I am now one of 30 million people, hugged by Amma

Originally posted to firesofcreation.gaia.com on Jul 15th, 2007

And at the rate she's going, by the year 2013, Amma will have hugged as many people as there are in the state of California; a total of 36 million. It was quite an amazing experience to be part of the Amma phenomena today at the Best Western in Marlborough, MA. I guess I'm still trying to make sense of it all. (I lean towards trying to understand the world through the masculine side of my brain using reason and logic)

If you've never heard of Amma, here's some footage of her on YouTube:

Amma: Darshan trailer, new film about Amma by Jan Kounen

Our morning began when we walked in the front doors of the Trade Center where we were given a color coded sticker indicating whether we had been hugged by Amma before, or not. Then we were handed a ticket with a letter and a number. I unfortunately got a ticket with the letter X and number 5. It meant I'd be close to dead last in getting a hug from Amma. This was OK though because there was plenty of things going on outside of the hugging. There were venders set up all over the trade floor, selling Amma merchandise from her books, DVD's, CD's, photos, Hindu statues, ornaments and other trinkets that were blessed personally by Amma.

There were also healing arts services around. You could get a massage there as well as an Ayurvedic reading. I also found a table set up for Radiance Healing consulting. They offered a information gathering at 2:30 which I decided to attend. The lecture room began filling up and several of Amma's staff members were present.

One of the teachers introduced us to the grandfather of Radiance Healing whose name is Devananda. He is a Japanese energy worker who was a priest at a Buddhist temple for thirty years before he met Amma and devoted his life to her causes. Radiance energy was described as coming from white light that surrounds us all and that we could tap into for it's healing power. This is facilitated by Devananda who sets up various periods of the day to send this energy to practitioners all around the world who are open to it. After the teacher showed us photos of this white energy captured by film, he dimmed the lights and started a movie showing how Devananda sends this white light around the world. We were then instructed to close our eyes and imagine this white light entering our crown into all other successive chakras to heal us. I tried the mediation but opened my eyes periodically out of curiosity of what Devananda was doing. The movie just showed him standing stationary in front of the camera waving his hands around in circular slow motion.

I remember thinking to myself, "this is really sketchy." Is Devananda the only enlightened being on earth who can send this healing energy to us? Surely there must be many others who pick up the job when he leaves off so we can tap into this energy 24/7? What about the countless Buddhas on countless worlds in the universe? Surely there are a host of them who are focusing a continuous stream of this light energy at all planets in the universe at all times of the day.

I didn't want to rock the boat though. I felt compassion for the folks gathered in the room. A lot of them were elderly, one in a wheel chair and another kept coughing. I knew that this energy work gave them hope and sometimes that's the only thing sick people can ask for, myself included (having Chronic Lyme Disease for over 13 years without any success in treating from western medicine). But the skeptical part of my brain kept on sounding the alarms. I know some of my skeptic, Richard Dawkins thumping friends (you know who you are :-) would tear these people's hopes to pieces if they all of a sudden showed up.

What I realized througout the day was that Amma's orientation is to exemplify the archetype of the divine feminine, also corresponding to the East's general spiritual orientation. She is a symbol of nonviolence and unconditional love to millions of people, many of whom see a lot of the world through the right hemisphere (feminine) side of their brain. This means that the realms of logic and reason can't make sense of the realities they tap into. According to Legend, Amma even performed a miracle at a young age. She was able to bend the rules governing the material world to show her disciples that she was for real, converting water into milk pudding.

Amma's Miracle

miracle by Amma

It is interesting that the only other person whose acts reminded me a bit of the Amma sensation is David Blaine. I saw him locked in a glass sphere in New York City receiving lines and lines of people at all hours of the day. It's as if he was blessing them with his hands on the glass tank like Amma blesses people with her hugs. It's also note worthy that Blaine pushes the limits of the material world, seeking to break their rules with each new death defying stunt he undertakes.

David Blaine in Sphere Pt1

I was reading in one of Amma's books on the way home, (bought by a fellow passenger) a chapter in which Amma councils us all to open our heart and tap into this intuitive, feeling side of our being and avoid the trap of being cut off from this to become cold hearted machines ruled by the logic of the brain.

It is ironic though that the hug I received at the end of the day from Amma felt very mechanistic; it was like we were all in an assembly line for hugs and Amma was the hugging machine, moving us along the conveyer belt at unnatural speeds. I suppose it had to be like this though considering the massive numbers of people waiting. If Amma made each hug personal and special for each person, I'd probably be at the hotel now, still waiting in line.

But as it was, I missed my X, 5 designation and ended up in the Z line. I rode the people train past the offerings you could buy for Amma; fruit, flowers and chocolates. I rode the line of chairs all the way to the inner circle; a massive crowd of devotees surrounding Amma, as if feeding off of her radiant energy. At the end of the line, we went from the chairs to our knees. One of the disciples forced me to take off my sandals. Another warned the others that I was a "tall one." (6'8") I was lagging behind a bit from taking off my sandals so they hurried me along on the conveyer belt.

When I got up to Amma, I offered one of my peace poem cards to her who a disciple took. Then she pulled me to her chest in a smothering hug as she chanted some kind of Hindu phrase in my ear. Soon after I was released from her Darshan and the disciples directed me to the side where I grabbed my sandals and followed the arrow tape markings on the floor like a runway, directing all hugged individuals off the conveyer belt track and back to their transport delivery vehicles for the journey back home.