This video is a very nice interview with Atmananda, one of the principal assistants of the great yogini Anandamayi Ma. Anandamayi Ma grew up in Bengal, which was also the birthplace of other great Masters such as Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda and Sri Chinmoy. She spent almost sixty years of her life going from one place to another across the vast Indian subcontinent, where crowds of people would throng to see her in the blissful consciousness that gave rise to her name (Anandamayi=’filled with bliss’)

The interviewee, Atmananda, is Austrian by birth and came to India in 1935 to teach English in the Indian city of Benares. She met Anandamayi Ma in 1943. Later on she was to quit her school job and remain with Anandamayi Ma on her travels, translating many books of her sayings from Bengali to English and editing an English. The interview takes place in 1981, the year before Anandamayi Ma left her mortal frame.

By this time, Anandamayi Ma was very well known, and the video mentions the masses of people coming to see her. One interesting thing about the video is that Atmanada says she rarely sees Anandamayi Ma these days because of the crowds, but the inner connection she feels with Anandamayi Ma when she does her translating work makes this physical separation negligible.