Amma's Empire II: Birth of a Movement

How did Amma become revered as God? Meet the early disciples that built the movement.

Be Scofield is a prominent cult reporter whose work is cited by the NY Times, Rolling Stone, People, Netflix, and more. Be is the author of Hunting Lucifer: One Reporter's Search for Cults and Demons. She exposed the Love Has Won cult which led to the hit HBO series.

READ PART I: Amma's Empire: Sex, Lies and Hugs

By BE SCOFIELD

12/15/24

In 1987 a young woman sought Amma for a private meeting at the Indian ashram. She was distraught. During the emotional conversation she told Amma that she was pregnant and that the father was Chandru. He was one of Amma's staff members and earliest disciples. "Amma advised her to terminate the baby," and "arranged an escort for the young woman," Gail Tredwell writes in Holy Hell. She says Amma wanted to "dodge a scandal for Chandru and the ashram." Amma's decision ended in tragedy. "The subsequent medical procedure succeeded in being the death of the woman’s secret," Tredwell writes. "Sadly, it also killed her. She died shortly thereafter from septic shock."

Chandru was one of Amma's first devotees, having begun following her around 1977. Amma had conned Chandru into believing she was God and performing miracles. She then dispatched him to cities in India to find more followers. He soon became the central proselytizer of the new faith. One of his first recruits was a man named Neal Rosner (Nealu). In late 1979 he showed up on his doorstep in Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai. Rosner left Chicago in pursuit of spiritual awakening ending up at Ramana Maharshi's ashram, Sri Ramanashramam, in 1968 where he stayed for more than a decade.

"I came from Kerala," Chandru told Rosner. "A young woman there sent me here to Tiruvannamalai telling me to take a vow of silence for forty-one days. She also told me to strictly avoid the company of women while here." Chandru asked if he knew of a place to stay. Rosner offered him the house on the side of his that was empty.

Over a meal Chandru told Rosner of this mysterious woman who had sent him. "Ammachi is the daughter of one of the villagers," he said of the small fishing village where she lived. "For about five or six years now, she has been curing many people of incurable diseases like cancer, paralysis and leprosy through her spiritual power. Three times a week she sits through the whole night receiving people. At that time she reveals her identity with Lord Krishna and the Divine Mother." Rosner was intrigued. "As far as I'm concerned she is the Divine Mother herself," Chandru said.

Amma's fabricated miracles were the foundation of her proselytizing efforts. Without them she was a 4th-grade-educated mentally unwell twenty-something from nowhere. Chandru explained to Rosner how she had incredibly cured a leper who was more "dead than alive." Rosner had long suffered serious health problems and began to wonder if Amma could help him. "Forty-one days later found me and my new friend, Chandru, going by train to Kerala, about five-hundred miles southwest of Arunachala," Rosner writes in his book On the Road to Freedom. Amma had just landed her first American devotee. And he had money.

IN 1980 AMMA'S AHSRAM WAS nothing more than her parents home where she had been living since birth. Green, lush and humid, Amma's fishing village, Parayakadavu, was surrounded by miles of dense coconut palms. It was "situated on a thirty-mile-long peninsula that thrust between the ocean and this brackish river," writes Tredwell in Holy Hell. "The house was very basic with three bedrooms, tiny shrine room, large dining room, a firewood kitchen, and concrete floors throughout." There was only a wooden table in the barren dining room. Amma's room had a single bed against the back wall by a window, a small metal trunk and some clothes strewn around.

Chandru had first knocked on Tredwell's door days prior to Rosner's. "I'm looking for a man named Madhu and was told he lives around here," Chandru told her. She told him he lived in the back unit but was out of town for a few days. Over tea Chandru sold Tredwell on his guru. He pulled out a photo. "My goodness, she is so young," Tredwell chimed. "Why, she barely looks twenty years of age." Chandru told her Amma had just turned 26.

