The Bengali “Joy-Permeated Mother” — Autobiography of a Yogi — SRF Teachings Portal
45.The Bengali “Joy-Permeated Mother”
Paramahansa Yogananda·~9 min
aan hour in the ecstatic trance. She returned to this world with a gay little laugh.
"Please, Ananda Moyi Ma," I said, "come with me to the garden. Mr. Wright will take some pictures."
"Of course, Father. Your will is my will." Her glorious eyes retained an unchanging divine luster as she posed for many photographs.
Time for the feast! Ananda Moyi Ma squatted on her blanket-seat, a disciple at her elbow to feed her. Like an infant, the saint obediently swallowed the food after the chela had brought it to her lips. It was plain that the Blissful Mother did not recognize any difference between curries and sweetmeats!
As dusk approached, the saint left with her party amidst a shower of rose petals, her hands raised in blessing on the little lads. Their faces shone with the affection she had effortlessly awakened.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength," Christ has proclaimed; "this is the first commandment."²
Casting aside every inferior attachment, Ananda Moyi Ma offers her sole allegiance to the Lord. Not by the hair-splitting distinctions of scholars but by the sure logic of faith, the childlike saint has solved the only problem in human life — establishment of unity with God.
Man has forgotten this stark simplicity, now befogged by a million issues. Refusing a monotheistic love to the Creator, nations try to disguise their infidelity by punctilious respect before the outward shrines of charity. These humanitarian gestures are virtuous, because for a moment they divert man's attention from himself; but they do not free him from his prime responsibility in life, referred to by Jesus as the "first commandment." The uplifting obligation to love God is assumed with man's earliest breath of an air freely bestowed by his only Benefactor.⁴
On one other occasion after her visit to the Ranchi school I had opportunity to see Ananda Moyi Ma. She stood with a group some months later on the Serampore station platform, waiting for the train.
"Father, I am going to the Himalayas," she told me. "Some kind persons have built for us a hermitage in Dehra Dun."
As she boarded the train, I marveled to see that whether amidst a crowd, on a train, feasting, or sitting in silence, her eyes never looked away from God.
Within me I still hear her voice, an echo of measureless sweetness:
"Behold, now and always one with the Eternal, 'I am ever the same.'"
Paramahansa Yogananda and party visit Agra's Taj Mahal, the "dream in marble," 1936
⁴ "Many feel the urge to create a new and better world. Rather than let your thoughts dwell on such matters, you should concentrate on That by the contemplation of which there is hope of perfect peace. It is man's duty to become a seeker after God or Truth." — Ananda Moyi Ma.
The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats
"Sir, whither are we bound this morning?" Mr. Wright was driving the Ford; he took his eyes off the road long enough to gaze at me with a questioning twinkle. From day to day he seldom knew what part of Bengal he would be discovering next.
"God willing," I replied devoutly, "we are on our way to see an eighth wonder of the world—a woman saint whose diet is thin air!"
"Repetition of wonders—after Therese Neumann." But Mr. Wright laughed eagerly just the same; he even accelerated the speed of the car. More extraordinary grist for his travel diary! Not one of an average tourist, that!
The Ranchi school had just been left behind us; we had risen before the sun. Besides my secretary and me, three Bengali friends were in the party. We drank in the exhilarating air, the natural wine of the morning. Our driver guided the car warily among the early peasants and the two-wheeled carts, slowly drawn by yoked, hump-shouldered bullocks, inclined to dispute the road with a honking interloper.
"Sir, we would like to know more of the fasting saint."
"Her name is Giri Bala," I informed my companions. "I first heard about her years ago from a scholarly gentleman, Sthiti Lal Nundy. He often came to the Garpar Road home to tutor my brother Bishnu.
"I know Giri Bala well,' Sthiti Babu told me. 'She employs a certain yoga technique that enables her to live without eating. I was her close neighbor in Nawabganj near Ichapur.¹ I made it a point to watch her closely; never did I find evidence that she was taking either food or drink. My interest finally mounted so high that I approached the Maharaja of Burdwan² and asked him to conduct an investigation. Astounded at the story, he invited her to his palace. She agreed to a test and lived for two months locked up in a small section of his home. Later she returned for a palace visit of twenty days; and then for a third test of fifteen days. The Maharaja himself told me that these three rigorous scrutinies had convinced him beyond doubt of her non-eating state.'
"This story of Sthiti Babu's has remained in my mind for over twenty-five years," I concluded. "Sometimes in America I wondered if the river of time would not swallow the yogini³ before I could meet her. She must be quite aged now. I do not even know where, or if, she lives. But in a few hours we shall reach Purulia; her brother has a home there."
By ten-thirty our little group was conversing with the brother, Lambodar Dey, a lawyer of Purulia.
"Yes, my sister is living. She sometimes stays with me here, but at present she is at our family home in Biur." Lambodar Babu glanced doubtfully at the Ford. "I hardly think, Swamiji, that any automobile has ever penetrated into the interior as far as Biur. It might be best if you all resign yourselves to the jolts of a bullock cart."
As one voice our party pledged loyalty to the Pride of Detroit.
"The Ford comes from America," I told the lawyer. "It would be a shame to deprive it of an opportunity to get acquainted with the heart of Bengal!"
"May Ganesh⁴ go with you!" Lambodar Babu said, laughing. He added courteously, "If you ever get there, I am sure Giri Bala will be glad to see you. She is approaching her seventies, but continues in excellent health."
