Experiences with Amma
AMMA, the Mother of Compassion
Dr. N. Narayana Rao
Edward C. Jordan Professor Emeritus of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distinguished Amrita Professor of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi was born to a mother in the Kerala region of India, and she became "Amma," meaning "Mother," for her devotees, whom all over the world, she calls her children. Her mother tongue is Malayalam, which has syllables, like my mother tongue, Telugu, and all spoken languages have syllables. Malayalam has a script like Telugu and all written languages have scripts. But the language of Amma needs neither syllables nor a script. It is a language that emanates from her heart, like the fragrance from a flower. You don’t hear its syllables or see its script; you feel it deep in your heart. It is the "language of compassion" which is her "passion"! One of her divinely beautiful messages says, "The one word solution for almost all the problems the world faces today is compassion."
I was born in Kakumanu, Andhra Pradesh. I am in my seventies and have been living in the United States since 1958 for the last 50 years. Currently, I am Edward C. Jordan Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States and Distinguished Amrita Professor of Engineering at Amma’s Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham. I never envisioned that one day in my life I would meet Amma and get hugged by her, let alone become the first Distinguished Amrita Professor. But destiny took me to Amritapuri, along with the U.S. delegation for the Indo-US Interuniversity Collaborative Initiative in Higher Education and Research in December 2005, where my wife and I met Amma for the first time. From then onwards, things began to happen and we continued to meet Amma a number of times, both in India and in the United States.
I teach the subject of electromagnetics, and I have written a number of textbooks on the subject. Students find this subject challenging to learn and teachers also find it a challenge to teach. I consider my station in life to make the learning and teaching of electromagnetics fearless or at least, less feared. And that is why I believe that my connection to Amma, the Mother of Compassion, happened. "Fill your heart with love and express it in everything you do" was inscribed on a retreat wristband I wore when I attended a retreat with Amma in December 2006. This message touched me so deeply in my heart that I decided to write a compassionate textbook on electromagnetics. The book, Fundamentals of Electromagnetics for Electrical and Computer Engineering, was published in the United States in May 2008, and the Indian Edition, Fundamentals of Electromagnetics for Engineering, came out just two days before I began offering an intensive two-week, eight-day, training course at Ettimadai for faculty on the "Fundamentals of Electromagnetics".
The dedication in it reads:
"Fill your heart with love and express it in everything you do."
– Amma Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Chancellor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
To students all over the world, I offer to you this book on Electromagnetics, the "Mother of Electrical and Computer Engineering," with the spirit of the above message from Amma, the "Mother of Compassion!"
Amma blessed the book on July 5, 2008 in Chicago, by writing on the dedication page the message, "Om. May the divine love guide my darling children!"