He then handed Tredwell a tape of Amma singing devotional songs and said he'd be back in a few days. "The recording was rather scratchy, but its contents were like nothing I’d ever heard before," Tredwell says. "Her voice touched my heart in an unexpected way, and within a couple of minutes I was an uncontrollable mess. I was sobbing so hard I became weak and had to lie down." Tredwell said she wondered if Amma was the guru she had been praying for. "For the next two days, I remained at home playing my tape over and over like a lovesick teenager. I couldn’t wait to meet Amma but had no clue how or when such a meeting would take place."

Upon his return Chandru told Tredwell he had met Neal Rosner and would be staying with him. Once his forty-one day silent retreat was finished the two made the trek to Amma's tiny fishing village in southwest India. Gail waited with anticipation. "Nealu returned head-over-heels and utterly smitten with Amma," Tredwell writes. "He was convinced she possessed genuine spiritual powers and was eager to spend more time with her." He told her he was packing his things to return to Kerala and asked if she would join. "I was thrilled knowing my dreams were only a hair’s breadth away from becoming reality, and my days of yearning and pining would soon be over."

Both Neal Rosner and Gail Tredwell were seekers. They were young, idealistic and primed for the spiritual quest. Each had left their respective countries in search of something deeper in India and Amma was ready to capitalize on them. It wouldn't be until 25 years later that Elizabeth Gilbert popularized the spiritual quest to India in Eat, Pray, Love. Coincidentally, the teacher she found, Gurumayi, was also a problematic female guru who ran Siddha Yoga. A new lawsuit alleges that its founder Muktananda raped many girls and that as early as 1978 Guruyami knew of the ongoing abuse. Former followers of Gurumayi have called her authoritarian and abusive.

Rosner suggested that Tredwell pick a new spiritual name before visiting Amma. One day while looking through tapes of classical Indian music she discovered it. "'Oh my God, there it is. There’s my name,' I shouted leaping out of the chair. I grabbed the cassette, and as my heart pounded, I read out loud 'Gayatri.'"

On January 14th, 1980 Chandru, Rosner and Tredwell boarded a train to Kerala. Filled with zeal and wonder they shared spiritual stories along the journey. They stopped in Viluppuram and took an overnight train to Quilon, a town about an hour from Amma's fishing village. When they reached the state of Kerala, Tredwell was surprised at the lush environment. "Like an excited child, I sat gazing out the window, taking deep breaths, inhaling the fresh air," she writes. "Water was plentiful. The train rushed over several bridges suspended high above swollen rivers." She reminisced on the similarities with her hometown in Australia.

They took a taxi from Quilon the remaining distance. "The taxi twisted and turned through narrow roads lined with trees, rice fields, and the occasional house," Tredwell writes. The road continue to narrow until they reached a dead end. "Before us was a wide river waiting to be crossed. Below to our right was a sun-dried old man standing beside a large wooden canoe waving his arms, beckoning us to get in." Tredwell says her heart was "pounding with excitement" at the thought of meeting Amma.

She fumbled into the canoe, eventually finding her balance. "All I could see for miles and miles were coconut trees," she writes. Eventually she saw a group of women surrounded by water pots yelling at each other. She'd learn that they were at the only water pipe in the village. There was no landing so the three hopped out and waded through the water to shore. The locals pointed and cackled. The children screamed, “Sayippu, madama! Sayippu, madama!” It meant "White man, white woman."

As they walked through through the village they noticed huts made of woven coconut palms with thatched roofs. There were also basic structures made of plastered brick. The sandy lane wound to the right passed a swampy lagoon. "I was taken by surprise when Chandru suddenly turned left off the path between two homes," Tredwell writes. "After a few more steps, I noticed a young man meditating in front of a small shrine. That’s when it hit me. We had reached Amma."

BY THE AGE OF TWENTY-SIX Sudhamani Idamannel aka Amma should have been married. Growing up in a remote fishing village in India in the 1960s provided little opportunity for a woman. Amma was forced to drop out of school in the fourth grade after her mother got sick. According to her biographies she worked from 3 a.m. until 11 p.m. Amma cooked, cleaned, cared for the animals, washed clothes and made the long trek to get water daily. Her parents physically abused her terribly. When she was sent to her aunt's and grandmother's to work as a teenager the abuse continued. Her family was convinced she was schizophrenic or mentally ill because of her odd and severely dissociative behavior.

