No Darshan?

Lily was eight and her babysitter was the 12-year-old daughter of the owners of Healing Earth Resources, Chicago’s premier new age emporium at the time.

Karina was a daytime babysitter, a young babysitter for times when I was not too far away, for not too long. As a mother, I liked her because her parents were well known, and because she went to the Chicago Waldorf school, where Lily went. Ultimately, I liked her because we didn’t seem the least bit weird, compared to her crystal-selling family. I loved their store. Plus, Lily was crazy about her. One summer morning, I picked her up at her parents’ shop, where they both worked for a good ten hours a day, and her mom was excited when I said I was going to go see Ammachi, the hugging saint, who was known at that time for having given 23,000 hugs--it is now said to be 43 million.

Karina’s mom assumed I would be bringing the girls along, and enthusiastically told her daughter to go run and get her Ammachi doll. (Who knew?) I hadn’t actually been planning to take the girls, but my babysitter’s mom said she had taken Karina annually for years, and that it would be an unforgettable experience for Lily. While I had my doubts, and craved alone time in my car, it felt a little bit selfish to refuse, so I drove us out to a west suburban hotel where we easily found our way to the ballroom doors, only to see that the event was already in progress.

“You’ll have to come back this afternoon,” one of the volunteers said, “Get a number at that table over there now, hang onto it for a few hours, and that will be your place in line for your hug.” I had no choice but to agree, disappointing though that was. You sit in a room for quite a while apparently, as long as it takes, so that you can then get in a line to get a hug while the hundreds of other people sing or chant or just soak up the energy of being around Amma. Sometimes it lasts all night. That’s why I was there in the morning. We had gotten there around 10, but apparently it had begun at 6. Everyone who’d ever done this had told me it had been a lifechanging experience…but they weren’t toting 8 and 12 year olds, who were going to need to do things like eat, and pee, and drink water, and then ask to pee again. I was thinking we’d just leave. I don’t like lines. And a hug is nice, but. Maybe we’d go to Barnes & Noble instead.

While I pondered the options, a different volunteer approached me and said, here, I’ll sneak you in. I surprised and thrilled. After preparing the girls to possibly get right back into the car and go to the bookstore, they happily shifted into “never mind, let’s go inside” mode. We stood in the back of the room for a few minutes, wondering where to settle, when that same angel of a volunteer came back and steered us across the packed ballroom. “If you stand right here,” she said, “you’ll be able to touch her as she walks out.” I probably wouldn’t touch her, but I liked the idea of proximity. We stood in her suggested place and watched people one by one walk up the two steps in the middle of the room to the throne on which Ammachi was sitting, receive a hug, and return to their seat on the floor. There were no other chairs, besides hers. You could sit or stand. This process of being recognized by a guru, or a saint, is called Darshan. I had never seen anything like this, and it was pretty cool just to be in the same room with all these spiritual people, and certainly I felt good about giving my daughter a diversity of experiences. Before I knew it, the hugging ceremony was over, literally I didn’t realize it; there was no fanfare. Somehow, I guess had spaced out or something, but with no announcement, Ammachi, a tiny Indian woman in white, and her entourage, also all in white, were walking down the aisle of the crowded ballroom toward us and would indeed have to walk right past us—just as the volunteer had said! Everyone was now standing.

When Ammachi and her entourage were about to pass us, she stopped, looked directly into my eyes, and said, “No Darshan?” 

I was shocked that she had just hugged 800 people yet somehow realized I was not one of them. How on earth?! Maybe it was the little girls, maybe it was Karina with her Ammachi doll. I didn’t know how to reply. “No Darshan?” I didn’t realize she spoke any English, but I didn’t know how much she actually spoke, and as I was mentally composing a reply to the effect of “Well, I didn’t realized it started at 6, I had no idea there was a protocol for this, we don’t even have numbers, and we are not actually even supposed to be in this room, but someone snuck us in,” she opened her arms to Karina, and then to Lily, and then to me. 

In Ammachi’s arms, time stopped, my brain stopped, and I knew nothing. I knew nothing except that my Divine Mother, my real mother, the mother of the entire Universe loved me beyond measure, and that there was no greater love than this. I disappeared into the love. I don’t know how long I was in her arms. It felt infinite. But based on Lily’s and Karina’s hugs, it was probably about ten seconds.

The tiny woman released me and continued on her procession out the door. I could have wept, or sung an aria, but I couldn’t actually do anything. I couldn’t move. I was standing in a magic spot, and I never wanted to leave. This peak life experience seemed to be about being in the exact spot where I was standing, in the right place at the right time. But I was in a hotel ballroom in Naperville, Illinois, the most ordinary place ever. Eventually most people had followed the procession out of the room, and the girls were ready too. Volunteers were making Indian food and serving it on paper plates, so I got each of us one and we sat down to eat. It was heavenly.

I asked the girls how they liked their hug.

“It was good,” they both replied.