Those who have spent time in Kankhal, in particular during the last year, can testify personally. Narayan did not realize that he was at the point of death and that he had only one hour to live. Preface This anthology on practical Vedanta is a collection of my essays on various aspects of practical Vedanta, as expounded by Lord Krishna and as applied by Swami Vivekananda in the nineteenth century and Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and Ma Anandamayee in the twentieth century. See also www.anandamayi.org He noticed that the thing that frightened people about the big passage was the prospect of endless suffering. Many of you probably already know that Swami Vijayânanda left his body peacefully on Monday the 5th of April at 5.10 PM. You consider self-transformation to be a hazardous adventure. To one who has dived deep into it all truths of Science, philosophy and allied subjects never remain unexplored. She came and visited the Kumbh Mela from the 27th to the 31st, for herself and also to write a “ telegram ”, which means a report for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, about this great event of India. Mâ had entrusted Bhaskârananda with the task of giving initiation on her behalf. Worldly life is no doubt a battlefield. When they were sitting together, it happened from time to time in the ashram in Khankal for some celebrations, they did not show great emotion, but you could feel they had a deep connection and were united in a peaceful and spontaneous joy. Rishi-Sufi. This natural way is rooted in the Natural Law of cause and effect. He went again up to Patal Devi in 1961 for a year, and then for eight years in Dhaulchina ashram, in complete solitude. Vijayânanda’s special way of transmitting energy arose when he was asked to bless something. I grew into womanhood, but still I was the same. He was clad as a poor man. The inhaling and exhaling breath is analogous to the law of cause and effect: inhale, exhale. Born to a Jewish family on November 26, 1914, at the beginning of World War I in East France, he was destined to succeed his father who was the main rabbi of the town of Metz. She arranged a room for him on the terrace of the sadhu kutir, and she told him : “Yahan baito! 1.30mb WMA Download HERE : 2.50mb mp3 Download HERE: 7: Jai Ma 7.37 min. He was chiefly responsible for the first ashram built for Anandamayi Ma in 1929 at Ramna, within the precinct of the Ramna Kali Mandir. [3] Paramahansa Yogananda translates the Sanskrit epithet Anandamayi as "Joy-permeated" in English. He concluded saying that he believed Ma. Despite that, he was giving much of his time to attend regularly the satsangs. In 1970, he came back to Patal Devi ashram until 1976, when Mâ asked him to stay in Kankhal. She felt that Swamiji wanted to say goodbye to her when he asked her to come for two private interviews, included on her last day in Kankhal just before taking the train to Delhi. Gonzague was next to him and Izou was calling the air- ambulance that was supposed to carry him to Delhi urgently. Narayan, Pushparaj’s nephew, who was brought up at the ashram in Almora, has taken care of Swamiji daily for the last two or three years, while he was studying. If it was a rosary, he would take it in his hands and began to recite it; if it was a book, he would leaf through it; if it was a photo of Mâ, he would comment briefly on the particularity of the face, holding the photo in his hand; and if it was a meditation mat, he would usually put it on his head before putting it on the head of the person who was expecting the blessing. Swami Vijayânanda often said that once when Mâ had asked him what he wanted to do with his body after his death he had answered : “ You can throw it anywhere, I do not care about it ! Many people, for one reason or another, had not much time when they came to see Swamiji. This evokes the area from where the soul leaves the body. If you want to transfer this text to some more people that could be interested, just do it. Around the big bath of the 30th of March, dedicated to Hanuman, the god of service and devotion, Vijayânanda said that he was feeling his presence in particular. Vijayânanda had left with Izou and Gonzague a written document where he gave them the responsibility to decide what to do with his body after his death. [12], From her shift Dehradun onwards various scholars were drawn to Anandamayi Ma's light, gift, power and message of love, though she continued to describe herself as "a little unlettered child". Precognition, faith healing and miracles were attributed to her by her followers. Sonia Barbry has been visiting Kankhal for ten years. Explore Anandamayi Ma's biography, personal life, family and cause of death. To come back to Swami Vijayânanda, we should first evoke the successive parts of his life in a nutshell. There was some resistance from a part of the ashram. He had attended all the satsangs in a very normal way up to the day before – Sunday evening, in spite of the fact his breath was getting shorter and shorter and his voice more and more difficult to hear. Vijayânanda told clearly that the Guru does not die and that his words have the same value before and after he leaves his physical body. Death, Cause unspecified 27 August 1982 (Age 86) chart Placidus Equal_H. We’ll put their testimony on the Internet, probably on the web site anandamayi.org, and