In his book The Amma Empire, her former translator of 13 years, Jacques Albohair, suggests why only Amma was abused and not her other seven siblings. A member of the ashram told him that Amma's mother had been raped by her husband's brother. Amma's "official" father Sugunanandan had allegedly raped the wife of his brother. The brother reciprocated the act by later raping Sugunanandan's wife, Damayanti. Neither her parents or anyone in the family has Amma's dark skin complexion but her uncle does, however. She also has the same bowed legs as her uncle. "The uncle was banned from ever appearing in the vicinity of the house," Albohair writes. "For her mother, her daughter's existence must have constantly reminded her of her own husband's infidelity."

Albohair first met Chandru in 1978 in Tiruvannamalai. "I was exposed for the first time to the extraordinary stories of this young 'holy woman' – stories and anecdotes which left me both perplexed and indifferent," he writes. "What I heard was not really my cup of tea so I let it rest there." As Albohair would walk around the 14-mile base of Arunachala mountain chanting he'd often see Chandru on the trail. "He'd look at me insistently and then later say, 'I know you are Amma's son.'"

In 1968 Albohair became intrigued by German existentialist philosophers like Sartre and later discovered Krishnamurti. He also read Ramana Maharshi and set off to India in 1970 on a spiritual quest in his late teens. He spent time with titans of the guru world; Satya Sai Baba, Muktananda, Nisargadatta and Mā Ānandamayī. Albohair would spend six months in India living at ashrams of spiritual personalities and then return to Europe to save money for the next year. He eventually settled on the Ramana Maharshi ashram by the late 1970s.

Tredwell had trekked to Ramanashram with two friends from Europe, arriving in 1978. When they asked for a room, the man behind the desk stared at them critically. They assumed it was because of the way they were dressed as Western women with no saris. He sent them across the street. “Several homes have been turned into guest houses," he told them. "You shouldn’t have any problem finding somewhere else to stay.” He suggested Saraswati Nilayam a few minutes away. They grabbed their luggage and walked to the property where they met the owner. A former family home, it was now being used to rent out rooms. There was no kitchen, the bathroom and toilet were outdoors and they had to hand haul water up from a deep well when the electricity was out which was often.

“I want to learn how to meditate and do yoga. Is there anyone here who can teach me?" Tredwell naively asked the man. “Sorry, we cannot help you. But Bhagavan can,” he told her. “Just go to the meditation room and he will guide you.” They eagerly entered the room but only saw a handful of people meditating. Where's Bhagavan? Tredwell wondered. Eventually another Western woman explained. “Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi left his body nearly thirty years ago, but he is very much alive in spirit. His presence can indeed teach you everything you need to know. All you have to do is sit in silence.” As a novice Tredwell sought to imitate the postures of the people she saw meditating. “Come on, come on. Something has to happen,” she thought while sitting. She gave up after several minutes. On the way out she stopped in the bookstore picking up a copy of Ramana’s Life and Teachings. Back at the house her friends smoked a joint while she devoured the book. "As I lay there reading and pondering these new teachings, an incredible river of peace was flowing through my body," she writes.

The following day Tredwell's two friends told her they were leaving. They wanted to travel and only had a week left on their visas. Tredwell was sad as she waved goodbye as they had grown close over the last four months of traveling. "There I was, on the side of the road, all alone once again. The reality hurt," she writes. "It was on this day, in September of 1978, that I turned a new leaf and embarked on a fresh chapter of my life." She committed to the path. Every morning Tredwell visited the ashram and walked "slowly and meditatively" around Ramana Maharshi's tomb. She would sit with eyes closed. Occasionally she felt what seemed to be a thumb pressing on her third eye between her eyebrows. She soon met a man named Madhu who also lived in the same housing complex. He was born on the French Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean but he was of Indian origin. He further helped Tredwell along her path, lending her books from his vast library.

