Ammachi Gets Into The Apocalypse Biz
File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR
She's in Northern California right now, flooding the pool of Bay Area satsang junkies with her magical, infantilizing astral milk product. And apparently, according to one devotee, she's gone into the end-of-the-world, apocalypse prediction business:
[A] devotee came up to a group of long time devotees and reported that Amma had told a group of devotees in Seattle a few days before that... well here goes:Ammabots apparently believe she also predicted the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, although she was off by a year or so.
2010 - 2011 prediction... mass starvation and environmental destruction. World War III would be better, and, no child under the age of 5 would reach child bearing age. This was disturbing to me to say the least. I felt sad about it and asked for clarity. [The devotee] said the same thing over again. I asked if [Amma] said we could do anything about it. He said become a vegatarian and do spiritual practices, that we need to work fast for realization before it's too late. I thought it must be a trick to get lazy meditators motivated.
The suprising thing is [the devotee] has a child about that age and did not seem concerned, rather that he seemed excited to know what was happening next. It seems that this devotee has really acheived a level of detatcment that Amma herself would envy. I am in the prosess of confirming these statements. So far [the] L.A. satsang has denied it. All they said she said was there would be hard times ahead or something to that effect...
One last thing. I know for a fact that the MA center ashram has purcased a whopping $10,000 worth of rice to be stored for disaster. Ok, that's harmless except for the fact that hoarding food is one of the reasons for skyroceting food prices around the world, which is part of the reason for the predicted mass starvation.
While these sort of vague predictions of disaster are often a big-time guru's stock in trade, we are disappointed to see Ammachi stooping to the same level as the rest of them. We might find her milk distribution plot to infantilize the world to be a disaster of monstrous magnitude, but we were trying to hold on to the assertion that she is the best of the big-time gurus. But with nonsense like this swirling around at her satsangs, Swami Ramdev is beginning to look better and better as the recipient of the weak endorsement we've been giving to Ammachi the last few years.
Labels: Gurubusting, The Siddhi of PR
posted by guruphiliac @ 9:17 AM
21 Comments:
panicking , hoarding , doom saying, yes that all sounds so enlightened don't it? so many satsang purveyors use these fears to stimulate the bottom line? the sword is hanging over your head! get realized!
gosh,
didn't this happen a few years ago? the Y2K thingy...everyone moving up into the canyons above LA and hoarding water in their cupboards? I remember at the time, an Ammachi devotee I talked to "warned" me to buy up alot of bottled water and maybe even get a weapon to fight off the people who were thirsty so I wouldn't have to share. I seem to recall saying something like, "why have a 'guru' if you're going to live in fear"? Wasn't something like this supposed to happen when the "millenium shifted" too?
I mean, if you're not the body, why would you be hoarding rice? lol.
seen too much
I think it's interesting what you have to say about Amma's newest ideas (i.e. the apocalypse), and especially about the purchasing of rice! There are so many things happening lately that are bringing me down a bit: food prices, gas prices, etc.
I recently stumbled upon a blog that talks about Amma crossing the picket line of hotel workers in Los Angeles. They're saying that if she cares about justice, she should respect their boycott. They made a cool video about it, check it out: http://hugthiscause.wordpress.com
Here is something similar which I witnessed happen quite a few years ago. I'm placing it here just for interest, because I still do not quite know what to make of it.
In July of 2001 I went to the small ashram of Sri Maa in northern California.
It was guru purnima day (the one day in the Hindu calendar dedicated more than any other day to the guru).
After the pujas and singing in the temple, (it was kind of a very nice and funky place), Sri Maa stood outside talking with a few people.
One of my friends, who knows her pretty well, was standing listening to what she had to say.
Later he told me, 'Sri Maa said that she and the 'Swami' (this is a western Swami who is her constant companion), are going to spend the next few years on the ashram grounds not leaving, and doing lots of puja and tapasya for the sake of the planet, because the next (so many) number of years the planet is going to be going through a very very hard time.
I asked my friend some time later how many years it was that Sri Maa had said the planet was going to be in for a hard time, and he couldn't remember, nor could I remember what he had initially told me.
