Evolution of love

JAI MAA ANANDAMAYI

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It is said that the universe has its origin in love, and the chaos is systematised into the cosmos through the bond of love. There is love between fire and air, between earth and water; without this love neither heaven, nor earth, nor the nether world would have originated at all. There is love between heaven and the skies, between heaven and earth, between hell and the nether world in which it lies, and thus are the three worlds supported in love. There is love between the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars and in love they are all fixed into the sky above.
There is love between the sea and its water, between the moon and the night and the sun and the day; - the tree is fixed to the earth by its roots, the black bee is attached to the lotus, fish is bound to the water, man is bound to the woman - and all in love.

The body is in love with the mind and the mind with the vital prana. In love does the mother conceive the child, in love does the earth hold fast the root of the tree, in love does the tree hold fast the branches and the flowers and fruits, in love does the fruit accumulate juice in its kernel - thus is the whole creative process supported in love.

This "absolute rest" is more meaningful than a merely pleasing figure of speech and takes us right to the innermost meaning of Anandamayi's repose in the vedi. Fundamental to all Indian thinking about phenomenal existence is a deep and abiding belief in the continuance of the Beginning, but not as a unique "big bang" or originating moment sparking temporal succession, as in Western thinking about the origin of the universe. To the Indian mind, genesis is a continuing function; the cosmogony takes place not at the "beginning of time" but in the Eternal Present.

All Indian symbolism for this ineffable Beginning helps to "reverse human experience of genesis, reintegrate the wasteful entropy of time and regain the continuing original whole" - Philip Rawson.


Reading the various accounts of Anandamayi's early life and the events leading up to her naming, though it all happened long ago, one still gets a lively impression of a group of people drawn together by a particularly powerful urge to assimilate to this "original whole". Each individual participates vicariously in the immersion through the sheer intensity of mystical identity. The experience is so complete, even though at one remove from actual physical entrance into the little vedi, that no interpretation of the symbolism is needed. Here is the real thing: oneness with the Source.
No word other than "Anandamayi", no verbal comment, either by Anandamayi herself or by anyone else, was called for, other than her sibylline utterance there of mantras. She herself is the body of the temple as a goddess would be in a traditional context; her utterances within the vedi are essentially cryptic, but nevertheless imply the intelligible structure of the world emergent from that Source.
What "happens" in the vedi serves to structure otherwise inexpressible intuitions about the origin, meaning and destiny of the human world. The participation of so charismatic a personage as Anandamayi guides the behaviour of all the other participants, as well as their spiritual effort.
The plethora of symbolic objects - a hole in the ground, the central point where the energy beyond emerges into the realm of manifestation; a termite nest and sacred earth; an altar surrounded by a fence within a shrine within an ashram - merely serves that divine energy entering the world through the mediation of Anandamayi.
By now we are in a better position to appreciate why Anandamayi did not have recourse to the vedi for long. The subtle messages she conveyed directly to the hearts of her followers through the language of the Siddheshwari symbols would, with time, inevitably grow weaker What once had reshaped the lives of all participants in that ashram would lose its compelling immediacy.
Not only would Anandamayi move on, but the enactment of the hierophany would give way to expository discourse, albeit both more comprehensive and considerably more explicit. But for as long as it continued, Anandamayi's recourse to the vedi to all those who witnessed it, served as a reminder that it was possible for each individual to find the way back to the hidden oneness.

And for those who can now only imagine what it must have been like, it remains a compelling image of the essential oneness of the individual with the universal, of the manifested reality with its source -indeed, of the constant flow between the unmanifest and the manifest.

Words of Anandamayi: Short Communications 4

There is a time for everything. No one can come to me until the time is ripe.

Question: How can I know which is the true path?
Answer: If you sit with all doors and windows closed, how can you see the path? Open the door and step out; the path will become visible.

Visitor: I have no spiritual aspirations; I am happy as I am.
Answer: That is good; we also are talking of happiness. If you have found the secret of happiness why do you make this statement instead of being in this state for all to see? She smiles, the visitor laughs and acknowledges that it is so.
To be with God is true happiness.

The multifarious kinds of beasts, birds, men - what are they all? What are these varieties of shapes and modes of being, what is the essence within them? What really are these everchanging forms? Gradually, slowly, because you are rapt in the contemplation of your Beloved, He becomes revealed to you in every one of them; not even a grain of sand is excluded. You realise that water, earth, plants, animals, birds, human beings are nothing but forms of your Beloved.
Some experience it in this manner; realisation does not come to everyone in the same way. There are infinite possibilities and, consequently, which for any particular person is the specific path along which the Universal will reveal itself in its boundlessness, remains concealed from most individuals.

Question: Is it ever possible to bribe God?
Answer: By cheating, you yourself alone will be cheated.

God is everywhere, He pervades everything.

He, whom you think you have sought in vain for so many years, is not apart from you. Just as a man cannot be without bones, blood, flesh and skin, so the One is present everywhere, at all times, interwoven with everything that exists.

God is one's very own Self, the breath of one's breath, the life of one's life, the Atma. Not until his true Self has been revealed to him may a seeker ever relax his search. By seeking, one will find the Self is within one's own grasp. To feel fatigued, exhausted, because one has not found Him is a very good sign indeed.
It indicates that one is nearing the purification of one's heart and mind.

In dreams all kinds of things can be seen: things, which the mind has been busy with and, also, things which have not been thought about but which have occurred in the past or will come about in the future.
In any case every thing that happens belongs to the realm of dreams.

There are instances when one loses consciousness while sitting in meditation. Some people have found themselves swooning away, as it were, intoxicated with joy, remaining in that condition for quite a long time. On emerging they claim to have experienced some sort of divine bliss. But this is certainly not Realisation. A stage exists in meditation where intense joy is felt, one is as if submerged in it.
But who is it that gets submerged? The mind, of course. At a certain level and under certain circumstances, this experience may prove an obstacle. If repeated time and again one may stagnate at its particular level, and thereby be prevented from getting a taste of the Essence of Things.

If after coming down from the state of contemplation you are capable of behaving as before, you have not been transformed.

When one has become established in a state of tranquillity, one has become still.
Only then, the activity of nature, which continues at every moment in sleep and in waking from birth to death, this and the thinking mind become caught in that Stream and eternally remain floating in it.
Ever to keep the mind poised in the Self wide-awake in the current of Reality, where the Unfathomable, the One-without-end is ever revealed in His infinity - this must, with the intensity of a possession, be your one and constant endeavour.