Albohair was living at the ashram when both Tredwell and Rosner were there. "We used to bump into each other regularly even though we did not interact much," Albohair writes. "We each had our own approach to the path." All three had fled their home countries for India on a spiritual quest. Now they were in each other's orbit, oblivious to their shared destiny.

RAMANASHRAM IS LOCATED NEAR ARUNACHALA mountain about twenty minutes south of the Tiruvannamalai city center. The mountain is considered one of the main five holy sites of Southern India and is one of the oldest in the country. Legends about it go back to the Rig Veda and it is thought to be an incarnation of the deity Shiva. Ramana Maharshi discovered it at the age of 16 and spent the rest of his life there, later calling it the "spiritual Heart of the world."

It's no surprise that in the late 1970s there were several Westerner's living at the ashram. And it's no surprise that it's where Amma sent Chandru to find new followers. It'd be something she'd repeat. As her movement grew she targeted towns like Fairfield, Iowa which was the epicenter of Transcendental Meditation. Also on the list during the first American tour in 1987 was the new age mecca of Mount Shasta.

In 1980 Jacques Albohair left Ramanashram and moved to Kerala to treat a medical condition. "To please my hosts and almost in spite of myself, in April, I agreed to meet Amma," he writes. Tredwell and Rosner had arrived with Chandru three months prior in January. Albohair notes that both he and Amma were both 25 years old. "This encounter undeniably went straight to my heart and had the effect of an electric shock," he writes of first meeting her. "I immediately felt connected and touched deep within my soul." For years his spiritual path had been that of knowledge. But now he wanted to "elevate matters of the heart" in his path. "I felt I could not afford to ignore this wide-open door." After this brief encounter he returned and spent a few weeks with her. He then decided to move in.

"There were no schedules nor timetables," Albohair writes. "Under the coconut trees, apart from the regular singing session at dusk, we indulged in various spiritual practices and disciplines according to the inspiration of the moment. Our days were spent in a form of joyful and contemplative cohesion." Amma had not yet become a formal guru and the environment felt more like an intentional commune. "This initial carefree period allowed us to experience intense moments of mystical-sentimental sharing," he writes. "We all lived together in love." Tredwell echoed his sentiment. "Back then there was a peaceful, relaxed, and carefree atmosphere at the ashram, even though it hadn’t officially been declared one yet," she writes. "There were no set regimen of meditation, although meditation was a part of our daily practice by choice."

Accommodations on the property were scarce. Rosner initially lived in a tiny room at the front of the house but soon built a palm leaf hut on the edge of the property that afforded him some privacy. It proved short lived as Balu who'd later become Swami Amritaswarupananda, would stay a few nights of the week in the hut after kirtan. A young man named Sreekumar joined as well. "Amma spent hours on end in the hut with these young fellows—talking, laughing, and practicing bhajans (devotional songs) while Nealu lay in the corner in blissful agony," Tredwell writes. Eventually more "spiritual sons" arrived to follow Amma. "At mealtime, it became a ritual for her to make little balls out of her rice and curry and hand-feed one to each of us 'children.'"

"In this fishing society, the fact that a young, unmarried woman frequented men so closely, spending nights chatting and sleeping in the same hut with them was a serious blemish to the family’s honor," writes Albohair. He says he witnessed many "violent arguments" between Amma and her father who had wanted to arrange for her to be married. “We love being in her presence, but her father is a real monster and chases us away if we hang around too long," Chandru had told Tredwell. "He’s afraid their family will get a bad reputation in the village.”

Amma had agreed to let Tredwell stay long-term in exchange for her services as her attendant. She was thrilled. The ability to serve the divine mother fulfilled her hopes and dreams. But she soon realized that the "glory" came with a lot more work than she could have imagined. "In the middle of the night, Amma’s sister and I would haul fresh water for cooking the following day’s meals, then two buckets each, over and over until the tank was full. This was an arduous task."

Amma's mother and sister soon became overwhelmed with cooking for the growing group of followers and quit. "Amma responded by declaring she wouldn’t set foot in their house again and was moving to Nealu’s hut," Tredwell writes. "Little did we know at the time, but this was the unofficial beginning of an ashram that would become a multi-million-dollar international organization."

