Mata Amritanandamayi. Who can describe the impact of Ammachi’s darshan? I suspect it’s private and personal to everyone who receives it, but you can be sure the basis is always unconditional love. That’s the way it felt to me last Tuesday, when I went with Sri Lakshmi to Alexandra Palace on a beautiful blue cloudless autumn morning.
For her yearly visit this time there was a surprising amount of interest from mainstream media – this Telegraph video is quite revealing (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8893453/Hugging-saint-shares-her-love-with-Telegraph-reporter-and-30-million-others.html). But why surprising? She has only given her darshan hugs to more than 30 million people, she has only through her devotees housed, fed, educated and saved hundreds of thousands. There hasn’t been a disaster from the 2001 tsunami to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown where the Friends of Amma haven’t been there. She is one of the greatest benefactors in the world. At last the mainstream media are beginning to notice.
I’ve been going to her sessions for many years but have never quite been able to commit beyond darshan-and-donation. Swami Ambikananda first talked to me about her in 1993, not long after I had visited her (for the third time).
“What did she say about the mind?” he asked me.
“ She said it was very hard to tame the mind.”
“The mind alights everywhere, the mind is a fly [GSR].”
Then he warned about flitting from one teacher to another: “Better to abide some time with one who has one eye – king among blind, it is said. He has gone beyond death, he lives like a dead, nothing affecting. You have to have daya (compassion)– that’s Ammachi’s word, isn’t it? … I am one but there is variety in me. Bliss is my pen, you are my ink. Therefore the pen must have a point, the ink must be of different colours. One pen but different inks…”
A year later, in February 1994, Swamiji talked further about Ammachi during a visit to our house with Siva Kali, an old friend and devotee. Siva Kali asked if I had seen Ammachi when she had come to London the previous autumn. I said yes, and how good the kirtan was, and how fully Ammachi participated in the singing, sometimes breaking out in ecstatic cries of ‘Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma!’. And I remembered that Swamiji had hinted that she was an incarnation of Sarada Devi, consort of Sri Ramakrishna – our own Guru Dev.
Siva Kali said she had heard that Ammachi too had said something of the kind to her devotees, not denying that she might be an incarnation of Sarada Devi. And I had recently read that Ammachi had installed at her ashram in Kerala an exact replica of the statue, in the Kali Temple at Dakshineswar, of the Divine Mother as Bhavatarini which Ramakrishna had worshipped until she manifested herself to him. To me this definitely suggested an affinity between Ammachi and our own Holy Mother Sarada.
Swamiji now confirmed: ‘Sarada Devi and these, they do come back again in different form to do what they didn’t do on earthplane…. Time, place, God keeps coming back. Different manifestations, different ways. There are many ways to come, according to time, place and environment. …”
As regards Ammachi’s way of repeating “Ma!”, Swamiji said: “When Ramakrishna went in the boat to Benares [see GSR], he saw Lord Shiva one side and the Divine Mother Kali on the other whispering ‘Ma! Ma! Ma!’ Shiva was liberating souls, the thread was cut, there was liberation. … And She herself has done that in the form of an incognito Sarada. She has said, ‘Ma! Ma! Ma!’ repeatedly, with great love. But what does that mean? She is liberating! I think she is liberating these beings.
“Come and get milk, and dissolve. Didn’t the Mother look at you? The other one will also whisper, but you will not recognize. … God walks among us and is not recognized. There is a state half God, half man, half angel, walking now. It is heart in human form. As long the heart beats, that’s it. … Some people don’t have love, don’t have understanding, their hearts don’t melt. …But God respects your free will, God doesn’t interfere, he doesn’t force you to love Him. Sarada Devi says, ‘If you are happy with your red toys, go on playing.’ But when the toys are put aside, then ‘Ma! Ma! Ma!’ Then the Ma will bring the milk pudding, saying ‘the child is calling me.’ You have read GSR… You are not a foreigner, but you have got mixed in confusion with the world, work, house, argument between devotees. So get unmixed, become undiluted, and dissolve these external layers of wax, because internally there is really flame of Self, undying flame. So, [use] discrimination, dispassion…
“But we are the most lucky because we are really universal. Behind ourself there is this Mary, there is this Jesus, there is Ramakrishna. They are One God. Through us there is a link… Now is such a mixed up time, so try and eliminate attachment – but it’s not easy. Think of purity before you think of God. … When spirituality is mixed with worldliness, you get a worldly result, you get a mixed-type result. Evil has polluted this world. As for yourself, the conquest of the self is the greatest conquest of all. It’s not easy, but that’s the game. Hinduism tells you it’s a game. Hard? Yes, many lives, even, to attain. … So I’m not saying you will control yourself; you may go mad. But holy men convert that passion into love, it’s called ojas. They bring it to here [indicates his heart] and they experience live samadhi instead of that drip to the navel which is the fire of lust. They burn it, separate it, and go in bliss. …This is the advanced birth which people nowadays need many births to attain. But with bhava, with love, you transcend all this in one birth. Ramakrishna, Vivekananda transcended many births in one. Ammachi is making you eliminate, not illuminate, your births. Ammachi is saying, “No more births, my darling.” She didn’t tell you, but I am telling you as an outsider.”
Later, at the end of the same year of 1994, Swamiji told his devotee Vidya: “Amritanandamayi Ma is the headmistress of the school of your life to erase what is not required. Millions of things are erased in [her] darshan.”
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