Sad Vani | Teachings of Anandamayi Ma

SAD VANI

A collection of the teaching of SRI ANANDAMAYI MA

as reported by BHAIJI ( J. C. Roy )

Translated by ATMANANDA

Śrī Anandamayi Ma was among a few prominent God-realized, enlightened saints of the XX century from Bengal, India. Since early age of childhood she have had the deepest trance-like experiences of God-realization, all the divine qualities and miraculous powers and a great radiance of divine energy and blessing.

Her name Anandamayi Ma can be translated in English as “Joy-Permeated Mother”. Anandamayi Ma was a rare exception as one of only a handful of India’s God-realized female saints and is often revered as incarnation of Divine Mother, Shakti, a spiritual Mother of humankind.

Anandamayi Ma (30 April 1896 - 27 August 1982) never wrote down any piece of her teachings. She had a long life, she travelled around India almost constantly, met with most different people and Her own devotees, and what we have now as Her teaching was recorded or retold by her students. Since words alone cannot encompass all spiritual influence and blessing or bhāva, there exist also a vast library of personal impressions and memories about Anandamayi Ma. One of such examples to describe a personal meeting with Anandamayi Ma, the “Joy-Permeated Mother”, can be found also in the book of “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Swami Yogananda, famous in the West.

Sad Vani was the first collection of teachings of Śrī Anandamayi Ma which appeared in the form of a book and was first published in the Bengali original and also in an English translation by Ganga Charan Das Gupta in 1935, about two years before Bhaiji passed away.

When Anandamayi Ma left Bengal for Dehradun in in June 1932 she were accompanied only by two of her closest companions – Bholanath, Her officially married husband who turned Her devotee soon after their pre-arranged marriage, and Bhaiji, the first closest devotee of Anandamayi Ma.

During the following two or three years Bhaiji had a unique opportunity to listen to Mataji's words of wisdom. In those days Anandamayi Ma would immediately become silent if anyone tried to take notes while she was talking. Therefore, Bhaiji would write down afterwards what he had heard Mataji say. Thus Sad Vani is Mataji's teaching couched in Bhaiji's language.

However, the devotees who knew Bhaiji are in agreement on the fact that of all the men and women who have come in contact with Anandamayi Ma, Bhaiji was the person who under­stood her best and who had succeeded in effacing his ego in Mataji's service. For this reason we may be confident that what he passed on as Mataji's teaching could hardly be coloured by his own beliefs or points of view.

Anandamayi Ma often declared that she has no particular opinion, no ready-made answer for any particular question: "As you play the instrument, so you hear the sound," she used to say, referring to her own utterances in reply to queries.

In other words, she responds perfectly to the level of the person to whom she addresses herself, to his grasping power and his needs at the moment.

Bhaiji was a man of profound depths and a very serious and sincere seeker after Truth. It seems obvious that he must have known "how to play the instrument" and that he was bound to receive very generous response.

Anandamayi Ma teaching is completely universal, without any bias whatever. Men and women professing any religion or none, belonging to any class, caste, race or country can derive great benefit from her advice which is intensely practical.

Every human being is potentially a seeker after Truth. Anandamayi Ma never tires of repeating again and again that the supreme duty, the real calling of every man and woman as a human being is to realize his Self, to realize the One manifested in all.

Among the countless hosts of different creatures of the universe, the human being alone is endowed with the capacity to become aware of his own Divinity, to know THAT which lies concealed within all the infinite forms and shapes and modes of being.

May it shed light on their path!

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