Amma, Rosner and Tredwell slept in close quarters in the 10 ft. x 20 ft. palm leaf hut that now had a small kitchen. Soon Madhu who had lived near Tredwell in Arunachala began following Amma. He donated money so more living accommodations could be built and he'd come and go as he pleased. According to her biography Ammachi, as early as 1976 Amma had her first male Indian devotee and ashram resident. The biography describes him as a 20 yr-old named Unni Krishnan from Alappad who "developed a strong thirst to lead a spiritual life" after meeting Amma. He spent his days in the shrine performing spiritual rites. At night he slept on the temple porch.

By 1978 a handful of young men mostly from upper class families from the town of Haripad were visiting Amma almost daily. In addition to Unni there was Sreekumar, Ramesh Rao, Venugopal (Venu), Ramakrishnan and Balagopalan (Balu). They were in college or working. Her biography states the families of the men thought Amma was a "witch who had hypnotized their sons through the use of her master sorcery." It may have just been her charisma, a powerful asset for any aspiring cult leader. Ammachi says the men were attracted to Amma's "magnetic personality and all-embracing love." Some of the men came from broken families, others were struggling in life, while Balu had recently graduated college.

When Amanda Baldock arrived in 1982 from Australia she unknowingly experienced a form of love-bombing. She walked into the hut and Amma quickly rushed towards her and embraced her. "I was completely shocked by the love and tenderness that Amma showed me, a complete stranger," she writes in Sacred Journey. "In the ashrams that I had previously visited, one could only prostrate from afar while the Guru sat untouched at a safe distance—but here Amma was tenderly caressing Her devotees, even those who had just walked in for the first time, with a love and divine compassion that I had never imagined existed." Baldock continues. "She received me with as much intimacy as if I were Her own child. No one gives so much love to strangers!" It made her think Amma was someone "truly extraordinary."

The family of Ramesh Rao were so concerned that they essentially tried what equates to cult-deprogramming. Ammachi says Rao was "convinced of the Holy Mother's divinity" at the very first meeting and felt "bound to Her by a strong feeling of divine love." Like the others he seemed to be captured by some magnetic and charismatic power that Amma possessed. The young men also considered her beautiful and she was showering them with attention. Rao's father filed a police report saying he was being "forcibly kept in custody" by Amma. He then showed up with family and a van full of police. They kidnapped him and then placed him in a mental hospital in Trivandrum. Their continued efforts eventually failed, however. Rao escaped their grip and on August 27th, 1982 he joined the ashram as a full-time resident.

Albohair says Amma played favorites with Rao. Sensing a threat between the closeness of Rao and Pai she "systematically bullied" Pai and forbade them to speak to each other in their native ethnic tongue Konkani. "She saw the alliance between the two as a force to be reckoned with, the pair as a challenge to her power and the shaping she was trying to make within the organization," he writes. "Overnight she started to smother him with attention, attack Pai and drove a wedge in their friendship." Albohair says there was no "equal love for all" with Amma as she proclaimed. Pai later left the organization.

A young man named Subhir claimed Amma had shown him her powers as a Satguru. "She blessed me with many spiritual experiences which established in me a deep bond of love and surrender," he said. His family became worried when he told them he wanted to quit his job as an engineer and move in with Amma. Several times his parents removed him from the ashram, even utilizing extra people to guard him and take him to psychiatrists. Each time he escaped and returned. At one point the police had a search warrant for him. After many months it was finally settled by the courts and he was allowed to stay at the ashram. "Amma penetrates deep into our being, preparing us also to contain the infinite within," Subhir stated.

A similar phenomenon gripped the U.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s as young people increasingly became lured into dangerous cults. Cult deprogrammers like Ted Patrick and Rick Ross were hired by concerned parents to kidnap their children, take them to a safe house, and then deprogram them. It's clear that the problem of young aspirants abandoning their lives after claiming to have found God in a charismatic leader was not a uniquely American problem.

