Evolution of Love 2

Beautiful teaching

One of the most beautiful and endearing qualities to me about Sri Anandamayi Ma was Her teaching of non- exclusivity. "All paths are my paths" She said. And further "Essentially there is only He and He alone, although everyone has his own individual path that leads to Him. What is the right path for each depends on his personal predilection, based on the specific character of his inner qualifications." "How can," She said, "one place limitations on the Infinite by declaring there is only one path?" There are many sages who attained Oneness, Supreme Union, and I deeply respect them all, especially Sri Ramana Maharshi.

There are other great masters of India also, each of whom attained Oneness with God. As Mataji said, "When you gaze at one form, you cannot see any other, but in each of them the ALL is present, and every form reveals the One. In the void there is fullness, and in fullness the void. There are possibilities of every kind and description, but the root is the One, the Great Light. He is infinite. Even when speaking merely of one path - how can the end of it be found? Yet, when the individual is unable to proceed any further, then there seems to be an end."
I recall as a child, having been raised in the deep southern U.S in a quieter Presbyterian Church, being told by other more aggressive members of other churches that there was "only one way".

Even in our own Sunday School at the age of seven, I remember my mother getting a phone call from the teacher, saying "Carol is disturbing the other children with her questions." (I had raised my little hand, when that teacher said one who did not believe in Jesus would go to hell forever. I asked him if that sounded like a God who loves us?) My father, seeing how upset the call was making my mother, grabbed the phone from her hand. (I was listening from just around the hall corner).

My father then said to the teacher: "If you cannot answer the questions of a seven year old child, you should not be teaching them." My father saved me! He told me later never to let anyone intimidate me into believing anything. I also remember that my best friends across the street went to the Baptist summer Bible school. Before it opened one year, they had a huge parade that came down our street. Because they had such wonderful games and all kinds of special things to do, I begged my mother to let me go. She consulted my grandmother, who was the real authority on life in our family! My grandmother did not like ecclesiastical noise and thought fundamentalists were too "our way is the only way", she being of Cherokee ancestry, and no way was I going to be allowed to go.

So, one day, the big parade came down our street and all the streets in our neighborhood. I sat alone on the bank of our yard looking down at it. The Baptist preacher was on a spotted horse wearing a cowboy hat, behind him was a big hay truck and every friend I had was in it waving, all happy and joyful. And there I sat alone on the bank, the only child on the street not allowed to ride in the truck or go to their Bible school. Just me alone. My grandmother said "no, that is not where you belong". So she prepared me for life by letting me sit there alone and be made fun of and later asked a hundred times by friends why I thought I was so special that I could not go! Even Brucie Madden's mother let him ride in the truck, and they were Methodists! But you know, it was one of the best lessons I ever learned to prepare me for spiritual life.

My grandmother never spoke unkindly of any other faiths, but to her faith was quietude and contemplation and very personal. And above all, it was not something to force on anyone. Sometimes, when I would sit with her on her front porch, I would see her eyes gaze out at the sky and the world as if she saw so much more beyond it. I remember her quietness was as if a voice of beauty heard beyond sound. Perhaps my receptivity to the teachings of Mataji are not just from a previous life in India, which I most certainly believe existed, but also from my maternal grandmother's vast spirit and willingness to teach me the value of aloneness when it is really where one's spirit belongs.

Not one of my friends understood why I could not go with them. Exclusivity was never my destiny. God gave me a grandmother who taught me that. I am forever grateful to her immense soul. I know she would have loved Mataji! I often feel them both near. It is very strange, but beautiful.