Anandamayi Ma

Anandamayi Ma

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Category: Religion

Anandamayi Ma Profile

  • Name:
  • Anandamayi Ma
  • Born:
  • April 30, 1896
  • Father:
  • Bipinbihari Bhattacharya
  • Mother:
  • Mokshada Sundari Devi

Anandamayi Ma Biography

Anandamayi Ma was a saint from Bengal who lived in the 20th century. This name was given to her by her devotees. Her real name is Nirmala Sundari. Swami Sivananda described her as "the most perfect flower the Indian soil has produced." Precognition, healing and other miracles were attributed to her by her devotees. Anandamayi Ma never prepared discourses, wrote down, or revised what she had said and very often, people found it difficult to decode her words. Many authors have written books on the life history of Anandamayi Ma.

 

She was born as Nirmala Sundari on 30 April 1896 at Kheora, Brahmanbaria, Bengal of British India. Her parents were Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devi. Her father was a Vaishnavite singer and their family lived in poverty. Nirmala studied 2 years at a local school. In 1908 at the age of thirteen, she got married to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti of Vikramapura. She lived in her brother-in-law’s home for next 5 years and in a withdrawn meditative state much of the time. During this time, a devoted neighbor addressed her as ‘Ma’ and prostrated before her morning and evening in reverence.

 

When Nirmala was about seventeen, she went to live with her husband in Ashtagram. In 1918, she moved to Bajitpur, where she stayed until 1924. It was a celibate marriage. On a full moon night in 1922, at the age of 26, Nirmala enacted her own spiritual initiation. She moved to Shahbag with her husband two years later, where he was appointed caretaker of the gardens of the Nawab of Dhaka. Nirmala continued to perform household tasks, and also continued to practise silence.

 

In 1926, she set up a Kali temple in the Siddheshwari area and devoted herself to spiritual practices. Once while praying in a deep meditative state in the temple, she held difficult yogic positions for long periods and spontaneously formed complex tantric hand positions and gestures. Thus people began to drawn towards her divinity. She died on 27 August 1982 in Dehradun.

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Updated: February 10, 2014

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