1970 India Reunion cont’d
Anandamayi Ma
My friends and I spent a week in Deli, visiting mystics and Vedic book stores. Then we headed north, rested, happy, and excited, to Maharishi’s ashram in a caravan of old Ambassador taxis. In January the temperature in Delhi is perfect, but ascending to Rishikesh (1,200 ft above sea level), the air got cooler—and a lot cleaner—as we wound through farms and villages with huts and cows, buffalo, and the odd camel or even elephant: a scene that probably hadn’t changed in centuries.
Maharishi had suggested we stop enroute in Hardiwar, a traditional sister ‘city of saints’ to Rishikesh, also on the Ganges. Our mission: visit the ashram of Shri Anandamayi Ma, the great and beautiful saint from Varanasi (then Benares).
Our group assigned me to garland her with greetings from Maharishi, and to seek her blessings for the course and our speedy enlightenment. Maharishi knew and respected her as did his teacher, Guru Dev.
We left the noisy, crowded, dirt streets of Hardiwar into another dimension: her ashram was immaculate, with spotless, cool, beige marble floors and soft, quiet
air—a very together operation. A grey-haired man in bright white dhoti and kurta greeted us with palms together, said, “Namaste” and respectfully escorted us to an open courtyard.
The courtyard was full of men and women sitting cross-legged on floor-rugs, singing and chanting kirtans (devotional songs), including ‘Jai Shiva Shankar.’ Anandamayi Ma was seated up front, distributing ‘prasad’ (sweets and fruit) to everyone: a timeless scene from the Indian millennium. When we were introduced as representing Maharishi, she lit up and warmly invited us sit in front.
When it felt right, I stood up, offered Maharishi’s greeting and respects, and asked for her blessings for our course (in English—a man beside her translated into Bangali). Then I respectfully held up our garland of bright, orange marigolds, she lowered her head, and I gently placed it round her neck.
She was 78, but still had long, mostly black hair; still just resplendent. As I put the garland over her, I noticed she had a kind of static electricity around her hair, like a saint in Delhi we’d visited. I wasn't touching her hair, but I felt a soft, tingling energy field. A very happy energy field.
She sat back up, smiled at us, and said something in Bengali, which was translated as her deep respects for ‘father’ (Maharishi). Then she took the garland off, gestured for me to bow, and put it around my neck. After I raised my head and folded my palms to her, she gestured to an attendant who scrambled in a bag and gave her three oranges, which, to my surprise, she then handed to me with her kind eyes. I had not a thought; just glowed in this wonderful woman’s feelable, almost seeable halo.
I’d had a benediction from a timeless soul and felt it. Two years ago, when I put her poster on my wall, I never dreamed I’d meet her. She was a genuine saint, and we saw her twice again before we left India in April.
Paramahansa Yogananda, in his book, Autobiography of a Yogi, called her: the Bliss-Permeated Mother. This is what Anandamayi Ma told him:
"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
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.”
~ John