Ammachi
Mata Amritanandamayi is a spiritual master from the southern state of Kerala, India. Every spiritual master has their niche, and her’s is: bhakti and seva (selfless service, compassion, humanism). She has dedicated her life from a very young age to a simple philosophy: “to love and to serve all”. I consider her as a modern day bhakti saint, not unlike the 13 Allvars or 63 Nayanmars of the past.
Some notables: She addressed the 100th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s address to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. She was awarded the Gandhi-King award at the United Nations, Geneva, 2002, for her innumerable and innovative humanitarian activity (devotion through work and vice versa; the concept of doing work with bhakti has been around for ages; she has taken it on to a global scale). She was also honored to speak at the United Nations Summit for World Peace, 2000. Like the great sages and saints before her, she is an inspiration to the hearts and minds of many. Her contribution to the upliftment of India’s underprivileged is immeasurable (in many areas: education, health care, disaster relief, housing, orphanages, pensions for poor women, hospices,…).
She has also done a lot in empowering women, including talks encouraging women to take a stand, to harness the full potential of their femininity (as opposed to trying to emulate male traits) and using it to participate and take more share of their role in the world at all levels. She said something like, for there to be peace in the world, their needs to be balance. Right now there is no balance, as the world is masculine dominated. On top of that if women try to emulate masculine traits it’s going to make the imbalance deeper. The masculine order of the world has to be balanced by the feminine, as in Siva and Sakthi.
As for is she really god-realized (or as some people think, God?). Excerpts from an interview with Amma:
In your biography, there is an incident mentioned when you felt as if there was no difference between you and Lord Krishna. Could you tell us about it?
“Yes, I did feel that. It was an experience. The way I see my face in the mirror, Krishna’s face seemed to sort of merge with it. It was an intense experience.”There is also the belief that you are an avatar of Goddess Durga.
“That’s what people say. That’s their belief. I don’t worry too much about these things.”You have many critics.
“Critics will be there…..And criticism should be there. The easiest way to destroy a nation is to not criticize the prime minister. Only when criticism comes will the flaws be highlighted. I am not angry with them. There will always be differences of view.”
As a tip: if you decide to meet Amma (or any great spiritually enlightened master), keep your noisy intellect outside at the entrance along with your footwear :-). The intellect is a guardian (against cult worship for example), but don’t give it too much credit beyond that, else it will start building castles and there is no end to the way it can rationalize for you anything that reinforces it — and irrationalize anything that it feels is threatening. If you’re intellectually inclined, it is best to always temper it with any form of yoga which helps move from intellectual reasoning (buddhi) to wisdom/insight (jnana).
NGO’s, kings, and temples
If at all there is an efficient institution for the people, I feel it is not the government, but ashrams (and NGO’s that function like ashrams) guided by spiritual leaders. Much has to do with the efficiency and dedication of the guru’s devotees. It’s all about devotion, and with that comes sincerity in the work you do. Just pick any guru and you can see for yourself the massive amount of contribution to society. As a sample, do some research on Mata Amritanandamayi, Jagi Vasudev, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Satya Sai Bhaba, etc. I don’t like some of those gurus, but regardless of how genuine they are or not (and any controversies surrounding them), their impact on the people to mobilize and do good (whether it be seva or changing themselves) has been enormous and phenomenal.
From a socio-economic perspective, the spiritual gurus and ashrams are serving the same function as kings and temples in those days: redistribution of wealth (material and spiritual) for the benefit of society.