Amma dolls

[Homicidalheathen]

http://www.cultnews.com/

By Bronte Baxter

What do stuffed dolls have to do with enlightenment?

Lots, if you’re into the cult of Amma, known also as Ammachi, Mata Amritanandamayi and “the hugging saint”

Amma’s devotees talk to dolls made in her image that are sold on Amma retreats. They tell the doll their problems, seek its comfort, and listen in their minds for its advice.

Amma calls the devotees her children, and clucks syllables like baby talk into their ears in her trademark ritual of lining people up, watching them kneel before her and then embracing them.

Amma tells them she is their mother and that she hears their prayers.

She says she’d no more charge them for her darshan (i.e. being in her presence) than a mother would charge an infant for breast milk.

Yet insiders have estimated Amma takes in more than three million dollars in a 7-week tour , through donations and sales of items like her toothbrush, fragments of a garment she has sat on, Amma dolls, Amma posters and books by devotees extolling her divinity.

Devotees believe Amma is a living incarnation of the being they consider the supreme God: Kali in Hindu religion, who is depicted in Indian art wearing a necklace of bloody human skulls and a girdle of severed arms, but who devotees see as a loving maternal figure.

Amma events consist of child-like lectures on Hindu doctrines, ( hey if they know of hindu dieties already why do they need t0 be talked to like children) Amma blessing water which devotees then drink, hymn singing, worship ceremonies and of course her trademark hugs.

At some events, Amma wears a two-foot-high sparkling crown.

Amma marries people on stage, gives babies their first taste of solid food, tells couples to break up or to stay together and ordains some of the faithful to abandon their family and live as monks in her ashram. lol i need more slaves biatch!

Amma teaches that love is all we need,and it is her divine love that will save us..

she stole that from the beatles and jesus

In Seattle a couple of months ago Amma predicted a nuclear war and that no child younger than 5 will live to adulthood after the year 2012. After spreading fear and despair through such prophecies, she then announced that only meditation and self-effacing acts of charity can possibly mitigate this sentence for humanity.

“Meditation” means mantra/obeisance meditation to the divine mother. Self-effacing charity seems to essentially mean donations to her organization and service to her cause.

At public sessions, devotees chant hymns to Amma that grow in volume and frenetic intensity, gesticulating in unison with their arms in the shape of an arc, from their midsection up and out towards Amma, who sits on a dais in front of them. The words of their chant is “Aum Parashaktyai Namah,” which translates to “I bow down/ pay homage to the Supreme Mother of the Universe.” The arm gesture is body language for surrendering one’s soul to Kali in the form Amma, her supposed living embodiment.

I am one of the moderators at the Ex-Amma Forum, a place where people who’ve left the Amma organization come together to help each other heal from their ordeal. The group is open to ex-followers, questioning devotees, concerned family and friends of devotees and people simply seeking more information about Amma.

I became involved with the forum after I watched a close friend of mine grow farther and farther away from the person he once was, as he sank deeper into Amma’s hypnotic embrace.

On the forum there are read hundreds of first-person accounts of what many people have experienced with Amma, the side of her that no one seems to talk about.

Allegations have surfaced through email from Amma’s former joint-secretary claiming she cooks the books, that the money she gathers for charity doesn’t go to the charities she claims.

Some former monks talk about the unexplained wealth of Amma’s family. And also about how her charity hospitals won’t take the very poor because the poor don’t have money enough for treatment.

There are accounts of “suicides” and unexplained deaths amongst ashram devotees. It appears that so many dead bodies have turned up in the waters outside the ashram that The Indian Express, New Delhi’s daily newspaper, printed an account of local citizens demanding a police investigation.

Some accounts tell of organ selling and beatings.

There is a video of Amma performing a puja (worship ceremony) to a portrait of Sai Baba, the guru who purportedly gives penis massages to his favorite disciples.

A letter from one former Amma monk alleges that he was told by an Indian holy man not to share what he knows about Amma if he values his safety.

Amma’s website sells pujas performed on behalf of the paying devotee for $30 to $250.

There is also an explanation of what happens in Kali puja, which is performed “on Amma’s birthstar” as follows:

“The puja is offered to a lamp representing the Goddess… The puja starts with a worship of the Guru… The central aspect of the puja is the symbolic offering of the five elements of creation to God. Our body is composed from these five elements… The puja symbolizes the surrender of the devotee to God… Each element is represented by a material symbol, such as flowers, or fire… These are offered at the foot of the lighted lamp. The desire of the devotee to offer his or her surrender is effected by these symbolic offerings (emphasis added). During the entire puja the temple resonates with the continuous chanting of the holy names of Kali.”

