Who Am I? If a scholar, particularly one who engages in fieldwork, acknowledges that objectivity is impossible in an encounter between the self & other and that culture is always created in relationship, he or she must become, to some extent, self-reflexive & self-revelatory. As a co-creator of the culture that is the focus of this study, I feel obliged to reveal to the reader some of my own narrative, the story that conditioned my participation in the dialogue as well as my analysis of the data. 30 My particular background, which is somewhere between outsider and insider, clearly elicited the kind of response that I received. When I came to this study, I was no stranger to the Hindu tradition. Twenty-five years earlier, I had begun to read Indian philosophy. In 1975, I received initiation into a Hindu kundalini yoga practice and began a daily practice of chanting & meditation. In 1978, I spent four months in India doing spiritual practice in the ashram of my guru. In 1984, I entered graduate school in religion, hoping to revitalize my transpersonal psychotherapy practice. I chose a program in which I could contextualize my spiritual practice within the Hindu tradition and the world’s, in general. In the process, I discovered that I loved being a scholar & decided to go on to get a Ph.D. in hinduism to engage to engage in full-time teaching & research. The Story of Anandamayi Ma’s Life**************** Though for a person like myself to write about Ma’s life was like a dwarf’s desire to touch the moon, still I wrote and felt it was good to do sa. I knew that in learned circles this book would be considered worthless because I do not at all possess the necessary knowledge and intelligence neededn to produce a book. But I thought that those who came in contact with Ma would read these anecdotes and experience bliss, and that the shortcomings in the language of the writer would not come in the way. . . . To those who have not seen Ma and who are coming to know her only through this book, I make an entreaty that if they misunderstand Ma’s nature or character at any place, the failing is mine. There is no imperfection or shortcoming in Ma’s conduct anywhere. Those who have met Ma will understand the truth of this statement. EACH OF THE SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHIES OF Anandamayi Ma begins as does Gurupriya Devi’s twenty-volume work,1 with a note of apology in which the author-devotee tries to express the immensity, and even the impossibility, of writing about Ma’s life. Ma, they tell us, is bigger than life and can never “known.” Yet, they feel it is their duty to share with those who have not had the good fortune to meet Ma the story of her life in the hope that the reader will obtain a taste of Ma’s greatness and even an experience of her bliss. There are an impressive number of spiritual biographies of Anandamayi Ma and an even larger body of works in which devotees speak of their personal experiences with Ma. Seven major sacred biographies of Ma have been translated into or written in English, all but one written by life-long devotees of Ma and all but one written before her death. Ma’s biographers witnessed overlapping portion of her eighty-six-year life. Because none of them was with her for her twenty-eight years, they had to rely on the anecdotes told by Ma’s mother, Didima, who lived to be ninety-four, stories told by Ma’s husband, Bholanath, and Ma’s own stories for information about her early life. Anandamyi Ma as a Woman:- MOST OF ANANDAMAYI MA’S devotees would regard the title of this chapter as an oxymoron becaose they do not consider Ma to be a woman. Ironically, however, although they insist that Ma was not a woman, they maintain that she was “the oerfect wife,” ever devoted and obedient. For example, Narendranath Bose, a young male householder devotee, told me, “The fact that Ma left her body in Dehradun is no coincidence in my mind. Her husband Bholanath, left his body in the same ashram. And being the dutiful wofe, even to the last, she by his example. She wanted to leave her body in the same place her husband left his body.”2 The claim that Ma was not a woman and that she was “the perfect wife” raises problems and challenges for the interpreter and scholar. We first focus on the latter assuming that Ma was a woman and, as such, can be evaluated as to her conformity to Hindu ideals of womanhood. Certainly, at first glance, Ma’s extremely unconventional life and marriage seem to reflect nothing at all of the paradigm of the perfect wife. Although in the very beginning of her marriage the cooked and cared for her husband, it is maintained by her biographers that she never engaged in sexual contact and that within a few years her husband was caring for her. Anandamayi Ma as Saint:- I had instantly seem that saint was in a high state of samadhi. Oblivious to her outward garp as a woman, she know herself only as the changeless soul; from that plane she was joyously greeting another devtee of God. She led me by the hand to her automobile. “Anand Moyi Ma, I am delaying your journey!” I protested. “Father , I am meeting you for the first time in this life, after ages?” she said “Please do not leave yet.” We sat together in the rear seats of the car. The Blissful Mother soon entered the immobile ecstaic state. Her beautiful eyes glanced heavenward and, half-opened, became stilled, gazing into the near-far inner Elysium. The disciples chanted gently: “Victory to Mother Divine!” I had found many men of God-relization in India, but never before had I met such an exalted woman saint. Her gentle face was burnished with the ineffable joy that had given her the name of the Blissful Mother. Long black tresses lay loosely behind her unveiled head. A red dot of sandalwood paste on her forehead symbolized the spiritual eye,ever open within her. Tiny face, tiny hands, tiny feet—a contrast to her spiritual magnitude! (Paramahamsa Yogananda)