introduction. 21
which concerns gurus—beings who straddle the line between the human and the di-
vine, or obliterate it altogether. Part 5 begins with Lisa Hallstrom’s portrait of
Anandamayi Ma (“Joy-filled Mother”), one of the most widely revered gurus in re-
cent Indian memory. Although she died in 1982, Anandamayi Ma’s devotees still ex-
perience her as alive today. When she was present in her earthly body, they resisted
the notion that she was either a woman or a saint; she was God. The nature and force
of this sense of divinity, however, is closely connected to human motherhood: its
irresistible power exceeds its moral attributes, and nothing is more powerful than the
sense of sitting in its—her—lap. While she was alive, Anandamayi Ma counted
among her devotees some of India’s most powerful people, including Prime Minis-
ter Indira Gandhi. Now that people can no longer experience “live” the electric
power of her darshan,Anandamayi Ma’s following has understandably waned. But
another “joy-filled mother”—Amritanandamayi Ma of Kerala, or, for short, Am-
machi—seems to have come forward to take her place, though without any claim to
spiritual succession. Succession is not what matters here, but the immediate experi-
ence of being accepted. Yet if living in the lap of the Mother was the defining ex-
perience for many of Anandamayi Ma’s devotees, then the ample, unquestioning
hug that Amritanandamayi Ma tirelessly offers seems to follow in close succession.
Succession is much more formalized in the Radhasoami tradition of North India,
where the lineage itself is understood to bear the charisma of guruship. On this ac-
count, lack of agreement about who should succeed to the throne when any given
guru passes away has led to a number of schisms since Radhasoami was established
in the mid-nineteenth century. Sudhir Kakar takes us to the compound of the com-
munity that has emerged from these struggles as the most populous and globally in-
fluential Radhasoami lineage—the stately deraat Beas in the Punjab. He describes
what it was like to be there in the presence of Maharaj Charan Singh, who served as
guru for the remarkably long period extending from 1951 to 1990. Kakar tells how
he felt the boundaries of his own personality melt away as he sat among the thou-
sands who waited for Charan Singh to give darshan,and reflects on the connections
between that and what an infant experiences in communion with its mother. The
guru has the power, especially through the magic ofdarshanbut also through his en-
tire presence, to reactivate this basic stratum in human personality, eliciting the
sense of trust and well-being that is essential for personal and spiritual health. Kakar
does not hesitate to call it “psychological regression” (Radhasoami adherents would
doubtless prefer “progression”), but when Kakar uses this term he does not mean
to imply that this shared psychological space is substandard or in any limiting sense
infantile. After all, it was Freud who spoke of regression in the service of the ego.