Amma’s PR is impeccable.

[Homicidalheathen]

Some former monks talk about the unexplained wealth of Amma’s family. And also about how her charity hospitals won’t take the very poor because the poor don’t have money enough for treatment.

There are accounts of “suicides” and unexplained deaths amongst ashram devotees. It appears that so many dead bodies have turned up in the waters outside the ashram that The Indian Express, New Delhi’s daily newspaper, printed an account of local citizens demanding a police investigation.

Some accounts tell of organ selling and beatings.

There is a video of Amma performing a puja (worship ceremony) to a portrait of Sai Baba, the guru who purportedly gives penis massages to his favorite disciples.

*bump*

hell i give penis massages for free, oh wait...

[sass_in_the_pants]

This actually begs the question for me - what are her followers actually seeking?

Surely, they sought her out and she fulfills something in them, but what?

By the way, reading about cults like this makes me glad I'm a Catholic. There's no hugging for the Catholics.

There's a handshake. And in some churches, they all join hands and sing koobaya, or some nonsense, okay not nonsense, it's the Our Father, but I'm just not, y'know, a hand holder, I'm more of the cold distant bitchy shoots darts out of her eyes type, so I just tell everyone the babies got snot on my hands. This excuse will probably hold off the hand holders for another year. After that, I don't see any way out of the hand holding except by having more babies. Or open wounds. I could go either way.

Just don't hug me.

[pomba gira]

In Seattle a couple of months ago Amma predicted a nuclear war and that no child younger than 5 will live to adulthood after the year 2012. After spreading fear and despair through such prophecies, she then announced that only meditation and self-effacing acts of charity can possibly mitigate this sentence for humanity.

OK, maybe it's 'cos I'm exhausted and fighting a cold... but I don't quite get the logistics here. Does that mean that everyone who's under five in 2012 will die before adulthood? Or that after 2012 no one will live past age five? I'm confused.

Anyway, she certainly doesn't sound like an incarnation of Kali to me. I can't see Kali Ma going around and lovingly embracing people... unless it was a prelude to her ripping their heads off and painting her temple with the fountaining blood. But what do I know.

[Rev.Reverence]

Kali Ma is essentially the same Deity as Shakti...

They left that part out...

...sounds like most religions to me... you can have the Catholic Monks/Clergy/Nuns pray for you... it costs a similar amount... you can have a Santero pray for you...it costs more...

[Homicidalheathen]

...in the picture her followers looked like a bunch of dumb westerners...there is one old deranged looking indian, and one of her higher ups...the rest are white.....and what with the dead bodies...maybe she does have a blood altar...of sorts

i heard lots of people not familiar with the culture go over there 'seaking' and get taken in by false guru's

OK, maybe it's 'cos I'm exhausted and fighting a cold... but I don't quite get the logistics here. Does that mean that everyone who's under five in 2012 will die before adulthood? Or that after 2012 no one will live past age five? I'm confused.

Anyway, she certainly doesn't sound like an incarnation of Kali to me. I can't see Kali Ma going around and lovingly embracing people... unless it was a prelude to her ripping their heads off and painting her temple with the fountaining blood. But what do I know.

[Destroit]

Kali Ma is essentially the same Deity as Shakti...

They left that part out...

...sounds like most religions to me... you can have the Catholic Monks/Clergy/Nuns pray for you... it costs a similar amount... you can have a Santero pray for you...it costs more...

Isn't Shakti just basically a "feminine essense" so to speak? I didn't know it was technically one singular deity.

And from what I've read about Kali...doesn't sound quite right. It's so easy to convince people of the Hindu faith that you're a saint not only because there's so many deities, but Hindus believe also that deities will take an avatara form, such as in the Bhagavad Gita itself when Vishnu came to earth as Krishna and had that talk with Arjuna. So in that faith you don't know who's an avatara and who's a fake.

[TitsMcGee]

How do I score that gig lol. Seriously though cults scare the shit out of me, I may be nutty but not very easy to convince of things, especially if it has to do with religion. I feel bad for the families of her followers.