"Please, tell me, sir, if it is absolutely true that she eats nothing?" I looked directly into his eyes, those telltale windows of the mind.
"It is true." His gaze was open and honorable. "In more than five decades I have never seen her eat a morsel. If the world suddenly came to an end, I could not be more astonished than by the sight of my sister's taking food!"
We chuckled together over the improbability of these two cosmic events.
"Giri Bala has never sought an inaccessible solitude for her yoga practices," Lambodar Babu went on. "She has lived her entire life surrounded by her family and friends. They are all well accustomed now to her strange state — not one of them who would not be stupefied if Giri Bala suddenly decided to eat anything! Sister is naturally retiring, as befits a Hindu widow, but our little circle in Purulia and in Biur all know that she is literally an 'exceptional' woman."
GIRI BALA, NON-EATING SAINT
She employs a certain yogic technique to recharge her body with cosmic energy from the ether, sun, and air. "I have never been sick," the saint said. "I sleep very little, as sleep and waking are the same to me."
The brother's sincerity was manifest. Our little party thanked him warmly and set out toward Biur. We stopped at a street shop for curry and luchis, attracting a swarm of urchins who gathered round to watch Mr. Wright eating with his fingers in the simple Hindu manner.⁵ Hearty appetites caused us to fortify ourselves against an afternoon which, unknown to us at the moment, was to prove fairly laborious.
Our way now led east through sun-baked rice fields into the Burdwan section of Bengal. On through roads lined with dense vegetation; the songs of the mynas and the stripe-throated bulbuls streamed out from trees with huge, umbrellalike branches. A bullock cart now and then, the rini, rini, manju, manju squeak of its axle and iron-shod wooden wheels contrasting sharply in mind with the swish, swish of auto tires over the aristocratic asphalt of the cities.
"Dick, halt!" My sudden request brought a jolting protest from the Ford. "That overburdened mango tree is fairly shouting an invitation!"
The five of us dashed like children to the mango-strewn earth; the tree had benevolently shed its fruits as they had ripened.
"Full many a mango is born to lie unseen," I paraphrased, "and waste its sweetness on the stony ground."
"Nothing like this in America, Swamiji, eh?" laughed Sailesh Mazumdar, one of my Bengali students.
"No," I admitted, filled with mangoes and contentment. "How I have missed this fruit in the West! A Hindu's heaven without mangoes is inconceivable!" I hurled a rock and downed a proud beauty from the highest limb.
"Dick," I asked between bites of ambrosia, warm with the tropical sun, "are all the cameras in the car?"
"Yes, sir, in the baggage compartment."
"If Giri Bala proves to be a true saint, I want to write about her in the West. A Hindu yogini with such inspiring powers should not live and die unknown — like most of these mangoes."
Half an hour later I was still strolling in the sylvan peace.
"Sir," Mr. Wright remarked, "we should reach Giri Bala before the sun sets, to have enough light for photographs." He added with a grin, "Westerners are a skeptical lot; we can't expect them to believe in the lady without any pictures!"
This bit of wisdom was indisputable; I turned my back on temptation and reentered the car.
"You are right, Dick," I sighed as we sped along. "I sacrifice the mango paradise on the altar of Western realism. Photographs we must have!"
The road became more and more sickly: wrinkles of ruts, boils of hardened clay — the sad infirmities of old age. Our group dismounted occasionally to allow Mr. Wright more easily to maneuver the Ford, which the rest of us pushed from behind.
"Lambodar Babu spoke truly," Sailesh acknowledged. "The car is not carrying us; we are carrying the car!"
Our climb-in, climb-out auto tedium was beguiled ever and anon by the appearance of a village, each one a scene of quaint simplicity.
"Our way twisted and turned through groves of palms among ancient, unspoiled villages nestling in the forest shade," Mr. Wright recorded in his travel diary, under date of May 5, 1936. "Very fascinating are these clusters of thatched mud huts, decorated with one of the names of God on the door; many small, naked children innocently playing about, pausing to stare or run wildly from this big, black, bullockless carriage tearing madly through their village. The women merely peep from the shadows, while the men lazily loll beneath the trees along the roadside, curious beneath their nonchalance. In one place, all the villagers were gaily bathing in the large tank (in their garments, changing by draping dry cloths around their bodies, dropping the wet ones). Women bearing water to their homes, in huge brass jars.
"The road led us a merry chase over mount and ridge; we bounced and tossed, dipped into small streams, detoured around an unfinished causeway, slithered across dry, sandy riverbeds; and finally, at about five p.m., we were close to our destination, Biur. This small village in the interior of Bankura District, hidden in the protection of dense foliage, is unapproachable by travelers in the rainy season, we were told; then the streams are raging torrents and the roads serpentlike spit mud venom.
"Asking for a guide among a group of worshipers on their way home from a temple prayer (out in the lonely field), we were besieged by a dozen scantily clad lads who clambered on the sides of the car, eager to conduct us to Giri Bala.
"The road led toward a grove of date palms sheltering a group of mud huts, but before we had reached it, the Ford was momentarily tipped at a dangerous angle, tossed up and dropped down. The narrow trail led around trees and tanks, over ridges, into holes and deep ruts. The car became anchored on a clump of bushes, then grounded on a hillock, requiring a lift of earth clods; on we proceeded, slowly and carefully; suddenly the way was stopped by a mass of brush in the middle of the cart track, necessitating a detour down a precipitous ledge into a dry tank, rescue from which demanded some scraping, adzing, and shoveling. Again and again the road seemed impassable, but the pilgrimage must