“My life is boundless;
My biography is limited,”
– Mother
The original (Telugu) saying of Mother has a literary grace about it which cannot be translated into English. The word Abaddha’ (translated as ‘boundless), in Sanskrit, literally means ‘unbounded’, in Telugu it is generally used as a synonym of ‘unreal’.
Mother once said ‘Mother’ does not mean the one who is sitting on a cot at Jillellamudi; it means the One without the beginning and the end; the One who is the Beginning and the End”
‘Mother is the Infinite, Eternal, Basis of Existence.” “You must come (here) to see me; but I can see you wherever you are.” These sayings of Mother in the context of innumerable experiences of Her omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence which various devotees had, reveal how Mother’s ‘life’ is not bound by the limitations of Time and Space. This, as regards the connotation of the Sanskritised Telugu word.
Taking Abaddha’ as a Telugu word the saying acquires a new shade of meaning. Apparently Mothers’s is the life of a simple, unlettered, village housewife. She even tells some of her visitors “I am just a common housewife. I am one like you. I am not anything which you are not. Do not believe the tales which people weave about my miraculous power”. This apparent life of a simple housewife named Anasuya, i.e. the physical aspect of her which creates the illusion of Mother being a common housewife, is ‘unreal’.
We need not think that Mother utters lies about herself and we need not batter our heads in arguing as to the need for her to utter falsehood. For, every word she utters has altogether a different connotation. For example she defined ‘common’ to be that state of Perfection in which even Perfection becomes one’s ‘common’ or ‘natural’ state. Mother’s description of Herself as a common housewife is intended as a means of seperating those who believe in Her and those who do not. For she once said. “I see The Divine in you and you see the Human in me.
As one who constantly dwells in Eternal oneness with All, Mother’s life is not bound by physical birth and physica’ death. “Christ said that he was before Abraham. “This Eternal Yoga (of Jnana) was taught by me to Vivaswan; and he taught it to Manu,” declared Lord Krishna, the son of Vasudeva. In the same vein Mother described herself as “the Mother of the First Cause Adi (Amma = also, the Original Mother)” such a one to be identified by us with her body, which has a beginning and an end, is the unreality to which the Telugu word referred. No wonder therefore that her casual utterances come out to be startingly true in course of time. Besides her keen memory of even the minutest details of her own birth, she revealed a keen aware ness of events that took place long before her physical birth. “Death is forgetfulness itself, she once defined. “I have no forgetfulness” she declared on another occasion. Thus her life is both’ ‘boundless* and unreal’.
But her biography is bound to be limited by the two terminii of life-physical birth and physical death.
Lastly, we might add that Perfect as she is, Mother is unbound by the dualities like good and evil in her love for her children, though as Smt Anasuyadevi, she scrupulously adheres to all the imperatives of the life of an ideal housewife.