2 Dec 2013, Amritapuri<\/p>\n
Archana was chanted an hour early at 4am.\u00a0 By shortly after 5am the whole ashram was lined up from the gate to Amma\u2019s room for her expected arrival at 6-6:30am.\u00a0 Even people who will not normally spend 2 minutes in a Q without complaining or cutting it, patiently waited, even chanting their mantra peacefully!<\/p>\n
We began to get updates.\u00a0 Mobiles have some advantages.\u00a0 She\u2019s left airport.\u00a0 She\u2019s at Attingal.\u00a0 She passed Parippally (did not stop).\u00a0 She is at Kollam. Now she is at Karunagappally!!!!! She\u2019s on the beach road!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\u00a0 Everyone is smiling. Hands folded in prayer and respect.\u00a0 And finally after two months her car enters the gate!<\/p>\n
The driver\u00a0 goes slowly and carefully and Amma tries hard to look at everyone and touch their hand. When she arrives at her stairs, many of us feel very sad.\u00a0 For the first time, Pattiamma, the oldest ashram resident, is not there to garland Amma.\u00a0 She had died just 4 days before.\u00a0 But Bhakti, the\u00a0 canine devotee was there, making an indescribable sound somewhere between a howl and a whine.\u00a0 Amma stopped and spent a little time with her before moving to the top of the steps for a few more words, waves and smiles.<\/p>\n
Next in the welcoming ritual is to move to a vantage point where Amma can be seen as she goes to her room.\u00a0\u00a0 In the old days, she could lean out the window. And when I first lived here in the early Nineties, every day she would lean out her window and give instructions about various matters to people standing below.<\/p>\n
We had to wait over 15 minutes for Amma to come to the window.\u00a0 No one moved.\u00a0 I looked around at the happy faces of my diverse, international and sometimes dysfunctional family.\u00a0 All were so happy, but I couldn\u2019t help feeling a little sad for all of those not here for this joyous moment.<\/p>\n
To my amazement Swamiji was also standing at the car, looking up, waiting for a glimpse of Amma, surrounded by a sea of people.\u00a0 He had just flown with Amma, driven in the car with her, but still he wanted one more look just like us.<\/p>\n
Why do millions of people all over the world stand and wait to MAYBE get a glimpse of Amma, a touch of her hand?\u00a0 Because, whatever projections and fantasies they have about Amma, deep in the soul they recognize her as Supreme Consciousness.\u00a0 And what is that?\u00a0 It is the foundation of creation, our home, our birthright.\u00a0 The reason for this fortunate human birth.\u00a0 And why is it so attractive? Because Supreme Consciousness is another word for love and bliss.\u00a0 This is what every human desires and searches for their whole life\u2026and today we have it right here at Amritapuri.\u00a0 And because Amma exists, and because we have understood at least this much about her, we too have a chance to find that Consciousness within ourselves.<\/p>\n
Rta S<\/p>\n
Happy in Amritapuri<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2 Dec 2013, Amritapuri Archana was chanted an hour early at 4am.\u00a0 By shortly after 5am the whole ashram was lined up from the gate to Amma\u2019s room for her expected arrival at 6-6:30am.\u00a0 Even people who will not normally spend 2 minutes in a Q without complaining or cutting it, patiently waited, even chanting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ashram-diary","category-with-amma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}