Ma and What Is

Part 4    

Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. -Ma

Many people who knew Ma take exception to the term, saint.

A saint (roughly speaking) is a person who struggles through the travail of life "down here," surmounts the spiritual tests, and thereafter leads a fairly pristine life -- and, oh yes, performs a few miracles along the way.

Ma had "arrived" before she was born. She didn't need to work out any karma; she incarnated, she said, because her presence on earth was requested. By whom, or for exactly what purpose, was never specifically stated. 

It also seems that there was no barrier between her awareness and total awareness -- especially when she pulled away from this physical world and "went somewhere else," which she often did for hours, days, and even weeks at a time.

Although Ma definitely believed in reincarnation (for one thing, it was central to the religious culture she was born into), she said she wasn't "here" as a result of having to work through past karma.  (Apparently reincarnation was also a part of early Christian scriptures, but it was removed from the scriptures somewhere around 300 AD.)

Did that mean Ma had previously worked through all her karma or that it didn't apply to her in the first place? Her words clearly suggest karma didn't apply to her, which only raises further questions as to whom or what she really was.

She suggested that although she was inhabiting a body, the body was only a kind of transient vessel -- we might even say an off-and-on vessel. To seemingly get the point across, she consistently referred to herself as "this body."

  Custom dictated that she would marry at a young age -- in her case when she was not even 13. Her husband, who came from a prestigious religious family, was much older. (He's standing next to her in this photo.)

Having a robust and even formidable husband may have been necessary to protect a very beautiful wife who tended to wander freely and seemingly randomly throughout India.

 As was the custom in these arranged marriages, she continued living with her parents for some time.  She was a virgin when she moved in with him and she remained a virgin her entire life. Even so, she said that being a housewife and having children was an accepted lifestyle and woman didn't need to follow her example in sexual abstinence, 

We do know that in India highly spiritual people typically abstain from sex.  Maybe abstinence and the bolstering of sexual or kundalini energy has something to do with it. This libidinal energy is reputed to be the driving (spiritual/sexual/life force) energy that springs from the base of the spine.

According to gurus such as Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda the awakening of kundalini shows itself as "awakening of inner knowledge" -- which seemed to have happened in the later years of her husband's life.

To Next Chapter >>>