At the time, I wondered what Sri Ma was talking about. The planet seemed relatively peaceful to me then.
That was July 2001 and then, of course, a few months later, there was September, and all of the events subsequent to that.
So, although I'm not a great believer in predictions, it was interesting to me that Sri Maa did seem to suss out in advance that something not so great was about to happen.
As far as I know she and her Swami did spend a number of years at the ashram doing their practices and not leaving the grounds.
So that's an unbiased report. I do think sometimes that some people can be aware of things which most people are not aware of.
It isn't the purpose of spiritual practice, and it certainly isn't the point of it, but sometimes (and I witnessed something of the sort recently) these types of things do happen.
If we see it as the be all and end all of the spiritual journey then we can be in trouble. And if the teacher or leader presents it that way, serious trouble. If we see it as an interesting aspect of creation, then IMO it's okay.
You don't know if she really said these things. It's all just more gossip. Any one can come online and say they are a devotee and Ammachi said such and such in private. That doesn't make it true. she may not have said it. There isn't any public record of it. I'm not a devotee but i have been around her quite a bit . i kind of moved on and don't plan to see her this year, however, it seems highly out of character for her to say something like that.
River
Anonymous said...
gosh, didn't this happen a few years ago? the Y2K thingy...
True enough... but with this thing about predicting the end of the world... you an be wrong a million times, but you've only gotta be right once.
Stuart
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/
These are some of the E-mail comments Amma Event organizers sent to the Hotel protesters:
Quote"One thing I have learned from Amma, is, that she knows FAR more than we do. We are not in a position to judge her actions. Perhaps there was some fatal accident due to happen at the hotel, and she knew that her powerful spiritual presence would prevent it and save the lives of thousands of people. We do not know."
"We must all understand that Amma will do what She feels is the best for everyone involved. We have no way of knowing the intricacies of the karma around all of this" Unquote
All this is just a sick making, flowery way of saying F-you hotel workers,why don't they say they simply don't care and that Amma doesn't care, or that they don't want to break there deal with the hotel? That would be closer to the truth and way more compassionate. The spiritually advanced are very picky about their causes, hotel workers and labor causes are not fashionable, now say you want to send money to India for orphans, money that Amma has control over , that's totally different. Amma has no vested interest in supporting American Labor causes, plus this is an iron clad argument,the whole omniscient thing, a guru never has any reason to answer for their actions, according to this non-logic.
I find the whole mommie knows best thing condescending, arrogance parading as humbleness.
i seriously doubt that amma hung around the ashram for two years. hasn't she been touring pretty steady for the last eight years or so? maybe she used then transporter.
Just to be clear the story about the female guru who stay in her ashram doing puja and tapasya for several years after she said in July 2001 that the world would be going through a hard time for several years to come, is not a story about Ammachi.
Sri Maa is a completely different person altogether. She has a very small ashram in Napa County in California. She doesn't encourage visitors to her ashram very much, and her scene is actually very small.
She considers her guru to be Sri Ramakrishna. She is really into puja and ritual, especially fire puja. I like her place, not so much because of the pujas, which isn't my path, but because it is very quiet and peaceful.
So that story was not about Ammachi, but about a completely different person
yomamma said...i seriously doubt that amma hung around the ashram for two years.
................
Yomamma, you have confused Shree Maa with Ammachi. Shree Maa and her Swami did indeed stay within the ashram grounds for 3 years doing almost non stop sadhana to complete their vow. This was not the first time they did this sort of thing. I met Maa and Swamiji in 1988 when they lived in a near windowless cinder block building in Martinez, California. They had taken such a vow now to leave the building for a number of years and were well into this time. They had not taken a step outside for nearly two years at that point. Once I saw a photograph of Ammachi trying to hug Shree Maa. Ammachi had come out to their ashram in Napa and was trying to give a patronizing squeeze to Maa. The look of disgust on Shree Maa's face was so refreshing.
BWAAGGH!!!
