Evolution of love

True nature of Anandamayi

In all likelihood, the hole in the ground was a shaft-hole of the anthill over which the vedi was built. It is also my conjecture that the object which Nirmala was holding in her hand when she withdrew her arm from the hole was a queen termite. Shaft-holes are an essential feature of the termite nest and anyone who has broken into one, as I have done, will know that there would have been every likelihood of her hand accidentally encountering termites in the nest, perhaps even touching a queen.
And if Bholanath had handled the fat worm-like body of a queen termite, which is unpleasantly slimy, his revulsion would have been quite natural. It is, however, only conjecture; in any case, the object's actual identity does not concern us and is only a minor detail in the interpretation of the hierophany.
But Nirmala's experience would be no less extraordinary for having natural causes as its simple explanation. On the other hand, her "occult" location of the spot and the way her arm found its way into the hole are by no means easily explained. Nor does the link with white ants "demystify" the hierophany.
On the contrary, such facts as are known about it render all the more remarkable the way these particular natural phenomena are integral to the whole scenario.
In the Yajur-veda, termites are addressed as "the earliest of Creation". Their Mound is identified with the original lump of mud that was raised to the surface of the Cosmic Ocean. In the Satapatha Brahmana termites are invoked as "the first-born of the world"; in yet another early text, the mounds made by ants are also identified with the first lump of cosmogonic mud.
The insects are addressed as 'Ye Divine Ants, who originated at the Creation, ye who are combined with Rita', Rita being the Vedic term for Cosmic Order, hidden in the nether world.
It is curious that modern science also tells us that termites are indeed extremely archaic creatures and have been active since the Permian level on the geological time-scale - that is, for no less than 200 million years. In Indian folk culture, termites are associated with ancestor-worship and, because their shaft-holes are believed to lead down to the nether world, with Death and the "Womb of Life and Rebirth".
There are many stories of gods and goddesses said to have been literally "born from an ant-hill".
The deity does not represent the ant-hill, or vice versa; the ant-hill is the deity, and the deity is the ant-hill; mound and deity are regarded as one. In the Vedas, the water from a termite mound is cited as a remedy for flux: "Deep down do the Asuras bury this great healer of wounds. The ants bring up this remedy from the subterranean waters. And finally, and of special interest to us, clay from an anthill which is inserted in the foundations of a temple is still termed the 'embryo'".
Nirmala's use of ant-hill mud, both in laying foundations for the vedi and in the making of the image of the goddess, is still common practice in modern India. The link between the ant-hill, the cosmogony and the Siddheshwari hierophany turns out to be not so obscure after all.
Nirmala continued her trance states in the vedi over the next few years. Since she was tall and sturdily built, says Didi, who often witnessed her posture in the pit, it was astonishing that she managed it. But Nirmala's relaxed way of melting into the extremely restricted space of the vedi no more than 22 inches, 35cm, square perfectly expresses her sense of identity with the unmanifest Ground of all being.
Curled up in the vedi, her physical state is a graphic verification of her assertion that 'this body is That'. She is at home - not the home of a personal God, but of a formless, unmanifest Supreme Reality, the anandamaya-kosha, the bliss body.
There is an air of inevitability about the way she takes up residence in the vedi: for her it is nothing special.
Someone who has reached the stage of the last picture in the Zen Ox-Herding Pictures, their commentary explains, is regarded as being so elevated as to look no different from ordinary people: I use no magic to enhance my life; now; when I approach, trees bloom."
Didi used to say that Mataji's followers became so habituated to her secure warmth and ordinary manner that they tended to take her for granted, forgetting how really extraordinary her true identity was. Perhaps it is because of this apparent ordinariness and ease that none among them felt any need to remark upon or interpret the Siddheshwari hierophany.
Bhaiji was the first disciple who gave overt recognition to Nirmala's true stature. His contribution at the climax of the vedi story indicates his acute insight.
Jyotish Chandra Roy - his original name, - a senior government official in Dhaka, describes how, one noon:
"I was busy at my desk. Someone came with a message from Mataji asking me to go to Shahbagh. He had told her that the Director of Agriculture could take charge of the office that day. Without a moment's hesitation I abandoned all the paperwork on my desk and without informing anybody, left for Shahbagh forthwith. When I got there, Mataji said: 'Let us go to Siddheshwari Ashram.' So I accompanied her and Bholanath. There was a small hollow, the vedi, exactly where a small pillar and a Shiva Lingam now stand.
Mataji sat inside the hollow, her countenance soon wreathed in smiles and radiant with joy. I exclaimed to Bholanath: 'From today we shall hence forward call Ma by the name Anandamayi.' He at once replied: 'Yes, let it be so!'
Mataji gazed at me for some time but did not say anything.
When we were about to return to Shahbagh she enquired: 'All along you were so full of joy, so how is it that you now look so pale?' I replied that the thought of going home had made me remember all the paperwork I had left unfinished at the office.
She said: 'You need not worry about that.'
Next day I asked Mataji why she had called me so unexpectedly in the middle of work the day before. She said: 'to test how much progress you have made in the last few months.'
Then she added with a genial laugh: 'If you had not come, who else would have given a name to this body?'"
The naming was Bhaiji's flash of intuition; at the furthest remove from learning, scholarship and research, the moment of naming is traditionally seen to be highly significant. The name emerges at a moment of inspiration in the namer. Pronouncement of the name is a condensation of the person's essence - nama-rupa, convergence of name and form, a mantra of the Self. "Ananda" simply means bliss, a self-luminous word for the self-luminous state.
"Anandamayi" means the Self of bliss. Perhaps "steeped in bliss" catches the tone of Bhaiji's pronouncement.
Shankaracharya, the great exponent of Vedanta, cited by Anandamayi in connection with Siddheshwari, says "when a being, by means of the cognition of absolute identity; finds absolute rest in the Self consisting of bliss, then he is free."
We could say "the bliss of absolute rest in the vedi".
The naming was the real climax to the Siddheshwari hierophany. It occurred at a time, so far as the observer's outward eye can perceive, when the role of Anandamayi crystallised. She was beginning to establish her public identity and it would soon reach far beyond the circle of companions gathered round her in Dhaka. But the difficulty in writing an account of how all this came about arises from the fact that the hierophany itself is pure poetry. It does not lend itself to interpretation in expository prose something essential is missing from my words. To make up for this I will quote from a poem which does convey exactly what I believe to be the inner meaning which Anandamayi gave to the hierophany the Jnanasagar of Aliraja, as transcribed by the great scholar, S. B. Das Gupta, himself one of the first learned men to recognized the true nature of Anandamayi.