182. gurus
Ma’s women devotees fail to identify with Ma as a woman. If they have listened to
Ma well, they have come to believe that they, too, are neither woman nor man but
are, instead, the Self of All.
There is a second important but related factor that seems to inhibit Anandamayi
Ma’s potential to serve as a model for women, and that is the very fact of her being
considered a deity, albeit a deity in female form. When I asked Malini if Ma was her
role model, she replied, “No, you see, to model yourself on Ma was very, very dif-
ficult because Ma was the embodiment of perfection.” I pushed her a little further,
saying, “But you had somebody to look up to?” Her answer reflects what most of
Ma’s devotees see as the unbridgeable gulf between the human and the divine: “Re-
allylook up to! Way, way up!” While we might have expected that Ma’s women
devotees would have imitated Ma’s life in both minor and major ways, from wear-
ing their hair loose and displaying ecstatic spiritual states to casting aside all
worldly goals to pursue Self-realization, we find that most women felt, as Malini
did, that what Ma did was not applicable to them. Those who chose the renunciant
life did not report that they chose it because Ma lived such a life. Rather, they cited
other reasons: because Ma suggested it, because Ma’s spiritualizing presence in-
spired them to renounce the world, or because they simply wanted to be close to
Ma’s side.
It seems that once devotees accepted Ma as embodied God, no matter how many
times she told them that they, too, were God, it was difficult for them to believe her
because they naturally assumed that she was more God than they were. They per-
sisted in seeing her as “way, way up” and out of reach. Yet Ma’s devotees would say,
“The fact that I cannot identify with Ma is not important. Ma is my Mother, my God
incarnate, and therefore my association with her will carry me to rest with her eter-
nally. I need only to sit in the lap of Mother to have it all, both worldly and spiritual
fulfillment.” Indeed, this reminds us of one of the central doctrines of the avatara:
a devotee need only recognize a person of divine origin to be saved.
In January 1991, nearly nine years after Anandamayi Ma’s passing, I sat near the
banks of the Ganga at the feet of Swami Samatananda, the head of Ma’s Calcutta
ashram. With a twinkle in his eye, Swamiji was explaining the “Motherly ap-
proach” to me:
The first thing is this. The ultimate force, the Absolute, whichever name you may
call it, has got two main aspects: one is the dynamic aspect, which we call Shakti,
the other is the static or formless aspect, or Shiva. We prefer to approach from the