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Sri Ma Anandamayi

Anandamoyi Ma Template:Lang-bn (1896 - 1982), also called Anandamayi Ma, was a spiritual teacher (Guru), saint and a mystic from the Bengal region of India, and hailed as one of prominent mystics of the 20th century. During her times, she was considered the embodiment of spiritual bliss and her name literally means Joy Permeated Mother.

Anandamoyi was her ashram name, but she was also called Dakshayani, Kamala, Vimala, and "Mother of Shahbag". Swami Sivananda (Divine Life Society) had said that she was the finest flower that the soil of India had produced. Precognition, healing and other miracles are reported of her.

Biography

Early life

Anandamayi Ma was born Nirmala Sundari to Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devie in Kheora, Brahmanbaria District on 30 April, 1896. Her father, who came originally from Vidyakut in Tripura, was a Vaishnavite singer. His devotion was shown when during a storm which blew the roof off their home, he was said to have continued singing during the downpour. His daughter experienced the presence of divine power in herself since childhood and went into a trance (Bhava) on hearing kirtans. She attended the village school for barely two years.

At the age of thirteen, in 1908, she was married to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti of Vikramapura, who she called Bholanath and pitaji. She spent 5 years after her marriage at her brother-in-law's home, where she was in a trancelike state much of the time. It was a celibate marriage because whenever thoughts of sexuality occurred to him, Anandamoyi's body would take on the qualities of death and she would grow faint. When Nirmala Sundari was about 17, Nirmala went to live with her husband in Ashtagram. It was here that a devout neighbour, Harakumar, developed a habit of addressing her as "Ma", and prostrated before her morning and evening. In 1918, they went on to live in Bajitpur, where she became famous for her beauty. Here they stayed till 1924, while Niramala went deeper into her trances. On his return from the office at the end of the working day, Bholanath often found Nirmala lying on the kitchen floor, the food half cooked or burnt. On the full moon night of August 1922, at midnight, 26-year old Nirmala went through the actions of spiritual initiation - all by herself. Members of Bholanath's family did not respond to his wife’s strange behavior as calmly as he did. While his relatives suggested he remarry, he became her first disciple in 1922. Her second disciple was Bhaiji.

In Dhaka

Nirmala moved to Shahbag with her husband in 1924, where he had been appointed caretaker of the gardens of the Nawab of Dhaka. During this period Nirmala used to manifest the ecstassy that resembled Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. In 1926 she set up a Kali temple in the Siddheshwari area and devoted herself to spirituality. Nirmala underwent a mystic experience while praying in the temple one day. In her trance, she would hold difficult yogic positions for long periods and spontaneously form complex tantric hand positions and gestures. Henceforth, she became known as Anandamoyi Ma, meaning the Joy Permeated Mother. She set up an ashram at Ramna within the precinct of the Ramna Kali Mandir. Though her parents were Vaishnavas, she followed the Tantric creed.

Scholars were attracted to Anandamoyi Ma's spiritualism, though she called herself "a little unlettered child". Mahamahopadhyay Gopinath Kaviraj, Sanskrit scholar, philosopher, and principal of Sanskrit College in Kolkata and the physician Triguna Sen were among them. Uday Shankar, the famous dance artist, was impressed by Anandamoyi's analysis of dance, which was used as a metaphor defining the relationship between humans and God.

In Dehradun

In 1932, Anandamoyi Ma went to Dehradun with her husband and started working there. She travelled across the subcontinent to enlighten others. Several ashrams, and seats of learning hospitals were established in her name at Ramna (near Shahbag) and Kheora in Bangladesh, and Benares, Kankhal and other areas in India. Twenty-five ashrams are named after her. She also renovated many dilapidated holy places, including the Naimisharanya, where she set up a temple there and arranged for the recitation of holy names and the performance of kirtan and other religious rites. At this times people like Arnaud Desjardins, the French producer of sprititual films, Melita Maschmann, the German novelist, and Dr. Collin Turnbull, the English author, became her disciples.

Kamala Nehru, wife of the future prime Minster, Jawaharlal Nehru, became a devotee in 1933. Anandamoyi was then staying at a small temple in Dehradun, while Pandit Nehru was incarcerated by the British in Dehradun jail. Later she took Kamala to the Ambika temple in Kajpur to perform a three-day yajna. She gave to her daughter Indira the rosary which Mataji had given her. Mahatma Gandhi came to hear of Anandamayi through Kamala and sent his aid, Jamnalal Bajaj, to see her. He in turn became a devotee. After the unexpected death of Bajaj, she went to Wardha to console Mahatma Gandhi.

She visited Ramana Maharshi at his ashram and also met J Krishnamurti. Although she is mentioned in many books about Indian spiritual teachers, she is notably written about in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. His meeting with her is recounted in the chapter titled The Bengali "Joy-Permeated Mother", where he wrote:

"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 around me in the hall of eternity, I shall be the same."

— 25px, 25px

She died on 27 August, 1982 and was buried on the banks of the Ganges near the Kankhal Ashram in Haridwar in North India.

Teachings

As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them.
- Anandamayi Ma, Ananda Varta Quarterly

Book published by Sri Satguru Publications.Delhi.ISBN.81-7030-810-0

• 1896 births
• 1982 deaths
• Hindu religious figures
• Hindu gurus
• Bangladeshi Hindus
• Brahmanbaria District
• People from Dehradun
• People from Haridwar