This is what she does nearly every day, breaking for only a few hours in the afternoons, and going until three, four, five in the morning. A sly, benevolent smile spreads across her face as she pulls one person after another to her bosom. Clad in a billowing white sari, her rotund figure is perched atop her dais, a cushy throne draped in garlands and strewn with rose petals. Inside Amrita Hall, as the modest A-frame structure is called, Amma is surrounded by a dense, undulating throng. Wherever Amma goes, people wait for hours in order to kneel before her and be embraced, and they are waiting on the morning in early June when I first arrive: blissed-out clusters congregating around the ashram’s temple, everyone basking in a collective mood that is as seductive as it is unnerving. Known to her devotees as Amma, an honorific nickname meaning “Mother,” she is most famously referred to as the “hugging saint” because of her trademark blessing: a big, rapturous hug that her admirers describe as a transformative event – an infusion of pure, unconditional love that works on you like an elixir, cleansing the soul and bringing about a higher state of consciousness. Center, an ashram named after Mata Amritanandamayi, a 58-year-old spiritual guru from southern India. Their destination is the tranquil and sprawling grounds of the M.A. They make the journey every year, thousands of people heading up an unmarked, unpaved road into the feral hills outside San Ramon, a suburb some 30 miles east of San Francisco.
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