Traditional Anandamayi Ma (born Nirmala Sundari; 30 April 1896 – 27 August 1982) was an Indian saint, teacher, and mystic.

[9] Anandamayi was born Nirmala Sundari Devi on 30 April 1896 to the orthodox Bengali Hindu Brahmin couple Bipinbihari Bhattacharya and Mokshada Sundari Devi in the village of Kheora, Tipperah District (later Brahmanbaria District), in modern Bangladesh.

According to Nirmala Sundari, her mother gave birth to three sons, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood.

[11] Although her teachers were pleased with her ability, her mother worried about her daughter's mental development because of her constantly indifferent and happy demeanour.

In 1908 at the age of twelve years, 10 months, in keeping with the rural custom at the time, she was joined by arranged marriage to Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti of Bikrampur (Munshiganj District) whom she would later rename Bholanath.

[10][12][4] She spent five years after her marriage at her brother-in-law's home, attending to housework in a withdrawn meditative state much of the time.

It was at Ashtagram that a devout neighbour, Harakumar, recognised and announced her spiritual eminence, developed a habit of addressing her as "Ma", and prostrated before her morning and evening in reverence.

Their relationship was not in accordance with social norms as it was a celibate marriage—whenever thoughts of lust occurred to Ramani, Nirmala's body would apparently take on the qualities of death.

[14] In Ashtagram Nirmala manifested symptoms of religious ecstasy for the first time in public, accompanied by extraordinary psycho-energetic and physical phenomena.

In this period, Nirmala Sundari continued to fall back into spiritual rapture (bhāva) while listening to kirtan.

[16] According to her spiritual biographers, from the end of 1918, Nirmala Sundari was completely absorbed in the name of God (harinām) at night, which emanated without effort and in unison with inhalation and exhalation.

[13] Although she was uneducated in the matter, the complex rites corresponded to those of traditional, ancient Hinduism, including the offerings of flowers, the mystical diagrams (yantra) and the fire ceremony (yajna).

[21] After her move to Dehradun, various scholars were drawn to Anandamayi Ma's light, gift, power and message of love, though she continued to describe herself as "a little unlettered child".

During this period, Anandamayi Ma also traveled to South India for the second time, where she was received by the great temples such as Sri Rangam.

On the occasion of these visits to the great temples, ten thousand people gathered to see Anandamayi Ma.

However, her personal attendant Gurupriya Devi, and a devotee, Brahmachari Kamal Bhattacharjee, made attempts to transcribe her speech before audio recording equipment became widely available in India.

She welcomed and conversed with devotees of different paths and religions from Shaivaite, Vaishnavite, Tantric, or from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism.

[10] Her style of teaching included jokes, songs and instructions on everyday life along with long discourses, silent meditation and recommended reading of scriptures.

She frequently referred to herself in the third person as either "this body" or "this little girl", which is a common spiritual practice in Hinduism in order to detach oneself from Ego.