Remembering Anandamayi Ma

Next to the Ramakrishna Mission in Dehradun, there is a small ashram where on 27^th August 1982, Anandamayi Ma left her body. Anandamayi Ma, who was born in 1896 as Nirmala Sundari in what is now Bangladesh, was and still is revered all over India for having being extraordinary saintly and wise right from childhood. Devotees still come to her Samadhi in Kankhal, even though many of them have never seen her in person. I was fortunate to meet her and would like to share some of those precious memories:

During the Ardha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar in April 1980, some foreigners asked me to join them to receive their guru, Anandamayi Ma, at the railway station. I was curious, because I had seen a photo of her in Paramahansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. The photo was taken in the 1930s and showed a beautiful woman. Almost fifty years had passed since then and I was surprised that she was alive and anyone could meet her.

At dawn, we went by rickshaws to the railway station. Even at that early hour pilgrims flocked to the Ganges in a steady stream. They were mainly poor people, who carried their bundle of belongings on their head or over the shoulder. The railway station, too, was already full of people and activity: groups of travellers sat in between their luggage, the women in saris of the brightest colours and some of the men with similarly colourful turbans on their head. Children ran around – their mothers calling out for them or sitting quietly breastfeeding a baby. Boys offered ‘Chai’ with strong voices. Dogs were sniffing around in search of something eatable. Sadhus sat in a pose of meditation with one elbow resting on a wooden crutch or inhaled, with hands cupped, from a chillum. And some figures wrapped up in sheets were soundly sleeping on the ground.

Here I was at that early hour, waiting for Anandamayi Ma. A group of Indians were conspicuous by their neat and well-groomed appearance. They were devotees of Ma.

Then, hooting, the train from Varanasi pulled in and screeched to a halt. Four young men in spotless white dhotis, the traditional substitute for trousers in northern India made of thin, starched cotton, entered the first class compartment and carried Ma out on a chair, to which four handles were attached. Ma appeared delicate, was wrapped in white cotton cloth and her black, oiled hair fell over her shoulders. She looked at us with calm eyes. There was no reaction on her face, no sign of recognition of her devotees, many of whom she would have known for decades. She simply looked and her eyes moved slowly around the group. It was pleasant, and I had the strange feeling, that nobody was there behind those eyes.

When I saw her like this, my reaction came as a surprise: tears were rolling down my cheeks. I was neither especially happy, nor sad. There was no reason for tears to well up and yet they kept flowing and didn’t want to stop. “That’s normal, when one is touched by a great soul”, someone next to me, who had noticed it, reassured me. And indeed I had the feeling that I had been touched by a very pure soul.

Anandamayi Ma went to her ashram in Kankhal and we followed her in taxis. Kankhal extends to the south of Haridwar and in 1980, it was still idyllic, quiet and laid-back. It mainly consists of large ashrams surrounded by boundary walls.

Ashrams are often compared to monasteries, and in a sense, this comparison is valid: its residents are ideally striving for god- or self-realisation (god and self are interchangeable in Indian philosophy). Yet there is a major difference: an ashram comes up around an extraordinary human being: an enlightened master or at least someone, who is spiritually above average. That person attracts attention, because s/he rests in the innermost being and does not seek any benefits for her own person. People, who are interested in knowing the truth, want to stay near, because someone, who knows the truth, is said to be of invaluable help to someone, who wants to realise it. So they erect huts or build houses and an ashram is taking shape. It usually continues to exist, even when that personality dies without a designated successor. Henceforth the tomb, called samadhi, becomes the focus of veneration, as it is supposed to have power. Anandamayi Ma’s samadhi in Kankhal is today such a focus, since her death on 27^th August 1982.

The taxi stopped at the gate of Ma’s ashram. Flower vendors eagerly awaited us. They offered garlands of jasmine, marigold or even roses, which shed a wonderful fragrance. Everyone entered the ashram with either flowers or fruits in his hands.

