Gimme A Hug

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Everyone is searching for love. Srila Guru Maharaj says: "Everyone is searching for happiness, pleasure, joy, fulfillment. The most general thing in our nature is to inquire after happiness.... Everyone is engaged in the search for Sri Krishna: Reality the Beautiful."

Indeed, the need to be loved is so strong that one opportunist, Mata Amritanandamayi ("My karma is to console those who are sad") has built a worldwide empire by doling out hugs — hugs! — to spiritual bargain-hunters.

Amma (as she is affectionately known to her adherents) is worshipped as God although she confesses to having only a vague concept of God: "Everything is God for me.... I don't believe that God is there above the sky. I have a concept of God in terms of qualities. [My] attempt is to instill those qualities in people."

In Inner Fulfillment, Srila Guru Maharaj says: "For as long as we go on searching for happiness within the material plane, our efforts and endeavors are destined to be irrevocably frustrated. Due to their natural limitations, material objects and goals simply cannot satisfy our limitless hankerings. Only by seeking out the beauty and love of the unlimited spiritual realm can we hope to be successful in our common quest for lasting happiness."

Why do people want God so cheaply? Don't allow yourself to be cheated! Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says: "Don't be satisfied with such an incomplete, superficial idea of happiness. There is so much more ecstasy waiting for you — go further!" (eho bahya, age kaha ara).