Need a hug? Spiritual leader has one for you
By Michael Wamble
mwamble@dailyherald.com
Posted Friday, July 06, 2007
Sharyn and Steve Galindo Thursday drove from their Northfield home to the Marriott Oak Brook Hills Resort for a hug.
As their moment drew near after more than a hour of waiting, the Galindos walked into the pool of people surrounding humanitarian and Hindu spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi.
They knelt.
Then it was their turn to feel the 53-year-old South Indian woman wrap her arms around them.
“It’s a very loving embrace,” Steve Galindo said. “There is this … energy for lack of a better word.”
Amritanandamayi called it “transmitting pure vibrations of love and compassion” during the first six hours of her two-day marathon of hugging strangers. Her appearance continues today with two sessions — one at 10 a.m. and another at 7 p.m.
Organizers of the 10-city U.S. tour said they expected 10,000 people to travel to Oak Brook to see, hear and — most importantly — hug her.
As a humanitarian, Amritanandamayi already has raised more than $1 million in aid for Hurricane Katrina victims, in addition to pledging $23 million toward relief work in regions in India ravaged by the 2005 tsunami.
Her latest project is to create social and economic programs to reduce suicides among farmers in central India.
Promoting healing through personal embrace and social programs, Amritanandamayi said, are essential to serving humanity.
“I am trying to create a balance between the spiritual and the material,” Amritanandamayi said as she hugged the Galindos.
Finding balance is part of what people said they seek from Amritanandamayi.
In 2005, Dinesh Agarwal, of Naperville, suddenly was laid off from his IT job, his wife, Sangeeta, said.
“We almost broke down,” Sangeeta Agarwal said. “We just got a new house.”
Then, a week after the family went to see and be hugged by Amritanandamayi, Agarwal said, her husband got a new job.
Thursday was the family’s fifth visit to see “mother,” she said.
Yet, most people including Balan Nair of Oak Brook, who first met Amritanandamayi in 1987, said she doesn’t profess supernatural powers.
“Once someone feels good,” Nair said, “they attribute things to the hug.”
Still, Tom Szabo of Lisle, a research technician, said he’s heard similar stories at work.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Szabo said.
Szabo, who describes himself as spiritual rather than religious, said his first-ever hug “felt like ecstasy.”