will make a selection for ‘Jay Mâ’. At that time, Swamiji used to come down every day for the evening puja, but not to stay long, hardly five or ten minutes after which he used to go back to his room. We have a French quarterly called Jay Ma. But by celebrating such occasions, there is an increase of devotion, true knowledge, and satsang among devotees, and therefore I do not object to these activities. It’s probably relevant to say that at the moment when Swamiji left his body in Kankhal, our group of French people was just coming back from the pilgrimage of Surdanka Devi, 3,000m high, in the Himalayas. Paramhansa Yogananda translates Anandamayi as "joy-permeated". He expressed his appreciation for their efforts by saying: “ It’s great ! [8], On the full moon night of August 1922, at midnight, twenty-six-year-old Nirmala enacted her own spiritual initiation. During all of this period, Izou, Gonzague, Pushparaj, Narayan and Dinesh were particularly committed to do what has to be done; Izou’s family also gave up everything to be there for the last rituals. I kept watch over Swamiji’s body in his room and for sure, this name of God continuously repeated, helped me and purified me in my meditation. Swamiji said that the bodies were like leaves that were falling from the tree, while the Self was the tree itself and remained the same in any season. (A must-read if you're a seeker written by a seeker. ANANDAMAYI MA. [4][1] Her father, originally from Vidyakut in Tripura, was a Vaishnavite singer known for his intense devotion. It’s touching from a symbolic point of view, you can interpret this as the symbol of what he had done his whole life : to give his energy in the service of Mâ, to give on behalf of Mâ. [6] During this period Nirmala went into ecstasies at public kirtans. Atmananda did her last work of editing by revising the first number in September 1985. In fact, it was probably the symptoms of an intracranial hypertension with the beginning of an engagement of the basis of the brain in the spinal canal: this results in depression of the breathing function that makes breathing weaker and weaker, and leads to death. The group consisted of more than sixty people and we could have been concerned about the satsang because of Swamiji’s weak voice and the fact he persisted in holding the satsang at the noisiest time of the day, during the puja in Mâ’s temple, with the loud speakers, whose volume was regularly turned high. The Navadurga is translated as the nine Durgas, referring to nine different forms of the great goddess Durga. In the end of 1950, he took a boat from Marseille in South France to Sri Lanka and India in the hope to find his guru. April 30 is Sri MA Anandamayi’s jayanti, or birthday.When MA was alive, her devotees celebrated her birthday with lavish ritual.. MA said: This body says that it was not born. Swamiji often said that the function of a guru is not to give an intellectual teaching but to transmit energy. Thanks to the Kumbh Mela where I was since the beginning of February, I attended the two last months of satsangs of Swamiji almost continuously, except a few days, amongst which were the last four days. Anandamayi Ma, Ananda Varta Quarterly I/60 ... Again, Mahashakti (Ultimate Divine Female Power) is the root cause of everything - of creation, preservation, dissolution. Further the Bengali manner of alliterative wordplay was often lost in translation. He almost did not take any medicine. When the Supreme Experience supervenes, everyone's service is revealed as one's own service. Ma died on 27 August 1982 in Dehradun, aged 86. As a little girl, I was the same. Her style of teaching included jokes, songs and instructions on everyday life along with long discourses, silent meditation and recommended reading of scriptures. He left his body in 2001 and his long-time devotee Laurence Le Douaré built him a samâdhi with a part of his ashes in a beautiful garden in her house that overlooks the Douarnenez Bay near Brest. ”. We even thought of Daulchina and this area of Kumaon where he had spent 17 years. She later stated, "As the master (guru) I revealed the mantra; as the disciple. It is not Anadamayi herself who is alone but Rajneesh too got his epitaph made before his death which reads: Never born. Teachings. I know only one example of a sage in the Indian tradition who has a samâdhi in France; this is Ranjit Mahâraj, who had the same guru as Nisargadatta Mahâraj. Both parents were from well regarded lineages, though the family lived in poverty. Buddhist Teachings. In fact, it was probably the symptoms of an intracranial hypertension with the beginning of an engagement of the basis of the brain in the spinal canal: this results in depression of the breathing function that makes breathing weaker and weaker, and leads to death. [9] She explained that the ceremony and its rites were being revealed to her spontaneously as and when they were called for. We can see the direct and stabilising influence of Swamiji, beyond the superficial changes of life and death. [7] Although uneducated on the matter, the complex rites corresponded to those of traditional, ancient Hinduism, including the offerings of flowers, the mystical diagrams (yantra) and the fire ceremony (yajna). Our birthdays were 51 years apart. After his return to Bhimpura he learned to breath without the ventilator, though still with the