As a dude who spent a lot of time watching "Psychic Detective" shows on TV, this crap boggles my mind. It's hilarious. Even when you're psychic calls are 80% accurate--like the woman who called the police and said, "Oh my god there's a girl who's been dismemeber and had her body parts cast in concrete blocks and dumped in the water"--and four days later the cops find that, yes, the girl they were looking for was in the water in pieces in concrete blocks, and, yes, the psychic has an alibi, guess what? Psy-Detective didn't know who killed who, or where, or what. The astral plane is funny that way.
How the fuck this has anything to do with enlightenment, I don't know. Do I listen to my teacher's stock market picks? Of course not. I listen to his meditation instructions. If he starts making calls, I'll have to find a new one... Why do students and ashramites put up with this shit?
i guess the part about her ashram being small, should have tipped me off. Is she then one that likes to drink coca-cola? i heard a good story to that effect.
ok, dudes, and dudettes, what do you think will be happening in 2010, 2011? eh?
what do you think will be happening
Who knows? And that's the main point. We don't, and Amma doesn't either.
hey Gregory is back! Where ya been?
Eight years later, I'm still disappointed that Y2K turned out to be such an unmitigated dud! In late 1999 I was really looking forward to the cascading power failures, food riots, martial law, and hordes of cold, hungry people foraging on the streets and even resorting to cannibalism. Oh well, there`s always January 18, 2038 to prepare for! That`s when computer clocks will literally run out of time. Google "Year 2038 bug" if you don't believe it could be TEOTWAWKI for real!
I would be shocked if any sage failed to warn of the earth changes. This is Kaliyug. All these predictions have been going on for decades now. And they are coming true. Just ask the Hopis. Or the Kibeho Rwanda Marian visionaries. Bad things are already happening now. Mass famine is coming. Mass genocide and warfare is coming. And it doesn't take a prophet to predict.
The fossil record indicates that in the past, sudden environmental changes have temporarily but drastically reduced human and mammilian populations.
Such events may or may not happen during the period 2010-2011
There is no need to pin labels on such occurrences, such as "Apocalyptic" or "end of the world".
If these things do happen, this indicates that Ammachi has some capacity to see future trends, so what's the big deal?
Interesting that perhaps we as a nation are unwilling to even give thought that times could get worse. I believe the whole spirituality thing is that you do what you can not only for yourself, but for everyone's and everything's benefit...
The way this topic is presented shows a conventional and narrow mindset which, of course is at the opposite pole of spirituality. "Apocalypse Biz" is a term that calls for biased resposes. People want to be "right" even though they we don't feel "right". Small minds have always tried to find fault in the work of those they are not fit to emulate asthough they are above them failing to realize that without those they try to discredit they wouldn't have anything worthy of attention. There are a number of "accusations" here which only show their authors' lack of spiritual, intellectual and cultural breadth and depth. A sad human trait makes people do nothing to truly better ourselves while throwing dirt on those who might have put us to shame for our inertia. That makes us feel "relatively" worthy of saying something. This disease does not go away easily. Followers misinterpret and deface what their teachers have said causing the "debunkers" to have a field day basking in the light of those they want to tarnish.
VIEWPOINT, I'm glad that there's at least one intelligent person reading this blog, lol! The inaccuracies and the sheer foolishness of this author make me smile broadly, and by that I mean the author of this trash "article", and also the others who've written responses. This Jody person must be a pretty dim bulb, is my guess. I mean, some Amma devotee told her that Amma said something, so she's just gonna take that and run with it, rotflmao, as if just cuz some random person told her then it MUST be true! With that level of intelligence and discrimination, I'm amazed that this person hasn't been able to make a living as a real journalist! Ah well, I guess that shit journalists have to end up somewhere ;) and what else are blogs good for?? lol!
The thing that is funniest about these so-called "guruphiliac" folks is that they run around insisting that the spiritual people are hysterical, stupid, and backwards, and yet all they do is make themselves look that way with all their mouth-foaming. So I say to them, keep at it!! By revealing how hateful they are, they do us spiritual folks a huge favor, because people coming onto the scene look at the calm spiritual aspirants, and then the crazy ones, and then they look at the people on the bad side of the fence, and they say "God, I'd rather be crazy and a fool for you than ever fall back into that hell of darkness and hatred!"
Happy holidays, y'all! May the hatred die in each of us and only goodness remain!
~Nandini
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