-> Hunting Lucifer is the new book by journalist Be Scofield about hunting cults and dangerous gurus as a nomad. "A real-life epic and hero's journey."

GAIL TREDWELL STOOD IN THE corner of the temple watching with amazement. She was witnessing her first Krishna Bhava. "After approximately one hour of singing, Amma stood and entered the shrine, signaling me to follow," Tredwell writes. "Two of her cousins jumped up and came inside as well, closed the door, and bolted it. Amma changed into the sparkly skirt, ran the dirty comb through her hair, dusted some talcum powder on her face, placed a large spot of sandalwood paste on her forehead, strapped the ankle bells on, and she was ready for the next phase."

The next phase was the Devi Bhava where Amma would embody Kali. She held a sword in one hand and trident in the other. She wore a silver crown and costume jewelry. Tredwell was warned Amma would rush out of the Temple once this phase began. "Then, with amazing speed, Amma leapt out onto the verandah," she writes. "I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was dancing wildly to the music, twirling around and around, waving her sword through the air. I gasped in horror a couple of times when the musicians ducked as the sword came gyrating above their heads. Sparks flew into the air when her sword struck the ground or collided with the pillars a couple of times."

Amma then went down the line with her sword. "In almost drunken fashion, Amma made her way along the line of thirty men, tapping each of them on the shoulder with her sword," she writes. Amma was vibrating intensely as the temple bells rang loudly. "A few yards from where I was standing, a woman began shouting and making all kinds of weird noises. Her arms hung limply by her side, her entire body jerked uncontrollably, and her head rolled from side to side. Suddenly, Amma came swirling across the courtyard, ran straight up to the woman, lunged the trident through her hair, and flung her to the ground. Amma’s eyes were glistening but barely open. She began shouting angrily at the woman, and in between, I could hear her teeth grinding. Amma cried out for some sacred ash, which arrived with amazing speed. Taking a fistful of the ash, she ordered the woman to stand up. Then she threw the ash in the woman’s face. I watched transfixed in terror. My eyes must have been popping out of my head."

Tredwell said she later learned that an evil spirit had possessed the woman and Amma was performing an exorcism. "These theatrics were all very strange, but I found them fascinating, as though I were watching a real-life horror movie." Albohair notes that some believed Amma was incarnating the actual gods. "The myth is that these are not trances, but various deities that descend or incarnate into a human being during a given episode," he writes. "None of the locals saw her as a person who could spiritually guide others; they respected her only during bhāvas." These staged performances were the central draw, leaving them entranced. It was only later that Albohair, Rosner, Tredwell and Chandru were able to convince Amma of her potential as a spiritual teacher.

"I heard about a girl endowed with supernatural powers who gave darshan in the forms of Devi and Krishna," Balu said of his first discovery of Amma. He had just graduated college and after some of his relatives spoke highly of Amma he acquiesced from an initial skepticism and visited with his uncle. Balu prostrated in front of her in the shrine room after which she took his hand and stared into his eyes. "Her eyes were beaming like the full moon," he writes. "That look penetrated me; that smile bound me and made me motionless. Infinite compassion manifested on her face. Slowly she put my head on her shoulder and softly but emphatically said, ‘Child, I am your mother and you are my child.’ That sweet voice entered deep into my heart and I became enraptured with inexplicable joy. This is what I had been searching for! I burst into tears."

He says the next day he noticed a "great change" and that he became indifferent to his usual activities. "My desire to see her again intensified. All my thoughts were fixed on her. That night I was unable to sleep." He says images of Amma appeared to him whenever he closed his eyes. After meeting her a second time his desire to break off worldly desires only intensified. "Thinking of the Mother, I became like a madman. I forgot to eat, to sleep and to take bath. I abandoned my fancy way of dressing and combing my hair. My parents and other family members were worried by the change in me and forbade me from going to Vallickavu."

