Letters to the Editor
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Amma Mia
"My journey into the arms of Amma the hugging saint reminded me that humans are far more than neurologically programmed DNA machines." So that's the choice: melt into the milky breast of the Mother or succumb to the Selfish Gene? Gag me with a Hershey's kiss.
You don't have to be an arrogant atheist indulging himself in a "disproportionate hategasm" (as opposed to a proportionate one, ChrisWren?) to find the notion of Amma alt-dolls and devotees to Kali spiritually stultifying. Davis's glutinous account of herds of huggees made me hanker for the medieval mystic Margery Kempe, who at least had the gift of tears.
A deep-rooted skepticism, an aversion to obvious idiocy, is not the same as arrogance, hatred or even snarkiness. It's an intelligent response to the dark reality of religious enlightenment. For example, try growing up gay almost anywhere in the world and listen to what your local preacher/priest/rabbi/imam/avatar has to say about you — you'll learn pretty quickly what holy hatred sounds like. You'll also develop a healthy suspicion of mystical, all-embracing "truths." My journey into the mawkish adoration of Erik Davis reminded me that, all things being equal, I prefer the hugs of sinners far more than saints.
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Why conflate experience and belief? Why divide experience into "spiritual" and "wordly"?
One need not conflate spiritual experience with religious belief. Despite what the predominant religious systems of American culture often profess, belief is neither a prerequisite for nor the only important outcome of spiritual experience. In other words, one can be an atheist (believing there is no God) and also have an experience of being connected to something larger than oneself. One can do this and still think of that very experience as neurochemically determined and its potential encoded in DNA. One can hold quite a materialistic, scientific world view and be awed into great joy and deep trembling fear by the experience of love, or the sudden visceral awareness of one's place in the vastness of the universe, or the smell of the forest after a thunderstorm. Atheists can be as humble and as spiritual as anyone else.
But then, I would disagree with Amma's quoted distinction between spirituality and worldly pleasures (though I'm not sure her distinction in that quote actually means what the author of the article wants it to mean). The two -- spirituality and sensory experience -- very often go hand in hand. Arm in arm, even. Else why do hugs at all? Investing it with this or that interpretation doesn't take anything away from or add anything to the experience itself, not necessarily at least. Either Amma's statements are not coherent to her practices, or the author has taken something out of context and turned it into a hook for people with specifically American cultural hangups. Or it's a bad translation. Or both. :)
After all, what really makes something sacred but it's inability to be pinned down by the language of the intellect alone? The holy, in my experience, is something that goes beyond belief. That doesn't mean that it has to be unbelievable, just that it doesn't really reside on that spectrum at all. Visits it occasionally, perhaps, but doesn't stay for long. I'd warrant a guess that some animals have just as much potential for spiritual experience, if so defined, as do we.
Speaking of visiting, I would personally avoid the Amma gatherings, as well as most other "spiritual tourism," largely because I have noticed that spiritual experiences rarely come to those who are looking too hard for them (at least the kind that don't seem a bit rooted in the need to convince oneself that one has not wasted travel fare and admissions fees). As some Buddhist philosophies put it, you have to let go or your attachment to letting go of attachment in order to let go of your attachment. That happens, generally, when it's good and ready to, no sooner, no later, and never in the place of your own choosing.
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It may be worth remembering
How difficult it is to distinguish between the worth of an idea, and the worth of the person that holds the idea.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that it isn't just difficult, it is impossible. We, burdened animals that we are, cannot separate the physical from the symbolic. Hugging a person for what we think they represent is precisely the same as killing a person for what we think they represent. The physical world is a metaphor, and the symbolic world forever reappears in physical form. We must become enraged at people for what they think for the same reason that we must build alliances with people for what they think. We are doomed to this inability to separate matter from meaning. We simply cannot disentangle the two.
The important thing is to hate. Hate the idea or the person that speaks the idea. It doesn't matter. They may as well be the same. It's the hating that matters. Because symbolic ideas are as physical people: when they lack solidarity they die.
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Do saints cross picket lines?
In Los Angeles, despite pleas from union activists and clergypeople, Amma chose to patronize the Airport Hilton, infamous for its union-busting tactics and opposition to LA's Living Wage law. Other organizations, in respect for the union's wishes, have cancelled events at the Hilton, but Amma declined to do so, saying it wasn't her business to take sides in a local dispute. Hugs are good--and material aid to tzunami survivors is better--but what about social justice?
Something positive that Amma's hugs stand for, I believe, is a reclamation of the body, its needs and vulnerabilities, as a site for spiritual good. What about the bodies of the working poor? Isn't relieving their exhaustion from overwork and making sure that they get healthcare a spiritual imperative?
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Wouldn't Elvis fans have felt the same...
after physical contact with their idol? Wouldn't a Michael Jackson fan?
Or more to the point, any follower of any one of a dozen gurus from the 70s who were eventually hit by financial and/or sexual scandals?
Don't these "ineffable feelings" have less to do with the object and more to do with what we as "followers" bring to the situation?
Or rather, what our DNA programmed brains seem to generate emotionally -- and possibly universally -- in the dynamic between exalted "hugger" and sincere "huggee"?
And to those who would answer "you have to feel it to know it" -- isn't that exactly what any born-again Christian would say?