In the centre of the courtyard, a chair was placed for Ma. She sat down and we, about thirty people, were standing around her. Now she asked some of her devotees, how they were doing, whether everything was okay and so on. The questions were commonplace, and yet there was a sense of sublime sacredness in the air.

Then with a garland in his hands, somebody went up to her and kneeled down. He placed the garland at her feet and his forehead on the ground. Two women assistants, who sat on the floor left and right to Ma’s chair, threw the garland over his head. Then he got up, slowly and with folded hands, his gaze fixed on Ma and probably hoping that she, too, would look at him, which was not always the case. One by one went up to her like this, including my foreigner friends and it became plain to me, that the garland in my hands was waiting for a similar destiny.

I walked up to Ma, kneeled down and put my flower garland at her feet and my forehead on the ground. When I lifted my head again and looked up to Ma, she looked above my head towards the group. I went back to my place disappointed. “When you couldn’t see, Ma looked down at you”, someone next to me kindly whispered into my ear. I had noticed it already on the railway station, and now, in the courtyard, I noticed it again: her gaze was different. It touched the heart and widened it. And it was painful, when it was withheld. Because of her short, fleeting gaze and the feeling that it induced, I went from then on every evening by rickshaw to Kankhal.

Was Ma enlightened? I didn’t know, but felt, it was possible. Melita Maschmann, a journalist, who has lived in India since 1963 and written several books, two of them about Anandamayi Ma, was the only other German in the courtyard and she explained to me what enlightenment meant:

‘Ma sees in everything and everywhere only the one god, i.e. her own self. For her, ‘others’ don’t exist. She herself has said that only because of convention she differentiates between herself and others. In truth, she doesn’t see a difference and there is no difference.’

So, basically there is no difference between an enlightened being and us ordinary mortals. We differ only in one aspect: an enlightened being lives in that oneness, feels it, is at home in it, whereas we think that we are separate and even prefer to hold on to this illusion, though we, of course, are also at home in the oneness. Oddly, we want to be separate; we are fond of our person, our thoughts, feelings, relationships, memories, hopes and even our worries and pain. We are used to the illusion. It is familiar and almost everyone shares it. So far, we were okay. Why should we give it up? Just because of the truth?

Few are ready for it in spite of the assurance that truth is heaven and illusion is hell in comparison. All our suffering originates from our imaginary isolation and is completely unnecessary, claim the sages. We don’t need to be afraid of the truth. In fact, truth is the fulfilment, for which we unconsciously long for.

I tried to imagine what Anandamayi Ma perceived, while she looked at us. Did she see our bodies and her own among them as fleeting, transitory waves on the one ocean, while she felt immersed in its immense depth and vastness?

Concepts like truth and god, which had hardly figured in my vocabulary in recent years, seemed in the Indian context important, relevant and natural.

“Life is meant to realise the truth. Truth has to come first. Everything else is secondary”, Anandamayi Ma claimed and did not compromise on that. It seemed logical, if we are indeed taken for a ride by our senses and take falsely an illusion for the truth. And doesn’t science, too, maintain, that the perceived, manifested multiplicity in this universe is a deceptive appearance and that in truth everything is one, a whole?

For the majority of Indians it does not matter, whether the one is called God, Brahman or Allah. “There is only one supreme being. Sages call it by many names”, is stated in their Vedas, the oldest scriptures of humankind. This view is probably one of the reasons, why Hindus, compared to Christians and Muslims, are more generous regarding differing worldviews. I have not yet met a Hindu, who depicted Jesus Christ in poor light, on the contrary, most hold him in high regard. On the other hand, most Christians tend to depict Krishna, whom Hindus revere as an incarnation of god, in poor light and sometimes even as a devil.

Ma talked about god as if he was naturally the dearest friend we had in this world. She saw that it was true and did her best that we also could see it. When scholars put questions to her, she argued highly philosophically and gave inadvertently proof that she, who had attended a village school in today’s Bangladesh for only two years, not only knew the scriptures but knew them from direct experience. Scholars were impressed by her. Many came.

