MA ANANDAMAYEE:- Kanpur January 7, 1973--- I’ve spent the last week here in Kanpur with Ma Anandamayee. It has been a wondweful visit, but I’m afraid you may find my account of it disappointing. Most of the benefit I’ve received has been internal. Though little has actually happened, outwardly, this has been for me in some way the best time I’ve ever spent with her. On previous visits her inner joy overflowed into outward experssions of merriment, delightful wit, almost an eagerness to answer wuestions and to offer encouragement and helpful advice. Those occasions are among the sweetest memories of my life. But this time I found her very different—withdrawn, frail, silent most of the time, and speaking only in whispers when she did speak. She was in a car accident several years ago, and has not been in good health since then. Of course, too, ahe is nearly eighty now. One might say that a lifetime of giving of herself almost twenty-four hours a day would be explanation enough for her poor health, but the truth is that great saints also offer up their own bodies as a sacrifice for others, taking on themselves the karma of their disciples. Ma throughout her life has been a true mother to anyone who ever sought her help. The peoply whose karmic burdens she has carried must number in the tens of thousands. THEDIVINE LIFE SOCIETY (Rishikesh):- {Delhi December 28,1972} Ishould have sent that last letter to you days ago, but—of all crumby excuses—I didn’t have an envelope! So I’ll enclose it with this one. I was feeling a bit nostalgic at the though of missing Christmas completely, so I went to a Christmas party at the U.S. embassy the evening of the 22nd. We sang carols, chatted aimlessly, and people passed in and out, but mostly out. (‘I’m kidding, of course. There was spiked punch for those who wanted it, but it was a thoroughly tame affair—the sort of thing one expects embassies to put on.) The carols were evidently picked with a view to offending on one—Jews, Hindus, atheists, what have you. They were so carefully non-religious (“Rudolph the red-Nosed Reindeer,” that sort of thing) that they probaly succeded in offending many more people by completely ignoring the true significance of the occasion. For myself, I tried singing a couple of songs, then lost interset. It just wasn’t like Christmas at Ananda or in SRF, with that all-day meditation, and those vibrations of Christ’s living presence. About the Auther:- Born in 1926, in Romania of American parents, Swami Kriyananda grew up in Europe and the United States, viewing Western civlization from many angles. In one basic respect he found it wanting: everywhere he saw people seeking happiness and fulfillment, but nowhere were they really finding it. Surely, he thought, they must be seeking in the wrong way. Surely, the answer lay within man, not in a continual search for happiness “somewhere out there.” As a young man, Swami akriyananda was studying to become a writer, and was told by many professionals that he had the potential to become truly great. But doubt began to enter his mind, not so much of his ability to express himself, as of his capacity to say anything truly meaningful. “Why should I just add my own ignorance to that of everyone else? What do I have, truly, to say?” This period of questioning soon led him to seek spiritual answers for his inner dilemma. In September, 1948, seemingly quite by accident, Swamiji came upon Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda, in a New York City bookstore. He knew nothing of yoga or gurus or Indian philosophy. What made him buy the book was something about the author’s photograph on the cover—a goodness, a humility. Above all it radiated the very thing he himself had been seeking: a calm, inner happiness.