Early life Anandamayi Ashram Anandamayi was born Nirmala Sundari Devi on 30 April 1896 to the orthodox
Bengali Hindu Brahmin couple Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devi in the village of Kheora,
Tipperah District (later
Brahmanbaria District), in
Bengal Presidency,
INDIA . Her father, originally from Vidyakut in
Tripura, was a
Vaishnavite singer known for his intense devotion. Both parents were from well regarded lineages, though the family lived in poverty. According to Nirmala Sundari, her mother gave birth to three sons, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood. Nirmala attended village schools of Sultanpur and Kheora for approximately 2–4 months. According to Anandamayi Ma's autobiographical account in "Mother Reveals Herself", the reason for her short attendance at school was that no one could accompany her on the long journey to school as her brothers had died. Although her teachers were pleased with her ability, her mother worried about her daughter's mental development because of her constantly indifferent and happy demeanour. When her mother once fell seriously ill, relatives too remarked with puzzlement about the child remaining apparently unaffected. In 1908 at the age of 12 years and 10 months, in keeping with the rural custom at the time, she was joined by arranged marriage to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti of
Bikrampur (
Munshiganj District) whom she would later rename
Bholanath. When Nirmala was about seventeen, she went to live with her husband who was working in the town of
Ashtagram. Their relationship was not in accordance with social norms as it was a celibate marriage—whenever thoughts of lust occurred to Ramani, Nirmala's body would apparently take on the qualities of death. In Ashtagram Nirmala manifested symptoms of religious ecstasy for the first time in public, accompanied by extraordinary psycho-energetic and physical phenomena. Her parents were then informed by the villagers that Nirmala Sundari had become "hysterical." Her husband, however, took up her defense and reported to his in-laws that Nirmala was perfectly healthy. In 1918, the couple moved to
Bajitpur, where they stayed until 1924. In this period, Nirmala Sundari continued to fall back into spiritual rapture (bhāva) while listening to
kirtan. Bholanath was somewhat concerned about that as she would then often fall to the ground and sometimes take hours to return to a normal state of consciousness. According to her spiritual biographers, from the end of 1918, Nirmala Sundari was completely absorbed in the name of God (
harinām) at night, which emanated without effort and in unison with inhalation and exhalation. During this time, yogic postures
(āsanas) are said to have manifested spontaneously: "Sometimes the legs stretched of their own accord and then gradually formed themselves into the lotus position or some other body position without the help of the hands. [...] When the body became completely still and remained seated for a while, I went to sleep. The next morning when I got up early, the body felt light and from the feet to the head a wave of bliss flowed through me. Of this kind was the experience. Day and night, an overflowing light of bliss pervaded me." On the full moon night of August 3, 1922, at midnight, twenty-six-year-old Nirmala enacted her own spiritual
initiation.
Dhaka in 1967 Nirmala moved to
Shahbag with her husband in 1924, where he had been appointed as the caretaker of the gardens of the
Nawab of Dhaka. In 1926, she reinstated a formerly abandoned ancient
Kali temple in the Siddheshwari area.
Dehradun (
Kankhal) After her move to
Dehradun, various scholars were drawn to Anandamayi Ma's light, gift, power and message of love, though she continued to describe herself as "a little unlettered child". Prangopal Mukerjee Furthermore, she was a contemporary of the well known
Hindu saints like Udiya Baba,
Sri Aurobindo,
Ramana Maharshi,
Swami Ramdas,
Neem Karoli Baba, and
Paramahansa Yogananda. a
samadhi (shrine) was built in the courtyard of her
Kankhal ashram, situated near the banks of the Ganges in
Haridwar in
North India. == Teachings and public image ==