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Excerpts from Reuters
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In the City of Angels, which some
say can be among the most cut-throat places on Earth, thousands
of people from all walks of life have been lining up for a
free hug and a pat on the back. This is not just any hug,
it is the mother of all embraces from none other than the
"Mother of Immortal Bliss," a.k.a. Mata Amritanandamayi,
a humble Hindu woman with a diamond stud in her nose who is
fast becoming a world-renowned spiritual leader, like Mother
Teresa or Mohandas Gandhi. Cherubic, always smiling, the tiny
woman who friends call Amma or Ammachi made her way from her
home in southern India to Los Angeles last week on a 10-city
US tour ending July 17 that includes stops in Santa Fe, Dallas,
Chicago, Washington, New York, Smithfield (Rhode Island) and
Boston.
The drill is the same wherever she goes. From dawn to late
at night people stream toward her. Rapidly growing in popularity
and a sought-after guest, Amma, 46, goes where she is summoned
and does not publicize her visits. She stays where people
offer lodging, asks for nothing, eats little and spends up
to 18 hours a day -- rarely moving from her seat -- hugging,
praying for, and blessing anybody and everybody who comes
to her. She never seems to tire or get sick. "We can't
keep up with her. I have to go to bed. She keeps going. You
wake up and she's still at it. After 15 hours she's radiant,"
her spokesman Rob Sidon said. Proceeds from snacks sold at
her appearances and money donated directly to her go to one
of several charities begun in her name, which to date include
four hospitals, 33 schools, 12 temples, 25,000 houses for
the poor, an orphanage, pensions for 50,000 destitute women,
a home for senior citizens, a battered women's shelter and
various technical education projects. In the United States
her followers have organized schools in San Francisco and
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her assistants work on a gratis basis,
said Sidon, who left a lucrative marketing career to volunteer
for her organization. Although some people claim she has cured
their ailments or provided divine advice, she does not claim
to be a messiah, nor does she seek converts to her Hindu religion.
Rather, her aim is to spread pure, heartfelt, divinely inspired
love to everyone in the whole world who asks for it, and so
far she has personally touched and prayed for more than 20
million people.
"In France Catholic nuns come to her, in Japan Zen Buddhist
monks come, she's universal," Sidon said. "She stands
up after having sat for 13 hours, fresh as a daisy. The only
telltale sign of wear and tear is a large black streak on
her white linen sari from all the tears shed on her shoulder."
In her travels she has sucked poison from a leper's lesions
in India, cradled AIDS patients in San Francisco, hugged tough
New York cops and embraced movie stars with equal energy and
concern. She has been a featured speaker at the United Nations
and has advised world leaders, particularly in India.
For a week in Los Angeles, a steady stream of locals poured
into the lobby of a Hilton hotel to see Amma. Forlorn-looking
businessmen in suits, college students, women with sick children
and various artists and performers, some in white, braved
sweltering heat and heavy traffic to sit for hours on the
hotel lobby floor, cross-legged and barefoot, waiting. One-by-one
they moved along the line for her "darshan," or
blessing, reverently kneeling before her throne, a wooden
chair covered in candy pink fabric and adorned with roses."Often
holy people don't touch followers or allow themselves to be
touched, but she breaks tradition and hugs everyone,"
Sidon said. She smiled broadly at each person who came before
her. Against a backdrop of soft, tinkling music played by
orange-clad swamis sitting cross-legged behind her, she went
to work, hugging, stroking backs, chucking chins, smoothing
hair, kissing cheeks, whispering in peoples' ears words of
love spoken in her native Malayalam: daughter, daughter, daughter
or son, son, son or truth, truth, truth. She squeezed each
one tightly as if to press her love into their very soul.
They came up crying, beaming, dazed. Children looked unafraid.
Adults looked childlike and rapturous. With a radiant, utterly
guileless expression, she wiped tears and held faces in her
cupped hands. After a moment she gave them Hershey's kisses
wrapped in rose petals, apples containing her love energy
and healing packets of sacred ashes, then sent them on their
way with blissful expressions.
"I'd like to have another child," one 46-year-old
woman said in a quivering voice, before kneeling before Amma
for a blessing. Another woman in a peach sari placed her head
in Amma's lap and began sobbing loudly. For a moment Amma
looked pained, as if she was absorbing the woman's sorrow,
but she immediately recovered and began to smile again as
she dabbed the woman's tears with a tissue handed over by
a bystander.
"That truly was intense," said Greg, 43, a sculptor,
after a blessing by Amma. Greg, who came at the urging of
a friend and did not want to reveal his last name, added:
"There isn't much that's holy in LA I feel very peaceful."
Amma was born in 1953, the daughter of a poor fisherman in
a small village of Kerala in South India. Her father made
her drop out of school in the fourth grade to work as a house
slave. Early on she became known for radiating an unusual
amount of love and light. She began hugging the sick and impoverished
in her teens and soon attracted a following. Despite a limited
education, Amma speaks metaphorically, answering all types
of questions from world leaders, scientists, farmers who want
to know why their cows will not produce milk, and passerby
with relationship questions. Reporters streamed in to see
her as well and she was happy to grant interviews in-between
blessing people. She answered one reporter's questions in
her native language, which was translated into English by
her personal assistant, Swami Amritaswarup, an early disciple.
"I seek to give and give and give, to personally wipe
away tears through selfless love, compassion and service.
I seek to fill the people with ... love," she said."
That's what the world wants today because parents are not
setting an example for their children and therefore children
are not learning how to give and take properly," she
said."There is a destructive tendency in the world. You
cannot give what you don't have. Even if one has a full tank
of gas a car will only run if it has a properly working battery
of love. I want to awaken an awareness of a profound feeling
of ... love in order to (help) the world to learn and to grow."
By Sarah Tippit
Yahoo
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