Evolution of love

JAI MAA ANANDAMAYI

By any standards, this is one of the most arduous of all trekking pilgrimages. Published accounts relate how the little band of pilgrims was seized by a mood of intense exaltation, yet shadowed by hints of impending trouble.
Not far from this great focal point of Hindu and Buddhist pilgrimage, beside the shore of Lake Manasarovar, Bhaiji, now in the terminal stages of tuberculosis, was overcome by a spirit of supreme renunciation.
In response, sannyasa mantras spontaneously issued from Mataji's lips.
But Bholanath had to restrain him from throwing himself into the sacred waters of this enchanted, high-altitude lake. With Bhaiji's strength failing fast, the party was forced to return to Almora, where he died beside the Patal Devi temple.

The following year, Bholanath, that great bulwark of reliability and tender concern, was also to die. The relationship between the couple is a remarkable tale in itself. He displayed great generosity of spirit, kept a watchful eye on Mataji's health, proved indefatigable in times of crisis and earned the respect of her followers.
Each in a manner of speaking acted as a parent to the other, yet each also served the other with devotion and humility. Just before his death at Kishenpur, Bholanath openly called her "Ma" and asked for her prasada. Up till then only consideration for appearances had kept him from acknowledging himself a child before his "mother".

The proximity of death broke down all barriers. A few moments before he died she blessed him thrice by passing her hands over his body from head to foot. He died with the word "Ananda" on his lips, her hand resting on his head. Four months later, while her father lay dying, he also finally cast aside parental formality and called out to her, "Ma! Ma!"
Kamala Nehru, wife of the future prime Minster, Jawaharlal Nehru, became a great devotee in 1933. Mataji was then staying at a small temple in Dehradun, while Pandit Nehru was incarcerated by the British in Dehradun jail. Kamala would visit Mataji after nightfall and leave before dawn. She used to go into deep meditation in Mataji's presence, her body becoming quite stiff, ants crawling over her.
Later, Mataji took her to the Ambika temple in Rajpur, where Kamala performed a three-day yajna, a fire sacrifice, according to Mataji's instructions.
However, in 1935 she became very ill and Mataji went to see her twice in hospital. Shortly afterwards, Kamala was taken to Switzerland where she often had waking and dream visions of Mataji. She gave to her daughter Indira the rosary which Mataji had given her. After Kamala's death in 1936 both Pandit Nehru and Indira subsequently visited Mataji on numerous occasions. Mahatma Gandhi came to hear of Anandamayi through Kamala; initially he sent his trusted aid, Jamnalal Bajaj, to see her and then he in turn became a devotee.

After Jamnalal Bajaj's unexpected death, Mataji went on the long journey to Wardha and gave Mahatma Gandhi consolation. Gandhi was fascinated by her power to attract so large and diverse a following regardless of caste or creed. This was a matter she often discussed with others; according to Gurupriya Devi;

She once told her mother laughingly:
In reality I have not the slightest tie or relationship with anyone. Look if there were even the tiniest difference in my attitude towards you as compared to all others because of being related, I would have left you all and gone away long ago.
I have the same attitude towards all people regardless of whether they are related to this body or not. Since I have no feeling of difference, I remain with everybody.
Whom shall I abandon and whom shall I retain? Everyone is alike to me.

The nature of Anandamayi's ministry was based upon this fundamental equality of all who came to her. But of course what she saw was an equality of "uniqueness" as much as an equality of status; it encompassed much more than a mere "fairness" of favours or a refusal to make distinctions between, for example, saint and sinner.

This comprehensive detachment would have amounted to not much more than cold aloofness or bogus sentimentality were it not for its most remarkable corollary: an acuteness of perception and memory as to exactly what, at any time, each seeker's spiritual situation comprised - from where it had developed and in what direction it was heading.
This instant recognition of an individual's uniqueness was, no doubt, a spiritual inspiration to all its beneficiaries, but it was also a profoundly emotional experience above all, an experience of immeasurably stirring love.
Even the simplest of her words in answer to questions had immense and reverberating potency for the recipients.
There was good reason, no doubt, for Mahatma Gandhi's desire to find the secret of Anandamayi's mass appeal, with its overtones of egalitarian universalism embedded in a context of Hindu spirituality.
Her aims were by no means counter to his own, although their spiritual roots were much deeper than those the Mahatma himself had put down. What is remarkable about this aspect of Anandamayi's status as a "public figure" however laughable that label would seem to those closest to her - is the completeness of her detachment from worldly affairs and everything with which the peoples of the world have been so preoccupied in the course of this tumultuous century.
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.
With the floodtide of materialism already an ominous threat to the Indian way of life, the moment in history when the matter of this book took its course looks almost a miracle of timing. Anandamayi's ministry was so firmly established in the truth which subsists under all conditions and in all eras that her position at the apogee of spiritual culture confounds all fashionable pessimism.
To put it crudely - she's the last sort of person one would expect in our deplorable times.
"That God is as much present in the world given over to scientific research as in the age of mythology;" writes Bithika Mukerji, "we may say, is the 'Message' conveyed by her sojourn on earth."
When the village simpleton, Harakumar, her devout neighbour, presciently divined Nirmala's true nature and called her Ma, he could not possibly have guessed what would become of her. As she became more widely known outside India, one can't help wondermg how she would have surmounted the minor handicap of a title which, for Europeans has vulgar associations with pantomime dames and pejorative male slang.

Of course, 'Ma' has the highest connotations in India, as in the mantra-like vocable for the Mother Goddess, the Great Mother, Shakti, the Devi, but it is also a term of deep respect and affection for everything maternal and all aspects of the divine in its feminine aspect. When the anthropologist Colin Turnbull was first invited by a colleague to visit Anandamayi, "my Western ways of thought and conduct", he wrote, "revolted against the idea of a woman saint"(my italics).
Since this revealing admission great changes have occurred in attitudes towards women and towards the issue of female spirituality; but even in global terms (India must be included here), the image of Anandamayi as, precisely, a woman saint, has not been easily accepted. Yet unless we address this issue we miss a quality that is absolutely central to the whole nature of Anandamayi's unique and special lila.
If for a moment, we cast a somewhat analytical eye on this lila, it is obvious that important aspects of reality, such as we might expect of an account dealing with her life and the institutions bearing her name, have not been mentioned until now. What about the financing of all that incessant travel, all those expensive ashrams, all those costly yajnas and pujas?
What about Mataji's detachment from the Indian independence movement which raged throughout the first half of her life? How did she face up to the issues of a materialist world dominated by technology?
What did she do to help the poor? And so on . . . important matters, no doubt, but posed in a way which precludes and forestalls substantive answers because they all ignore the prior commitment of Anandamayi herself to the absolute primacy of her only concern; the One.