of Tripura. There are several reasons for this, and they tell us much about the character of that ministry. Question: Why then should anger be avoided? Four months later, while her father lay dying, he also finally cast aside parental formality and called out to her, "Ma! Didi did as she was bidden, carrying them all in her arms as she ran to catch up. But of course our terminology is once again inadequate to the situation: someone whose actions are involuntary is hardly likely to exert "rigorous control.". Once the mind in the course of its movement has felt the touch of the Indivisible - if only you can grasp that moment. ", "What is the process by which this can be accomplished? Her eyes began to show signs of life and she wept profusely. One drowsy afternoon at Vindhyachal there were very few people about; nothing stirred. A dim lamp was burning in front of her and that was perhaps the only thing in the room. Remember this visit well, for she is a holy person and she never does anything without meaning.". As the visitors got back into the car, one of the villagers diffidently enquired of the driver who was the great lady who had referred to herself as "this body". What is there in ice? Questioner: On everything that shuts out the Light of the Self. But if tempted, at the first touch of Bliss, to allow oneself to be drowned in it and later declare: "Where I was I could not say, I do not know", this is not desirable. No other person in the India of her day incarnated love so purely, so magnificently, so comprehensively, as Anandamayi. Fundamental to all Indian thinking about phenomenal existence is a deep and abiding belief in the continuance of the Beginning, but not as a unique "big bang" or originating moment sparking temporal succession, as in Western thinking about the origin of the universe. Mataji's face was completely hidden from our View as in those days she used to veil it exactly like a newly married village girl. . The light of the world comes and goes, it is unstable. Therefore, in as much as you are free - with the entire universe held within yourself - the fact of your eternal freedom stands revealed and any question of being in bondage no longer arises. If I had to find one word with which to describe the most outstanding characteristic of Anandamayi's teaching it would have to be "inclusiveness". Her given name was Nirmala Sundari Devi, which means Immaculate Beauty; she was a blithe and happy child. It seemed to have been blown down and as she fell her body started rotating fast, just like a leaf or a scrap of paper blown about in a gale. In the perishable there is no Self-revelation. One then attains to the beginning of Time and enters the Timeless, the Eternal Present. Female sages as distinct from saints capable of holding sustained discourse with the learned are almost unheard of in India. Indeed everything arises out of one Being. In that vision without eyes there is no room for "di-vision". This body tells you to find your real home from which nobody can drive you out, which is not of this world. In all directions stretched the same unchanging expanse of farmland, dotted here and there with clusters of trees and the mud huts of villages. "Come on then," replied Didi patiently, "let's go back and look at them." He might even fall a victim to the influence of some 'spirit' or power. Answer: By keeping satsang for a great length of time. I would have to shelve the project. Answer: I have no work. It was not long before I discovered a very striking visual effect: those around her all seemed to converge upon her figure in spontaneous often fast-changing, unconsciously felicitous compositions. Later, Bholanath took initiation from Therefore it is useful to discuss. Accustomed as they were to high-flown expositions on spiritual topics larded with complex Sanskrit terminology and framed within the terms of scripture, her learned interlocutors - theologians, Sanskrit scholars, senior monks and university professors were astonished, as the learned always are when confronted not with intellectual brilliance but with the living Truth. Then he looked up and in a hard, taut, contemptuous tone declared, "Elle est ratee!" She appeared to be in a deep sleep, but she was not sleeping, for her eyes were half open and drawn within. permanent. A few days later, they planted a sacred tulasi and some flowering shrubs round the hole, and the surrounding area about 5 metres, 16 feet, square was lightly fenced in with bamboo according to Nirmala's instructions. At another stage there is no way of thinking of the Guru and the disciple as separate from one another. This Sanskrit verse might also be said to constitute the quintessence of themes for meditation by all those under the aegis of Anandamayi. Then the lady in white asked them: "Do you repeat God's name-. ", Bithika Mukeiji says that an Irish journalist asked her, "Am I right to believe that you are God?" She would let all her illnesses run their course with complete equanimity, and possessed the ability to know beforehand on exactly which day they would come to an end. I therefore set out to visit her riverside ashram the next day. But where happiness is in its essential form, unconditioned, the opposites - joy and misery - find no place; where there is solely rasa, there can be no question of a-rasa - a sense of dryness or emptiness, of the anguish of God's absence. He represented a firm regarded as among the most distinguished in France on such topics. By introducing the dimension of spirituality into the discussion, by developing a style of commanding authority in organisational matters, and, above all, in her unique marriage and the way she handled her own status first as a married woman and then as a widow for half a century, Anandamayi indicated a need for radical reorientation in this area of life to engage the interest and the respect of women everywhere. Here was life as it should he led, life for the One Self not for the little individual self, a life in which all of us could join equally no matter how feeble and weak we were. At temples, she would also see religious figures emerging from religious statues and reentering them. When she was asked whether the altar was to be covered with mud, she replied, "Let the work start first. Anandamayi was sensitive to environmental influences as was demonstrated when she once passed a Muslim tomb. You