tracheostomy; the times when he appeared conscious with open eyes increased day-by-day. Some people heard him pronounce “Jai Ma” quietly. ” That’s what they did, and only afterwards the guru fell asleep forever. Before he would often ask visitors who were about to leave, to come back later, but recently he did not do that. Jai Guru Ma, Bhagavan (version 2) 5.2 min. Anandamayi was sensitive to environmental influences as was demonstrated when she once passed a Muslim tomb. He would nod Yes or No to questions asked. So she booked her plane ticket for after the big bath on the 14h of April, the last one of the Kumbh Mela. Moreover, on occasions he blessed people who were visiting him, by holding their head with his hands, and would smile. Even if you can‘t fully be aware of his level, you can receive directly love from him, this is the experience of many people who came to visit him. It was better that way. The bad rich man then got furious: “You, coolies, you always say that, and afterwards you ask ten times the price!” Kabir replied: “All this does not matter, since when you reach to your door, you will fall flat dead!” At this point, the rich man became still more furious : “You will see when I am at the door of my house that I am not dead, just by the sound beating I will deliver to you!” Kabir smiled, took the bundle and went with the rich man towards his house. During almost 70 hours, I only slept three hours, but the energy was there and allowed me to care about practical things during the day and meditate in Vijayânanda’s room during the night. [6] She was a contemporary of the well known Hindu saints like Udiya Baba, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Ramdas, and Paramahansa Yogananda. ^ Life History: Chronology of Mothers life Anandamayi Ma Ashram Official website. ‘ and so he did for 34 years, until his last breath in the afternoon of the 5th of April 2010. Hindu. INTRO: The Ashram is excited to announce the very first blog post on Anandamayi Ma!A beacon of love, light and spiritual power, Anandamayi Ma (Mother of Bliss) blessed this earth from 1896-1982, giving teachings on living a God-inspired life through purifying the heart and enlightening the mind. Those who consider they have made enough cycles on this earth tend to choose this auspicious period to leave their body. For the last few months, he was saying that Pushparaj had been a monk in a former life and that he was returning progressively to this kind of life ; for several months, he was sleeping in Swamiji’s room, at the bottom of his bed, to be with him when he wanted to go to the toilet, because Swamji had fallen several times whilst doing so. Moreover some travellers, despite the fact Kankhal was not included in their trip, decided to come and visit Vijayânanda. As they were very surprised, he made up for it saying that maybe he would not leave his room for the satsang. Vijayânanda liked quoting a transcendentalist poet of the XIXth century, maybe Emerson, who explained that for the one who was at a high spiritual level, death became a laughable eventuality. [6] During the time in Shahbag, more and more people began to be drawn to what they saw to be a living embodiment of the divine. He lived in the 15th century Banaras. I should mention that another great Swami of Mâ, Shivânanda, left his body just 4 days after Vijayânanda, on Friday the 9th of April in the morning. Afterwards he came back and gave satsang as usual up to Sunday 4th of April in the evening – that was his last meeting with the devotees. He probably meant that the handicap was a weight for oneself and for the others. Thus her Sadhana can not be slotted into a specific area, for to do so would mean that she was somehow limited to that area and her mastery was also limited. The sense of "I" implies will-power and self-exertion. There was the theoretical possibility to bury the body for the time being in a garden and find another place far away from Haridwar and its pandas, and to quietly build a samadhi for Vijayânanda. They were almost his last words, He passed away a little after. Anandamayi was born Nirmala Sundari Devi on 30 April 1896 to the orthodox Vaishnavite Brahmin couple Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devi in the village of Kheora, Tipperah District (now Brahmanbaria District), in present-day Bangladesh. Moreover, the conservative people in the village and the sadhus connected to the Daksha temple, the Mahanirvanî Akhara and a group of pandas (monks on pilgrimage) in Kankhal opposed this project and began to demonstrate. In the following years, until perhaps 2005, Vijayananda continued to read the proofs and answer in writing the question of devotees. ” The rich man said: “How much?” “As you want !”. We generally recognize the value of planning for the future, although none of us knows what the future has in store for us. Some of the notes of satsangs that I made in the last few months, appeared in the last issue of the quarterly ‘Jay Mâ’, but I have still several of them to publish. She welcomed and conversed with devotees of different paths and religions from Shaivaite, Vaishnavite, Tantric, or from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism. At Christmas 2009, he had bad flu that handicapped him and he missed the satsang for a few days. This is an axiom of life. