Anandamoyi Ma

"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."

"Enquire: 'Who am I?' and you will find the answer. Look at a tree: from one seed arises a huge tree; from it comes numerous seeds, each one of which in its turn grows into a tree. No two fruits are alike. Yet it is one life that throbs in every particle of the tree. So, it is the same Atman everywhere. All creation is That: There is beauty in the birds and in the animals. They too eat and drink like us, mate and multiply; but there is this difference: we can realize our true nature, the Atman. Having been born as human beings, we must not waste this opportunity. At least for a few seconds every day, we must enquire as to who we are. It is no use taking a return ticket over and over again. From birth to death, and death to birth is samsara. But really we have no birth and death. We must realize that."

"The Vedas are but sparks from They eternal Light. Thou dost symbolise the heavenly couple, Kama and Kameshvari who are dissolved together in all-permeating Bliss Supreme and signified by Nãda and Bindu, when differentiated for keeping up Thy Lila. Do Thou dispel the fears of the world. I seek refuge in Thee."

"From 1976 through 1980 I corresponded with the great woman saint of India, Sri Anandamayi Ma. I had decided to write her as a friend of mine had recently done so and received a reply. To my surprise a letter came back from her within a few months. Swamis Atmananda and Nirvananda helped with my communications. I planned to visit Ma in India but somehow could not get the resources together to bring it about. I also wrote a few articles for their magazine Ananda Varta. Contact with Ma inspired me more into a Vedantic and Hindu mold. Her energy would come in waves, almost like an electrical force, encouraging me to deeper practices. Ma’s energy opened up devotional potentials for me, not merely for the Goddess but also for Shiva and Rama. I began to look into Bhakti Yoga, chanting and devotional meditation. Images of Hindu deities appeared in mymind."

"Sri Ma was often lost in bhava samadhi and other forms of trance-like ecstasies. Once she stayed in samadhi for five days without any response to outside stimuli. When asked about it, she replied, “It is a state beyond all conscious and supra-conscious planes – a state of complete immobilization of all thoughts, emotions and activities, both physical and mental, a state that transcends all the phases of life here below.” She was stabilized in sahaja samadhi, the natural state of effortless abidance in the Self regardless of one’s external circumstances. ... Sri Ma’s realization embraced all opposites. Though distinguishedly beautiful in appearance and motherly by temperament, she could equally display the more masculine, impersonal aspect of God. In her advanced years, she would still express the lustre, innocence and charm of youth encompassed by an aura of the wisdom of the ancients."

"In her later years, Sri Anandamayi Ma was treated like the spiritual queen of India, often visited by Kamala Nehru, wife of the first Prime Minister of India. She became the protector and confidante of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, cabinet members and countless government officials. She was universally revered by millions of sadhus, saints and devotees. In January, 1982, she was selected by the sadhus of the Haridwar Kumbha Mela as their Ishta Devata, or beloved personal form of God, and rode a caparisoned elephant to lead the procession of Naga Babas marching toward the holy Ganga. Gopinath Kaviraj, the great savant-saint of Banares, called her Adya Shakti, the incarnation of the highest Spiritual Energy. And Swami Sivananda, founder of the Divine Life Society of Rishikesh, offered her the ultimate accolade, calling her “the purest flower the soil of India has ever produced.”"

"I have no sense of pleasure or pain, and I stay as I have always been. Sometimes He draws me outside, and sometimes He takes me inside and I am completely withdrawn. I am nobody, all of my actions are done by him and not by me."

"As you do not feel the weight of your head, of hands, and of feet … so do I feel that these persons are all organic members of THIS BODY; so I don't feel their pressure or find their worries weighing on me. Their joys and sorrows, problems and their solutions, I feel to be vitally mine … I have no ego sense nor conception of separateness."

"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[s] around me in the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"

"Melita Maschmann, a journalist, who has lived in India since 1963 and written several books, two of them about Anandamayi Ma,... 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.’"