Kheora, Brahmanbaria, Bengal·1896 – 1982
आनन्दमयी मा
Sri Anandamayi Ma
The Bliss-Permeated Mother
She did not teach. She simply was, and that was enough.
“Do not give up anything. Just yearn for God with all your heart, and everything will come of itself.”
Sri Anandamayi Ma, Matri Vani
Life
Nirmala Sundari Devi was born on 30 April 1896 in the village of Kheora in Brahmanbaria district, Bengal (now Bangladesh), into a devout Vaishnava Brahmin family. Even as a child she would fall into states of absorbed stillness, smiling at something no one else could see. Her formal education lasted only two years. Asked later in life how she knew so much, she would say simply: 'I never learned anything. Everything was remembered.'
She was married at twelve to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti, later known as Bholanath, but the marriage was never consummated. On the rare occasions her husband approached her, her body would become rigid, as though an unseen force intervened. Bholanath, bewildered at first, eventually recognised what lived in his own house. He became her first disciple.
Between 1918 and 1924, living in Bajitpur and later Dhaka, she passed through a remarkable period of spontaneous sadhana. Without any external instruction, her body performed elaborate yogic kriyas, mudras, and chanting, practices she had never been taught. She initiated herself, gave herself a mantra, and performed her own diksha ceremony. Asked who her guru was, she replied: 'Your body is my guru.' She would later describe all her movements, where she went, whom she met, what she said, as arising from Kheyal, a spontaneous divine impulse. She never claimed to decide anything; Kheyal decided.
By the late 1920s, disciples began to gather. Jyotish Chandra Ray, whom she named Bhaiji, became the first organiser of her growing community. Gurupriya Devi, known to all simply as Didi, became Ma's closest attendant and constant companion for decades, recording her daily life with intimate devotion. Kamala Nehru brought Ma into contact with India's intellectual and political elite. Paramhansa Yogananda met her and wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi: 'the joy-permeated Mother is literally a walking manifestation of God in the form of a woman.'
Ma established ashrams across India, in Varanasi, Dehradun, Haridwar, and Kankhal, though she owned nothing and claimed no organisation. She instituted the annual Samyam Saptah, a week-long retreat of silence, fasting, and intense sadhana that continues to this day. She wandered ceaselessly, never staying long in one place, carried by Kheyal like a leaf on a river. In her later years she ate almost nothing, sometimes sustained for weeks on a few grains of rice placed in her mouth by Didi.
She passed away on 27 August 1982 in Dehradun. Her samadhi shrine at Kankhal, near Haridwar, remains a place of pilgrimage. Thousands still gather there on her birth and death anniversaries, drawn by a presence that devotees say has not diminished. As she once said: 'This body has not come to do anything. It has come to be, and being is enough.'
“Just as fire is latent in wood, so is God in every human being. Ignite the fire of love and the smoke of sin will vanish.”
Matri Vani
“Joys and sorrows are time-born and cannot last. Therefore do not be perturbed by these. The greater the difficulties and obstructions, the more intense will be your endeavour to cling to His feet.”
“This body has lived with father and mother, then with husband, in the midst of all kinds of people, but the feeling was always the same: 'I am ever His.'”
Words of Sri Anandamayi Ma
One Heart
“My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, I was the same. As a small girl, I was the same. I grew into womanhood, but still I was the same. And when the family into which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, I was the same.”
Teachings
The Play of the One
'Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself.' For Ma, there was never a second. All joy, all suffering, all love, all separation: one single movement of the divine playing hide-and-seek with itself.
Find God: The Only Purpose
'Find God. That is the one and only purpose of being born a human.' Everything else, wealth, family, reputation, learning, is a detour. Ma did not soften this. She said it with a smile that made it sound like an invitation rather than a demand.
The Inner Cave
'Human beings must become dwellers of the inner cave, so that the Supreme Being who resides within may be revealed.' Turn inward. The kingdom is not somewhere else. Ma pointed always to the same place, the cave of the heart where the seeker and the sought dissolve into one.
Kheyal: The Divine Impulse
'This body does nothing of its own accord. Whatever happens, happens by Kheyal.' Ma never claimed authorship of any action. She ate, spoke, traveled, blessed, and withdrew, all by Kheyal, the spontaneous arising of divine will through a form that offered no resistance.
Works & Publications
Words of Sri Anandamayi Ma (Matri Vani)
Compiled sayings and conversations, translated by Atmananda. The closest thing to a 'scripture' from Ma, though she wrote nothing herself.
Sad Vani
A collection of Ma's utterances on spiritual life, compiled by devotees and widely circulated in ashrams across India.
As the Flower Sheds Its Fragrance (Diary of Gurupriya Devi)
The intimate diary of Ma's closest attendant, recording daily life with Ma over decades and offering a rare window into the lived reality of a God-intoxicated being.
An Inspiration
In satsang, Ananta often invokes Ma as the living proof that the Self needs no teaching, no system, and no method. Only the willingness to stop pretending you are something other than what you are. Her presence is the bridge between the teacher's pointing and the seeker's own recognition.