This week The Emily Dahl Foundation is featuring the wisdom of the great Indian Saint Anandamayi Ma. 

Sri Anandamayi Ma (1896-1982) was one of the great Indian saints of the 20th Century. She was born in present-day Bangladesh. As a person of remarkable piety, sanctity, and wisdom, she came to the notice of both simple people and famous figures of India. She did not have an outer guru and emphasized the importance of detachment from the world and spiritual devotion, encouraging her devotees to serve others. An ecstatic child of ecstatic parents, she became a famous saint who like many other female Indian saints stood on the edge of several spiritual traditions, and in the midst of none. She influenced the spirituality of many thousands of people who came to see her throughout her long life. She was 86 when she left the material world. 

The ultimate wisdom emphasizes the impermanence and illusory nature of the material world, encouraging seekers to look beyond appearances and realize the underlying truth of existence.  

One of the dear friends of The Emily Dahl Foundation who lives in Vernon, BC is a serious practitioner, and he often stresses the importance of wisdom.  He works constantly on his knowledge of the way things are and helps countless others in the Vernon community. In addition, he and his wife have travelled all over the world and have made countless trips to India to develop both their spiritual and practical knowledge. He is now in his mid 80's and just meditation in silence with him and his wife can bring calmness and, for a brief time at least, invokes indifference to the world. In his travels he met Ram Dass in person many years ago and this was a key part of his journey. 

There is a link here because Ram Dass was quoted as saying that one of his favorite Saints in India was Anandamayi Ma. 

Ram Dass was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book "Be Here Now", which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. 

Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Then known as Richard Alpert, he conducted research with Leary on the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. In addition, Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 "Good Friday Experiment" with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience. While not illegal at the time, their research was controversial and led to Leary's and Alpert's dismissal from Harvard in 1963. 

What follows below is the wisdom that Ram Dass himself passed on about our featured Saint Anandamayi Ma. 

Words of Wisdom on Anandamayi Ma by Ram Dass: 

"For those of you who have been on the Ram Dass circuit together for years, you may have many pictures of Anandamayi Ma by now, because we usually hand out pictures of her. The reason I like her quotes is because they convey two different planes of consciousness, one of them in which she exists ‘in form’ and the other in which she’s ‘beyond form.’ In her own words, when she’s speaking, she’s speaking from that place at that moment, and it gives you a chance to hear, which is not so frequent, from a true ‘free’ being on different levels of consciousness. So, when she is in the level of ‘form,’ she has millions of devotees and beings in her presence. For me (Ram Dass), it was like being with a wild deer or fox or something like that, just an intimate, non-human connection, non-social. In this quote, she is talking from dualism: She says, "This body has lived with father, mother, husband, and all. This body has served the husband, so you may call it a wife. It has prepared dishes for all, so you may call it a cook. It has done all sorts of scrubbing and menial work, so you can call it a servant, but if you look at the thing from another standpoint, you will realize that this body has served none but God, for when I served my father, mother, husband, others, I simply considered them as other manifestations of the almighty, and served them as such. When I sat down to prepare food, I did so in the spirit of divine service. Hence, I was not quite worldly, though always engaged in household affairs. I had but one ideal to serve all as God, to do everything for the sake of God.”  - Ram Dass

Enjoy this short talk featuring the thoughts of Anandamayi Ma. 

The Emily Dahl Foundation 
January 2025