Soon he became a devotee and moved into the ashram. Within time he'd rise the ranks of her most senior disciple. "Amma nursed Balu, had him get trained in philosophy," Albohair told me. "She made it clear she wanted him to have his M.A. Balu was also emotionally malleable and ready to go into a personal relationship like that." Others like Ramakrishnan were more independent he told me, while Venu was more interested in pursuing traditional drumming and yoga.

In 1985 Balu published Mother of Sweet Bliss, the first biography of Amma. It was based on interviews that Professor Ramakrishnan Nair conducted with Amma and her family. He first published a biography in Amma's language Malayalam. Albohair told me Nair sold his home and possessions and donated everything to Amma including his life savings. In the early 1980s he moved into the ashram with his family. Nair's daughter Manju would become a close disciple of Amma. Eventually they'd all break way from Amma, leaving empty handed and forced to rebuild their lives from scratch.

Amma controlled her devotees sexuality. "Amma was hosting these families, couples with kids, and prevented them from having healthy, normal sex," Albohair told me. "She even punished them." He said Amma would humiliate and go after people when she found out they were having sex. Meanwhile she was having sex with multiple disciples. As Tredwell lost faith in the late 1990s she had a dream one night. "I saw thousands of people with tear-stained faces screaming, 'Why, why?' as they looked at Amma and clawed from outside the pearly gates," she writes. “Out of devotion for you, we sacrificed our right to sacred human pleasure and slept with no man or woman. Wasn’t that the agreement? Wasn’t that what you asked of us?” they wailed. “Oh Amma, how could you betray us and not practice what you preach?”

Balu would later publish Ammachi in 1994 which was a highly expanded biography from the original. For decades it was the primary tool that Amma used to sell the world on her mythological origin story. The book is filled with accounts of her miracles and God-like status.

At first, the word spread about Amma in surrounding villages organically. She would also visit families providing darshan to them. Also, Chandru, the ever-excited proselytizer of the faith, would bring in hundreds over the years. In 1982 Amma traveled to Tiruvannamalai for the first time bringing around fifty devotees. The group stayed at two homes Neal Rosner had built while he lived in Arunachala. Amma gave darshan in the daytimes from there while at night she sang devotional songs to Ramana Maharshi at the ashram.

Amma had created a highly charged cultic environment. From the first moment of meeting she would love bomb new members, deeply eye gaze with them and shower them with attention. She'd use psychologically powerful phrases like, "I am your mother now." There was even a romantic undertone to her efforts. "She was frequently surrounded by a number of young Indian admirers with whom she spoke entire nights under the coconut palms – a sort of informal club of romantic-mystical friends," writes Albohair. During the Krishna Bhava's she'd entrance them with performances, music and exorcisms that'd last into the night. With her claims of miracles and being God she built the perfect breeding ground for converts and followers. It was these true believers that were key to her growth and their efforts would soon pay off in dividends.

IN 1983 GRETCHEN MCGREGOR WAS working at Pilar Cafe just south of Taos, New Mexico. For the previous few years she had been in a passionate search of the Great Mother. Her interested peaked after reading When God Was a Woman that described all the ways the divine mother had been worshipped throughout ancient history. She began praying to the Great Mother asking for guidance. She trekked across the country from the East coast and eventually landed in Taos. It was there that summer, working in the cafe, that a friend told her amazing news. "I just met a man who saw the Divine Mother in India. And he has pictures."

The 21-yr-old idealistic seeker was in awe. When the man came into the cafe a few days later she pleaded with him. "So, are you the one who met the Divine Mother?" He replied yes and said he was doing a slideshow about her that Saturday. McGregor was the only one in attendance but sat in "stunned silence" at the first photo of Ammachi as he called her. "The light in her eyes burned away a fog in which I had been unconsciously enveloped my entire life," McGregor says in her book In the Shelter of Her Arms. She told the man, whose name was Greg McFarland, that she wanted to see Amma. He told her she had to write to her first. While she waited to hear back she worked as a cook on a three-week rafting trip down the Colorado river. McFarland was on the trip and told her incredible stories of Amma's abilities. "One day he told me that Amma had given him a mantra that he could share with anyone he met that seemed like they might be one of Amma's children," she writes. She would repeat the mantra in sets of 108 times having a significant impact on her and undoubtedly priming her for encountering Amma.

