Die Woche - German Newspaper

Feeling of Bliss

In southern Kerala in 1953 a girl is born. Her parents call her Sudhamani, pure jewel. She learns to walk at an early age, sings a lot, prays and meditates. When she is nine years old, she has to leave school because her mother is sick and Sudhamani has to replace her. But Sudhamani not only takes care of her family, she also has concern for strangers, poor and sick people. She gives them what she has, love and compassion; she comforts and embraces them. And since she never stopped doing that she has embraced in the meantime 15 million people- approximately - and is now called Mata Amritanandamayi, Mother of Immortal Bliss.

Some stories are true just because everyone believes in them. Her followers believe Mata Amritanandamayi is a holy person.. They call her "Amma", just as Indian children call their mothers "Amma". Amma says: "All are all my children. When a mother takes care of her children, she never gets tired of it because she loves them."(…)

(…)Amma's visit in the Brückenforum in Bonn is announced as an "Indian cultural event". The entrance is free. The location isn't a spiritual place: The city cops will meet there at the end of November, and later there will be an erotic fair held in the same place.(…)

(…) What is happening here isn't quite what you would normally think of when you think of being embraced. Up to five helpers direct the people, who come from three different queues, on aisles marked on the carpet. To the ones who are sweating or wearing makeup a kleenex is provided.(…) Little children cry, whereas bigger ones let themselves be hugged the way a child who has never, or not for a long time, seen his aunt takes the hug: with open eyes and a tight-lipped mouth.

But Amma is looking at every single person who is facing her. She pulls the head to her breast, strokes the back. And what you can't see, but experience, is that she is murmuring comforting sounds into people's ears. So this at first apparently mechanical ritual, in the end is dark and warm like a motherly embrace which promises that everything will be all right. And she does smell exactly as you would expect an Amma to smell, lily of the valley and vanilla.

Also grownups cry, some before being embraced, some after - because they are moved or they are afraid to be alone. Amma says: "One who is afraid of tomorrow can't do today's job well. Yet you have to be prepared for everything. Someone who knows how to swim can play with the waves. Those who can't will drown."(…)

A retired teacher says it is great that the present time offers so many possibilities to seek your own way. She visited China and has been doing yoga for thirty years: "We all have those energies and abilities in us. But the churches suppress this fact because of fear of losing their power."

In India Amma has built schools, clinics and orphanages. The finances come from those who visit her and who have decided that she is holy; they buy her books, her music, saris, jewellery and very tiny, quite plump dolls.(…)

(Excerpts translated from German language national newspaper Die Woche)