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. Even for Mâ in August 1982, the devotees were about to put her body in the Ganga and it was the head of Mahânirvâni Akhara in Khankal who insisted and he took matters upon himself for building a samadhi. She says that twice during the last year, some visitors told Swamiji that they would come back for the Kumbh Mela and he answered that maybe he would not be there. While we plan for things that may or may not happen, how many of us have a plan for death… He met Ma Anandamayi in Varanasi on February 2, 1951, asked her if he could stay for two or three days in her ashram, she said yes, and actually he spent the next 59 years in those ashrams, and he even never left the holy land, the devbhumi of India. ― Anandamayi Ma, The Essential Sri Anandamayi Ma: Life and Teachings of a 20th Century Saint from India. However she did not advise everyone to become a renunciate. Maybe he thought that anyway it was his duty to do it. To most of the Indian subcontinent Durga is the divine mother, presider over the seasons of life, death, and birth, the liberator of the oppressed and marginalized, and warrior. Mâ’s game is really surprising : as I was just beginning to write this message to give some details about the way Vijayânanda “had merged into the Braman “( in Sanskrit and Hindi, you say “ bhrama-lin ” when a sage leaves his body), I received a phone call from a young Swami of Israeli origin connected to Bhaskarânanda and who informed me that he left his body that morning on Thursday the 8th at 4.55 AM at the ashram in Bhimpura, on the banks of the Narmada, Gujarat. Still, he was suggesting that the real encounter with a sage was not a question of quantity, but of quality. We can assume that he heard, when he was conscious, that Swamiji Vijyânanda had left his body and that it helped him to leave his body. He was 94 and three months according to the Indian way of counting, which means 93 and three months according to the Western way of counting, what means two years and two months less than Swami Vijayânanda. We must remember that neither Mâ’s husband Bholonath nor her faithful assistant Didi had a samadhi. It was a celibate marriage—whenever thoughts of lust occurred to Ramani, Nirmala's body would take on the qualities of death. Vijayânanda did not take them because he had understood that the diagnosis was wrong. Anandamayi Ma, the bliss filled mother, was full of love; a mother to all; a radiant goddess in human form - humble, compassionate and loving. The saddest thing, when you are with the body of the person who was the most important for you for 25 years, is to realize all that you should or could have done and that you did not do. WORDS. He was the first to suggest that Nirmala be called Anandamayi Ma, meaning "Joy Permeated Mother", or "Bliss Permeated Mother". For sure, it’s impossible to tell everything about such a deep and subtle relationship with Swamiji, but you can relate some things. She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. ", "Who is it that loves and who that suffers? But Swamiji had no interest in being placed in a place that could become a temple, with morning and evening rituals. He himself had a lot of energy; for several months, he was sleeping very little. He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.. The second night was much more peaceful, with the process of mourning that was happening quite quickly, at least in the first layers of the mind. He was tossing and turning in bed so as to find a position that would alleviate his pain, but in vain. ', 'Wherever God may keep you at any time, from there itself must you undertake the pilgrimage to God-realization. Anandamayi Ma Quotes “Whether you worship Christ, Krishna, Kali or Allah, you actually worship the one Light that is also in you, since It pervades all things.” “Without cause or reason, His compassion and His grace are pouring forth at every instant.” “Joys and sorrows are time born and cannot last. She herself has said (ref. She would dismiss spiritual arguments and controversies by stating that "Everyone is right from his own standpoint,". This page is intended for Sai Baba followers who have visited any of the anti-Sai Baba web sites and have had their faith in him shaken. Sandrine Oubrier spent 15 months almost continuously at the ashram in Kankhal and attended almost all Swamiji’s last satsangs. Even now, the Muslim population of Kheora still refer to her as "our own Ma".[7]. Mother Reveals Herself), all forms of sadhana, known and unknown, just occurred to her in the form of a lila (play) without any conscious effort on her part. I hope the report of the last period of Swamiji’s terrestrial life will help you to deepen the relationship you had with him. At 5.OO PM, the breathing got even more difficult. According to her wishes, Anandamayi Ma was buried and a shrine was erected, which has become a place of worship and pilgrimage, known for its spiritual power (Hallstrom 52). Never died. [6] Uday Shankar, the famous dance artist, was impressed by Anandamayi Ma's analysis of dance, which she used as a metaphor for the relationship between people and God. He did not dramatize death and said that there were two possibilities : either you were a believer and you would melt in the spiritual light, or you were a non-believer and you would fall asleep. This verbal suggestion of Swamiji’s was accepted on Tuesday 6th