"I love the idea of God coming down to earth and moving among us in a human body." - Gretchen McGregor

By October, 1983 McGregor had heard back from Amma. "Come quickly, darling daughter," she wrote. In November she traveled to Amma's ashram with McFarland and his daughter. "She was shimmering with light," she says of first seeing Amma. Her smile was "1,000 watts" and her "eyes were piercing stars." Upon hugging Amma she says her "heart burst like a damn" describing it as a "sensation of excruciating joy." She then had her first vision. "A double helix, like a DNA strand, which was iridescent and luminous, awash with soft color. Awareness that Amma was one side of the strand and I was the other. We were entwined as far into the past as could be seen, and just as far into the infinite future. In that instant I knew I had found the Divine Mother in this lifetime."

By the time McGregor arrived the ashram had grown from its meager beginning and had become formally registered as Mata Amritanandamayi Mission (Math). Neal Rosner had sold a coin collection worth $10,000 and donated it to Amma. They built huts to expand the community. He also donated his collection of 3,500 books which became the ashram library. The initial carefree and lax environment had been replaced with a strict schedule. Prayer ritual would start at 4:30 in the morning followed by three hours of yoga and meditation until 9 a.m. Throughout the day there were classes on the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads, singing bhajans, and several more hours of meditation until bedtime around 11 p.m. "My first big discovery was that I loved to meditate," McGregor writes.

"This change felt a bit harsh for we who were used to bathing in fusional carelessness," writes Albohair. "Amma, our equal in age who had become our master, used the special fusional relationship we had with her, to help us overcome and sublimate emotions. Although we now had to behave as disciples with her, our approach remained indissociable from the fusional feeling we had cultivated till then. This combination of almost amorous fusional intimacy with the mystical approach and the discipline of the master was particularly effective in progressing on the path. But it also bore the seeds of possible deviances and corruption."

McGregor quickly became involved with the daily routine of the ashram. She began helping cook and then became the full-time pot washer. She massaged Amma's legs, brought her dinners and taught the female disciples yoga. It'd later become branded as it's own style called Amrita Yoga.

Over the next several years the group continued branching out. "We began traveling farther and farther away from Amma’s little fishing village in Kerala, doing programs at various temples," Tredwell writes. "Politicians were starting to take note. At many of the venues they became the official guests of honor. This attention secured them the devotees’ votes, potentially, in the next election. Their presence, in turn, fed Amma’s power and celebrity." Soon Amma's influence was spreading throughout India. "Like a wild creeper she was planting roots throughout Kerala, Madras, Bangalore, New Delhi, and Bombay, with talk of overseas next on the agenda." In early 1985 Albohair was in Europe building the movement and raising money.

By 1986 there were 20 full-time renunciates living at the ashram. Because Chandru was ordained as a monk at the Chinmaya Mission he was able to ordain others as Swamis. Balu became Swami Amritaswarupananda. Soon many were dawning yellow robes. Later Chandru would be ousted by Amma over his repeated sexual encounters with young women where he exploited his position of authority and betrayed his monastic vows. Later in 2012 he was sentenced to life in prison in South Africa for repeatedly raping a 12-year old girl. She suffered from epilepsy and was brought to Chandru by her parents to heal her. He told the girl that his sexual abuse was part of the healing process.

Neal Rosner's brother Earl visited the ashram around the mid-1980s and became an ardent devotee. He planted a seed that'd change the course of history. He wanted to host Amma in America. And soon their relative Ron Gottsegen began following Amma. He'd play a pivotal role in the establishment of Amma's Empire by providing the land for her temple in the Bay Area. Before that, in 1986, McGregor would lead the effort to prepare for Amma's first American tour. Along with Balu, Chandru and Neal Rosner they'd soon drive across the country in a van spreading the gospel of their new guru. "My children are everywhere," Amma told McGregor. "They are crying for Amma but cannot find me. Amma must go to them."

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