Anandamayi Ma Explaining Sahaja Samadhi in Conversation with Yogananda | H. Breton

Note: The conversation below was taken from the book known as “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Yogananda. This book can be found here: https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Autobiography-of-a-Yogi-by-Paramahansa-Yogananda.pdf

Yogananda: "Please tell me something of your life."

Anandamayi Ma: "Father knows all about it; why repeat it?

Yogananda thinking to himself: She evidently felt that the factual history of one short incarnation was beneath notice. I laughed, gently repeating my question.

Anandamayi ma: "Father, there is little to tell." She spread her graceful hands in a deprecatory gesture. "My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came on this earth, Father, 'I was the same.' As a little girl, 'I was the same.' I grew into womanhood, but still 'I was the same.' When the family in which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, 'I was the same.' And when, passion-drunk, my husband came to me and murmured endearing words, lightly touching my body, he received a violent shock, as if struck by lightning, for even then 'I was the same.' "My husband knelt before me, folded his hands, and implored my pardon. "'Mother,' he said, 'because I have desecrated your bodily temple by touching it with the thought of lust-not knowing that within it dwelt not my wife but the Divine Mother-I take this solemn vow: I shall be your disciple, a celibate follower, ever caring for you in silence as a servant, never speaking to anyone again as long as I live. May I thus atone for the sin I have today committed www.holybooks.com against you, my guru.' "Even when I quietly accepted this proposal of my husband's, 'I was the same.' And, Father, in front of you now, 'I am the same.' Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity, 'I shall be the same.'"

My thoughts on this: Her last sentence perfectly describes one who has attained Sahaja Samadhi (permanent and effortless abidance as Unconditional Love, Stillness, or Pure Awareness). This state is what I personally call the “Dance of Shiva” which I explained in my previous post as to why I call it by that particular name. In other words, though everything in the illusion of life changes, the background behind life, Reality (Pure Awareness, Unconditional Love, or Stillness), never changes. In that state, one is not subject to suffering. Rather, there is only permanent Bliss, Peace, and Happiness. After all, freedom comes when you know that you are not the ego (personality) that is subject to change but the Pure Consciousness behind the ego which without, the ego cannot exist.