Amma in Bonn, Germany
Die Woche
October 2001
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 grown ups 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, jewelry and very tiny, quite
plump dolls.
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