Their faces shone with the affection she had effortlessly awakened.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:" Christ
has proclaimed, "this is the first commandment." {FN45-2}
Casting aside every inferior attachment, Ananda Moyi Ma offers her
sole allegiance to the Lord. Not by the hairsplitting distinctions
of scholars but by the sure logic of faith, the childlike saint has
solved the only problem in human life-establishment of unity with
God. Man has forgotten this stark simplicity, now befogged by a
million issues. Refusing a monotheistic love to God, the nations
disguise their infidelity by punctilious respect before the outward
shrines of charity. These humanitarian gestures are virtuous, because
for a moment they divert man's attention from himself, but they do
not free him from his single responsibility in life, referred to
by Jesus as the first commandment. The uplifting obligation to love
God is assumed with man's first breath of an air freely bestowed
by his only Benefactor.
On one other occasion after her Ranchi visit I had opportunity to
see Ananda Moyi Ma. She stood among her disciples some months later
on the Serampore station platform, waiting for the train.
"Father, I am going to the Himalayas," she told me. "Generous
disciples have built me a hermitage in Dehra Dun."
As she boarded the train, I marveled to see that whether amidst a
crowd, on a train, feasting, or sitting in silence, her eyes never
looked away from God.
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