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.” [45-2]
Casting aside every inferior attachment, Ananda Moyi Ma offers her sole allegiance to the Lord. Not by the hairsplitting 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 God, the nations 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 single responsibility in life, referred to by Jesus as the first commandment. The uplifting obligation to love God is assumed with man’s first breath of an air freely bestowed by his only Benefactor.
On one other occasion after her Ranchi visit I had opportunity to see Ananda Moyi Ma. She stood among her disciples some months later on the Serampore station platform, waiting for the train.
“Father, I am going to the Himalayas,” she told me. “Generous disciples have built me 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.’”
[45-1:] I find some further facts of Ananda Moyi Ma’s life, printed in East-West. The saint was born in 1893 at Dacca in central Bengal. Illiterate, she has yet stunned the intellectuals by her wisdom. Her verses in Sanskrit have filled scholars with wonderment. She has brought consolation to bereaved persons, and effected miraculous cures, by her mere presence.
[45-2:] Mark 12:30.