On the other hand, she formulated the essence of Advaita Vedanta, the highest wisdom, in clear and simple terms:

“Behind all the different, perpetually changing names and forms in this universe there is only ‘one thing’ – Bhagawan, god or however you like to call it. That alone is eternal, ever the same. This god plays with himself as it were. All appearances are contained in him, like in a mirror. He is the I of our I. Life is meant to realise this – to realise who we really are and drop the wrong identification with our person.”

Her words had power, probably because she was genuine and said only, what she definitely knew was true.

For example, when her mother had died and was laying out in the ashram, Ma was cheerful and laughed her hearty laugh as usual. Her devotees felt that her behaviour was not quite appropriate for the situation. Ma reacted surprised: “Why? Nothing has happened!” For her dying was like changing a dress. Who would be sad over losing an old dress, when one is still fresh and alive?

In May, when the temperature shot above 40 degrees Celsius in Haridwar, Ma moved to Dehradun in the foothills of the Himalayas. Dehradun is some 800 meters above sea level and the temperature a few degrees lower. During the following years, this city became the place in India, where I felt most at home.

A wealthy couple had built a cottage for Ma in their spacious compound on the outskirts of the town on Rajpur Road. Towards evening, around sunset, Ma would give darshan there. She sat on a cot on the veranda, behind her the outline of the first range of the mountains against the evening sky that changed into ever new shades of colour. The atmosphere was uplifting and pure.

While waiting for Ma, we were singing the Hanuman Chalisa and other religious songs, and the repertoire of such songs seemed infinite. Once, a girl of about ten sat next to me. She sang full throatily, yet a little out of tune. Her clapping of hands was also slightly out of rhythm. When I heard her singing like this and felt her presence next to me, I liked her more and more. My heart went out to her and was overflowing with love.

Then the veranda door opened and Anandamayi Ma appeared, supported by two women. Even before she reached the cot, she briefly stopped, half turned and looked sort of irritated into my direction. When she finally sat down on the cot, her glance settled on me for a long time – so long, that the three women sitting behind me afterwards whispered about it to each other. Yet this time, Ma’s glance did not strike me or induce any feeling. It seemed as if there was no centre that could have got struck and affected. I simply looked back at her.

Probably Ma’s glance was attracted by the love that I felt for that girl and probably she really did not perceive us as separate persons. After all, she often declared that it is a mistake to consider oneself as separate from others. But certainly all of us, as we were sitting there on the veranda during her daily darshan, wished that she appreciated us personally. And if we were honest, we most likely even wished that she appreciated our own person a little more than the others.

But Ma didn’t oblige. She was not consistent in her attention and affection, as Devaraha Baba had also not been consistent. Sometimes he had suddenly and abruptly turned to someone else and left one abandoned and ignored standing in the sand. A genuine guru can see, even if his disciple cannot see it, that the ego is the culprit who makes life difficult. Naturally, he is not interested in flattering the ego and strengthening it – on the contrary.

“The association with an enlightened being consists in getting blows for the ego”, Anandamayi Ma once remarked. My ego felt sometimes the blows, for example, when she did not look at me for long and it reacted with heavy, resentful thoughts. On the other hand I felt attracted to Ma, because I learnt around her almost effortlessly a new way of life – for example that everything is right as it is.

“Trust in Bhagawan. He certainly will look after you and all your affairs, if you really put full trust in him and if you dedicate all your energy to realise your self. You then can feel completely light and free”, Ma claimed and it sounded convincing. By ‘Bhagawan’ she meant the formless essence in everything. However, this essence is not something abstract and cold. It is love and can be experienced as the beloved. She also said, “You are always in his loving embrace.”

No doubt, there had to be something far greater and far more intelligent inside me than this Maria who I think I know. I, as Maria, cannot even manage the functioning of my liver. And what about coordinating all those billion cells in my body? An impossible task. It also made sense to me that that great being is the source of love. Where else would love come from? Anandamayi Ma drew my attention to that Great Spirit in me, in whom it is possible to feel fully safe and protected.

Maria Wirth