Just got back from seeing Amma. Now I am in bed, coming down, with my face pressed against the white cotton shirt I wore today. It smells of roses.

Some say that Amma is a living saint. For many years I tried to make sense of the mystical experiences I have in her presence. I googled the words: kundalini, shakti, ecstasy. I compared my experience to that of others. But I’ve stopped trying to understand.

I would not say that Amma is my sole teacher, or guru. I have had many great teachers. Yet Amma is a touchstone I return to year after year. She might be my most powerful teacher. This was my sixth year with Amma at the Manhattan Center and every visit is different. I always learn lessons.

My first experience in Amma’s presence brought on such intense feelings of bliss, peace and transcendence that I was frightened I’d been dosed. This encounter taught me that visceral shifts in consciousness are possible without drugs. It crystalized my faith in a higher power.

My third year, I ignored an impulse to volunteer to wash dishes. Instead I sat by Amma like a god-junkie for eight hours straight until I got vertigo and had to go home in a taxi. I think Amma was teaching me that spirituality is not about feeling good all the time, but about service.

On another visit, I brought someone very close to me to meet Amma–a person who claims he has “no spiritual wiring.” I thought I could convince him otherwise and “give him” a peak experience. While this person now respects Amma as a humanitarian (he calls her a spiritual genius), on a sensory level he was unphased. He just sat in the balcony ho-hum, reading Harper’s and eating a doughnut. The lesson here? I am not in control of other people’s perceptions. I forget this lesson a lot.

So much of learning seems to be about remembering. Today I got a  message that I hear in my heart every time I am with her, and then repeatedly forget.

In my heart I said to Amma: It is so easy when I am with you to feel peace. But what about when I am not with you?

And Amma said to my heart: I give you permission. I light the spark. But peace is in you, child.

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Published on July 5, 2010