From her early youth she was very sensitive to the sufferings of others and attempted to help the poor people in her neighborhood by giving them food and clothing from her own house. Her parents punished her for this but she refused to stop.
She began spontaneously hugging people from the age of 14, not something that was socially acceptable for a woman to do in Indian society, especially a young girl touching men but she continued anyway. Her followers say she has hugged millions of people in her 60 years of continual ministry to the less fortunate.
Due to local superstitions, Amma was estranged from her family at an early age because she was darker skinned - considered a sign of inferior status. She was forced to be the family servant and lived in the cow shed on her family’s property. Her family arranged several marriages for her but she refused to enter into any marriage. Her family consulted a seer who declared she was not destined for marriage or worldly life but for a spiritual mission.
The neighboring villagers nicknamed her “Kaveri” which means “ideal character.” They saw in her the potential for a devout spiritual leader and in 1975 at a Krishna festival they compelled her to perform miracles, to which she replied, “I am not here to create desire for miracles, but to remove it.”
Never-the-less, many people have been healed of physical and mental ailments when Amma ministers to them. People line up for hours to receive hugs and counsel from her. She has been known to embrace over 20,000 people for 20 hours straight.
Timothy Conway, Ph.D., author of the book Women of Power and Grace, describes Amma as “one of the most glorious lights to appear in the history of religion. Just her stamina – embracing these millions of people one by one, day after day, without a break, all over the world – is some kind of divine gift. No mere human resources could accomplish this.”
She underwent great resistance from the local authorities and intellectuals who sought to kill her by poisoning, and on one occasion sent an assassin to stab her. When this would-be assassin was confronted with her obvious love and compassion he threw down his knife at her feet and burst into tears.
Amma is quoted as saying, when asked about her hugging, “I don’t see if it is a man or a woman. I don’t see anyone different from my own self. A continuous stream of love flows from me to all of creation. This is my inborn nature. The duty of a doctor is to treat patients. In the same way, my duty is to console those who are suffering.”
She lives in the same humble house she was raised in as a child and though her organization, Embracing the World, has grown to include a small town of 3000 staff, followers and devotees, she maintains that the key to her ministry is a life of selfless service to others. She is usually the first to rise in the morning to begin the daily chores of carrying bricks and sand for the building projects, cleaning the public latrines, milking cows and cooking the meals.
She charges no money or fees for her programs and subsists entirely on the financial support of donors. When followers are overly lavish in their praise and adulation, she responds, “I want people to worship God and not me.”
- From the Joshua Ascension
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