beat the drum, and you hear the sound. Answer: Where the Guru gives a mantra and desires to live with an unmarried girl disciple, he is not a Guru at all. What is wanted is genuine Awakening, an awakening after which nothing remains to be attained. At other times if a bhakta put my feet on his head this body would feel an electric shock. In true realisation, one can have no quarrel with anyone - one is fully enlightened as to all creeds, faiths, doctrines and sects, and sees all paths as equally good. Anandamayi was born on 30 April 1896, of a poor but prestigious Brahmin family in a small village called Kheora, in the district of Tripura. Accept cheerfully whatever He may bestow on you or take away from you.". Ma Anand Sheela | Sept 2019. Photography became my sadhana spiritual exercise, as meditation and yoga were the sadhana of my fellow ashram inmates. Here the question arises, was it proper for the girl to cease thinking "I am Atma, I am Sri Krishna"? repeat mantras to bring her back to normal consciousness. But the analogy I will use for these scenes is that of a conductor with an orchestra, each musician playing a different instrument. This and all that has been said above is within the Supreme State, of which it is said that even though the Whole is taken from the Whole, the Whole remains the Whole. way of being. At the moment of your birth, you did not know that you came into being. The fact that she was a woman certainly accentuates the distinctive features of her manifestation. First, I was trying to be truthful to experience. It prepares a new birth, but not a repetition of the first, physical birth. In the Vedic cosmogony these cosmic waters constitute the cosmic ocean, but in later cosmology they have become identified with subterranean waters, which could be said to correspond to our modern concept of the "water table". Only the distant sound of a dog barking or a temple bell rang through the echoing air. In all likelihood, the hole in the ground was a shaft-hole of the anthill over which the vedi was built. If you put yourself into the hands of the greatest, you may then remain free from worry and feel: "Whatever happens is all right, I have done my utmost." There is a time for everything. Then, the planting of sacred trees and erection of a fence so precious that it would later be preserved after it no longer served any functional purpose, constitute the consecration of the territory, like making it a little cosmos, a re-enactment of the Creation. During satsang in Varanasi about 50 of us were gathered while Mataji listened to someone talking. I cannot do so. Ma was considered as the deity of prosperity even there. I simply considered them as different manifestations of the Almighty, and served them as such. What is it that makes the same substance appear in different forms, as water, ice, waves? Try to fathom the end of yourself, if you can! She was, throughout her life, in every domain, the acme of effortless perfection. sense but instead had a kind of She was the unassuming country girl from a dirt-poor village home who became the cynosure for all eyes. This is absolute and perfect Realisation. You must bear in mind that only when the sense of want becomes the sense of the want of Self-knowledge does the real Quest begin. The world is concerned with the knowledge that is ignorance. It is said that even though the Whole is taken from the Whole, the Whole remains the Whole. Even when physical consciousness dawned once more following the state of absorption in the divine, she took a long time to regain her normal state.". It is He who manifests in the shape of disease as well. She always had the aura of perfectibility all around her but somehow it never overwhelmed her companions. She is at home - not the home of a personal God, but of a formless, unmanifest Supreme Reality, the anandamaya-kosha, the bliss body. Look, now, at this very moment there is motion as well as rest. Sometimes she would go to the station and simply board the first train which happened to arrive. Sometimes touching her feet with her forehead, she prostrated and then became limp. She lay down in bhava and wept profusely for a very long time. There are several ponds round Kheora and plenty of little woodland glades full of atmosphere and a strong sense of place. The only time I personally saw Anandamayi in samadhi was during her 59th birthday, at the Patal Devi ashram, Almora. I had stored in my memory a beautiful observation of Paracelsus on this theme. There can be no additions and no subtractions; the wholeness of the Whole remains unimpaired. He was lecturing on Vedanta, larding his words with formidable Sanskrit terminology in a somewhat hectoring tone. She would sit in one posture for several hours at a time without the slightest movement, or fall into silence in the middle of a sentence. The Indian struggle for independence, two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise and fall of Communism, the Scientific Revolution, the Sexual Revolution, the Feminist Revolution, the power of the media, the crisis of values - all has occurred within the poignantly "oblivious" lifetime of this unscathed woman. The village is too small to have a mosque, but a very simple Hindu shrine still stands - just four walls. For instance, he described how, at moments during an ecstatic dance, she rose on her toes, her head arched over backwards until it touched her back. If that is the irreducible minimum of her teaching, she herself provides us with a summary of her own life: At Puri a lady once asked her: Ma, you have a feeling of duty towards your husband. Then I said to Bholanath. Answer: So am I a Christian, a Muslim, anything you like. Karan Johar Arrives in Delhi Photos. At the same time He does not reveal Himself at all: to whom is He to reveal Himself? While her parents worshiped Krishna, she could not be placed in any definite tradition. She was free of the world in the sense that her essence was the Source of the world and she was not limited by its products or involved in them. Answer: Are you really? All the people were strangers and everything appeared new to me. The whole affair was an imitation of sadhana and it was so arranged that it had all the air of naturalness in it. Sw Kedarnath presents Sri Ma’s revelations that occurred spontaneously in her life, and the answers she gave to questions put before her.