A book that introduces four women mystics, Women Who Wear Only Themselves is full of fire. Each mystic gets a chapter.
Sri Annapurani Amma’s is about emptiness, because she’s an Indian woman, sought by many for darshan and teaching, who wears no clothes. The book’s title is inspired by this.
Balarishi Vishwashirasini’s chapter reflects on the role of a guru through give-and-take conversation with the book’s author. This includes interesting reflection on “the growing marketing pitch that pervades the spiritual life.”
The next mystic, Lata Mani, is also Indian, but spent time as an academic in southern California. There, a car accident became the entry point to her mystical life — involving brain damage and chronic illness.
The final chapter is about Maa Karpoori. It is about monkhood. Maa, too, has a personal relationship with the author. A sanyasi, Maa lives without possessions. At one point she remembers burglars with knives busting into the apartment where was staying, and then taunting them in ways that reminded me of similar stories from the life of Francis of Assisi.
Arundhathi Subramaniam’s own poems, as well as poems by other Indian poets, preface each chapter, and are often offered as prefigurings of the encounters the author has with the unusual living saints in this fascinating group memoir.
