How to Become a Friend of God

The first time I wrote to Mother Anandamayi, in her reply she referred to me as “my friend,” which she only did in relation to monastics. Others she called “father” or “mother.” To his disciples who had left everything to follow him, Jesus, too, had said: “I have called you friends.” The relationship of father and mother is not by (conscious) choice. A friend, however, is ours by choice. Everyone was related to Mother by nature, but only the monastics were hers by choice, therefore she called them “friend.”

The most striking evidence of Mother’s attitude toward secular life was her absolute refusal to enter the home of any married persons–including those of her married devotees. Once my friend, Durgaprasad Sahai, asked Ma to visit his home. She explained that she never entered the homes of married people. So he asked if she would come up onto the veranda of his house? She told him No. She would go into a rented pandal, but not into the house or veranda of grihastas.

How could a person deliberately take up a way of life that would bar Mataji from any part of their life? It was obvious to me that her behavior was related to something far more significant than a mere building. The objectionable thing was what it represented. It was the “thought form” that repelled her. In actuality, it was not that Mother refused to enter, but that the very nature of the structure closed her out. Physically Mother could enter the house, but spiritually she could not enter into the way of life conducted there. In English the Sanskrit term for married persons, grihasta, is usually translated “householder.” What an image that evokes! Whenever I hear it I “see” an adult clutching a little toy house and pressing it to himself in frantic fear of losing it, like a child infatuated with a toy. Poor man, he does not realize that though he may possess it, he cannot really live in it.

There were married devotees who would ask Mother to come and stay in their newly-built houses before they moved in themselves, and she would do so. But this even more dramatically demonstrated that by their way of life they were turning Mother from their door–an act that could only be regarded as spiritually insane. Mataji was agreeing to stay in their new houses to get the message across to those who would heed.

Only one did. Doctor Ghosh was a devotee of Mother in Ranchi. Upon pressure from his family he agreed to be married, and they made the arrangements, including the choice of the bride, as is traditional. At the juncture of two main streets, not far from his office, he built a veritable mansion for himself and his bride. Naturally he invited Mataji to come spend a week in the house prior to the marriage. Before the week was out he came to the realization of what he really was doing. After a token hospitality to Mother he was then going to ban her from his house forever! Then what about his life? Would that, too, be closed to her? Hastening to Mother, Doctor Ghosh begged her to accept the house as hers. When she asked if he would build another one for himself he told her that he would never build or live in a house where she could not come. But how could this be, Mother wanted to know, since after his marriage she would not come into any house in which he lived. That was just it, he countered, he would never marry so that wherever he might be Mataji could also enter there. And so it was. His house became the Anandamayi Ashram of Ranchi and the home of Goddess Kali.

There is a footnote to this story that is not insignificant. Wherever Mother stayed in the various Anandamayi ashrams, those rooms were kept exclusively for her. They would be always locked in her absence. No bed or chair upon which she sat was ever used by another. Yet at Mother’s order, whenever Doctor Ghosh came to an ashram he stayed in her room and slept on her bed. Having given his house to Mother, all her houses became his.