'Hugging Guru' Amma Reinforces San Ramon Roots During Visit

SAN RAMON, CA — The hugging saint has come and gone this year, but her devotees remain. In June, followers lined up in San Ramon to wait for a hug from Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, otherwise known as Amma.

Known as a “universal mother,” devotees believe a single hug from Amma can heal all. During her June 9-14 stop here — her second of a 2019 North American tour — she visited the MA Center in San Ramon, which is very near to her: It was her first ashram in the United States.

"Once a barren landscape, the MA Center is now is a pure example of Amma’s vision to bring harmony to nature through sustainable and compassionate techniques for the cultivation of land and resources," San Ramon ashram officials said following her June visit.

Since the founding of the first MA Center in San Ramon in 1989 — officially registered as a nondenominational, humanitarian nonprofit — there are now 12 MA Centers across the United States, with only two hosting Amma’s programs: San Ramon and Elburn, Illinois.

Amma is alleged to have hugged more than 39 million people worldwide, and her followers are strong believers. “Amma is our inspiration for everything we do here,” Faith Pomeroy-Ward, an MA Center Chicago resident and community outreach volunteer told PRI last month. “We live by her teachings … to alleviate human suffering through loving service [and] compassion in action.”

During the San Ramon stop, Amma’s wish to plant 1,000 fruit trees on the compound's grounds was realized when she blessed the 1,000th sapling after a question-and-answer session. Amma also fed the swans, geese and new goslings that live in the ashram pond.

According to a biography on the MA Center San Ramon website, Mata Amritanandamayi was born in a remote coastal village in Kerala, South India in 1953. When she was 9, her mother became ill. The child was taken out of school in order to help with household chores, including caring for her seven siblings. Despite the family's dire poverty, Mata Amritanandamayi brought food and clothing to others. Her "miracle work" earned her the nickname Amma (Mother), according to the biography.

Amma began her first spiritual tours in North America at age 33, and has since built an empire based on hugs. The now 66-year-old comes from a long tradition of guru movements — including female gurus — in India. Tulasi Srinivas, a professor of anthropology, religion and transnational studies at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, told PRI, “The power of this singular person is what is called in India as an ‘avatar of God’ — a manifestation … gurus have traditionally claimed that they are extra-spiritual human beings, but it is devotees who ascribe divinity to them."

“What Amma is doing in the world is so important," Pomeroy-Ward told PRI, "it transcends all boundaries set up by political systems, cultural systems and constructs."