Amma

April 05, 2020

Amma

It was around April 2019. Like most weekends, I was getting a spiritual dose via the Batgap (Buddha at the Gas Pump) YouTube channel. Rick Archer, the host, interviews an "Ordinary" spiritually awakening person every week. This was an interview with one of Amma's disciples.

Of course, I had known about Amma (Mata Amritandamayi) as a personality for a long time. The first time I really made a note of Amma was when the Lonely Planet travel show host Justine Shapiro had Amma's darshan in Kerala in 1995. The moment was captured on the show. Back then, the darshan queues were not so long, and cameras were allowed. So, from 1995 till 2019, all I knew was that there was this hugging saint from South India. I even doubted if she was authentic.

Back to April 2019, and the interview. For some reason, I had a strong urge to go through the complete interview despite my general bias towards saint-like personalities who are looked upon as Gods by their devotees; I will get into my personal intellectual conflict with such devotion at a later point in the blog.

Post watching the interview, which certainly had anecdotal evidence of miracles we associate with saints, I began reading books on Amma out of curiosity. I was actually touched by the journey of this woman. Born in humble settings, treated ill by her parents, she labored hard from dawn till midnight. She was devotional from a young age and always yearned for God-realization. So, she was different as a child no doubt. It took a long time for her parents to see that though.

While I was humanely touched, I still was curious whether she was 'realized'. My ego was not ready to accept her. I had to tally her knowledge with what I expected saints to know. The judgment was to be based on the limited knowledge I had of Advaita Vedanta which I had acquired by devouring books and content from a lot of teachers.

Without knowing about it, she followed the path of bhakti as a child. A devotee of Krishna, she always thirsted for union with the divine. Her stories of awakening are delightful and she has beautifully explained the oneness (nonduality) of existence and the path to reach that goal. My ego was satisfied.

But, what makes her very beautiful in my eyes is her love for humanity. She will be the last person to ask a suffering person who comes to her, "..but tell me first where is the 'I' that you are referring to'. I love this response from Amma when asked by an interviewer about God and God's existence. She says, 'Whether God exists or not is not the most important question. The most important question is how we can help those who are suffering!"

And, help she does. Her humanitarian initiatives are innumerable. One of the stories that I particularly find inspiring is when Tsunami struck various parts of Asia. Kerala and Amritapuri were badly affected too during this time. As the disaster was unfolding, Amma co-ordinated all the evacuation activities and she was the last person to leave the threatened area. She did that only after making sure that each and every person from her Ashram and neighboring areas were provisioned to a safe place.

But no conversation is complete about Amma, without talking about her darshans (her hugs!). Before I knew anything about Amma, I thought that this was a gimmick of sorts. But the hugging really started when she was a child. Her heart went out to all the poor and suffering she saw in her village. So once, to pacify a suffering villager, she took him in her lap and hugged him. So, this really started because she wanted to show her love and compassion. That was her natural way of helping people. The spiritual experiences that some devotees go through during the hugs are actually only by-products. My guess is, if you are going to a darshan looking for a spiritual experience, you certainly would not get one.

She is one of the most accessible saints in the world. Amma has hugged about 39 million people to date. And as a first-timer to her darshan, do not worry about the queues. If I remember correctly, the way Amma has sequenced the queue lines is like this - 1st: those who have never had darshan before, 2nd: those who have had darshan, but not in the current year, 3rd: those who have had darshan in the current year. Unfortunately, due to the current Covid crisis, her darshans have halted. This is the first time in 45 years that Amma is not having darshans.

Now on to something, that's somewhat of a grey area for me and I struggle on and off on this topic. I love Amma!, but I always questioned why the need for communal worship with large super-sized photo frames and garlands? From what I have understood so far, Amma does not care if all this stops and if people stop coming to her. She does it so as to not disappoint the people who look up to her. And why do people do it? Because they have personally experienced her grace that has changed their life. To an outsider's eye, it will seem cultish, but to the devotee, it is the most natural expression of his/her love for the Guru. But it cannot be ignored, that, there are Gurus who can fake the whole show. So, I guess, before your mind starts treating someone like a Guru, ask your heart too!

I want to end this long blog, with a couple of snippets of Amma's recorded conversations from some books.

A man: I do not mind disclosing about my wife in front of all those who are here. I assume that all of you are Amma’s devotees and therefore there is nothing wrong in relating this to you. My wife was very skeptical about Amma. She did not even want to come with me. It was only because of my insistence she came. It is not her fault. She was brought up in such a skeptical family. On our way to Kanvashrama she even teased me, saying that I was too emotional, that I was silly to come to meet this lady whom she thought was an ordinary person who had no powers at all, that everything was only my own hallucination. She even challenged, “If your Mother is all-knowing, let her give me a hint about her omniscience. If she does that I will definitely believe her”. Now the Mother responded to her skeptical mind. She had taken a sip from all glasses except hers, letting her understand that the Mother could clearly read her mind. This was exactly the answer to all her questions. The man was thrilled, excited and inspired that the Mother had revealed her omniscience. The Holy mother smilingly consoled the woman, saying,

Amma: Daughter, don’t worry. It is not because Mother knows everything but because she knows nothin that she acted in this way. Had she known everything, she would not have hurt you like this.

Questioner: Amma, can You give me a one-sentence piece of advice for my peace of mind?

Amma: Permanent or temporary?

Questioner: Permanent, or course.

Amma: Then, find your Self (the Atman)

Questioner: That is too difficult to understand.

Amma: Okay, then love all.

Questioner: Are they two different answers?

Amma: No, only the words are different. Finding one’s Self and loving everyone equally are basically the same thing; they are interdependent. (laughing) Son, it is already more than one sentence!