Anandamayi: Her Life and Wisdom

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‘The be a human being means to place first and foremost the desire to known one’s Self.’

Anandamayi was a simple country girl from a remote village on the easternmost border of India who became a personality of the highest spiritual distinction. Like her great predecessor, Shankaracharya, she encompassed all castes, faiths and creeds on a journey which took her to all four extremities of the Indian subcontinent.

Drawing extensively on her own words and advice to followers, Richard Lannoy reveals a personality at once both breathtaking simple and an enigma of fathomless complexity. His high-speed action photography capture her essence while his text recounts her dramatic spiritual metamorphosis from youthful ecstatic to venerable sage.

Richard Lannoy started out as a reportage photographer for international magazines. He then specialized in the study of Indian culture, combining artistry in words with powerful photography.

His best known book on India, The Speaking Tree, enjoys worldwide readership and has been in print for 25 years.

Question: What are you in reality? Answer; How could such a question arise in your heart? The vision of gods and goddesses appears in accordance with one’s inherited disposition. I am what l was and what l shall be; I am whatever you conceive, think or say. But, more to the point, this body has not come into being to reap the fruits of past karma. Why don’t you take it that this body is the material embodiment of all your thoughts and ideas? You all have wanted it and you have it now. So play with this doll for a little while. Further questions on this matter would be fruitless.

In the whole universe. in all states of being, in all forms is He. All Names are His names. All shapes His shapes, all qualities and all modes of existence are truly His.

lf one is to attain the Eternal, it is helpful to look for that in everyone and everything. The search after Truth is man’s duty, so that he may advance towards Immortality.

The moment that has passed returns not. Time must be used well. Only when spent in the effort to know “X/ho am l?’ has it been used well.

You are yourself the self evident atma: seeking and finding is all in you.

In wealth and property there is certainly no peace. What then does give peace? My own true nature’s peace, knowledge, divine consciousness unless and until this is realized how can there be peace? In order to find your Self you must become revealed to yourself, how beautiful!

If one stops short at whatever can be achieved by following one line, the Goal of human life has not been reached. What is required is a realization that will uproot conflict and divergence of opinion, that is complete and fee from inherent antagonism. If it be anything less than that it means that one’s inner experience is partial and incomplete. In true realization one can have no quarrel with anyone — one is fully enlightened as to all creeds, faiths, doctrines and sects and sees all paths as equally good, This is absolute and perfect Realization So long as there is dissension one cannot speak of attainment.

It is said that even though the Whole is taken from the Whole, the Whole remains the Whole. There can be no additions and no subtractions, the wholeness of the Whole remains unimpaired, whatever line you may follow represents a particular aspect of it. Each method has its own mantras, its own ideas and states, its beliefs and rejections to what purpose?' realize Him your own Sell.

One must be fully conscious, wide awake. To fall into a stupor or yogic sleep will not take one anywhere.

Through every religious sect he gives Himself to Himself and the value of each of these sects for the individual is that they each indicate a different method to Self-knowledge. He alone is water as well as ice. What is there in ice? Nothing but water.

Question: God has given us the sense of ‘I’, He will remove it again. What need is there for self-surrender?

Answer: Why do you ask? Just keep still and do nothing.

Question: How can one possibly keep still?

Answer: This is why self-surrender is necessary.

Question: What is the means of entering the tide?

Answer: To ask this question with desperate eagerness.

If you say you no faith, this body insists that you should try to establish yourself in the conviction that you have no faith. Where ‘no’ faith is, ‘yes’ is potentially there as well.

Worship is not a ritual it is an attitude; it is an experience.