Earlier, Rick Archer made two posts here on FairFieldLife, back-to- back: one was a personal experience of hugging that a fellow devotee of Amma had forwarded him and Rick felt he just had to share with the rest of us (see http://tinyurl.com/avv6zc ); the second one was a link to a media story on a Hindu group developing a cow urine beverage to be marketed to the masses in India (see http://tinyurl.com/bj5le6 ).
I suppose it was the odd juxtaposition of the two that got me thinking: instead of offering hugs in her darshan sessions what if Amma would offer sips of cow urine? There would be the same line-ups to the podium. But instead of hugging each of the aspirants and clinging them to her chest or shoulder (which can't be very sanitary from the looks of the photographs I've seen of her), she would offer up a cup of urine that the devotee would sip from. I mean, in the final analysis, what would be the difference? Whether she offers a hug or a sip of cow urine, why in heaven's name would there be any different outcome to the person partaking in the experience? If she is, indeed, enlightened, the hugging business is of course only just a "gimmick"; a means to an end...an avenue through which to express, manifest, and communicate her universality to whomever she is coming into contact with. If anything, I imagine that switching to cow urine would provide a booster shot, so to speak, to the experience. Why? With the hugging gimmick, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can get in line -- believer or skeptic alike -- and get a hug just to see what the experience is going to be. Hey, you could even be a complete cynic like me who would show up at the darshan hall just to see what the hell was going on and check out whether Amma was a fraud or not. And if truth be told not everyone that goes up and is on the receiving end of the old touchy-feely from Amma gets the Baroque experience that her hard-core devotees are always most eager to share with us. No bells and whistles, no conversion. No tickee, no washee. But if all she was offering was urine, then you'd pretty much have to have a leap of faith to even show up, let alone get in line. I'd say the switch to urine would start separating the wheat from the chaff; all the skeptics, marginals, and low-lifes who, for the most part, are not good potential devotee material would be automatically filtered out and, instead, those willing to get in line for a sip of the old bovine elixir will henceforth be heavily skewered to the true- believer demographic. And that's the stuff from which profitable, going-concerns of a cult are made from. Hey, isn't that one of the reasons the TM organisation upped their fee for learning the technique from $75.00 back in '75 to the $2,500.00 it is today? "We want only the serious aspirants now, not like back in the old days when anybody could show up and get initiated," TM teachers will tell you in order to justify the current exhorbitant fee. "Charging $2,500.00 means that the person showing up is going to take it seriously." I'd say that the carrot of darshan or bliss or whatever it is that Amma huggees get from being cleaved to her bosum for those 3 or 4 seconds would be replaced by a new carrot provided by the offering of holy Amma-blessed cow urine... which would elicit the added benefit to the Amma organisation of upping the true believer factor exponentially. Certainly, adopting this new marketing approach would, initially, dramatically reduce those in the darshan line-up, let alone people showing up at the auditorium. But I'm confident that the percentage of devotees that would result would at least be the same under the hugging angle, if not more. And the profit margin would necessarily be higher: the organisation would no longer have to rent out large halls, always a risky undertaking in the guru business. This would save an incredible amount in expenses. Plus, I can only imagine that after hugging those many millions Amma must want to give that right shoulder a break. Another benefit: if the new age business has learned anything it's that the front man (or woman, as the case may be) must continually reinvent themselves if they want to avoid the risk going "stale" in the consumers' minds. I guarantee you that the move to cow urine from hugging will result in a completely new set of headlines worldwide and publicity the likes of which only a double murder in Brentwood could possibly hope to match. Perhaps we're on to something here. My only reservation is that I've gone public without first sharing the idea with Amma and her people privately. That way I could have sent her an invoice for services rendered.
