Community Notebook

How I Met the Divine Mother

I sat on a couch in Cassia Berman’s cottage in Woodstock, sipping Breathe Easy tea, as she explained how she met Bhagavati Sri Sri Sri Vijayeswari Devi (or Karunamayi). Cassia’s cat, Shyama (Dark Goddess) purred beside her, in a room of decorative Yogic Bohemia: shawls, footstools, photos of swamis, chimes, books. Cassia is a T’ai Chi and Qigong teacher, a poet, and organizer of Karunamayi’s local programs.
“I was raised Jewish, and I read in the Bible that God spoke to people, and I thought, ‘Did God stop speaking to people at a certain time?’ I wanted to hear God speak to me.

“It wasn’t until my late twenties, I heard a female voice inside me—a very gentle female voice. I had a friend who was devoted to Sri Ramakrishna, and he showed me a picture of [Ramakrishna’s wife] Sarada Devi and started telling me about the Divine Mother tradition of India—and Divine Mother just took over my life, and introduced me to different goddesses, not just in the Indian pantheon, but all the goddesses worldwide, showing me how She is hidden in every religion.

“And I had a female teacher in the 80s, Hilda Charlton, who died in 1988. She was a very great spiritual teacher who lived 18 years in India; she taught the truth at the heart of all religions. And when she died, I felt very filled with her teachings—like it would take a lifetime to live out what she had taught. And I didn’t think I was going to have another teacher.
“Then in ‘95, I went to Elat Chayyim [a Jewish retreat site] to spend Shabbat with a female rabbi I like, Shefa Gold, and somebody there recognized me from Divine Mother events and he said, ‘Oh, you know, there’s a new Divine Mother down in the city. You have to go see her! The group around her is still very small.’

“It was August, and it was hot and humid, and the last thing I wanted was to go to the city, so I said, ‘No way!’ And I came home, and on my answering machine there was another message, ‘There’s a new Divine Mother in New York! You have to come see her.’ And again, the last thing I wanted was to go to the city. And the next day there was a third message: ‘You have to come down and see this Divine Mother.’ So I called a friend of mine who was devoted to a female guru, and she had been getting these messages too. So we decided we had to go. The next day Amma was going to be at the home of some Indian people in Westchester. And we didn’t know how long it was going to take us, so we were the first ones there. And as the living room filled up, we kind of got pushed to the front.

“And then when Amma entered the room, I had such an unexpected response to her. My heart just opened and I was hers. In my heart I felt … ‘I want to be near her forever.’ My mind was saying: ‘Does this mean I have a guru? Does this mean I have to go to India?’ And my heart was saying: ‘This is my deepest desire, to be close to her.’

“And she started looking into my eyes with this mischievous smile, and looking away, and looking in my eyes…”

Cassia saw Amma the next two nights, also.
“Seeing her those three nights, after that, through the whole next year, it was like Amma had moved into my house and she was a living presence with me all the time. And she had asked us, with great heart, to get up very early and meditate every morning—between three and five in the morning. And I found myself waking up three-thirty, four, every morning, and I would be alert, wide awake, and I would sit up, and I would feel she was sittinSg right in front of me.
“Everything just got clear in me. Sadness that I had felt for years just disappeared.

“I didn’t expect to have a guru. I do come from a Western background, and I have been cautious about all of this, but it has only brought good into my life. This kind of love—bhakti, it’s called—purifies the love you have in your relationships with other people. When it happens, it’s like all the intoxication of falling in love, but when it’s with a real guru … your life becomes more and more devoted to the Divine. And the Divine, finally, is the nature of existence.

“In 1999 we arranged a one evening program for Amma in Woodstock, at Overlook Methodist Church. It was 95 degrees, and there were only a few fans, and we had an overcrowded room, and the mikes weren’t very good, so you could hardly hear her. And people’s lives were transformed that night. The next year she came to the Unitarian Church; that time she did a two-day program. Again we had overflow crowds, and again people’s lives were transformed.

“Amma once said, ‘The difference between a saint and an ordinary person is that an ordinary person sees what’s wrong with you, and a saint only sees what’s right with you.’ And I’ve found, being in the presence of the real saints, because they see your divine, wondrous being, that lights up. It lights up in their presence. And then when you start having negative feelings, you say, ‘Is that true to my Self?’”

“Are you a Hindu?” I asked Cassia.

“No. There are Indian spiritual practices that I do; sometimes I call myself a ‘HinJew’. Amma once said to me, ‘Divine Mother isn’t Indian, isn’t Hindu, isn’t American, isn’t limited by any of the cultures or religions. Divine Mother is everywhere. I come from India, so I express it through Indian culture, because that’s what I know. But Divine Mother isn’t limited to India. Divine Mother is for everyone.’”

“What does Karunamayi mean?” I asked.
“Karunamayi means ‘filled with compassion.’ Once, I was told, Amma was at some spiritual gathering and it was cold and a wandering holy man, a sadhu, came in wearing only a thin cloth. She had a beautiful woolen shawl, and she took it off and put it on him, and he bowed to her and called her Karunamayi—Compassionate one—and after that people began calling her Karunamayi.”

“What does Amma mean?”

“Amma means ‘mother’ or ‘mom’—a very affectionate way of calling on the Goddess.”

Before Karunamayi’s birth in 1958, the noted holy man Ramana Maharshi broke his habitual silence to tell her mother that the Divine Mother would be born as her child. From an early age, Karunamayi showed signs of being spiritually gifted, and at 21 withdrew to a remote forest area, Penusila, in Andhra Pradesh, South India, to meditate. For ten years, she performed spiritual practice there. She tells stories about how while she meditated, a tiger would rest his head on her lap; talking birds would recite her mantras. Emerging from this retreat, Karunamayi founded ashrams in Penusila and Bangalore, as well as an orphanage, a school for tribal children, and free medical clinics for remote tribal peoples. She began her yearly trips to the West in 1995.

—Sparrow

Amma will give free programs at the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock on April 9 & 10. On Tuesday, April 9, Amma will give a talk at 7pm. People who wish to receive individual blessings from Amma can come to the theater the following day, to meet with her one-on-one. Amma will also be giving programs the preceding weekend, April 5-8, in Westchester, including in-depth “Jnana Classes” and a Vedic fire ceremony. For further information, call (212) 502-8670 or visit Amma’s Web site, www.karunamayi.org.