Amma's cosmic squeeze

Though all this can be seen as some kind of bizarre mass performance art, Amma's trademark gesture is also a brilliant and quietly subversive transformation of traditional South Asian worship. Hindus, and especially followers of the devotional path of bhakti, have long placed a special emphasis on being in the physical presence of holy beings, whether living saints or revered icons or sacred mountains and rivers. This practice of presence is called "darshan," and is usually considered a visual or visionary experience (the word means "sight"). But after having a number of powerful goddess visions of her own in the 1970s, a young Amma broke the fourth wall of darshan and started physically embracing those who came to her for succor, spiritual or otherwise.

In India, where traditional mores limit physical contact between women and strangers, Amma's embrace also announced a liberating and almost feminist activism. As well it should. Amma's mission, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, is now one of India's major humanitarian non-governmental organizations. In the late 1990s, the Math was already the second largest Indian recipient of foreign contributions, totaling $11 million, and her organization has grown dramatically since then. Though its books are closed, materials provided by the Math trumpet scores of large and successful feats, including mass housing projects, disaster relief, food programs, schools, a university and hospitals, one of which is the best research hospital in southern India. The Math contributed $46 million to souls weathering the after-effects of the Southeast Asian tsunami, while the American M.A. Center gave a million bucks to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. While the university and hospital services are not generally free, and the extent of good works may certainly be exaggerated, Amma's mission has developed the international reputation of actually delivering the goods, and tons of folks have had their lives materially transformed by the organization.

Of course, with abundance comes power, and power means politics. Amma's flock certainly includes individuals and organizations associated with right-wing Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva. Many Hindutva ministers of state are Amma devotees, including former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and her ranks swell with members of the RSS and VHP, nationalist organizations that have been accused of, among other things, helping foment the bloody Gujarat riots in 2002. These are complex issues, of course, and Amma is the very opposite of fascist demagogue. But many of the liberal Westerners lining up for their hug have no understanding of how their guru plays in reactionary or "fundamentalist" circles in a modern India with a large Muslim population. And the global managers of her brand are perfectly happy to keep it that way.

And Amma is a brand; her organization has a cute registered trademark, good P.R., a snappy slogan ("Embrace the world"), a TV station and an ad campaign that recently plastered the Mother's mug on billboards and buses across the world. The video shown before her evening gathering at the M.A. Center was essentially an infomercial, though its sentiment was no more manipulative than your average junk letter from the Sierra Club or Amnesty International. What's amazing, however, is that this juggernaut is sustained by Amma's own personal example of ceaseless and exhausting activity; even cynics cannot doubt her industry. Eating and resting little, giving out thousands of hugs a day for most of the year, Amma is moving at a supernatural pace.

Amma's example also creates a culture of self-abnegating service, as followers are encouraged not only to hand over cash, but to sacrifice themselves on the altar of volunteer labor. This is great news for the NGO's bean counters, but not always so great for the young devotees who are offering "seva," or service. One ex-devotee, who is wary enough of the organization that she asked me to simply call her Lakshmi, describes the Amma scene as a competitive, back-biting and self-righteous culture where volunteers are encouraged to work beyond the point of exhaustion in order to please Mother. "There is a very strong focus on selfless service," she wrote in an e-mail. "However, much of the 'selfless service' in the West involves assisting people who have enough money to pay for retreats so that there is no paid labor during these programs." Lakshmi left the organization partly because she "realized that seva might be short for slave labor."

Another reason that Lakshmi and others have soured on the Amma scene is the growing materialism that feeds the empire. A good quarter of the meditation hall at the M.A. Center, for example, was given over to the Amma Shop, where volunteers in bright orange safety vests oversee a brisk trade in books, mugs, jewelry, clothes, calendars, decals, CDs, unguents, oils and Ayurvedic medicines. Photography and videotaping are forbidden in the hall, but devotees can buy DVDs and photographs of Amma; in some she looks like Queen Latifah. Many objects are advertised as having been blessed -- touched -- by Amma; I heard one story of a woman who offered a priceless heirloom to Amma, only to see it reappear hours later in the shop. But the most incredible commodity fetishes are the handmade Amma dolls, which were being lugged around by a surprisingly large number of adult women in the hall. These cute and pudgy figures fetched a decent price -- $180 for the Cabbage Patch-size ones -- and they could be accessorized with colorful silk outfits (blessed by Amma, natch) associated with Durga, Kali and other goddesses.

As a fan of alt-dolls and vinyl figures, I'd have to say the Amma dolls are pretty cool. But for some observers of the spiritual scene, they incarnate nothing so much as spiritual infantilism. Jody Radzik, a 48-year-old graphic designer who writes the muckraking and funny Guruphiliac blog, calls Amma a "space mommy," which he defines as a guru who fulfills "the function of a cosmic parent for insecure, self-loathing devotees." A "spiritually informed skeptic," Radzik nonetheless considers himself a devotee of Kali and a follower of Vedanta, the non-dualist summa of Hindu thought. "Vivekananda described Vedanta very simply. Everyone is God. That means that a single person can't be more god than any other person. Gurus like Amma pay lip service to the Vedanta while also presenting themselves as special beings who wield magic powers because of their divinity. But self-realization is the opposite of magic -- it's the most mundane thing in their world. It's always right there right on the end of your nose. These gurus have people looking everywhere but the tip of their nose."

Amma herself seems to wear her robes lightly; she is a cheery woman of little education who makes no divine claims and carries an air of good-humored humility. But the lore that surrounds her -- much of which derives directly from her tight-knit group of core disciples -- is redolent with the miraculous. Many devotees, East and West, believe that Amma's divine shakti can give them children, or fix their marriages, or make them money. One of the first Amma videos that comes up on YouTube shows a reenactment of a young Amma miraculously transforming water into pudding. No one less than Big Swami narrates the clip.

Next page: Every guru needs a rock star; Amma attracts guitar gods