World-renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma) is in the United States conducting her 28th annual summer tour of North America. Amma will visit a number of cities during the tour including Seattle, Bay Area, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Dallas, Cedar Rapids, Toronto, Chicago, Washington D.C., New York and Boston.

Recently Jim Carrey met Amma in Los Angeles and tweeted about his experience, “I was feeling down about life'n'love. Then I met a woman named Ammachi and she gave me back my smile. Darkness cannot compete with her.”

Amma has been conducting spiritual programs in her home country of India since the mid 1970s. At the request of people in Europe and the United States, she began giving similar programs outside India in 1987. Amma says that her life is dedicated to trying to awaken love and compassion within individuals all over the world. Amma feels these qualities are essential for world peace and harmony. “In today’s world, people experience two types of poverty: the poverty caused by lack of food, clothing and shelter, and the poverty caused by lack of love and compassion,” Amma says. “Of these two, the second type needs to be considered first because if we have love and compassion in our hearts, then we will wholeheartedly serve those who suffer from lack of food, clothing and shelter.”

Amma has deployed doctors, ambulances and a tele-medicine bus from her non-profit specialty hospital, AIMS, in Kochi to provide relief after the devastating floods in Uttarakhand. In 2009, Amma announced that the Ashram will spend Rs. 50 crore (10.68M USD) for the rehabilitation of the flood-hit people in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. By 2012, close to 1000 homes had already been built and allotted to displaced families.

Amma’s programs are run entirely by volunteers. Funds raised from retreats as well as from the sale of food, books and gifts available at the programs directly support the humanitarian projects of Embracing the World, Amma’s global network of charitable activities. Embracing the World projects include orphanages, homes for the homeless, scholarships for poor children, hospitals, disaster relief and microfinance-powered initiatives for women.

Programs include guided meditation, devotional singing, and a spiritual talk by Amma offering practical solutions for personal fulfillment as well as the most pressing challenges facing today’s world. Program attendees also have the opportunity to receive Amma’s darshan—a spiritual blessing in the form of a physical motherly embrace. The program also includes a private retreat where participants get to learn the Integrated Amrita Meditation technique, listen to spiritual discourses by Amma and her senior monks and be served dinner by Amma herself.

“Love is the only medicine that can heal the wounds of the world."—Amma

Amma will be at the Best Western, 181 Boston Post Road West in Marlborough, MA from June 27th-29th and all are invited to receive a personal blessing. Programs include inspirational music, meditation, spiritual discourse, and personal blessings. Numbered tokens for individual blessings are distributed prior to the start of each program and are limited by time constraints.

Free programs are on:

      June 27th at 7:30 pm (tokens at 5:45 pm)
June 28th from 11 am to 5 pm (tokens at 9:30 am)
June 29^th at 10 am (tokens at 8:30 am)
June 29th at 7 pm (tokens at 5:30 pm) - Devi Bhava, a celebration devoted to world peace.

|