of April in the evening by the ashram board along with Panuda, the president of the Sangha, who has known Swamiji for 60 years. She taught how to live a God-centered life in the world and provided the living inspiration to enable thousands to aspire to this most noble ideal. Prangopal Mukerjee[5] Mahamahopadhyay Gopinath Kaviraj, Sanskrit scholar, philosopher, and principal of Government Sanskrit College in Varanasi and Triguna Sen were among her followers. To be attracted means to become trans­formed. The Sri Sri Anandamayi Sangha in Haridwar organizes the annual Samyam Mahavrata congregation to devote a week to collective meditation, religious discourse and devotional music. She is a devotee of Swami Chidânanda, who was, up until his death, the successor of Shivânanda at the head of the Divine Life Society, and who was also close to Mâ Anandamayi. Nowadays she is a political consultant in the French ambassy in Delhi. Through interviews with Ma s devotees, Aymard illustrates the fundamental Hindu belief in the presence of a saint after his or her death. What will we do now we are left to our own devices ? Yet there is also a natural interval between the inhaling and exhaling breath. Several ashrams had organised continuous repetition of mantras. For Swamiji, it was probably due to the considerable bending of the nape of the neck through osteo-arthritis, and the vertebral compression that was pressing the spinal cord and that had paralysed the lower limbs when he wanted to walk a few steps. [4], Ma died on 27 August 1982 in Dehradun, and subsequently on 29 August 1982[1] a Samadhi (shrine) was built in the courtyard of her Kankhal ashram, situated in Haridwar in North India. He had hoped to meet Shri Ramana Maharshi and Shri Aurobindo, but both had just passed away when he reached Chennai in January 1951. He had often said that to live to be very old was not always a blessing and could be a disadvantage. Everyone was welcome and she was equally at ease while giving guidance to all practitioners of different faiths. My perception of her life is that she is an example of a realized Saint. Moreover, Swamiji offered to each member of the group, (most of them are yoga teachers), a small meditation mat made in Gandhi’s ashrams. ... generating inner turmoil and disaster, for it belongs to the realm of death. He vomited several times. We have decided that the best way to respect Mâ’s will concerning the body preservation was to repatriate it to France. Nirmala attended village schools of Sultanpur and Kheora for approximately 2–4 months. Spiritual-Teaching.org. In 1908 at the age of twelve years, 10 months, in keeping with the rural custom at the time, she was married to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti of Bikrampur (now Munshiganj District) whom she would later rename Bholanath. Izou’s father and Vijayânanda were born the same year in 1914; in age they were just one month apart; they had been in the same regiment during the Campaign of May 1940 without knowing each other. For this reason, we had not expected his imminent departure. On Monday around noon, his breathing became more difficult, but he could communicate and even stand up to go to the toilet. He recommended that we go to the ritual baths and meet the naga babas. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. In fact, for a few months, his breath had been getting shorter and shorter, and his voice was very weak during the satsangs. These sadhus, despite their peculiar attraction for hashish, and their pitched battles against some other sadhus from time to time, are even so an example of renunciation with their nudity and their simple way of life. Anandamayi Ma, the nocturnal North-eastern quadrant, consisting of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd houses, prevails in your chart: this sector favours self-assertion and material security to the detriment of your perception of others. Only after Atmânanda left her body in October 1985, he started to see more visitors, especially Westerners, because Ma had asked him to care for them. She told him as she was showing him her body : “ This is just a cloth, I am omnipresent ! We’ll talk more about Swami Bhaskarânanda in the next issue of Jay Mâ. The more the heart becomes filled with the love of God, the fainter will grow the appetite for material enjoyments. At the time when the play of sadhana was being manifested through this body, it could clearly perceive these various possibilities. Anandamayi Ma (née Nirmala Sundari; 30 April 1896 – 27 August 1982) was a Bengali Saint, described by Sivananda Saraswati (of the Divine Life Society) as "the most perfect flower the Indian soil has produced." He wanted people’s devotion to remain focused on Mâ Anandamayi’s large samadhi. He had been to hospital two days before. One disciple claimed that she was saved from death after a car accident when Anandamayi grasped her "life substance" and brought it back into her dead body. More of this is found in the book "Death Must Die". Link to Wikipedia biography. She peered deeply into the soul, instantly grasping the inner essence, of all who came before her. People had difficulty transcribing her often informal talks because of their conversational speed. ”. The nape of the neck, the back of the head and his chest were very painful. The individual suffers because he perceives duality.